American Airlines yesterday named ExpressJet President and CEO James Ream as its new senior VP-maintenance & engineering. He will take over on Jan. 1, succeeding the retiring Carmine Romano. Ream held various positions at AA between 1987 and 1995 and led ExpressJet for the past eight years.
V Australia launched twice-weekly Melbourne-Los Angeles service on Sunday and will begin weekly MEL-Phuket on Dec. 3 aboard a 777-300. American Airlines brought forward the start of its daily Chicago O'Hare-Beijing 777 service to April 26 from May 1. Blue1 will operate a seasonal weekly Kittila-Dusseldorf flight Jan. 14 - March 25.
Air India and pilots represented by the Indian Commercial Pilots' Assn. reached an agreement Sunday that allowed the carrier to avoid a strike scheduled to begin today ( ATWOnline, Nov. 18). "The agreement involves some financial payout by the airline," an AI official told The Hindu. ICPA General Secretary R.S. Otaal said AI "accepted all our demands," according to Mint.
Emirates President Tim Clark is upbeat about the airline's future despite the financial challenges facing Dubai that came to light last week, when the emirate announced it would seek to delay debt payments owed by Dubai World, the government's primary investment company.
El Al reported a $12.3 million third-quarter profit, down 60.3% from the $31 million earned in the year-ago period, on an 18% fall in revenue to $496.1 million caused largely by lower yields and the rising US dollar. CEO Haim Romano said the net result is "indicative of [El Al's] ability to weather the global financial crisis." Operating expenses declined 15% to $400.7 million as fuel prices fell, and operating profit slipped 53.4% to $23.8 million from $51.1 million in the 2008 third quarter. Passenger numbers climbed 7% year-over-year.
Edward Stimpson, who retired as chairman of the Flight Safety Foundation on Nov. 1, died Nov. 25 of cancer. He was 75. Before joining FSF he served as US ambassador to the ICAO Council for five years. Prior to his 1999 nomination to the Council, he spent 25 years as president of the General Aviation Manufacturers Assn. and is associated closely with the 1994 passage of the General Aviation Revitalization Act, widely seen as helping to revive that segment of the industry.
Travelport reached a deal with Gol to provide its Interline E-ticket Interchange technology, including the ETDBase e-ticket database. The LCC codeshares with Air France KLM, American Airlines, Iberia, AeroMexico and Copa Airlines and has interline agreements with 60 carriers.
Concessions in US airports generated $7.49 billion in revenue in 2008, representing a 6.4% increase over the previous year, according to a report by ACI-NA. "With passenger traffic continuing to decline in this challenging economy, airport concessions have become a critical component of nonaeronautical revenue," said ACI-NA CFO Bill McAllister.
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is to begin construction in March of a new baggage transport system known as the Backbone. It recently signed a contract for the system with Vanderlande Industries and IBM. The Backbone will link the West, E, D and South baggage basements, "thus creating an integrated baggage system." The project is expected to be completed in mid-2013. Two rows of check-in desks in Departure Hall 2 will be closed alternately from May 2011 through September 2012 to facilitate the project's completion.
Aficionados of the old Seinfeld TV show may recall an episode in which Jerry accuses his dry cleaner of wearing a jacket that Jerry left to be cleaned and pressed. Responding indignantly to this (truthful) accusation, the proprietor sputters that no dry cleaner would dare do such a thing because, "It's in the dry cleaner's code of ethics."
An advisory group is set to propose an "administrative unification" of Japan's Kansai International, Osaka International and Kobe airports in an effort to streamline costs, Japan Times reported. The proposal will be presented at a Dec. 14 meeting of regional leaders. Currently, each of the airports has separate management groups.
What distinguishes these "high performers"? Accenture recently released a comprehensive study, "Achieving High Performance in the Airline Industry," that may provide some clues. The consultancy--which has spent the last six years conducting a wide-ranging research project trying to determine what distinguishes high-performance businesses across a range of industries--turned its attention to airlines, closely examining and analyzing the financial performance of carriers from around the world for the period 2001-07.
BAA last week placed a £235 million ($391 million) Sterling index-linked bond with a 2039 maturity and a fixed real annual interest coupon of 3.334%. The issue follows placement in late November of a £700 million, 17-year bond issue undertaken by the company. Proceeds from the bond issues will be used to refinance existing debt and will lengthen the airport operator's debt maturity profile.
In October, Iberia disclosed plans to create a new short- and medium-haul carrier feeding its growing long-haul network of mainly Latin American services through its Madrid hub. The announcement was unexpected given that IB has a solid short/medium-haul network into MAD spanning all 38 domestic airports, 47 destinations in Europe and eight in North Africa that it serves with a fleet of 81 Airbus family aircraft.
Since American Airlines told delegates to the Computerized Airline Sales and Marketing Association conference in October that it plans to move all indirect volume to direct connections, industry observers have wondered what such a world would look like and how it would change relationships among airlines, travel agencies, GDSs and customers. Jim Davidson, chief executive officer of Farelogix, shed some light on the issue during the recent PhoCusWright conference in Orlando. "It's not about eliminating the GDS channel," he said. "It's not about either/or."
Vancouver Airport Authority is gearing up for the 2010 Winter Olympics in February with programs to manage increases in passengers and oversized bags and new snow removal equipment that will maintain operations in adverse weather conditions. The airport also plans to double the size of its volunteer force and is training more than 5,500 frontline employees to help passengers find their way around the airport.
Singapore's Changi Airport Group launched the Changi Airport Growth Initiative to replace the Air Hub Development Fund, which expires at the end of December. According to CAG CEO Lee Seow Hiang, the focus of CAGi will be to incentivize airlines and airport partners to grow their traffic volumes at Changi. "While the priority of the AHDF in the past year was to provide urgent across-the-board cost relief, the key thrust of CAGi is to increasingly shift towards promoting growth--for both Changi Airport as well as our partners.
World airport traffic rose 1.8% in October compared to October 2008 to 287.6 million arriving and departing passengers, continuing the upward trend seen in September, according to Airport Council International's PaxFlash traffic report. Domestic traffic climbed 3.5% to 151.7 million passengers while international traffic dipped 0.2% to 131.6 million passengers.
Airports Council International-North America is urging US lawmakers to fund airport infrastructure projects because they will help create jobs and promote economic growth.
