Swissport and Ryanair announced a six-year agreement under which Swissport will handle more than 54,000 flights per year at London Stansted, including those presently handled by Stansted Ground Operations. The deal becomes effective Feb. 20. Under the new agreement, Swissport will provide full passenger, ramp and ticketing services for all operations. The accord also will see some 120 current SGO employees transfer to Swissport.
Air Tran will offer service from White Plains, N.Y., to Atlanta (twice daily), Orlando (daily) and West Palm Beach (daily) beginning April 4 aboard 717s. Frequency to Atlanta will increase to thrice-daily May 9. Separately, AirTran launched a new cargo website yesterday enabling customers to track shipments 24 hr. a day, among other features. It also announced a partnership with Kayak.com to distribute fares and ticket availability through that search engine. Kayak.com was created by Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia.
AeroMexico placed an order for three 737-700s and three 737-800s, Boeing announced yesterday. The aircraft are worth approximately $372 million at list prices and will begin delivery in 2007. "Since they were introduced to our fleet in 2003, the Boeing 737-700 has proved to be an exceptional airplane and with the acquisition of the 737-800 in 2006, we will continue our fleet renovation program with great success," said AeroMexico CFO Francisco Cuevas. The carrier is scheduled to take delivery of eight 737NGs and two 777-200ERs this year.
Indian startup IndiGo named former North American Airlines COO Steven Harfst as its COO. New Heights Aviation Services President Jeff Wehrenberg will succeed Harfst at NAA. Amadeus appointed former Director-Airline Sales Chris Barnes VP of e-commerce sales.
United Airlines formally, and finally, exited bankruptcy yesterday after 1,150 days during which it cut annual costs by approximately $7 billion including more than $3 billion in concessions from labor unions, reduced and reconfigured its fleet to fly more profitable international routes and launched its low-cost subsidiary Ted.
Frontier Airlines will become a subsidiary of Frontier Airlines Holdings, a new Delaware corporation, according to a reorganization plan approved Tuesday by the carrier's board. There will no anticipated effect on shareholders, who must approve the plan at a meeting tentatively scheduled for March 27.
Messier Services secured 777 landing gear MRO contracts with Malaysia Airlines and Thai Airways International covering nine and 14 shipsets respectively. In addition, Boeing selected Messier Services Asia Pte as an approved facility for landing gear and component repair and overhaul.
JetBlue Airways' inability to control costs and misplaced capacity increases cost it dearly in the final quarter of 2005 as it suffered a net loss of $42.4 million--by far its worst quarterly performance since it started service in February 2000. JetBlue earned $1.5 million in the year-ago quarter. The surprising 2005 result plunged the carrier into the red for the fiscal year ended Dec. 31. It posted a $20.3 million annual loss compared to a $46.2 million profit in 2004. In addition, it is forecasting a loss in both the current quarter and for full-year 2006.
El Al will launch twice-weekly Miami-Tel Aviv service on March 28 using two-class 767s. It replaces a twice-weekly direct service. Separately, El Al will introduce an onboard calling service on its 767s through the Iridium satellite network for $1.60 per min. Gilat Satcom through its GayaCom subsidiary is supplying the Iridium terminals and calling card services.
Boeing yesterday raised its earnings outlook for 2006-07 on the back of strong sales and earnings momentum as it reported that fourth-quarter net income more than doubled to $460 million from $186 million in the year-ago period. The result propelled full-year income up 37% to $2.57 billion from $1.87 billion in 2004. "Boeing made great progress in '05, which has given us a solid foundation for even better performance in 2006 and beyond," said Chairman, President and CEO Jim McNerney during a webcast.
Airline of the Year Cathay Pacific Airways Sixty years ago this September, Roy Farrell and Syd de Kantzow, the one an American, the other an Australian, created an airline in Hong Kong. Pilots both, they had become acquainted during World War II while flying the famous "Hump Route" between India and China. Perhaps after surviving that experience, the thought of trying to make a living by transporting people and cargo for money didn't seem so crazy.
After a year in which Airbus and Boeing booked more than 2,000 new firm orders, is it possible that they will do even better in 2006? The history of recent past cycles suggests the answer may be yes, as hard as that is to believe. The outlook should become clearer when the global aerospace community meets at the Changi Exhibition Center Feb. 21-26 for the biennial Singapore show.
This month, Vueling Airlines and JetBlue Airways are trialing an exchange program whereby cabin staff from the Barcelona-based low-cost carrier are heading to New York to fly with JetBlue and some of the latter's attendants are coming to Spain to fly with Vueling.
Blacklists are not a safety tool favored by the airline industry, which believes they are punitive and do nothing directly to improve safety. But with an increasing number of countries now making public their own national listings, the European Parliament has approved plans for introduction of a Europewide blacklist of airlines that do not meet a common set of safety requirements.
JetBlue Airways and TAP Portugal appear to have little in common with one another. The former is a newcomer, just turned six, built from the ground up as a low-cost airline. TAP fits all the descriptions of a legacy carrier, born at the end of World War II and forced today to confront an environment vastly different from the one for which it was created. Yet both share a similar ability to find successin JetBlue's case virtually from startup, while for TAP it is more a case of renewal.
With this issue, ATW continues for a 32nd year one of our proudest traditions: The presentation of our Annual Achievement Awards. In an industry that sets its internal bar very high, the seven winners each have accomplished things that the editors of ATW view as extraordinary.
For students of China's rapidly growing but often puzzling airline industry, at least two developments during 2005 needed no explanation. The landslide victory in early December of the pro-reunification Party in Taiwan's municipal elections sent a clear message that reunification will be a key issue in the country's 2008 presidential election, paving the way for unrestricted direct flights between Taiwan and China.
If China is to become the world's largest aviation market by 2020, it will have to move mountains of earth to provide enough runways. The country has just 196 certified airports for transport aircraft and 329 "GA Temporary Landing Points" to serve a population of just over 1.3 billion. By comparison, the US with 270 million people has 14,807 airports, while Australia with just over 20 million has 444 and tiny Iceland has 100.
Sabre Travel Network signed a "long-term" agreement to provide GDS services to Priceline.com, another erosion of Worldspan's position as the online technology leader. Priceline president and chief executive Jeffery Boyd said a principle reason for the deal is that it "provides us with redundancy in case of technical problems at Worldspan."
When 18-year-old Shawn "Napster" Fanning invented the software that turned the music industry on its head, he also engendered a vast community of young file-swappers. There are 250 million registered users of "peer-to-peer computing" networks worldwide. According to Big Champagne, a market research company that measures consumption of digital media, more music is now acquired online than on CD. The phenomenon is spreading to other forms of entertainment as well.
Aeroxchange named Jim Taylor CFO. All Nippon Airways appointed Damion Martin to head all non-Japanese PR. Assn. of European Airlines selected Wolfgang Mayrhuber, CEO and chairman of the executive board of Lufthansa, as chairman for 2006. ATA Airlines Holdings announced that Subodh Karnick becomes COO, Senior VP John Graber adds GM-military & charter operations to his responsibilities and Doug Yakola becomes CFO. Aviapartner tapped Rob Kuijpers as nonexecutive chairman and Andrew Burnett as business development mgr.
Austrian Airlines Group will end all long-haul charter flying by its Lauda Air leisure subsidiary at the end of the current winter season, with its six 767-300ERs and 777-200ERs repainted in Austrian Airlines' livery. Some charter flights, such as those to Mauritius, will be terminated, while others will become scheduled services, CCO Josef Burger told ATWOnline.
China Eastern Airlines took delivery of its first A330-300 on Jan. 25, becoming the aircraft type's first operator in China. The Trent 700-powered aircraft will seat 300 passengers in a two-class configuration.
