News from Travel Technology Update: GDS executives are calling for the development of technical standards for the booking and processing of airlines' unbundled fares, ancillary revenue and other sales innovations. "Standards are good, but let's all keep in mind that this is about differentiation," Suzanne Rubin, American Airlines' managing director of merchandising and distribution strategy and president of AAVacations, said. "We don't want something that puts us right back into the same box of commodity product."
Austrian LCC Niki's partnership with S7 Airlines continues to be delayed by Russian regulators, CEO Othmar Lenz told ATWOnline. "S7 needs traffic rights between Moscow Domodedovo and Vienna. If S7 gets these rights, then we can implement codeshare operations," Lenz said. Bilateral talks should be completed next month ( ATWOnline, Oct. 17, 2008).
Virgin Nigeria said it will suspend flights to London Gatwick and Johannesburg on Jan. 27, citing a need to review "our entire long-haul operations including our product offerings on these routes." It said it would resume long-haul service "with a truly competitive offering" following the review and will concentrate on its domestic and regional routes in the meantime. VK serves seven domestic and seven continental destinations.
American Airlines flew 10.32 billion system RPMs in December, an 8.2% decline from the year-ago month. Capacity fell 8.6% to 13.03 billion ASMs, lifting load factor 0.4 point to 79.2%. American Eagle flew 588.1 million RPMs, down 12.4%, against a 13.5% fall in capacity to 837.3 million ASMs. Load factor rose 0.9 point to 70.2%. Alaska Airlines flew 1.48 billion RPMs in December, down 5.2% year-over-year. Capacity dropped 10.9% to 1.84 billion ASMs and load factor was up 4.9 points to 80.7%.
Wizz Air will begin serving Prague on Feb. 19 with flights to London Luton (four-times-weekly), Rome Fiumicino (four-times-weekly), Bergamo (four-times-weekly), Brussels Charleroi (thrice-weekly), Paris Beauvais (thrice-weekly) and Eindhoven (thrice-weekly). Frequencies to LTN, BGY and CRL will increase on July 25. Wizz CEO Jozsef Varadi said the carrier intends to become the "leading" LCC in the Czech Republic "in the coming years." It carried 5.9 million passengers in total last year, up 41% from 2007, and launched more than 40 new routes.
Chinese government decided to grant domestic airlines a three-year tax break on fuel charges retroactive to Jan. 1, 2008, as part of its effort to mitigate the impact of the global economic downturn on the country's commercial aviation industry. The tax relief is expected to save Chinese carriers about CNY2.5 billion in operating costs, but local industry analysts argued that it will do little to improve airlines' financial performance since the tax rate on fuel surcharges is only 3%.
China Eastern Airlines is taking a series of measures to curb rising operating costs and try to engineer a turnaround from what it expects to be a significant 2008 loss.
Aer Lingus CEO Dermot Mannion and CFO Sean Coyle agreed to waive a controversial new clause in their contracts that provided for a €2.8 million ($3.8 million) parachute payment for Mannion if they left EI following its acquisition. Ryanair, which has offered to buy its rival, claimed the payments proved that EI did not foresee a future as an independent carrier ( ATWOnline, Jan. 8). The amount of Coyle's prospective payment was unclear.
European Commission, as expected ( ATWOnline, Jan. 9), granted conditional approval for the merger of Clickair and Vueling Airlines Friday. Clearance depends upon the release of slots at Barcelona "and other European airports to address competition concerns." Clickair, Vueling and Iberia, which will hold 45% of the new airline, have offered to cede slots on "all routes where competition concerns were identified," according to the EC.
Cebu Pacific Air soon will take delivery of a seventh new ATR 72-500 and launch flights from Manila to Catarman and Virac (each four-times-weekly) on Feb. 14 and Calbayog and Cauayan (each thrice-weekly) on Feb. 18. It also will increase service from Manila to Naga and Busuanga. American Eagle will launch a third daily Miami-Tallahassee flight on March 2 aboard an ERJ-140. Transaero launched twice-weekly Moscow Domodedovo-Krasnoyarsk service using Tu-214s and 737s.
Boeing Commercial Airplanes will cut some 4,500 positions from its payroll this year in "an effort to ensure competitiveness and control costs in the face of a weakening global economy," it said Friday.
SkyWest Inc. reached an agreement with Delta Air Lines for subsidiary Atlantic Southeast Airlines to operate 10 CRJ900s on Delta Connection service starting later this year. The aircraft were ordered by DL and will be contracted to ASA, the principal Delta Connection carrier at DL's Atlanta hub. ASA currently operates 110 CRJ200s and 39 CRJ700s. Separately, ASA announced Friday that 80 pilots will be furloughed effective Feb. 9. "We do everything we can not to have to do that. It's a last resort option for us," a spokesperson told ATWOnline.
Disgruntled with what it believes is an overcrowded low-cost airline terminal at Kuala Lumpur International, AirAsia revealed plans to shift its operation to its own new airport just 30 min. outside the capital.
Oneworld announced the following London Heathrow relocations: Finnair will transfer to Terminal 3 from T1 on Jan. 27; Iberia will switch to T3 from T2 on Feb. 25; British Airways will transfer remaining flights at T1 to T3 on Feb. 25. American Airlines, Cathay Pacific Airways, Japan Airlines and Royal Jordanian all are based in T3. Qantas will switch over from T4 later this year.
Air France KLM flew 16.83 billion RPKs in December, up 1.3% from the year-ago month. Capacity rose 0.9% to 21.32 billion ASKs, lifting load factor 0.3 point to 78.9%. Southwest Airlines flew 5.79 billion RPMs in December, up 1.1% from the year-ago month, against a 1% decline in capacity to 8.32 billion ASMs. Load factor rose 1.5 points to 69.7%. LAN Airlines flew 2.44 billion RPKs in December, up 10.7% year-over-year. Capacity rose 12.6% to 3.26 billion ASKs and load factor dropped 1.3 points to 74.7%.
United Airlines dropped plans to furlough an additional 250 flight attendants because it needs more cabin staff for its international network ( ATWOnline, Sept. 29, 2008), according to a memo from Senior VP-Onboard Service Alex Marren cited by the Associated Press. UA also decided not to furlough up to 205 customer service and ramp employees at Chicago O'Hare because a sufficient number took voluntary leave and 43 will shift to part-time from fulltime.
FlyLAL Lithuanian Airlines has been purchased by SCH Swiss Capital Holdings for $1 million plus an agreement to cover debt of some €1 million ($1.4 million). "We were looking for an airline to purchase, and this is a good company to invest in. . .FlyLAL can be a very strong regional carrier," SCH CEO Jan Erik Jansson told the Associated Press, adding that the firm does not "see these debts as a big problem." The sale will take effect on Jan. 23, according to reports.
SkyEurope Airlines announced that GECAS terminated leases on six 737s effective Jan. 8 and the aircraft have been returned to the lessor. The LCC said the capacity has been "replaced" and that all scheduled flights are being operated, although it provided no further details. It also said that Longstock SAPO, a Greek/Portuguese investor ( ATWOnline, Dec.
French investigators now have access to data from the flight data and voice recorders salvaged from an Air New Zealand A320 on lease to XL Airways that crashed into the Mediterranean Sea in late November, killing all seven onboard ( ATWOnline, Dec. 5, 2008). The data were extracted successfully in the US, raising hopes that France's Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses will gain insight into the accident, as the crew had given no indication of any problem to air traffic control.
Lufthansa Technik announced the establishment of Lufthansa Technik Maintenance International, a 100% subsidiary integrating the former Condor/Cargo Technik it previously acquired. LTMI will be based in Frankfurt and will assume responsibility for airline third-party MRO business previously handled by LHT. It will continue to maintain Lufthansa Cargo's MD-11s as well. The unit has some 1,000 employees.
Metropolitan Airports Commission, which manages Minneapolis-St. Paul International, last week declined to approve a tentative agreement reached in December with Delta Air Lines that would have allowed DL to retain many of the financial benefits subsidiary Northwest Airlines received for basing its headquarters at MSP.
US National Transportation Safety Board in a preliminary report issued this week offered no scenarios to explain what factors may have caused a Continental Airlines 737-500 to depart the runway during takeoff on Dec. 20. The aircraft was destroyed when it veered from the left side of the runway on its takeoff roll, crashing into a ravine and catching fire, injuring 38 ( ATWOnline, Jan. 7). NTSB said the runway "was bare and dry and free of debris." Winds of 24 kt. gusting to 32 kt.
Hit hard by the deepening global financial crisis, Chinese airlines posted a net loss of CNY7.7 billion ($1.13 billion) in the first 11 months of 2008, according to CAAC Vice Minister Yang Guoqing. Yang noted in a conference this week that the carriers suffered from a sharp decline in demand last year, especially on international routes. Even Hong Kong and Macau slipped. Based on the regulators' rough estimate, Chinese airlines transported 192 million passengers in 2008, down 13% from 2007. Cargo volume plummeted 14.8% to 4 million tonnes.
