Lufthansa and Air Malta signed an MOU Tuesday in Malta to begin a "bilateral cooperation" that will start with the adjustment of their schedules to give passengers of each airline the "opportunity to increase connections to worldwide destinations." Lufthansa VP Joachim Steinbach said LH hopes to integrate Air Malta into the new Terminal 2 in Munich. In addition, the two are planning to introduce codeshare flights from November.
Washington Dulles received a $200 million pledge yesterday from the US Dept. of Transportation to help build a fourth runway. The funding will be provided over the next 11 years. The airport's third north-south runway will be completed in 2008, costing $356 million, and will allow Dulles to handle up to 50% more flights per hour "during the right conditions," DOT said. Passenger throughput has increased from 12 million in 1996 to more than 27 million in 2005.
US Airways Group reported a $261 million net loss in the fourth fiscal quarter ended Dec. 31, the first full three-month period following the September 2005 merger of US Airways and America West Airlines, which is treated as the acquiring company for accounting purposes.
The Australian government, as expected, yesterday rejected Singapore Airlines' plans to offer service on the transpacific route to the US, bowing to a concerted campaign by Qantas to limit competition on its most profitable route and ruling that there would be minimal benefits to Australia.
Etihad Airways will launch daily Abu Dhabi-Manchester service from March 27 aboard an A330. Separately, Boeing said Etihad will implement its Airplane Health Management maintenance condition monitoring system on five new 777-300ERs being delivered in the first half of this year.
Austrian low-fare airline Niki is planning to add A319s to its fleet of four A320s and one A321 in order to access new markets. "Currently we take delivery of our new A320s to phase out leased aircraft. With the A319 from 2007, we can operate nonstop services from Vienna to Barcelona, increase frequencies to Palma and look for new markets in Italy like Milan and also to Amsterdam," founder and majority owner Niki Lauda told ATWOnline. The carrier has two A320-200s on order.
Air New Zealand will go ahead and outsource the heavy maintenance of its long-haul fleet after all following the failure of unions to secure adequate support for a compromise proposal that would have kept the operation in-house. The airline had accepted the union's proposal late last month ( ATWOnline, Jan. 31). ANZ CEO Rob Fyfe said he was "extremely disappointed" by the decision that will result in the loss of 507 maintenance jobs.
Jet Airways committed to equip its 10 A330-200s from an order confirmed in October ( ATWOnline, Oct. 26, 2005) with GE CF6-80E1s. The deal is worth more than $300 million. Delivery of the new aircraft will begin next year.
Cenco International will supply a new flagship testing facility in Arnstadt, Germany, to N3 Engine Overhaul Services, a joint venture between Lufthansa Technik and Rolls-Royce. The facility will provide technical support for Trent 500, 700 and 900 engines.
Reed Exhibitions' plan to move Asian Aerospace to Hong Kong International Airport in 2007 also calls for a shorter show, with the elimination of public days ( ATWOnline, Feb. 14). The newly named Asian Aerospace International Expo and Congress will take place Sept. 3-6, 2007, at the AsiaWorld-Expo complex at HKIA. A three-day "major international aerospace congress" will be held in conjunction with the event. This year's edition of Asian Aerospace, running Feb. 21-26, takes place at its traditional location and venue, the Changi Exhibition Center in Singapore.
Thai Airways released details of its fiscal first quarter performance Friday, confirming it earned a net profit of THB3.81 billion ($96.7 million) in the three months ended Dec. 31 ( ATWOnline, Feb. 15), a 33.4% decrease from the THB5.72 billion earned in the year-ago quarter.
Star Alliance member carriers at Paris CDG Terminal 1 have begun moving into new check-in Hall 4, the alliance announced last week. Thai Airways and bmi already are using the new Star Alliance facilities and Adria Airways, ANA, Croatia Airlines, LOT Polish Airlines, Lufthansa and SAS Scandinavian Airlines will relocate by the end of the month. There are 24 check-in desks currently available. Singapore Airlines, United Airlines, US Airways and Varig will start making use of the new facilities in 2008 once additional areas of the terminal are refurbished.
Lufthansa Technik signed a contract to deliver its Total Component Support service for seven CRJ200s operated by Danish Regional Cimber Air over a two-year time period and also signed a TCS deal covering a CRJ900 for Spain's Air Nostrum.
SkyEurope Airlines denied forcefully last week any assertion that it is decreasing its service to the Polish market, announcing it will base four of the six new 737-700s it will add this year at Krakow Balice. Rival Wizz Air said it would offer free tickets to SkyEurope passengers left "stranded" by the Slovakian carrier's decision to cancel service from Warsaw to London Stansted and Bratislava and to postpone two additional flights from Poland ( ATWOnline, Feb.
Airbus confirmed that an A380 suffered wing damage during a stress test last week, according to press reports. The rupture between two engines occurred when the aircraft was going from 1.45 to 1.5 times its limit load. The airframer said it still expects to deliver the first A380 on schedule at the end of 2006.
Gulf Air announced that approximately $900 million in funding for the "first phase of its fleet upgrade" is scheduled to be in place by May. The carrier's shareholders, the Kingdom of Bahrain and the Sultanate of Oman, agreed to a recapitalization at a board meeting in Oman earlier this month ( ATWOnline, Feb. 8).
DBA, days after announcing that it doubled its capital through the sale of a 25.1% stake to investor Lutz Helmig ( ATWOnline, Feb. 14), acquired a 60% share of charter carrier LTU Friday through majority owner Hans Rudolf Woehrl's Intro Verwaltungs investment group, creating a low-cost alliance it hopes can compete with Lufthansa.
Iberia flew 3.9 billion RPKs in January, up 3.1% over the year-ago month, on a 0.4% rise in capacity to 5.4 billion ASKs. Load factor improved 1.9 points to 73.2%. Number of passengers grew 3.6% to 1.96 million, of which 1.05 million flew on the domestic network. Norwegian reported a 101% increase in January traffic to 226 million RPKs. Capacity climbed 76% to 313 million ASKs and load factor rose 8 points to 72%. The carrier expected a yield of NOK0.72 (10.7 cents), a decrease of 8% from the year-ago month.
Kenya Airways unveiled its new website, which features a state-of-the-art online booking engine developed by E-Travel. The carrier is offering a 10% discount on tickets purchased on the site. It said it carried more than 2 million passengers in 2005 and recorded turnover in excess of KES42 billion ($583.5 million). It plans to launch service to Paris and Freetown "in the near future."
Air France-KLM announced the signing of a protocol agreement finalizing implementation of a European Works Council to "inform and consult workers about all matters concerning the Group as well as issues of a transnational character." The joint body, established to conform with European law, will supersede those of the individual airlines but will not replace staff representative bodies from each company and in each country. The council will comprise 37 members appointed or elected for a period of four years.
China Eastern Airlines contracted EADS EFW for the conversion of three A300-600 passenger aircraft to freighters. The first is expected to enter EADS EFW's Dresden facility in December. The remaining conversions will take place during 2007.
Rising fuel costs and "aggressive competitor capacity increases" contributed to a 9.6% decline in Qantas's half-year profits to A$352.6 million ($261.3 million) in the six months ended Dec. 31 from A$390.2 million in the year-ago period. The airline expects those difficult conditions to continue through the current semester, saying, "While further reforms in the business are underway, and coupled with the high fuel price, we do not expect to achieve the same levels of profitability in the current financial year."
Finnair lost €2.9 million ($3.4 million) in the quarter ended Dec. 31 compared to a profit of €3.9 million in the final quarter of 2004, but still managed to end the year with an impressive bottom line as its annual profit more than doubled to €61.4 million from €25.6 million.
