NewsAirlines
Emirates Hopes To Enter Talks On A350
Emirates hopes it will be able to re-engage in talks in the next few months with Airbus over buying A350s after it cancelled an order earlier this year. "I've said the company will look at the A350 again. It will be done when we can align a contract to what the performance of the aircraft will be when it's in service," Tim Clark told reporters in Berlin.
Link
Finnair is coming to Chicago O’Hare for next summer
Finnair (Helsinki) will start flying to Chicago (O’Hare) next summer, from June 13 to October 17, 2015. Flights will be operated three times a week with Airbus A330 aircraft. Departures from Helsinki and Chicago are on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays at 17:25 and arrive in Chicago (ORD) at 18:40 local time. Return flights to Helsinki depart at 22:00 and arrive the following day at 14:50. Finnair’s Chicago service is included in the joint business on trans-Atlantic traffic with fellow oneworld alliance partners British Airways, Iberia, American Airlines and American’s merger partner US Airways. Chicago is a hub for American, which allows Finnair’s customers quick codeshare connections to destinations throughout the United States, including San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Link
LATAM Airlines Posts Loss On Weak Economic Growth
LATAM Airlines reported a net loss for the third quarter, due to a fall in business travel and cargo traffic during the World Cup in Brazil and weakening regional economic growth. A foreign exchange loss of USD$144 million, mostly due to a depreciating Brazilian real, also weighed on the carrier's bottom line. The net loss was USD$107.8 million in the three months to the end of September, traditionally its strongest quarter, the company said. That compared with a profit of USD$52 million a year ago. Revenue in the third quarter was USD$3.05 billion, versus USD$3.27 billion in the year-ago period.
Link
Lion Plans 2016 IPO, Nears A330 Order
Indonesia's Lion Group is pushing forward with revived plans for a 2016 initial public offering designed to fund an airport vital to securing its growth, chief executive Rusdi Kirana said. The owner of one of the world's fastest-growing airlines, Lion Air, is also close to placing an order for Airbus A330s, which it plans to use for busy domestic routes as it runs short of airport slots for smaller aircraft. "We are talking now with banks about an IPO and will use the money to build this hub. Now we are using our own money but hopefully by the first quarter of 2016, the company will do an IPO and will use the money partly for airport expansion," said Kirana.
Link
Portugal To Sell Up To 66 Percent Of TAP
Portugal plans to sell its controlling stake in flag carrier TAP to one or more large investors in a relaunch of the partial sale of the indebted airline. Secretary of state for transport Sergio Monteiro said up to 66 percent of TAP will be sold, with 5 percent reserved for staff. The government will retain 34 percent and may exercise an option to sell that stake two years after the privatization. "The state does not intend to obtain financial gains from this privatization, it wants to guarantee that TAP is adequately capitalized," Monteiro told a news briefing. Monteiro added the airline had debts of EUR€1 billion (USD$1.3 billion) and Portugal was banned from injecting fresh capital under EU rules. Monteiro said there was no timetable yet for the sale. Economy Minister Antonio Pires de Lima has said there were various potential buyers interested in TAP. Lufthansa and Spanish group Globalia have said they were following developments around the privatization, while Portuguese entrepreneur Miguel Pais do Amaral has also expressed interest.
Link
Virgin America IPO Priced At USD$23: Underwriter
Virgin America's initial public offering was priced at USD$23 per share, according to an underwriter, valuing the low-cost airline, partly owned by Richard Branson, at USD$993.6 million. The IPO raised about USD$307 million after it was priced slightly below the expected range of USD$21 - USD$24 per share. Of the 13.3 million shares on offer, Virgin America sold 13.1 million, while the rest came from the selling stockholders.
LinkAirports
Winter storm affects operations at DIA
Snow removal and de-icing crews have been working to clear snow and ice from roadways and airplanes at Denver International Airport since early Wednesday morning.
According to DIA’s website, United Airlines has canceled 28 arriving flights and 27 departures through Wednesday evening. Many other United flights have been delayed. No other airlines have reported cancellations but have reported some delays. Pena Boulevard has been cleared and treated to clear the way for drivers, but DIA is urging drivers to slow down and give themselves extra time to get to or from the airport. Several traffic accidents have been reported on Pena Boulevard throughout the morning but nothing serious.
Link
Ind. airport to welcome Allegiant Air in 2015
Starting in February, Indianapolis International Airport will have a new airline that boasts nonstop flights to four popular vacation spots, airport officials announced Wednesday. Allegiant Air will have flights from Indianapolis to Las Vegas and three locations in Florida: Orlando, Tampa Bay and Southwest Florida. It's a change welcomed by an airport that, because of airline mergers, had gone from having 13 air carriers to one that's on pace to having just six, with AirTran Airways merging with Southwest Airlines, and US Airways with American Airlines.
LinkMilitary
BAE suing South Korea in wake of canceled F-16 upgrade deal
BAE Systems claims South Korea’s military purchasing agency is shaking the company down for $43 million following a canceled deal to upgrade the nation’s fleet of Lockheed Martin F-16 fighters and has filed suit in US district court to avoid payment. South Korea on 5 November terminated a Foreign Military Sales contract with BAE to upgrade its F-16 fighters, a deal potentially worth $1.7 billion. The company saw the FMS deal as a huge win in the competition with Lockheed to upgrade the thousands of F-16s currently in service worldwide. BAE Systems’s contract would have seen 134 aircraft receive new avionics and an active electronic scanned array (AESA) radar produced by Raytheon. The company alleges that South Korea killed the deal because BAE failed to secure a sufficiently low price through the US foreign military sales process. BAE is not seeking reinstatement of the contract.
LinkRegulatory
FAA eases pairing rules for older pilots
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is loosening the age restrictions for older pilots, the agency said Wednesday. Pilots over 60 will no longer be required to fly side-by-side with a younger pilot on international flights to compensate for various physical limitations and health problems they may face after that age. Starting Thursday, those pilots will be allowed to fly internationally as long as they have a second pilot to back them up, regardless of the other pilot's age, the agency noted in the Federal Register. This will ease what's known as the pilot pairing requirements for older pilots.
LinkSpace
Scientific work on hold as ESA determines comet lander's condition
European Space Agency scientists have determined that their robotic lander Philae is on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, but it is not anchored as it should be and is not sitting level. Philae may have come to rest on the steep rim of a crater after rebounding twice off the surface, following an initial touchdown near the centre of its planned landing site. The first rebound may have pushed the washing machine-sized lander up to 3,280ft off the surface, and it was 2h before it touched down again. Following the second rebound, Philae came to rest after about 38min.
Link
SpaceShipTwo Probe Focuses On Human Factors, Test Procedures
Assembly work on a second SpaceShipTwo spaceplane for Virgin Galactic is accelerating at its Mojave, California, facility as accident investigators focus on human factors that may have contributed to the deadly Oct. 31., inflight breakup of the first vehicle. The mishap, which killed Scaled Composites test pilot Mike Alsbury and seriously injured fellow test pilot Pete Siebold, occurred seconds into the first powered flight of the vehicle since January. The flight was the initial test of an improved hybrid rocket motor and a key step toward the planned hand-off of SS2 from its developer to spaceline operator Virgin Galactic. Until the accident, the transition to Virgin, and the final phase of testing preceding the start of commercial operations in 2015, was widely expected to occur around the end of the year.
Link
Aviation Quote
By further reducing the number of legacy airlines and aligning the economic incentives of those that remain, the merger of US Airways and American would make it easier for the remaining airlines to cooperate rather than compete on price on service.
— US Justice Department, part of a lawsuit filed to stop the AA/US Air airline merger, 13 August 2013.
On This Date
---In 1910... The birth of the aircraft carrier occurs when Eugene Ely takes off from the cruiser USS Birmingham in Virginia, on a Curtiss biplane. The warship has an 83-foot platform built over the foredeck for the take-off.
---In 1970…Southern Airways Flight 932 crashes near Ceredo,West Virginia, killing all 75 on board. The dead are 37 members of the Marshall University football team, eight of its coaches, 25 team boosters, and the crew of five.
---In 1974…F-15 Eagle enters service with the 555th Tactical Fighter Training Squadron at Luke AFB.
---In 1987… Air Transat began airline operations.
---In 2005…Boeing launches 747-8.
---In 2006…EasyJet announces an order for 52 Airbus A319.
Daily Video
Editor’s Choice
Trivia
Google Earth Airports
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
