Latin American Airline Assn. member traffic increased 2.1% in February to 9.14 billion RPKs as capacity grew 4% to 13.23 billion ASKs and load factor dropped 1.3 points to 69.1%.
SkyWest Inc., parent of SkyWest Airlines and Atlantic Southeast Airlines, priced a public offering of 4 million shares yesterday at $26.05, according to the Associated Press. The company expects to use about $99.3 million in net proceeds, excluding overallotments, to repay short-term debt, reduce amounts outstanding under a revolving credit facility and for other purposes.
Symbol Technologies and partner Peak Technologies were chosen by Virgin Atlantic Airways to supply RFID technology as part of a pilot project to track "high value" aircraft spare and replacement parts moving through its logistics supply chain at London Heathrow. According to Symbol, Virgin is the first UK airline to use RFID technology to track parts onsite.
Deutsche Lufthansa is planning a euro-benchmark medium- to long-term bond issue at the end of April on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Value was not disclosed. Joint bookrunners for the transaction are Deutsche Bank, Helaba, Morgan Stanley and UBS.
Triumph Group of Pennsylvania announced it completed an agreement to purchase the assets of Excel Manufacturing, which makes aircraft structural components.
Air France-KLM flew 15.94 billion RPKs in March, a 6.6% rise over the year-ago month. Capacity increased 7.5% to 20.06 billion ASKs, dropping load factor 0.7 point to 79.4%. Delta Air Lines' system traffic fell 6.1% last month to 10.07 billion RPMs. Capacity dropped 6.7% to 12.51 billion ASMs and load factor rose 0.5 point to 80.5%. Domestic traffic decreased 10.7% to 7.52 billion RPMs against a 12.4% fall in capacity to 9.28 billion ASMs as load factor rose 1.5 points to 81.1%.
Sabre Airline Solutions signed deals worth $2.5 million with Alitalia to provide it with revenue integrity products, as well as its consulting team, to stem what Sabre said is "millions of dollars of revenue leakage each year." The carrier also extended and upgraded its use of the Sabre AirMax revenue management system.
Avient Solutions said its Avient Gate Agent entered operation at London Heathrow and is used by British Airways, SAS, Virgin Atlantic Airways and United Airlines. Gate Agent is part of Avient's Passenger Management solution that includes FIDS and Check-in Agent.
Munich Airport claimed that IATA used partial and misleading data to buttress its claim that Munich is among Europe's costliest airports in its call for tougher regulation of airport charges issued Friday ( ATWOnline, April 10).
China Eastern Airlines posted a loss of CNY467.3 million ($58.3 million) in 2005, a reversal from the CNY320.7 million profit reported in 2004, according to press reports. Revenues rose 28.3% to CNY27.45 billion. EVA Airways earned TWD1.33 billion ($41.1 million) last year, a 59% plunge from a TWD3.24 billion profit in 2004, according to a company statement cited by press reports. Pre-tax earnings fell 69% to TWD1.14 billion.
IATA and the Chinese government agreed to open an additional route, Y-1, between China and Europe, designed to reduce flight time by 30 min. The route is expected to open to commercial traffic Thursday and initially could benefit up to 110 weekly flights, saving airlines $30 million in fuel costs, according to IATA DG and CEO Giovanni Bisignani. It also is expected to conserve 27,000 tonnes of fuel and eliminate 84,800 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
Large European airports are out-of-control monopolies and need to be regulated by newly created national authorities "with teeth," IATA DG and CEO Giovanni Bisignani said Friday at a meeting between the European Commission and 11 aviation organizations to discuss airport policy.
Singapore Technologies Aerospace and China Eastern Airlines said their airframe MRO joint venture, Shanghai Technologies Aerospace Co., received FAA certification. The announcement was made as the partners celebrated STARCO's first year of operation. The facility, which is operated and managed as part of ST Aero's MRO network, is located at Shanghai Hongqiao. It has two hangars that can accommodate two widebody and two narrowbody aircraft simultaneously.
Avexus announced that Kitty Hawk Aircargo will implement its Asset Management & Operations and Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul hosted solutions for fleet MRO management and planning.
Lufthansa Technik signed a contract with Mexmil giving the Santa Ana-based firm a license to market and produce LHT's AcousticPlus "enhanced cabin acoustic insulation system." Bombardier Aerospace appointed Taikoo Aircraft Engineering of Jinan as its first authorized heavy maintenance facility in the Asia/Pacific region. Taikoo is authorized to perform C checks and other heavy MRO on all CRJs.
Interest in airlines in Indonesia appears to be building. Last month, Qantas flagged interest in Adam Air and yesterday Bisnis was quoting Garuda Indonesia President Director Emirsyah Satar as stating that Emirates is interested in forging an alliance. "Emirates Airlines is one party interested in us, but there are still no concrete plans," he told the Indonesian newspaper. Previously, Lufthansa was inked to the financing of a rescue of Garuda.
American Airlines' traffic increased just 0.2% in March as it flew 12.1 billion RPMs. Capacity dropped 0.9% year-over-year to 14.9 billion ASMs, nudging up load factor 0.9 point to 81.1%. Domestic RPMs fell 0.8% to 8.05 billion, capacity decreased 3.2% to 9.65 billion and load factor rose 2 points to 83.3%. Internationally, traffic grew 2.5% to 4.05 billion RPMs, ASMs increased 3.6% to 5.25 billion and load factor dipped 0.9 point to 77.1%.
Air Berlin carried 2.75 million passengers in the first quarter, up 8.5% over the year-ago period. Highest growth was recorded at Nuremberg (up 24.4%), Paderborn (24.5%) and Hannover (12.7%). Top airports outside Germany were London Stansted (up 60 %) and Milan Bergamo (42 %).
ICAO and IATA signed a memorandum of cooperation "to share safety-related information from their respective audit programs to better identify potential safety risks and prevent aircraft accidents." They also will share accident and incident monitoring, and "experts from each organization will be allowed to participate as observers in audit missions of the other, upon request."
Precision Conversions will provide a 757PCF conversion to Ethiopian Cargo. The aircraft currently is being operated in passenger configuration by Ethiopian. Modification will take place at Goodrich ATS in Everett, Wash.
Willow CSN was selected by proposed low-cost startup Virgin America to manage all of its customer service calls including reservations and flight information through a "virtual call center" staffed by home-based CyberAgents.
Rockwell Collins named Jeff Moore senior VP-operations. He replaces Kent Statler, now VP and GM of Rockwell Collins Services. Goodrich named Bill Ashworth to the post of division president, Aviation Technical Services. He has 10 years of experience at ATS, most recently serving as VP-operations. He replaces Eric Schulz, who has been appointed division president, Actuation Systems.
Ethiopian Airlines will lease two 747-400s from Malaysia Airlines for five years to meet capacity demands ahead of the delivery of its 787s. The 747s will be delivered in July.
SkyEurope Airlines will launch twice-weekly summer services to Krakow from Split and Dubrovnik aboard 737-700s. Flights operate June 17-Sept. 16. It also will begin twice-weekly Bratislava-Naples flights operating June 18-Sept. 17. Separately, SkyEurope flew 178,163 earned seats in March, a 62.3% rise over the year-ago month. Load factor improved 1.2 points to 74.4%.
