AirTran Airways canceled its Atlanta-New Orleans flights scheduled for yesterday evening and this morning owing to Tropical Storm Cindy, which was expected to hit the US Gulf Coast.
America West Airlines flew 2.16 billion RPMs in June, up 4.1% over the year-ago period. Capacity climbed 0.2% to 2.59 billion ASMs and load factor jumped 3.1 points to 83.6%. For the six months ended June 30, RPMs increased 7.5% to 12.06 billion, ASMs grew 1% to 15.06 billion and load factor gained 4.8 points to 80.1%.
British Airways restated its financial results to comply with International Financial Reporting Standards in accordance with EU regulations, which required the company to adopt IFRS from April 1. Under IFRS, net profit was unchanged at £251 million ($298.9 million) for the fiscal year ended March 31 but operating profit increased to £556 million from £540 million under UK GAAP and profit before tax climbed from £415 million to £513 million. Separately, BA said it flew 9.74 billion RPKs in June, up 4.7% over the year-ago period.
US Airways announced that the 30-day period for alternative offers on its proposed merger with America West Airlines ended without any competing offers being submitted. The two airlines expect to close the merger in late September or early October.
Continental Airlines flew 7.23 billion RPMs in June, up 7.6% over the year-ago period. Capacity climbed 7.2% to 8.8 billion ASMs and load factor gained 0.3 point to 82.2%. For the six months ended June 30, RPMs increased 9.7% to 38.4 billion, ASMs rose 4.8% to 49.07 billion and load factor jumped 3.6 points to 78.3%. In June, Continental said both consolidated and mainline passenger RASM are estimated to have increased 6%-7% compared to June 2004. For May 2005, consolidated passenger RASM gained 9% compared to the year-ago period and mainline passenger RASM rose 9.5% from May 2004.
Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings filed its 10-K annual report for 2004 with the Securities and Exchange Commission, confirming its previously announced financial results for the year ( ATWOnline, May 24), which included a five-month period that ended Dec. 31, 2004, following its emergence from Chapter 11 protection, and a seven-month period ended July 27, 2004, that preceded it. For the five-month period, the company reported net income of $22.7 million. Revenue totaled $679.3 million and total expenses were $612.3 million, producing an operating income of $67 million.
OAG teamed with 15below, an aviation software applications specialist, to offer PASNGR, "a groundbreaking passenger communications system that interfaces to reservations and other data stores to allow airlines and travel agents to communicate practically any information to their customers on a worldwide basis." The system already is live with a number of airlines including Ryanair, Monarch, Virgin Express, AirAsia, TUI, MyTravel, First Choice and Jetstar. The companies said PASNGR also addresses EU regulatory requirements to notify passengers when service disruptions occur.
KLM Engineering & Maintenance is boosting its presence in the market for component maintenance by buying out partner Hamilton Sundstrand's 51% stake in their Schiphol-based joint venture EPCOR, which will become a 100% subsidiary of KLM E&M. The company employs 60 people and generates annual turnover of $20 million specializing in maintaining pneumatic aircraft components such as air cycle machines, engine starters and pneumatic valves for regulating bleed air and air-conditioning systems.
Lufthansa in response to the "continuing dramatic increase in oil prices" is increasing its fuel surcharge. From July 8, the surcharge on intra-European routes will jump from €7 ($8.36) to €9 per flight leg. On long-haul routes, the surcharge will increase from €27 to €37 per leg.
CSA said it carried almost 1.8 million passengers in the first five months of 2005, up 16% compared to the year-ago period. May traffic rose more than 20% to 444,000 passengers.
Northwest Airlines mechanics and related workers, citing the carrier's "continuing refusal to take current contract negotiations seriously," will begin a strike vote, the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Assn. said Friday. The two sides have been negotiating since October 2004. In June, Northwest filed a request with the National Mediation Board to declare the talks at an impasse, but it was rejected and NMB told the parties to keep talking ( ATWOnline, June 13).
United Airlines flight attendants, represented by the Assn. of Flight Attendants, said they now have the right to strike after the carrier began to terminate their pension plan. AFA had warned several times that any unilateral change to the flight attendants' contract, in this case termination of the pension plan, would violate the Railway Labor Act, setting the stage for legal work stoppages by the group. Earlier this year, United and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.
The carrier told its corporate clients that it will begin accepting credit card payments for the fares beginning Oct. 1. It said some clients had complained that its policy had made payment processing too complicated.
Then, living is far from "easy." Instead you sit there fuming, wondering why there haven't been A) airport and airways capacity increases to get ahead of the traffic that everyone-literally everyone-knew was coming because we've already been here, or B) more effort put into making all-weather airports truly all-weather rather than losing a large fraction of capacity when conditions drop below VFR.
The move is a natural progression for JetBlue, which serves 11 U.S. cruise ports. The carrier is working with EzRez, the Honolulu-based software company that specializes in dynamic packaging. The booking engine will have a completely new interface and will use XML connections to pull in pertinent cruise data.
The party's in gear, everybody's invited, the music is playing and yet amid the mirth on the dance floor there are sad faces, going through the motions of having good times yet enjoying not a bit of it. And so it goes with the airline industry halfway through 2005, five years since the start of the downturn and almost four years since the attacks of 9/11 put an air-tight lid on the industry's fun and booted it down the stairs: Some are doing great and some are hating life.
InteliSys Aviation Systems of America signed a renewal agreement with Air Arabia. Under the accord, InteliSys will continue providing the airline with its Internet-based amelia flight reservation, distribution and sales channel management system for a number of years. The original agreement was signed in August 2003.
SITA SC said it extended its long-term partnership with Air France-KLM Group. The four-year services agreement provides AF-KLM with complete end-to-end support from network hardware to project management. AF-KLM will be migrating nearly 1,000 connections to IP VPN, "allowing data, voice and multimedia to be transmitted efficiently over the same network and at significantly lower cost than over conventional networks." AF Director-IT Services and Operations Roland Fillon said, "We wanted comprehensive support, good prices and the best professional services.
SAS Group and Carlson Hotels Worldwide completed a previously announced agreement under which SAS sold a 25% shareholding in its Rezidor SAS hotels company to Carlson Hotels Worldwide in exchange for which Rezidor SAS Hospitality Group achieves improved commercial terms and extension options until 2052 of its Master Franchise Agreements ( ATWOnline, March 15). The agreement is expected to improve Rezidor SAS profitability by €6 million ($7.3 million) in the second half of 2005 and €11 million on an annual basis.
Skybus Airlines, a proposed low-cost carrier to be based in Columbus, Ohio, named as its CEO Bill Diffenderffer, former CEO of SystemOne Corp. and its successor SystemOne Amadeus. Most recently, Diffenderffer served as a partner in IBM's Global Travel and Transportation consulting practice and from 1998 until 2001 he was chairman and CEO of XTRA On-line, a developer and provider of Internet-based travel planning and reservation software.
American Airlines Cargo will increase its fuel surcharge from $0.40/kg. to $0.45/kg. for most US-origin international shipments and from $0.16/lb. to $0.18/lb. for US domestic shipments from July 12. The fuel surcharge also will be adjusted in local currency for most non-US-origin shipments unless the adjustment is not allowed for regulatory reasons.
Singapore Technologies Aerospace said ST Aerospace Supplies secured a five-year, $21 million complete component support contract with Spring Airlines for its fleet of up to 15 A320s. The agreement is on a maintenance-by-the-hour basis. Shanghai-based Spring plans to begin operations this year with three A320s. It is owned by Shanghai Spring International Travel Service, the largest travel agency in China, according to ST Aero.
Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Assn., representing Northwest Airlines' mechanics, said it filed an unfair labor practices grievance with Northwest over the company's use of Airbus employees in violation of its union agreement to repair the A319 that was damaged in a ground collision with a DC-9 in May. "Northwest had AMFA technicians disassemble the plane, issued layoff notices and brought in the Airbus replacement workers to finish the work," AMFA charged.
FAA said it is raising Greece's safety rating from Category 2 to Category 1, which means that the Greek civil aviation authority has been assessed by FAA inspectors and found to license and oversee air carriers in accordance with ICAO aviation safety standards.
