ARINC and SITA yesterday announced formation of an industry technical work group to define the next generation of business-to-business messaging among air transport operators. The workgroup consists of Northwest Airlines, British Airways, Worldspan, Amadeus, Lufthansa Systems, Sabre, Galileo and Mercator.
South African Airways announced the launch of a daily Johannesburg-Washington Dulles service via Dakar beginning July 1 aboard an A340-600, replacing a four-times-weekly flight aboard a 747-400 stopping in Accra. Times have been adjusted to conform more closely with United Airlines' Dulles schedule. SAA will discontinue its daily service to Atlanta the same day and but will continue to operate to New York JFK. Emirates will increase its Dubai-New York JFK service to thrice-daily with the addition of a new flight via Hamburg on Oct. 29.
Japan Airlines Group blamed sluggish traffic growth caused by "safety-related occurrences" and anti-Japanese sentiment in China for its inability to overcome rising fuel costs, resulting in a drastic reversal in financial fortunes and a loss of ¥47.2 billion ($423.2 million) in the fiscal year ended March 31 compared to earnings of ¥30 billion in FY05.
Turboprops are generating renewed interest from airlines just a few years after many industry players predicted their demise in the face of the invasion of regional jets, experts said yesterday during an ATWOnline webcast. Turboprops "have made a comeback," Meridian Aerospace Group President Bill Gardner said. "They've become pervasive again...I don't think operators are turning away from regional jets. I think they're revisiting whether it was a good idea to get rid of turboprops." Carriers are interested in 50/70-seaters such as the Q300 and Q400 for 60-90-min.
Ryanair will open its 16th European base at Marseille Provence, where it will base two new aircraft and fly to 13 destinations from November. The carrier said it expects to deliver 1 million passengers per year to MRS, which since 2000 has experienced a 10.8% decline in passenger throughput to 5.8 million. It will serve Brussels Charleroi, Dublin, Eindhoven, Fez, Frankfurt Hahn, Glasgow Prestwick, Karlsruhe Baden, London Stansted, Marrakech, Oujda, Sandefjord, Porto and Rome Ciampino. Separately, Ryanair will launch a daily Dublin-Berlin Schoenefeld service on June 1.
Airbus said it achieved "two major test milestones in the A380 program this week." Fatigue tests on an A380 in Dresden reached 10,000 cycles, twice as many as needed for certification, according to COO Charles Champion, who heads the A380 program. Fatigue testing began in September 2005 and will continue through 2008 to simulate 47,500 flights. In Hamburg, Airbus completed "the first extensive ground cabin tests in a fully equipped A380." During 5 hr. of testing, 474 passengers and 20 crewmembers simulated a 15-hr.
Bankruptcy-related charges totaling $975 million propelled Northwest Airlines to a net loss of $1.1 billion for the first quarter of 2006 from a loss of $537 million in the year-ago period. NWA filed for Chapter 11 protection last September. Excluding reorganization and unusual items, the carrier trimmed its first-quarter deficit to $129 million from $450 million in 2005, largely on the strength of improved cost performance.
International Assn. of Machinists and Transport Workers Union reached agreement over future representation of 8,000 active and furloughed fleet service workers at the new US Airways. IAM has represented fleet service workers at US since 1994, while TWU has represented America West Airlines employees since 1999. Representatives from the unions will work alongside each other in negotiations with US on a transition agreement to cover all affected employees at the merged airline.
Sabre Airline Solutions and Worldspan jointly implemented a new message routing technique yesterday that the two interline e-ticketing providers said streamlines communications links between their systems. "The new approach eases cooperation between hub providers and should accelerate implementing interline electronic agreements," according to Tom Murphy, IATA senior VP-industry distribution and financial services.
Varig will auction off a portion of its assets to raise the money it needs to maintain operations under a plan approved yesterday during a meeting in Rio de Janeiro of employees, government officials and the carrier's creditors, according to media reports. The government confirmed it will not bail out the bankrupt carrier, which reportedly will be split into two companies and sold in approximately two months. Two options are on the table, depending on investor intentions. One would split Varig into a flight operations company and a service unit handling distribution, reservations, etc.
Dallas/Ft. Worth International Board of Directors unanimously approved an expanded Air Service Incentive Program to entice new international passenger, international cargo and domestic passenger service to the airport. The new program will be capped at $7 million per year and $20 million in total through December 2009. In addition to service incentives, it includes landing fee rebates and marketing support. DFW said each new daily international passenger flight can generate upward of $350 million in annual revenues for the North Texas economy.
Record revenue and a commitment to cutting costs helped Singapore Airlines Group reduce the impact of soaring fuel prices to record a massive S$1.24 billion ($791.3 million) profit for the fiscal year ended March 31, just 8.3% down on the previous year.
US airlines reported an ontime performance rate for March of 76.1%, down 0.8 point from the year-ago month but up 0.8 point from February, according to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Hawaiian Airlines had the highest March ontime rate at 90% among the 19 airlines reporting while United Airlines was lowest at 69.3%.
South African Airways last week took delivery of the first of two Q400 turboprops. The 74-seat aircraft will operate from Johannesburg to Bloemfontein and George.
Touting synergies created by the merger of America West Airlines and the former US Airways, US Airways Group reported a first-quarter profit of $64 million compared to a profit of $28 million for America West in the year-ago quarter and said it now expects to be profitable for the full year, "even after accounting for merger-related expenses and continued high fuel costs."
Worldspan signed a new multiyear full content agreement with Air France that will give Worldspan travel agencies complete access to the airline's content.
Sun Country Airlines, a privately held LCC based at Minneapolis-St. Paul, said its first-quarter net income increased nearly 7% over the year-ago quarter to $5.5 million as revenues rose 15% to $76.5 million and passenger boardings grew 7% to 531,867. The airline said it maintained "virtually identical" year-over-year unit costs excluding fuel. It operates a fleet of seven leased 737-800s to destinations in the US, Mexico and the Caribbean.
Air Proxy was selected by Lufthansa Cargo as its GSA for Latvia from May 1, replacing its previous agreement with airBaltic. Air Proxy already represents Lufthansa Cargo in Estonia.
Air France-KLM flew 16.49 billion RPKs in April, a 10% increase over the year-ago month. Capacity rose 4.8% to 19.86 billion ASKs and load factor was up 3.9 points to 83.1%. AF-KLM flew 918 million RTKs, an increase of 1.1%, as cargo capacity grew 2.1% to 1.36 billion ATKs. Frontier Airlines said its April RASM increased 6.8% to 8.27 cents as yield climbed 1.1% to 10.25 cents and traffic grew 27% to 707.7 million RPMs. Capacity increased 20.1% to 877.4 million ASMs and load factor rose 4.4 points to an April record 80.7%.
Gulf Air faces a deficit of approximately BHD80 million ($211 million) despite "strong improvements" in key performance indicators during the first quarter because "revenue growth simply cannot keep pace with oil price rises," according to President and CEO James Hogan. "We are looking at a range of options to mitigate these additional costs. We are already seeing a more consistent application of fuel surcharges in all our markets," Hogan said.
ABX Air posted a 14.3% profit increase in the first quarter to $8.1 million, rebounding from a difficult 2005 that saw profits drop as primary customer DHL Worldwide Express struggled to compete against FedEx and UPS in the US market. The carrier earned $7.1 million in the year-ago period. "Our operating results reflect the success of our initiatives to drive down costs and improve productivity in our sort, line-haul and air operations for DHL," President and CEO Joe Hete said.
AirTran Airways yesterday resumed negotiations with its 1,400 pilots, represented by the National Pilots Assn. Talks in Orlando are aimed at renewing a labor contract that became amendable in April 2005. This week's talks are scheduled to run through Thursday and another round of negotiations is slated for May 30-31 in Baltimore. Separately, AirTran yesterday launched flights from Chicago Midway to Dallas/Ft. Worth (thrice-daily) and Charlotte (twice-daily) aboard 717s.
Delta Air Lines launched its five-times-weekly New York JFK-Budapest service last night. Flights will be daily from Aug. 3 to Sept. 30. Daily Atlanta-Nice service starts this evening. All flights are aboard 767-300ERs. Delta also announced the launch of a twice-daily ATL-Killeen-Fort Hood, Tex., service from Sept. 7 aboard Atlantic Southeast Airlines CRJ200s and addition of a second daily flight to its yet-to-begin Aspen-Salt Lake City service from July 1. Daily flights begin June 8.
