Northwest's New Subsidiary: Compass Airlines

In June, Northwest Airlines (which, by the way, lost almost $500 million in February) wants to start its new way to screw pilots over- whoops, start a new subsidiary airline called Compass Airlines. Compass will fly from Northwest's three hubs in Minneapolis, Detroit and Memphis. The first flight, in June, will be the Minneapolis-Washington Dulles route. Compass is part of what I see as Northwest's big plan to a) cut costs, b) retire those Flying...

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LAN To Get More 767s

LAN Airlines SA said it will purchase three Boeing 767-300s, to be delivered in 2007 and 2008. The cost: $270 million. LAN already bought a dozen of the type from Boeing last August....

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AA & Others Eager To Fly To China

Reuters is reporting that American Airlines is going to fly to Shanghai from Chicago on Sunday. Not only that, but they've been waiting fourteen years to get in. That's right - over a decade ago they set up an office in Beijing, and it's only now that they're getting to fly to China. The airline expects to fly up to 245 passengers to China a day, and the load factor's pretty nice, too: AA predicts that 86% of its seats will be full. They'll definately...

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Siberia Airlines To Get A319s

Siberia Airlines, or Sibir as it's officially called, announced that it will try to lease ten ex-Northwest Airlines Airbus A319s as it tries to phase out the aging Russian-built Tupolevs. As of now the airline operates six Airbus A310s, ten Boeing 737-500s, nine Ilyushin Il-86s, twenty-eight Tupolev Tu-154Ms and two Tu-204s. It plans to lease at least two more 737s and two more A310s this year, according to Flight International. Sibir will also obtain...

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BA: No Merger w/ Iberia - For Now

The head of British Airways' Spanish and Portuguese operations has ruled out a merger with fellow oneworld alliance carrier Iberia, but when asked if such a thing might occur down the road said, "There's a clear trend for consolidation. When will we arrive at this point? That's the million dollar question." BA and American Airlines collectively own 10% of the Spanish carrier.I don't see a 'complete' merger in the works at all. Both are flag carriers for their respective countries, so that has to be taken into effect. They might be able to do a...

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United Airlines, Shanghai Airlines Sign Code-Share Deal

Here's a small post: United Airlines and Shanghai Airlines are scheduled to begin code-sharing on May 15 (pending government approval). The two airlines will code-share on 11 flights in the US and China. However, there have been reports that Shanghai will join Star Alliance in the first half of this year. If this is the case, then the two will codeshare on probably almost every rou...

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Airbus Rolls Out A300 In Old Colors

Airbus has long since allowed the original A300 to go to the scrap yard. Which was surprising, considering that the A300 was the plane that put Airbus on the map. But now, it picked up an idle A300 and painted the original paint scheme on it.The Airbus first flew in February 1983. It was slated to go to Laker Airways but the airline went defunct before the aircraft was finished. The aircraft, an A300B4, was delievered to Pan Am in 1985, was bought by Sempati Air of Indonesia in 1993 and then it went on to DHL in 1999.(View picture at http://img482.imageshack.us/img482/7763/yourfile6xs.jpg...

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US Airways To Stick with Star - For Now

US Airways has decided to keep its code-sharing deal with United Airlines - for the time being, anyway. A code-sharing deal is where each airline is allowed to sell seats on the other airline. This arrangement brings in over $200 million annually to United.The two airlines began code-sharing in 2002, after the government anti-trust unit said no to a merger between the two. In 2003 US Airways joined Star Alliance, which was co-founded by United in...

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Delta: We're 'Tapped Out'

Edward Bastian, the CFO at Delta Air Lines, warned yesterday that the airline is 'tapped out' financially, and that Delta can't get any more loans. "We are clearly in the worst shape and are the most fragile of anyone in the industry," the AP quoted him as saying. He went on to say that because of its precarious finances, Delta must extract huge pay and benefit cuts from its pilots if it wants to survive.Delta's section of the ALPA (Air Line Pilots Association), of course, said that it would strike if that plan of action was carried out. And, to...

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Aeroflot to Join SkyTeam

Although the news that Aeroflot is going to join the airline alliance SkyTeam is nothing new, there's now an official date to its entry: April 14.Air France-KLM CEO Jean-Cyril Spinetta will fly to Moscow to welcome Aeroflot to SkyTeam, Aeroflot deputy CEO Lev Koshlyakov said Tuesday in a telephone interview from Moscow, reported Bloomberg.Aeroflot will gain access to SkyTeam's 684 destinations in 133 countries. It flies to 88 destinations, 27 of...

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A Look at Boutique Airlines

A Brandweek article called them 'boutique airlines', so I will too. Perhaps you've heard about some of these boutique airlines. You know, the ones that offer cushy seats, decent food, attentive flight attendants, etc. Here are the big three boutique airlines (at time of writing). One is transcontinental (across the US) and the other two are transatlantic. 1. United's Premium Service (p.s.)United's p.s. service is flown on Boeing 757-200 aircraft...

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Fare Raise!

Attention K-mart - er, Orbitz/Travelocity - shoppers! Be prepared to shell out more dough to buy a plane ticket!Southwest Airlines announced that it will raise fares $10 for a one way ticket as it tries to offset $600 million in additional fuel costs. And don't think it's just Southwest. It's Delta, too. And Northwest. And Continental. And US Airways. And American. And United. Even Alaska jacked up the fares by ten bucks on continental flights. This is the second round of fare-raising from Southwest, a low fare carrier. Well, those low fares won't...

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Alaska Airlines Gets Rid of Older Jets

Seattle-based Alaska Airlines is going to get rid of its MD-80 aircraft (pictured) to make way for Boeing 737s, a type of aircraft that the airline already has in service. 26 MD-80s are leaving, and 39 Boeing 737-800s are joining the fleet. Delivery is between now and 2008.Savings will apparently be about $115 million per year as fuel, operating, and maintenance costs plummet. Although the number of aircraft operated by Alaska will only increase...

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USAir CEO Declines 770K Bonus

The CEO of the US Airways Group, Doug Parker, said that he declined a $770,000 bonus last year and won't accept any bonuses until his airline becomes profitable.Parker, the CEO of America West Airlines, oversaw the merger/takeover with US Airways in September 2005. The combined airline kept the US Airways name.Why would Parker walk away from about three-quarters of a million dollars? He said it would be wrong for him to accept bonuses until US Airways employees get payments under a profit-sharing plan. "I was personally somewhat conflicted because...

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Northwest Buys Indy Air's Certificate

Northwest Airlines is going to pay $2 million for the operating certificate of former low-cost carrier Independence Air. Indy Air, which was auctioning it off, had other bidders for it but said that Northwest's offer was the highest. The FAA requires each airline to have an operating certificate. It's easier to buy someone else's than going through the process of creating one from scratch. Northwest is most likely going to use it in a new subsidiary for regional routes, one that flies planes with 51 to 76 seats. NWA also recently reached a tentative...

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DEN Traffic Up After Southwest's Entrance

Denver International Airport reported an 8.3% increase in passengers in January after Southwest Airlines began service to the airport. That's a 300,000 person increase compared to the time a year before."Southwest certainly was a part of the increase in January," airport spokesman Steve Snyder said. United has roughly 58% of the traffic at DEN and reported a 4% rise in traffic. Hometown carrier Frontier has about 20% of the traffic and reported...

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Aeroflot Might Snap Up Rivals

Interesting news out of Russia. The Moscow Times is reporting that Aeroflot is considering buying government stakes in rival government-owned carriers with newly issued shares. That's according to Lev Koshlyakov, deupty CEO of Aeroflot. The board meets in June to decide whether to issue more shares or not.Altough Koshlyakov said that the plan would "expand the company's activities", he denied a report that stated that Aeroflot's real plan would be...

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American Eagle Won't Charge for Drinks

American Eagle, a division of American Airlines, announced yesterday that it will stop charging $1.00 per soft drink, which it did do on some California flights since January. Spokesperson Dave Jackson: "We didn't sell a lot and we also got feedback from our customers saying they'd prefer that juices and sodas be complimentary." No, really? Gee, imaging having to shell out a dollar for a can of Coke on American - especially when they don't offer anything else for free. I've already written about my experience on Northwest Airlines last summer....

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