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Vol. 7 No. 139 WE COVER THE WORLD Monday December 15, 2008  |
Due to meager results Abu Dhabi-based Etihad
Airways has got plans in the drawer to get rid of their freighter fleet in
the months to come.
… Furthermore, internal sources told Air
Cargo News Flying Typers that Etihad plans to pull out all wide-body passenger
aircraft off routes with less than 4 hours flying distance.
They will be replaced by narrow-bodied equipment.
This would apply to the entire traffic to and
from the Indian Subcontinent the airline is presently offering.
The step is seen as a reaction to the tightening
financial situation the carrier is increasingly confronted with.
According to a leading manager, airline boss
James Hogan has briefed the top shots of the carrier’s air freight division
CrystalCargo.
His main point seems to have been the “unsatisfactory
performance” of the aircraft and their “disappointing contribution”
to the carrier’s finances. At Etihad nobody was available for comment.
If Mr. Hogan’s plans are put into practice
to end the freighter era at Etihad, the Middle East airline would be the first
carrier in the Gulf region to renounce main deck capacity. Presently, the
airline operates a small fleet of leased cargo planes, two of them A300-600F
and one MD-11F. The Iceland-registered A300F’s joined the fleet in 2005
while the MD-11F of U.S. operator World Airways is flying for Etihad’s
air freight division CrystalCargo since last year.
The “freighters – no, thank you,”
plan would be a severe blow especially for the charter experts of the airline.
According to cargo experts they have successfully marketed the spare capacities
of the three aircraft up to now. With no single freighter left in the fleet
their department might be shot down.
At this point it is uncertain if Etihad will
take over three Airbus 330-200 freighters that are scheduled to be delivered
from 2011 on. “They might opt for converting these orders from cargo
to passenger aircraft,” supposes a Dubai-based analyst when asked by
Air Cargo News FlyingTypers.
√Ever since being established in 2003 Etihad never flew out of the red.
Year by year the carrier’s top management kept predicting that profits
would be made starting in 2010. Due to the present global crisis however,
experts doubt that this financial ambition could be achieved. This might explain
why airline owner Abu Dhabi is lately mounting the pressure on Hogan and his
crew to save costs and increase earnings. First victim could well be the cargo
division.
Heiner Siegmund
Such
a deal… That sale to the Italian investment company CAI
who bought both Alitalia and Air
One with the aim to merge the companies, relieves the
Italian government of Silvio Berlusconi
an ongoing headache after the current Prime Minister, while trying to
get elected earlier this year, promised to get a deal for long suffering
AZ done. Price tag for Alitalia € 1 B +. Reportedly Alitalia/ Air
One together means loss of 3,200 jobs , so stay tuned. New company is
seeking an immediate joint venture with LH
and /or AF/KLM, to own +/- 25% of the new
combined Italian airline. CAI estimates that Alitalia will be profitable
2010 . . . Sail Away—Opening
of direct shipping 
service
begins Monday December 15 and in the general scheme of these things,
no small potatoes, as a historic first with the sailing of Evergreen
Line's 1,200-TEU Uni-Adroit (Uni-Arise pictured) as
the ceremony was mute testimony that the toothpaste is out of the tube
and everything changes from now onward across the Taiwan
Straits. The Evergreen service, known as the Taiwan-North
China or HBT route, will utilize Kaohsiung,
one of the world's ten busiest container ports. It is expected that
all of Taiwan's international harbors will eventually be involved in
a trade that will include virtually all of 
China's
ports . . . Just as former
Qantas USA top cargo executive
Bruce McCaffrey gets out
of the slammer after serving as the fall guy for Qantas Cargo in that
price fixing and surcharge scandal of earlier this year comes word that
right after they announced merger plans, Qantas
Airways and British Airways were
fined by an Australian court Friday for their involvement in a price-fixing
cartel in the global air freight industry. The Federal Court in Sydney
ordered Qantas to pay A$20 million (US$13 million), a fine the airline
had agreed to when the Australian Competition
and Consumer Commission launched legal action against it in October.
The court also fined British Airways A$5 million
. . . American Airlines
has announced it will begin daily nonstop service between Dallas
and Madrid, starting May 1, 2009 via a
B767-300 aircraft . . . LAN
Airlines SA said that cargo traffic decreased 1.7 percent, compared
with the year-earlier period. LAN November, cargo traffic decreased
1.7 percent as capacity rose 5.8 percent. Load factor was reported at
70.6 percent . . . Indian
flag airlines are slashing international routes but must endure foreign
airlines operating in the country building business as the India carriers
use less than 40 percent of their bilateral air service agreement rights
. . . Emirates has announced
that it will launch a new environmental program on Monday December 15
as it “executes the longest green journey,” aboard its flight
from Dubai to San
Francisco, now dubbed the world’s first cross-polar green
flight. Emirates said that it has worked closely with government agencies
in Dubai, Russia,
Iceland, Canada
and the United States and other countries
to plot the most environmentally-sophisticated 
route
and trip possible to help save an estimated 2,000 gallons of fuel and
30,000 pounds of carbon emissions on the 16-hour non-stop service. Nice
and easy being green . . . Not
only are things warming across the Taiwan Straits,
Beijing and Shanghai
Customs have said that an era of cooperation continues to build further
between the two cities with a new move that allows for declaration and
clearance of goods at origin between the two cities. The new service
is aimed at building logistics development in the two cities
. . . Cathay Pacific Airways
and Dragonair moved 131,758 tons of cargo
and mail in November, down 15.4 percent from the same month last year
. . . Air France-KLM registered
a complaint to the European Union over
Austria's plans to sell its national airline
to German carrier Lufthansa, saying the
deal depended on unfair state aid. Air France-KLM said a decision by
the Vienna Government to cancel a €
500 million euro (US$659.5 million) loan to Austrian
Airlines as part of the sale to Lufthansa had not been on the
table when Air France-KLM was itself considering bidding for the airline.
"Air France-KLM is convinced that the sale of Austrian Airlines
to Lufthansa has not been carried out in the best interests of the parties
involved or at a normal market price," Air France-KLM said
. . .