DOT has ordered Great Lakes Aviation to continue serving Mattoon/Charleston, Ill., until a replacement carrier for Great Lakes can be found at the point, but allowed Great Lakes to drop its EAS at Danville, Ill., and Muncie/Anderson/New Castle, Ind., effective Feb. 17, and confirmed that it already has granted the carrier an exemption to drop its Galesburg, Ill., flights on short notice. The carrier has dropped the Galesburg flights. The department called for proposals from carriers interested in providing replacement service at Mattoon, with or without subsidy.
Northwest Aerospace Training Corp. said it merged some administrative and scheduling functions with Northwest Airlines' flight operations department. NATCO said, in the past, the training needs of the airline sometimes made it difficult to allocate facility time reliably to other customers.
Aeroflot First Deputy Managing Director Nikolai Gloushkov and Russia's deputy secretary of national security, Boris Berezovsky, are suing Forbes in the London High Court for libel. Aeroflot asserts that an article in the business magazine's Dec. 30 issue states incorrectly that Berezovsky is responsible for murder and running a criminally corrupt business, and that Gloushkov was convicted of a crime in Russia in 1982.
World Airways' January block hours for continuing operations rose 23% to 3,853 over January 1996 levels, reflecting carrier expansion over the past year. Average daily utilization was down slightly to 9.6 block hours, compared with 9.8 the previous January. The carrier's MD-11s and DC-10-30s are flown for tour operators, military transport and wet-lease for other airlines.
Delta Connection Comair will add two Canadair RJ flights between Cincinnati and Rochester, N.Y., April 6, giving it three daily jet flights in the market. The same date, the carrier will add two jet flights between Harrisburg and Cincinnati, also giving it three daily jet flights on that route. Comair simultaneously is adding one more jet flight in the Cincinnati-Knoxville market for a total of six flights - five jet and one turboprop - in the market.
Air South is offering senior citizens 25% reduced fares. Anyone 65 or older can take advantage of the fares to any of Air South's 11 destinations. The specials are open-ended for now, and no restrictions apply.
Hawaiian Airlines will implement Sabre Decision Technologies' automated yield management system, Airmax. The system evaluates the allocation of seat inventory and pricing on a minute-by-minute basis.
Testimony before the House aviation subcommittee on user-fee financing for the aviation system, given by Herbert Kelleher and Robert Crandall, chief executives of Southwest and American, respectively, will be broadcast Sunday by Aviation News Today on Washington's NewsChannel 8. The program will be shown from 12:30 a.m. to 1 a.m. and from 1:30 p.m. to 2 p.m.
American Eagle's four affiliates posted a collective 55.1% load factor in January, 2.9 percentage points more than the January 1996 figure and a record, the company reported. Eagle's traffic dropped 1.4% to 193.5 million revenue passenger miles and its capacity declined 6.7% to 351 million available seat miles, reflecting the shutdown of the Nashville hub last September. Passenger enplanements dropped 3.5% to 923,364, also reflecting the Nashville hub's demise.
Vanguard reported a 135.6% jump in January traffic 6% to 67.2 million revenue passenger miles. Capacity shot up 87.6% to 129.7 million available seat miles. The load factor rose to 51.8% from 41.3%.
Lufthansa Cargo and SAS Cargo announced yesterday the implementation of a plan to promote joint commercial activities. The sales force of each company will soon begin selling both partners' cargo services and products, particularly express services. Marketing and public relations will be coordinated as well. The carriers will use one another's capacity and coordinate freighter operations and trucking systems. By 2000, the partners aim to offer joint freight-handling on a global basis.
Air Line Pilots Association, which represents American Eagle pilots, has taken umbrage with Allied Pilots Association representing American pilots, charging it with "irresponsible rhetoric concerning our qualifications." American Eagle Master Executive Council Chairman Homer Pugh said Eagle pilots' "qualifications, skill and professionalism are on a par with any group of professional airmen" and are trained "to the same exacting standards as the American Airlines pilots." American pilots simply do not want Eagle pilots flying regional jets.
Japan's Ministry of Transport told the nation's airlines to prevent passengers from operating digital cameras during takeoffs and landings. The carriers will warn passengers in public address system announcements and print the warning in timetables. The ministry action reflects an incident last August in which a Japan Air System Airbus A300-622R hydraulic system warning lamp lit when a passenger began to operate a digital camera while the aircraft was on the ground at Tokyo Haneda Airport.
Airbus and Fokker Aircraft Operating Costs Systemwide Aircraft Utilization Per Day Third Quarter 1996 A320-100/200 America West Northwest Number of Aircraft Operated 24 50 Total Fleet Operations Departures 121 209 Block Hours 298 579 Flight Hours 257 495
Second long-range, high-speed Bombardier Global Express business jet has joined the flight test program. The prototype Global Express, which made its first flight last October, has accumulated more than 127 flight hours. A third aircraft will join the test program in April.
American's negotiations with its pilots continued "slowly, with increasing difficulty" yesterday, according to National Mediation Board Chairman Kenneth Hipp. It appears that nothing short of a significant change in negotiations or a strike will satisfy the pilots, whose issues are hard to resolve because of their mistrust of management. For its part, the company appears to be underestimating the pilots' attitude about regional jets, refusing to budge on language the union wants promising that only American pilots will fly RJs.
Liverpool Airport ordered a GEC-Marconi S511 primary surveillance radar for its air traffic control radar service. The airport, majority owned by British Aerospace, will be the third of the company's airports to be equipped with the S511.
Greenwich Air Services received an overhaul and repair contract valued at $7 million from Moscow-based Transaero Airlines. Greenwich signed a 10- year, $70 million contract last September with LOT Polish Airlines. In the one-year Transaero deal, Greenwich's Prestwick subsidiary will maintain CF6-50 engines that power three DC-10-30s.
Northwest has joined United in opposing a slot exemption for Turkish Airlines to operate into Chicago O'Hare. Like United and Lufthansa, Northwest wants to serve Turkey via a third-country code share, with partner KLM. The Turkish government has not authorized either alliance. In contrast, United believes Turkey is ready to grant similar code sharing by Japan Airlines and Air France, on Tokyo-Paris-Istanbul (DAILY, Jan. 31).
The demonstration by FAA and Cardion of the cooperative area precision tracking system in a precision runway monitoring mode at Atlanta Hartsfield Airport indicates the system ultimately could be less expensive than system developers thought. In tests and demonstrations, the three sensors placed around the airport were able to provide accurate position data for approaching aircraft that surpass the parameters the designers had assumed. That result creates the possibility of developing an architecture for use of the system using fewer sensors.
Peru's Ministry of Transport and Communications ordered an $11.9 million turnkey air traffic control system from Northrop Grumman's Electronic Sensors and Systems Division. The company also received contracts from Panama and Aruba.
A San Francisco city ordinance may force United to do what unions and an employee group at the carrier have pressed for unsuccessfully for a few years - recognize domestic partners in its benefits plan. But United is not required to act for at least two years. The new ordinance requires companies doing business in the city on a contract basis, or holding leases from the city, to offer the same benefits to employees' domestic partners as they do to married employees' spouses.
General Aviation Manufacturers Association President Ed Bolen called "an affront" a recommendation by the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security that users of the airspace system fund its development through user fees. "By saying it's got to be user fees, the Gore commission is ignoring the plain language of the FAA Reauthorization Act, and it is an affront to those of us who would honestly appraise all the various funding alternatives," Bolen said.
The White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security called yesterday for user funding of the national airspace system (NAS) but backed off a requirement that airlines adopt 100% matching of passengers and their baggage. President Clinton accepted the commission's final report as a "clear plan of action" to raise safety, security and air traffic control system standards.
