Domestic airline delays in 2007 were the second worst on record, the Transportation Department said Tuesday.Flights in the U.S. were late more than 26 percent of the time last year, a slightly better performance than in 2000, when airlines were tardy 27.4 percent of the time. The federal government began collecting airlines on-time data in 1995.
source: SignOnSanDiego.com
Shares in Scandinavian airline SAS dived on Wednesday after it posted a fourth-quarter loss on problems with its Dash 8 Q400 planes and said it faced delays in turnaround plans and a worsening economic situation.
The airline, half of which is owned by Sweden, Norway and Denmark, added that replacing its fleet of Dash 8 Q400’s, permanently grounded after landing gear issues caused three emergency landings last autumn, would add to costs in 2008.
SAS shares were down 10.6 percent at 55 crowns by 1302 GMT, having hit 53.50 crowns — its lowest for more than three years.
source: Guardian Unlimited
Alitalia SpA, the state-controlled airline Italy is trying to sell, is cutting flights at Milan’s Malpensa airport because it’s “‘economically impossible”’ to maintain two hubs.Alitalia will eliminate unprofitable routes, keeping just three of its current 17 intercontinental flights at Malpensa while increasing traffic at Rome’s Fiumicino airport, the carrier said in a slide presentation on its Web site today. Mounting losses make it impossible to keep two hubs, the company said in the presentation of its summer 2008 schedule.
source: Bloomberg
India’s national carrier Air India is launching a daily non-stop New York-Delhi service from Feb 8 with a state-of-the-art Boeing 777-200LR aircraft to reduce the travel time between the two cities to 14 hours.
The flight will depart from New York’s JFK International Airport at 4:00 p.m. local time and arrive in Delhi at 4:30 p.m. the next afternoon. Returning flights will depart Delhi at 12:30 a.m. and arrive at JFK at 5:45 a.m. local time the same day.
source: Sify.com
Ryanair Holdings Plc, Europe’s biggest discount airline, said profit declined for the first time in seven quarters as increased competition hurt ticket prices. Higher fuel costs and a possible European consumer slowdown may slash earnings next fiscal year.
Net income in the fiscal third-quarter through December fell to 35 million euros ($52 million), or 2.35 cents a share, from 48 million euros, or 3.09 cents, a year earlier, Dublin-based Ryanair said today by e-mail. Analysts had predicted a profit of 35.6 million euros. Sales rose 16 percent to 569 million euros.
source: Bloomberg
Aer Lingus has reached an agreement with a low-cost US carrier that will give the Irish airline’s passengers easier access to locations across the United States.
The agreement with Jet Blue means Aer Lingus customers will be able to book flights from Ireland to 40 US destinations from April of this year.
source: Belfast telegraph
An Airbus A380, the world’s largest airliner, became the first commercial jet aircraft to use alternative fuel on Friday, marking a milestone on the road to biofuels.
The double-decker A380 needed no modification to use the gas-to-liquid (GTL) fuel, which was designed to be mixed with regular jet fuel so “‘the airplane does not know the difference,'” Airbus said.
Airbus hopes the plane, hit by production delays, will become the centerpiece of efforts to develop the next generation of cleaner fuel at a time when the aviation industry is under pressure over the impact of emissions on the climate.
source: Reuters
A plane carrying more than 150 people crash-landed in a bog in eastern Bolivia on Friday after fierce storms turned it away from its destination and it tried to reach another airport hundreds of miles away, according to officials and news reports. All on board survived.
Storms forced the plane to turn away from its destination in the northern city of Cobija. It then headed some 370 miles south to the eastern lowland city of Trinidad and was three miles short of the runway when the pilot was forced to make an emergency landing.
source: GoErie.com
It could be one of his most ambitious projects yet. Virgin Group chairman Sir Richard Branson, one of Britain’s most prominent entrepreneurs, said Thursday that his firm was in talks with local partners to establish a new Russian airline, one of several possible new ventures.
Virgin is in talks with “‘two or three'” local carriers and expects to make an announcement about a new partner in the next three months, Branson told reporters at an investment conference in Moscow.
source: The Moscow Times
A German travel agent has come up with the ultimate in no-frills flying – a charter flight for passengers who want to fly naked. Naturist holidays are particularly popular among east Germans, who like nothing better than to stretch out on a beach in the nude. “‘The flight can be enjoyed as God intended,'” said OssiUrlaub, a company specialising in selling to holidaymakers from the former east. “‘For the first time, passengers in Germany can fly completely in the nude.'”
source: Guardian Unlimited
