Emirates will need to build a bigger trophy case, again winning “Best Middle East/African Airline” award from BusinessTraveller Asia-Pacific for the second time running. The event was held last week in Hong Kong. Tung Chee Hwa, former Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) and patron of Save the Children Hong Kong presented Richard Vaughan, Emirates' Senior Vice President Commercial Operations-East Asia & Australasia, the award. Emirates flies to 10 destinations in the Far East and six destinations in Australia and New Zealand. The East Asia and Australasia region was responsible for 27.8 percent of the airline's revenue in the financial year 2004-05. Emirates Airline also took delivery of its fifth Boeing 777-300ER, out of an order of 30, bringing the EK fleet total to 80 aircraft. Emirates plans to add 21 new aircraft by the end of 2006. (Tirthankar Ghosh)


Maybe Boeing will be able to fulfill some of those delivery plans at EK, but with 18,300 aircraft builders at the company on strike and off the job since September 2, stay tuned.
Worth mentioning now that pension plans are biting the dust almost daily with U.S. carriers seeking bankruptcy protection, is that the Boeing strike is about pensions, with the International Association of Machinists (IAM) asking for $90 million more pension funding as part of a new three-year labor contract.
Boeing will spend about $4 billion on the IAM total wage-and-benefit expense once the contract is finally ratified, and since the company now has a huge order book, $90 million is chump change.
Many people who are smart about these things think that Boeing may have shot itself through the foot allowing this strike.
Part of the problem is, Boeing has long had rotten relations with the IAM.
With $54 billion in annual revenues, the company is playing a game it cannot win while it burns through more cash with this strike each month, than the new contract might have cost.
Go figure.

Jobs On The Line…University of Washington picture of kids supporting workers during a strike is typical of deep-seated feelings fueling labor unrest at the airplane builder whose 18,300 airplane builders walked off the job September 2.

 

With Indian Government approval, Air Arabia, the low-cost, Sharjah-based carrier becomes the first international airline to operate from Nagpur in central India. Air Arabia launches operations from Nagpur three times a week during the second half of October to Sharjah as the Month of Ramadan begins. Air Arabia also becomes the first international airline to operate on the Nagpur-Sharjah sector benefiting customers as well as trade and commerce from the nearby cities like Indore, Aurangabad, Bhopal, Jabalpur and other cities because of Nagpur’s strategic location at the center of India. Nagpur features excellent rail connections to Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and the rest of Maharashtra. Air Arabia launched its operations in India on March 26, 2005 with daily flights between Mumbai and Sharjah. The route has done well reporting an average load-factor of 95 percent. (T. Ghosh)
Qatar Airways and Lufthansa Systems have announced they have entered into an agreement for Qatar to use FACE (Future Airline Core Environment) from Lufthansa Systems as its reservation and passenger handling system. Lufthansa Systems will also equip all 66 stations of the Doha-based carrier with its Departure Control System (DCS) for baggage and also implement Lufthansa Systems’ Baggage Reconciliation System.
FACE supports all traditional core processes of passenger airlines—from reservations, inventory, ticketing and departure control—to passenger services and will provide new functionalities in the flexible handling of different marketing channels. Expected to carry six million passengers this year, from Doha, the airline serves 66 destinations across the Middle East, Europe, Africa, Indian Subcontinent and Asia.
Qatar Airways operates a 41 all-Airbus fleet and says it plans to triple in size to 110 aircraft by 2015.


Quote Of The Moment

At the World Low Cost Airlines Congress in Amsterdam on September 15, Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary said:


"The politicians want to protect the flag carriers.
The idiots in Brussels would, if they could, restart Sabena so they could lose money for another 75 years.
The low fare revolution has come to Europe and it won't be reversed.
European passengers would crawl naked over broken glass to get more low fares."

Korean, now the largest carrier of air cargo in the world on international routes shows no sign of slowing down. "We owe our success to the government's policy of encouraging exports," Cho Yang Ho, chairman of Korean Air, said in June, when data from the International Air Transport Association confirmed it as the No. 1 international freight carrier. Next up for Korean Air is expansion into China as mainland exports continue to move through Incheon, the big Seoul gateway. Incheon offers lower handling fees for airlines so KAL Cargo moves goods out of China via Incheon to destinations across its cargo network.Korean Air is also moving into China with Okay Airways, the first private airline in China. Reportedly KAL signed a "letter of intent" to buy Okay. Korean Air and Okay plan to operate a joint venture with consignments moving across China via Okay and worldwide aboard Korean Air.


Etihad Crystal Cargo took delivery of a third Airbus A300-600RF.
“With the third regional freighter we will further upgrade our existing Indian operations,” Ingo Roessler, Vice president Cargo said.
“All our existing routes to India show very high payloads, and the Indian Subcontinent has turned out to be a very dynamic market for cargo services.
“The additional freighter capacity will also allow us to enhance our worldwide charter services,” added Roessler.
The Airbus A300-600F will add an additional freighter service to New Delhi, increasing the freighter frequency to the Indian capital to twice weekly services and will upgrade services from Chennai from a twice to a thrice weekly service.
Etihad Cargo said it would also launch freighter service weekly to Calcutta and to Dhaka, Bangladesh and Almaty, Kazakhstan.



Freight operations underway again at Kent International Airport in the UK as an Air Atlanta 747 flew in from London-Gatwick to have an engine changed this week. Since then there have been several visitors, notably two African International DC8 aircraft that moved 78 tons of chemicals bound for Venezuela. General Manager Phill Vann said:
"KIA is now open for business and we're delighted to have got freight operations under way. We're doing all we can to bring new business to the airport."

Jade Cargo buys six B747-400ERFs to be delivered starting January 2006. Based in Shenzhen, China, Jade Cargo, a joint venture between Shenzen Airlines, Lufthansa Cargo and DEG Bank plans to begin operations in 2006. Boeing 2005 B747F order book stands at 19.

Boeing Company forecasts that the world freighter airplane fleet will double from 1,760 to 3,530 airplanes. According to the Current Market Outlook 2005, issued annually by Boeing Commercial Airplanes, 2,870 freighters will enter the fleet by 2024 and 1,100 cargo airplanes will be retired, for a net gain of 1,770 airplanes. Freighters of all sizes will provide more than half of the world's total air cargo capacity, a slight increase from today, although as a percentage of the total world airplane fleet, freighters will decrease from 10.5 percent to 10 percent, due to an increase in size of the average freighter, Boeing said. Boeing puts out a detailed forecast in even-numbered years and is scheduled to issue World Air Cargo Forecast 2006-2007 late next year.

Varig plans to exit bankruptcy, eliminate 1,500 jobs, and have the Rubem Berta Foundation surrender its 58% control of the airline. A new company, Nova Varig will manage the Rio Sul and Nordeste airline affiliates.

Just one more . . . “Delta Orient” may be a new airline on the horizon as both Northwest and Delta Airlines showed up in the same bankruptcy court in Manhattan, New York, on exactly the same day, at almost the same time, last week.
Can you imagine for a moment that some secret talks were taking place at an undisclosed location, but were suddenly interrupted as somebody suggested:
“First, let’s take care of those court filings, and then get back together again day after tomorrow, say eleven-ish ?”
In reality, looking at the two airlines’ system maps, a merged Delta-NWA makes a lot of sense.
Both have separate strengths in the U.S. market with minimal route overlap.
Delta is number one across the Atlantic, a crown it attained when it took over Pan Am 15 years ago.
Northwest has built a mighty empire with its service to Asia during the past half century.
Your move . . .

They know what it means to miss New Orleans—UPS, today(September 19) resumed service to parts of New Orleans’ Central Business District and sections of the French Quarter. Outside New Orleans, UPS now has reopened 21 of its 22 affected buildings in the region and restored delivery service to every ZIP code in Mississippi and Alabama. UPS has resumed daily air flights into and out of Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. UPS also opened a “hold-for-pickup” site for customers who want to retrieve packages on their own. The site, established just outside New Orleans at a UPS building in the suburb of Metairie, La., will accept and hold Next Day Air® and 2nd Day Air® packages for customers who wish to retrieve them. The building is located at 4502 Firestone Rd. More at www.ups.com.