Emirates yesterday began serving Toronto (thrice-weekly) and Bangkok (daily) with the A380. EK's next new A380 destination will be Incheon on Dec. 1. It also announced the addition of 22 weekly flights to India, bringing the number to 185 in the coming months. It serves 10 Indian cities. Royal Jordanian yesterday launched twice-weekly Amman-Benghazi service. It also added a fourth daily flight to Beirut. AirAsia yesterday launched daily service from Singapore to Penang and Langkawi.
AAR was selected by IAI's Bedek Aviation Group to provide the cargo system for its 767-300 conversion program. AAR and IAI developed a GMF system for the 767-200 conversion in 2002.
Search aircraft scoured wide swaths of the South Atlantic yesterday in search of any trace of the Air France A330-200 that lost contact with Brazilian ATC after possibly encountering a severe thunderstorm Sunday night. AF Flight 447 departed Rio de Janeiro Galeao at 7:30 p.m. local time May 31 carrying 216 passengers and 12 crew. Contact with the aircraft was lost approximately 3.5 hr. later, shortly after the pilots reported encountering heavy turbulence some 360 mi. off Brazil's northeast coast, according to press reports.
JetAmerica, a low-fare startup, said it will launch services from Newark to Lansing (thrice-weekly), Melbourne, Fla. (thrice-weekly), South Bend (twice-weekly) and Toledo (six-times-weekly), as well as flights from Melbourne to Toledo (twice-weekly) and Lansing (once-weekly) on July 13. A thrice-weekly flight between Toledo and Minneapolis-St. Paul is scheduled to begin Aug. 14. All services to be operated aboard a wet-leased 737-800.
KLM took delivery of the third of eight 777-300ERs. The fourth -300ER is scheduled to join the fleet this summer and will feature the new SkyTeam livery. AWAS delivered a 737-700 to Moskovia Airlines, its first Western-built aircraft. Airline is based at Moscow Zhukovsky.
British Airways will abandon its daily London Gatwick-New York JFK service on Oct. 25 owing to poor performance. The three-class 777 will be used on new thrice-weekly flights from LGW to Male and Sharm El Sheikh. Air India will launch daily Ahmedabad-Frankfurt service aboard a 747-400. Norwegian will launch new routes from Copenhagen to Vienna (thrice-weekly), Dublin (thrice-weekly), Rome Fiumicino (thrice-weekly), and Warsaw (six-times-weekly) and new thrice-weekly services from Oslo Gardermeon to Dublin and Vienna on Aug. 17.
Star Alliance CEO Jaan Albrecht said he sees a "renewed and more aggressive" interest in the alliance from member airlines as well as from nonallied carriers owing to the recession and industry downturn.
AIR NOSTRUM CHIEF EXECUTIVE CARLOS BERTOMEU TAKES A deep, long draw from his Montecristo cigar before responding to the inevitable question about the kind of year the airline is having: "2009 will be point of inflection in our history of steady growth and profitability," he says with noticeable regret in his voice.
FOR THE US TRANSPORTATION SECURITY Administration and the international air cargo industry, the definitions of "screen," "cargo" and "100%" have become critically important. That's because by August 2010, 100% of cargo transported on passenger aircraft to, from and within the US must be pre-screened under the Improving America's Security Act of 2007 (also known as the Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act, or the 9/11 Act).
IT'S HARDER THAN EVER AMID THE CURRENT financial crisis to find a buyer for a commercial aircraft, let alone one that's been grounded for some time or retired. Most of the hundreds of planes parked in the desert boneyards of the western US never again will return to revenue service. Boeing projects more than 8,000 aircraft will be retired by 2025.
An International Chamber of Commerce arbitration tribunal ordered IATA to cease using any ticketing information transmitted by Amadeus in its PaxIS product. The tribunal found that IATA's use of the data breached its contractual agreements with Amadeus and infringed on Amadeus' rights under the European Union Database Directive. The directive states that the holder of database rights may prohibit the extraction and/or re-utilization of the whole or of a substantial part of the database contents.
After defeating an environmental challenge to building its main runway, the only new air carrier airport under construction in the US is aiming for a late May or early June opening next year. Panama City-Bay County International is being built along the northern Gulf Coast of Florida on 1,300 of the 4,000 acres donated for the project by the St. Joe Co., which will develop nearby commercial and industrial districts. A 41,000-acre conservation area adjoining the airport will protect the state's West Bay shoreline.
Emirates President Tim Clark is getting some strange complaint letters these days. "Passengers are telling me off. They are not getting any sleep on our flights because they are up all night watching classic movies," he muses. The trend toward airlines offering increasing numbers of old movies is not just owing to a fondness for black and white or film noir, however. Some carriers are not happy about the rising price of first-run movies and are turning to the classics, which are one-fifth or less the price of a new release, to help manage costs in these tough times.
Passengers flying long-haul from UK airports may opt for other European airports if the government fails to act on the Air Passenger Duty, according to a poll commissioned by the British Airline Pilots Assn. The government plans to more than double this tax on British airports over the next 18 months. The APD could add up to £85 to the price of a ticket at Heathrow, BALPA contends.
United Airlines told some travel agencies that they would " no longer have continued access to United's credit card merchant agreements," effective July 20. The carrier told the agencies that if customers wish to pay by credit card, the agencies should process the transactions under their own merchant agreements and settle in cash with United through the Airlines Reporting Corp. United said agents who received the notice but continued to process transactions using United's merchant facilities would receive $75 debit memos.
TO BE OR NOT TO BE: THAT'S THE QUESTION facing China's smaller privately run carriers. Clearly, Chengdu-based United Eagle Airlines and Wuhan-based East Star Airlines chose no as the answer. United Eagle had to sell a controlling stake to Sichuan Airlines in exchange for a capital injection of CNY200 million ($29.2 million). East Star was forced by CAAC to suspend operations and has gone through bankruptcy owing to its heavy debt burden.
AS US AIRLINES SCROUNGE for every last penny of ancillary revenue to replace the dollars no longer being spent on tickets, some are taking a second look at food service. The post-9/11 buy-on-board programs that grudgingly were introduced after carriers concluded they could not simply withdraw all sustenance from the skies are taking on a new flavor, according to some that have adopted or are considering such options.
The US House of Representatives passed an FAA reauthorization bill in May containing several controversial provisions championed by Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar (D-Minn.), setting the stage for debate in the Senate on the long-stalled effort to renew FAA's legislative mandate and provide long-term funding for the agency.
The US Dept. of Transportation cancelled proposed slot auctions at New York's three main area airports, reversing a controversial rule put in place by DOT in the waning days of the Bush administration. The plan to requisition slots from airlines at JFK, LaGuardia and Newark and auction them to reduce delays had been tied up in court since it was proposed last fall following legal challenges by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airports, as well as the Air Transport Assn. and IATA.
PHOTO CREDIT: Werner Kruger, Lufthansa Lufthansa Cargo AG launched an "information offensive" to retain nighttime cargo flights at Frankfurt Airport after local officials said they were considering a ban against them.
ICAO's Group on International Aviation and Climate Change this month recommended "a global aspirational goal of 2% annual improvement in fuel efficiency of the international civil aviation in-service fleet," but noticeably did not make any proposals on emissions trading.
Not so long ago, the air transport industry faced a serious dilemma. The rapid growth in air travel in the early 1990s meant that absent a step-change improvement in safety, the industry could reach a point where it sustained one fatal accident per week. Of course such a situation never would have been permitted to develop. No government or regulatory authority could have tolerated it and so aviation growth would have been curtailed, with all this entailed for its ability to continue playing a vital role in a growing global economy.
FOR A SUCCESSFUL TECHNOLOGY, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman's famous observation has relevance to the expectation within the aviation industry and general public that the new technology being incorporated into the latest generation of aircraft will by itself eliminate all airline accidents.
