Sen. Wendell Ford (D-Ky.), ranking Democrat on the Senate Commerce aviation subcommittee, will discuss FAA funding issues as the morning keynote speaker at the American Bar Association's 1996 Annual Update Conference on Air and Space Law, to be held Jan. 30 at the Sheraton City Centre Hotel in Washington. Continental Chairman Gordon Bethune will give the luncheon keynote address. For more information, call Maxine Davis at 312-988-5580.
Japan Airlines, facing opposition to its application to switch gateways in order to increase its service to Kona, cited support from state and local authorities in Hawaii and faulted its adversaries for dragging separate issues into a routine filing. In varying degrees, Northwest and United have urged DOT to use Japanese carriers' filings as leverage to secure beyond-Japan routes they believe they are entitled to.
Turk Hava Yollari (THY) applied for an exemption to fly combination service between Istanbul and Chicago. THY has been operating scheduled service to the U.S. since 1988, currently offering daily nonstops between Istanbul and New York with the A340-300, the same type aircraft it plans to use to Chicago. The carrier said it will file soon with DOT for a foreign air carrier permit. (Docket OST-97-2071)
FAA will hold its 7th Annual General Aviation Forecast Conference March 20- 21 at the Broadview Hotel in Wichita. John Turner, Central Region administrator, will open the conference and Gov. Bill Graves of Kansas will give the keynote address. Top industry and government officials will lead sessions. Among topics to be discussed are manufacturer's perspectives, business aviation perspectives and the aviation infrastructure. The conference will be co-sponsored by the General Aviation Manufacturers Association.
American will add two maintenance lines to existing facilities in 1997 to handle a heavier load of C checks. It is unclear whether the lines will be added at Fort Worth Alliance Airport or in Tulsa.
United's Air Line Pilots Association leaders met yesterday to discuss their options following their members' overwhelming rejection of the mid-term wage adjustment. Officials promised to communicate their plans directly to members after the meeting. Last week, the membership voted 80% against the wage increases, which would come half-way through the term of the Employee Stock Ownership Plan. The union said the rejection is a clear message of dissatisfaction and a vote against a "business-as-usual attitude" at an employee-owned company.
AirTran Airways reported December traffic of 64.7 million revenue passenger miles, up 7% over December 1995. Capacity rose 10% to 105.6 million available seat miles, decreasing the load factor 1.8 points to 61.3%. For the year, RPMs rose 119% to 932 million RPMs and capacity 97% to 1.432 billion ASMs. The load factor gained 6.7 points to 65%. AirTran carried 74,596 passengers in December and 1,070,799 during 1996.
General Electric reported record earnings of $7.3 billion in 1996, up from $6.6 billion the previous year, on record revenues of $79 billion, up from $70 billion. Earnings for the fourth quarter rose to $2 billion from $1.9 billion on revenues of $23 billion, up from $19.8 billion.
Precision Standard named Darryl Mazow VP of its Pemco Capital subsidiary and announced the retirement of Walter Moede, chief financial officer and director.
Air cargo growth will be fueled by manufacturers that develop facilities in locations that minimize overall production costs - even with increased transportation costs - and by dispersion of international service from gateways to point-to-point markets, according to Avitas. The consulting firm expects air cargo to grow at 6.8% a year. Boeing predicts 6.6%, McDonnell Douglas 7.4%.
KLM is proposing to lower the standard commission it pays to travel agents in The Netherlands to 7.5% from 9%, airline spokeswoman Odette Foder said Friday. The change is only for Dutch agents and will have "no effect whatsoever" on commissions paid to agents in North America, she said. "The commission structure in The Netherlands is totally different than in other markets," said Foder.
Aeromexico applied with DOT for a code-share exemption to permit it to market seats on daily roundtrip Mexicana flights between Miami and Cozumel. The carrier said it may want to serve the market with its own aircraft in the future. (Docket OST-96-2062)
Comair established a new standard in accident management last week with the crash of its Flight 3272 near Detroit. The Delta Connection carrier confirmed the accident in a press release issued an hour and one-half after the fatal crash occurred and conducted a press briefing just two hours after the accident. An accident update came about five hours later and a second press briefing was conducted at 10 p.m. A list of the 29 victims of the crash was issued at 1:30 a.m.
Eurowings launched daily nonstop scheduled service between Dusseldorf and Wroclaw, Poland, using ATR 42 turboprop aircraft. The airline also is opening a route linking Dresden with Kattowice, and it already serves Frankfurt-Wroclaw, Dresden-Krakow and Dresden-Poznan. It said the new service gives it more destinations in Poland than any other Western airline. The carrier now operates more than 240 flights daily serving 41 destinations in 11 European countries.
Frontier Airlines, charging that United is engaging in illegal predatory practices, will meet "informally" next week with DOT and Justice Department officials to discuss the allegations, a Frontier spokesman said yesterday. Frontier, which operates from Denver Airport, estimates United's market share there at 70%, 77% including United Express traffic. Frontier flies its 10 737s to 14 cities in 11 states; 12 of the 14 cities are served by United as well.
National Transportation Safety Board still is pursuing three theories regarding the destruction last July of TWA Flight 800 - bomb, missile and mechanical failure - although there is no physical evidence of a bomb or missile, NTSB Chairman James Hall told a meeting of the White House Commission for Aviation Safety and Security yesterday. NTSB estimates that it will spend $27 million through next summer investing the accident.
Taiwan's Civil Aeronautics Administration favors increasing the foreign ownership share allowed in Taiwan carriers to 50% from the current 33%, according to Chang Kuo-cheng, deputy director.CAA and Cambodia are negotiating on new service, and China Airlines, EVA Airways and TransAsia Airways are believed to be interested in being Taiwan's carrier in the market.
Japan Airlines and Air France enlarged yesterday their code-share agreement to include the Paris-Istanbul route, beginning April 1. Air France's existing A320 service on the route will be used for the code share, although JAL will launch Tokyo-Istanbul service April 1 to coincide with the code-share extension. The two carriers began their limited alliance in June 1995 and currently cooperate on the Osaka-Paris and Tokyo-Noumea routes, as well as other joint marketing activity. JAL also announced yesterday the expansion of several international routes.
Alaska Air Group subsidiary Horizon Air posted a 1.4% increase in traffic last month to 74 million revenue passenger miles from 73 million in December 1995. Capacity rose 1.7% to 120 million available seat miles from 118 million in the comparable 1995 month. The passenger load factor dropped 0.2 percentage points to 61.9% from 62.1, and the number of passengers carried totaled 315,200, compared with 316,800 in December 1995.
Air Line Pilots Association, supporting the 737 rudder changes Boeing and FAA have decided on, said operating procedures should be modified while the fixes are put in place during the next three years or so (DAILY, Jan.
The air traffic control system as currently operated by FAA fails to take into account how "flexible" the modern regional fleet is, Regional Airline Association President Walt Coleman says. Coleman, speaking to Aviation Week Group editors in Washington yesterday, listed remedying that failure - along with correcting FAA's practice of assessing the cost of new rules in isolation, rather than as part of a big picture - among the goals he has set for 1997.
Regional airline industry officials will meet with FAA Jan. 28 to review separation standards for regional aircraft, Walter Coleman, Regional Airline Association president, said yesterday. A variety of commuters were reclassified as small aircraft last year for the purposes of instrument flight rules (IFR) wake-vortex separation, largely in reaction to fatal accidents involving aircraft following 757s (DAILY, Aug. 16, 1996).
