Austrian Airlines Group and Fokker Services BV signed a five-year contract for the logistical support of spare parts and components for the carrier's nine F70s and nine F100s.
Northwest Airlines reorganized its marketing and sales function in order to "better reflect the airline's commitment to developing travel products that best serve the needs of its business and leisure customers." Under the restructuring, VP-Market Planning and Airlink Thomas Bach has been named to the new position of VP-network planning and revenue management. He will be responsible for worldwide route planning and scheduling for Northwest and Northwest Airlink.
Air France selected Thales' TopSeries i5000 inflight entertainment systems for its future fleet of A380s. The French carrier has a firm order for 10 A380s and an option for a further four. "We will be equipping the A380s on our Montreal and New York routes first, followed by Beijing and Tokyo, with 538 passengers onboard," said AF Chairman and CEO Jean Cyril Spinetta during the signing of the contract.
US Transportation Security Administration completed its explosives detection trace portal program pilot phase for passenger screening. TSA tested the systems in 14 cities and said the tests were successful. Beginning next month, the agency will start the first round of deployment by adding 44 additional machines and 10 airports to the program. Airports in Baltimore, Boston, Gulfport, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York JFK, Phoenix, Providence, Rochester, San Francisco, San Diego and Tampa were included in the pilot program and are already using the new technology.
Lufthansa Technik signed two MOUs with Qatar Airways valued at more than $100 million. Under the first, LHT will take over maintenance and overhaul of the V2500 engines powering Qatar's fleet of 17 A320s over the next 10 years under a Total Engine Support contract. The second agreement calls for LHT to install Rockwell Collins' Tailwind 560 for onboard live satellite television on the carrier's 15 A330s. LHT said its engineers and technicians will equip the aircraft with antennas and corresponding systems and integrate the TV function into the existing IFE system.
AirTran Airways flew 971.2 million RPMs in May, up 38.8% over the year-ago period. Capacity climbed 34.4% to 1.3 billion ASMs and load factor rose 2.3 points to 74.6%. For the five months ended May 31, RPMs increased 29% to 4.33 billion, ASMs jumped 27.4% to 6.02 billion and load factor gained 0.8 point to 71.8%.
Delta Air Lines raised passenger surcharges on tickets purchased for travel on its transatlantic flights on or after June 15, primarily because of soaring fuel prices. The surcharge increase is $10 each way except for travel originating in the UK, which is £4.50 ($8.19) each way. The increase applies to all transatlantic travel except that to and from Canada and Mexico, and travel from France and Italy.
Germany's cartel office earlier this week announced that it had raided four German leisure travel airlines, including two of Europe's biggest tourism firms, on suspicion of collusion on travel agency commissions. According to a report in FT Deutschland, the cartel office raided the offices of TUI, Thomas Cook, Air Berlin and LTU. The reason for the raids was suspicion of illegal collusion of the companies in relation to their joint termination of contracts with travel agencies, the cartel office said in a statement.
Etihad Airways selected Connexion by Boeing to provide high-speed inflight Internet and live global TV service. The agreement calls for both in-line and retrofit installation on the airline's fleet of 25 777-300ERs, A330s, A340s and A380s. The carrier expects initially to offer the service on routes between the Gulf region and Europe and North America. Financial terms of the deal were not released.
Despite its extensive lobbying efforts, Singapore Airlines yesterday was denied entry to the US-Australia corridor by the Australian government, the Associated Press reported. "The issue of transpacific access has been considered at the highest levels by the Australian government, which has decided the time is not right for Singapore Airlines to be granted access to the route," AP quoted a government spokesperson as saying.
Travelport, an online corporate travel management solution and part of Cendant's Travel Distribution Services Division, launched its new offering designed specifically for Canada. According to the company, the product is an "integrated, full-service travel management solution comprised of online booking capability, comprehensive travel content from Galileo's GDS and automated fulfillment" and is based on Canadian point-of-sale via the single Travelport platform.
Republic Airways Holdings flew 382.1 million RPMs in May, up 49.9% over the year-ago period. Capacity climbed 41.2% to 528.7 million ASMs and load factor gained 4.2 points to 72.3%. For the five months ended May 31, RPMs increased 47% to 743.8 million, ASMs jumped 38.8% to 1.03 billion and load factor rose 4 points to 72.2%.
United Airlines yesterday introduced an ontime arrival guarantee for business travelers on all flights between Chicago O'Hare and seven US airports: Boston, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Newark, New York LaGuardia, Philadelphia and Reagan Washington National. Under the guarantee, any eligible business passenger on the flights who does not arrive at the destination within 30 min. of the scheduled arrival time for any reason, including weather and air traffic control delays, will receive a bonus of 500 frequent-flier miles.
Pinnacle Airlines flew 362.5 million RPMs in May, up 53.3% over the year-ago period. Capacity climbed 51.6% to 500.5 million ASMs and load factor rose 0.8 point to 72.4%. For the five months ended May 31, RPMs increased 56% to 1.51 billion, ASMs jumped 55% to 2.27 billion and load factor gained 0.4 point to 66.7%.
Mesaba Aviation flew 176.2 million RPMs in May, up 14.6% over the year-ago period. Capacity climbed 11.9% to 263.6 million ASMs and load factor rose 1.6 points to 66.8%. For the five months ended May 31, RPMs increased 21% to 812.9 million, ASMs rose 14.3% to 1.27 billion and load factor gained 3.5 points to 63.8%.
Mesa Air Group flew 570.8 million RPMs in May, up 22.6% over the year-ago period. Capacity climbed 25.1% to 814.7 million ASMs and load factor dropped 1.4 points to 70.1%. For the five months ended May 31, RPMs increased 28.1% to 2.51 billion, ASMs grew 24% to 3.55 billion and load factor gained 2.3 points to 70.7%.
Alaska Airlines named Kris Kutchera MD-applications development. In this role, she will lead the overall vision for the use of technology to support e-commerce, maintenance and engineering, ground and flight operations and the airline's mileage plan.
Viewmark was selected by Frontier Airlines to provide its usability testing lab facilities for a comprehensive review of Frontier's implementation of its new Sabre online booking engine.
America West Airlines flew 2.16 billion RPMs in May, up 12.8% over the year-ago period. Capacity climbed 5.1% to 2.64 billion ASMs and load factor rose 5.5 points to 81.7%. For the five months ended May 31, RPMs increased 8.2% to 9.89 billion, ASMs grew 1.2% to 12.47 billion and load factor gained 5.1 points to 79.3%.
Bulgaria's Supreme Court will not allow the government to award Copenhagen Airports an airport concession deal until it rules on appeals made by competitors, Reuters reported. Earlier this week, the Bulgarian government awarded the company a 35-year, €526 million ($638 million) contract to run and modernize its two Black Sea airports in Varna and Bourgas. However, the court said the deal only could be signed a month after it rules on appeals by two other companies.
SkyWest Airlines flew 625.9 million RPMs in May, up 49.9% over the year-ago period. Capacity climbed 46.7% to 852.7 million ASMs and load factor grew 1.6 points to 73.4%. For the five months ended May 31, RPMs increased 44.4% to 2.86 billion, ASMs rose 38.6% to 3.9 billion and load factor gained 2.9 points to 73.3%.
Vitria Technology was selected by Iberia to provide the integration backbone that will streamline various technological projects the carrier will roll out over the next three years.
