On any given night, tens of thousands of pilots and flight attendants are tucked away in hotel rooms in hundreds of cities around the globe awaiting the next duty day or the trip home. No other industry uses as many rooms as do airlines. It is fundamental to the nature of the businessmany carriers used to own hotels specifically for this purpose, although this is much less so todayand the ability to travel to faraway places and spend a bit of time there always has been one of the major attractions to persons considering careers as cabin attendants or pilots.
Look around any airport terminal in India these days and you notice the change from even five years ago. Gone are the gents in suits and women in muted silks; people in the waiting areas today are a truer reflection of the country at large. A rapid increase in the number of airlines and the reduction in fares that followed have brought air travel within the reach of millions of people who had never flown before.
AeroTurbine named Michael King senior VP-material sales. Air Wisconsin promoted Vince Portaro to VP-customer service. Alaska Airlines selected Tom Kemp as system chief pilot. Austrian Air Group tapped Peter Baumgartner as head-product management & customer services division, Rudolf Mertl as head-network & sales divisions, Christian Fitz as head-quality collective decision making & process management division, and Friedrich Strahammer as head-flight operations.
Although it is too early to tell whether the second quarter marked the beginning of US passenger airlines' financial comeback or was merely a brief respite from years of red ink, flat capacity growth and strong demand were enough to overcome $2.10 fuel for at least three months. Following on the heels of a solid first period, the quarter ended June 30 clearly was the industry's best since 2000. For the first time since 9/11, the phrase "net income" appeared far more frequently in earnings reports than "net loss."
Lise Fournel, the airline's senior vice president of e-commerce and chief information officer, said the new system will take a modular approach and include all reservations, inventory control, seat availability, check-in and airport operations systems. The transition to the new reservations system is slated for next year. Airport modules will probably be rolled out in 2008. ITA already has some modules in place, she said, such as domestic and international faring, but the airport systems will be entirely new.
Delta Air Lines is back in the black, reporting a July net profit of $69 million in a filing this week with the US Bankruptcy Court. It lost $41 million in the year-ago month. The result included $30 million in reorganization items, without which its monthly profit would have risen to $99 million. "July's results reflect the continued momentum of our restructuring," Executive VP and CFO Edward Bastian said.
IATA revised its earnings forecast for 2006, lowering projected industrywide full-year losses to $1.7 billion from the $3 billion estimated in June ( ATWOnline, June 6). "Stronger than anticipated economic growth has boosted airline revenues, and restructuring efforts have elevated load factors to record levels," the organization said in a statement. The collective industry 2006 fuel bill will total $115 billion, it added.
Air China today will launch services to Seoul from Dalian (daily aboard an A319) and Tianjin (Saturdays on a 737). Northwest Airlines will expand its freighter service to Guangzhou to daily from thrice-weekly from March 25. Return flights will stop in Japan. NWA already serves Shanghai daily.
Aloha Airlines parent Aloha Airgroup named Gordon Bethune chairman. He retired as Continental Airlines chairman and CEO in December 2004. ATA Airlines named Gary Ellmer, formerly of American Eagle, as senior VP-operations and GM-charter.
Aviareps reached a GSA agreement with Air Greenland covering the US, where a new route is to open in May 2007 to Baltimore/Washington International. GL operates a fleet of 24 aircraft, including one 757-200 and one A330-200 for international services.
Sabre Travel Network announced the renewal of a full-content distribution agreement with Lufthansa. Sabre will be an LH "preferred GDS" and will make the carrier's inventory available without surcharge to any agency using Sabre.
Niki will start a double-daily Vienna-Frankfurt service Oct. 30 using A320s. Niki and partner Air Berlin transported about 1 million passengers from Austria to six German cities last year, and Niki had a passenger increase of 15% across its network in the first half of 2006. It added the sixth A320 Wednesday. Founder Niki Lauda told this website that he will launch new Vienna-Moscow flights for the 2007 summer schedule.
Hainan Airlines parent HNA Group will purchase 50 Embraer 190s and 50 ERJ-145s, the Brazilian manufacturer announced yesterday. The deal is valued at $2.7 billion at list prices and represents a huge step for the Harbin Embraer Aircraft Industry joint venture with China Aviation Industry Corp. II, which assembles the 145 and had yet to reach a deal with a mainland carrier, delivering just a dozen aircraft as of May ( ATWOnline, May 12). The 106-seat 190s will be built in Sao Jose dos Campos.
Lagging regional aircraft deliveries and sales drove down Bombardier Aerospace's earnings and revenues in the fiscal second quarter ended July 31. The aviation unit of the Canadian transportation manufacturer reported earnings before interest and taxes of $66 million for the quarter, down 13.2% from EBIT of $76 million in the year-ago period, on a 3.6% drop in revenues to $1.89 billon. Bombardier Aerospace President and COO Pierre Beaudoin attributed the falloff to fewer CRJ deliveries and lower margins on commercial aircraft sales.
US and Kuwait announced the signing of an open skies agreement yesterday in Kuwait City. Kuwait Airways has served the US since 1978 and United Airlines is planning to launch a thrice-weekly Washington Dulles-KWI service later this year.
Southwest Airlines promoted Senior VP-Ground Operations Greg Wells to senior VP-operations effective Sept. 1. VP-Station Operations Chris Wahlenmaier will add Wells' former title and Senior Director-Ground Operations Stations Teresa Laraba will become VP-Ground Operations, sharing duties with Wahlenmaier. Lufthansa Cargo Charter appointed Monika Houck head of global sales and customer relations.
Dublin Airport Authority announced yesterday details of the new €395 million ($505.7 million) Terminal 2 at Dublin Airport scheduled to begin construction in the second quarter of 2007 and open in the fall of 2009, at which point it will be capable of handling 15 million passengers annually. The three-story, 75,000-sq.-m.
Finnair's Asian traffic will grow in the latter part of this year and 2007 by 30% thanks in part to an investment in Helsinki Vantaa's Asian terminal announced Tuesday by Finavia, the country's civil aviation administration. Finnair will add thrice-weekly Delhi service in October, increasing to five-times-weekly next spring. It also will launch service to Kuala Lumpur and add frequencies on Japanese and Chinese routes. CEO Jukka Hienonen said the airline will carry 1 million passengers on Asian routes this year. He recently told ATWOnline that Seoul and Chengdu are on the radar.
Air Dolomiti will test a new business model and begin feeding Lufthansa's Munich hub with daily morning flights from 16 Italian destinations. According to Financial Times Deutschland, the Verona-based LH subsidiary must change its operations completely in order to fly from each destination in the morning. CEO Michael Kraus said the new model will raise operational costs 10%-15% but LH will benefit from more Italian business travelers. Kraus also said it could be possible to change Air Dolomiti's fleet to 100-seat jets.
On a high after posting a second-quarter profit of $305 million ( ATWOnline, July 28), US Airways yesterday announced an order for seven A321s and the conversion of existing orders for seven A319s and one A320 into an order for eight additional A321s. Engine selection was not announced. Owing to the merger of US Airways and America West, the carrier operates a mix of IAE V2500- and CFM56-powered A320 family aircraft although its A321s all are CFM56-powered, according to the Ascend CASE database.
Germanwings will increase its presence at each of its four bases for the 2007 summer schedule. It will base an additional aircraft in Stuttgart and launch services to Ankara, Athens, Ibiza, Korfu, Lamezia Terme and Malta. Cologne Bonn will see two A319s/A320s added with new routes to Corfu, Lamezia Terme, Malta, Mykonos and Rhodes. From Berlin Schoenefeld it will add Mykonos and from Hamburg it will open routes to Corfu and Split. It also will boost frequencies on existing routes from all bases.
Malaysia Airlines reported a second-quarter net loss of MYR177.1 million ($48.2 million), narrowed from a net loss of MYR277.5 million in the year-ago quarter, on a 6% rise in revenues to MYR609.6 million, according to press reports. MD and CEO Idris Jala said the company's cost-cutting program is "showing positive results," evidenced by an 18% improvement in passenger yield and a 10.5% gain in cargo yield, according to Malaysian national news agency Bernama. Jala added that MAS is "on track" to achieve profitability in 2008 but projected a full-year 2006 loss of MYR620 million.
