Alitalia won the bidding for Volareweb.com, the LCC subsidiary of Volare Airlines. It reportedly offered €38 million ($46.2 million), some €10 million more than Air One, for the carrier, which has been in extraordinary administration since Nov. 30, 2004, Il Sole 24 Ore reported. Air One is considering suing Alitalia, questioning its right to participate in the auction, Corriere della Sera said. Official results of the sale are due to be announced Jan 15.
News from Travel Technology Update: The worldwide travel management scene is undergoing seismic changes as several companies split up, re-form and acquire others. TUI AG agreed to sell its business travel operations to BCD Holdings N.V., the Dutch parent company of World Travel BTI. The terms of the deal, which is subject to approval by TUI's advisory board and regulatory authorites, were not disclosed. If approved, the sale is expected to close in March.
Precision Conversions received an STC from FAA to carry out passenger-to-freighter conversions of PW2000-powered 757-200s. In conjunction with the awarding of the STC, CAAC approved the conversion, clearing the way for delivery of the first converted aircraft to Shanghai Airlines. The work was carried out on behalf of ILFC, which is leasing the jet to the Chinese carrier. Work will begin shortly on converting a second ILFC 757 for Shanghai Airlines. Precision received an STC for conversion of Rolls-Royce-powered 757s last June.
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said JFK, Newark and LaGuardia airports handled nearly 100 million passengers last year, a new record. A final tally is still a couple of weeks away, but preliminary figures suggest a 6% rise in passenger throughput, the Port Authority said. JFK handled nearly 41 million, Newark 33 million and LaGuardia about 26 million.
Preston Aviation Solutions, a Boeing subsidiary, announced that Dubai's Dept. of Civil Aviation will use its Total Airspace and Airport Modeler software. NavAero received an STC for its tbag C2 squared electronic flight bag system installed as a Class II EFB on a Miami Air International 737-800. Air One reached agreement with Accenture and Trax USA to implement the latter's Trax Engineering and Maintenance software. Click Commerce announced that American Airlines will implement its Service Parts Optimization and Planning solution.
Honeywell will provide its Runway Awareness and Advisory System to Lufthansa, it announced Friday. RAAS uses GPS technology to compare an aircraft's location against a database of airport runways and provides audio alerts.
National Air Traffic Services said it handled a record 2.3 million flights through British airspace in 2005, a rise of 5.7% over the previous year and the highest annual growth since 1999.
American Airlines' December system traffic rose 4.6% over the year-ago month to 11.49 billion RPMs. Capacity dropped 1.1% to 14.55 billion ASMs and load factor climbed 4.3 points to 78.9%. The number of enplaned passengers lifted 4.8% to 8.2 million. Domestically, RPMs rose 2.6% to 7.55 billion, ASMs fell 4.5% to 9.42 billion and load factor surged 5.6 points to 80.1%. International traffic grew 8.8% to 3.94 billion RPMs with capacity up 5.7% to 5.13 billion ASMs, resulting in a load factor of 76.9%, up 2.2 points. Cargo ton-miles lowered 3.1% to 185.9 million.
Delta Air Lines was granted an extension last week by the US Bankruptcy Court to file its reorganization plan by July 11. The original deadline was Jan. 12.
FLYi, parent of Independence Air, grounded its fleet Jan. 5 following its last flight, an A319 from Tampa that landed at Washington Dulles. Some 2,700 workers were left unemployed by the shutdown. The low-fare carrier, formerly known as Atlantic Coast Airlines, made the decision Jan. 2 to cease operating after failing to gain financial support from outside investors.
CAE signed a deal with Oman Air to extend its pilot training program. It will involve instructor-led upgrade training and recurrent training for 737NGs at the ECFT center in Dubai. SpiceJet of India signed a similar deal. CAE also reached an agreement with Qatar Airways for A330/A340 pilot training. Separately, CAE said it will invest $630 million in a six-year R&D program dubbed Project Phoenix "with the goal of improving current leading-edge technologies and developing additional ones."
Assn. of Asia Pacific Airlines released preliminary traffic results for November that show a significant slowing in passenger growth. Passenger numbers were up just 1.2% to 10.6 million, making the month the weakest in 2005. In terms of RPKs, passenger traffic rose by 2.1% on a restrained capacity increase of 2.9%, resulting in a marginal decline in passenger load factor to 72.3%. International cargo traffic fared much better with 4% growth in FTKs after four months of virtually flat numbers. Capacity was up 3.1%, resulting in a slightly higher freight load factor of 68.7%.
British Airways flew 9.16 billion RPKs in December, up 4.7% over December 2004, on a 2.6% passenger capacity hike to 12.34 billion ASKs. Passenger load factor rose 1.5 points to 74.2%. The number of passengers carried dipped 0.2% to 2.73 million, including a 3.1% reduction on the European network to 1.68 million. Cargo, measured in CTKs, rose 0.2% to 436 million. BA's Asia/Pacific routes showed the most growth with a 16.7% increase in RPKs to 1.7 billion and a 13.3% gain in capacity to 2.22 billion ASKs.
Volito Aviation placed a 1995-vintage A320-200 with Aigle Azur for lease through April 2009. Aircraft is financed by DVB Bank. Midwest Airlines sold an MD-81 to AeroTurbine of Miami. Meridian Aerospace acted as an exclusive agent for the seller.
Vueling Airlines signed a five-year agreement with SR Technics under which the latter will provide technical management and component support for the Barcelona-based carrier's fleet of nine A320s.
Japan Airlines will increase one-way domestic fares 3%-11.3% from April 1 to Sept. 30 to help it cope "with the financial impact of sustained high fuel prices." At the same time, JAL will eliminate the domestic fuel surcharge of ¥200-¥300 established in January 2005. The airline said its FY05 fuel bill will be ¥90 billion higher than in the previous year. It expects costs to increase ¥130-¥140 billion in FY06.
Northwest Airlines continues to seek agreement from its pilots, represented by the Air Line Pilots Assn., for permission to launch a new subsidiary carrier that would operate 70/100-seat regional jets at Regional airline industry average pilot labor costs ( ATWOnline, Oct. 14). NWA outlined its plans for the subsidiary in a special edition of its internal newsletter Passages. The airline, which has a working name of NewCo, would have its own AOC and would employ furloughed NWA pilots, who would have the right of recall to NWA when that opportunity arises.
EADS named Michael Hauger head of corporate media relations and communications-Germany. He succeeds Rainer Ohler, who took over as head of government relations, communications and external affaires at Airbus on Jan. 1.
Hitit Computer Services' Crane Frequent Flyer software was chosen by Carlson Marketing Group for Virgin Blue's new loyalty program Velocity. Turkish Airlines, Icelandair and Kuwait Airways also use Crane.
United Airlines' budget for 2006 includes capital spending of $400 million that will be invested in new resources including more airport check-in kiosks, refurbishing aircraft interiors, upgrading computer systems and new ground equipment. The information was contained in UAL Chairman and CEO Glenn Tilton's weekly telephone message to employees.
US airlines reported an ontime arrival rate of 80% in November, an improvement over the 79.1% achieved in November 2004 but a drop from October's rate of 81.3%, according to the "Air Travel Consumer Report" released yesterday by the US Dept. of Transportation. As usual, Hawaiian Airlines posted the best ontime arrival rate at 95.2%. Frontier Airlines was next at 85.3%. JetBlue Airways ranked last of the 20 reporting carriers at 74.6%, with Northwest Airlines at 74.9%.
