Southwest Airlines received a reprieve from US FAA yesterday and now has until Dec. 24 to replace the unapproved parts on approximately 39 remaining 737-300s/-500s as both the regulator and Boeing said the exhaust gate assembly hinge fittings "would not prevent safe operation of the airplanes."
Sensis announced that Newark International and Boston Logan International now are operating with its Airport Surface Detection Equipment Model X. The runway incursion detection and alerting system is operational at 19 US airports. FAA plans to deploy ASDE-X at 35 airports by 2011.
IATA said 54 airlines that have reported second-quarter financial results have lost a combined $2.02 billion, a figure signifying a "further deterioration" the organization said is troubling considering that carriers "usually make 50% of their profits in this seasonally strong quarter."
Avianova, a new Russian LCC, launched operations from Moscow Vnukovo with two A320s serving Sochi, Krasnodar, Rostov-on-Don and Samara. RIA Novosti said the airline's fares start at RUB250 ($7.88) excluding taxes and fees. Avianova Director Vladimir Gorbunov said the carrier hopes to add two aircraft in time for the winter schedule, The Moscow Times reported. The current aircraft are on lease from ILFC for five years each. Avianova's main shareholders are Alfa Group and Indigo Partners.
Etihad Airways introduced its new first class suite on an A340-600 operating between Abu Dhabi and London Heathrow. Suite includes an 80.5-in. lie-flat leather seat, a 23-in. LCD screen, a wooden table and a changing room with full-length mirror, sink and a fold-down seat. A second -600 equipped with the suite will enter the fleet next month. Five A330-300s will be delivered with the suites over the next two years, starting in December. Nine A340s will be retrofitted by December 2010.
American Airlines will furlough 228 flight attendants on Oct. 1 and place an additional 693 on leave. The Assn. of Professional Flight Attendants said the carrier originally had planned to cut 1,200 positions in response to previously announced capacity reductions but that the union and management worked to minimize the final number. As a result, 244 employees will go on leave in October and November and an additional 449 will be asked to take voluntary leave. Of the furloughs, 105 will come at New York LaGuardia and 65 at Chicago O'Hare, with the remainder at Boston, St.
Etihad Airways has said it will open a new premium lounge at London Heathrow airport as part of the airline's flights moving from Terminal Three to Terminal Four on 30 September 2009.
The union said that neither airlines nor regulators in the US and Canada have "kept pace" in terms of pilot qualification requirements and training oversight. "Today's archaic regulations allow airlines to hire low-experience pilots into the right seat of high-speed, complex, swept-wing jet aircraft in what amounts to on-the-job training with paying passengers on board," ALPA said. "Investigations of recent accidents reveal that safety margins have been eroded at some carriers as a result. A complete overhaul of pilot selection and training methods is needed."
US travelers are more environmentally aware than they were just two years ago but few are willing to pay extra for eco-friendly travel, according to the July "travelhorizons," a quarterly consumer survey co-authored by the US Travel Assn. and Ypartnership, an advertising and public relations agency.
Considering the precipitous drop in revenue and yields and the fact that general anxiety about the weak economy was exacerbated by the swine flu scare, US passenger airlines' second-quarter financial results could have been far worse than they were. Even with key indicators decidedly not in their favor, six of the nine largest airlines earned a net profit during the three-month period and seven of nine were profitable on an operating basis.
A UK government-commissioned report questions the green credentials of high-speed rail by claiming that the proposed new 300-kph (185 mph) London-Manchester train could be less environmentally friendly than the same air route. According to the Daily Telegraph, the study by consultants Booz Allen Hamilton argues that building and operating the rail network will generate more CO2 than taking the same route by air over a 60-year period.
Rentech announced that it has signed a multiyear agreement to supply eight airlines with up to 1.5 million gal. per year of renewable biodiesel--RenDiesel--for ground service equipment operations at Los Angeles International beginning in late 2012 when the plant that will produce the fuel is scheduled to go into service.
American Airlines emitted 29.1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents in 2008, down 5% compared to the previous year. Fleet downsizing and schedule reductions played a large role, but the carrier also is encouraging workers to find ways to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Its Fuel Smart fuel conservation program saved 111 million gal. of fuel and 2.3 billion lb. of carbon dioxide last year. Since 2002 AA has reduced its CO2 footprint by 20% and has set an objective of a further 30% reduction by 2025 from 2002.
Biofuels have gotten a major boost from the US Navy's announcement that it will test them in high-performance fighter aircraft. It has asked for 40,000 gal. of JP-5 jet fuel derived from bio-based feedstocks as long as they are not derived from crops used for human consumption.
"Despite the progress made on modelling aviation's impacts on tropospheric chemistry, there remains a significant spread in model results, and while much progress has been made in the last ten years on characterizing emissions, major uncertainties remain over the nature of particles." This is the key finding of a new report, "Transport impacts on atmosphere and climate: Aviation," published in Atmospheric Environment.
American Airlines' decision to work with HP to build a new passenger services system dubbed a "bold move" by Monte Ford, the carrier's chief information officer took many observers by surprise.
Confusion reigned as the Aug. 31 deadline for aircraft operators to submit their tonne-km. plans for the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme came and went amid growing concerns that operators could lose their free allowance allocations.
For the last few years, airlines and other travel companies have tried to figure out what to do about social media. Since the advent of TripAdvisor in 2000, suppliers at one industry conference after another were warned that they should not ignore the phenomenon. "It's out there," speakers would say. "You can't ignore it." But suggestions about the appropriate response were uniformly vague.
FOR AIRCRAFT SPOTTERS, WHO REVEL IN variety, Kuala Lumpur International is becoming positively boring, with 44% of the flights being AirAsia A320s as the airline becomes the largest user of the airport. That statistic is more extraordinary given that just 7.5 years ago it had two aircraft and six routes and founder and CEO Tony Fernandes rarely if ever received an audience with regulators and politicians, let alone a cup of coffee from a banker. Now the red carpet is unrolled wherever he goes as airports build new terminals to accommodate AirAsia's expansion.
SkyEurope Airlines suspended operations yesterday, hours after airport operators in Prague and Bratislava said they would stop handling the LCC's flights beginning today because it is behind on payments. Vienna halted the LCC's flights in mid-August and SkyEurope had been shuttling VIE passengers to/from Bratislava ( ATWOnline, Aug. 24).
French BEA Director Paul-Louis Arslanian said investigators have not determined the cause of the May 31 Air France A330-200 crash in the Atlantic Ocean and reiterated that there still is no evidence that speed sensors caused the accident. "At the moment, we can't explain the accident," Arslanian told journalists yesterday in Paris. "We are making progress and will make progress and I'm optimistic, but this will take time. It takes a year-and-a-half, being responsible and reasonable, in order to make progress and ensure that we've run through all of the questions."
Jazeera Airways lost KWD1.3 million ($4.4 million) in the second quarter, widened 39.8% from the KWD897,900 net loss reported in the year-ago period. Revenue dropped 11.5% to KWD10.1 million against a 5.6% lift in expenses to KWD11.5 million. Operating loss of KWD1.4 million compared to a KWD516,100 profit in the 2008 second quarter. Six-month net loss of KWD2.2 million deepened from KWD152,100 in the year-ago semester.
Southwest Airlines and US FAA were working toward accommodation today on a plan and timetable to replace unapproved exhaust gate assembly hinge fittings on some 49 of the airline's 737s. When the agency became aware of the existence of the unapproved parts, it issued a letter giving SWA conditional approval to operate aircraft with the parts for 10 days, a deadline that expires today at 5 p.m. local time ( ATWOnline, Aug. 27).
Frontier Airlines reported a $17.8 million net profit in July, reversed from a $3.2 million loss in the year-ago month. Operating profit was $24.9 million compared to a $1.2 million surplus in July 2008. Results were impacted by $5.5 million in reorganization expenses. Mainline unit revenue fell 5.1% to 11.26 cents while unit cost was down 27% to 8.58 cents.
