Blogging about aviation
News from the aviation industry
A computer problem forced United Airlines (UAL.N) to ground all domestic flights for about an hour on Sunday evening, causing a cascade of delays and annoying customers throughout the United States.
The “ground halt”, which the unit of United Continental Holdings Inc disclosed in a tweet at 8:06 pm ET and lifted about an hour later, follows a series of problems at United and other airlines last year.
Continue reading “United: computer glitch grounds U.S. planes”
A few days before his flight home to Seattle from Tokyo in October, Bruce Ryan learned that a windstorm might disrupt air travel in the Pacific Northwest. Mr. Ryan and his wife didn’t want to risk getting stuck.
Low-cost airline Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA will begin operating flights in Argentina beginning in late 2017, a spokesman said Dec. 16th , as more air travel operators seek a foothold in Latin America’s No. 3 economy.
The company plans to open two or three operating bases and begin passenger flights by November. It already has begun the relevant regulatory processes. Spokesman Alfons Claver did not say which routes the airline plans to run but expects to have bases in Buenos Aires, Cordoba and possibly Mendoza. “South America is a very interesting market characterized by little competition and high prices,” Claver said in a statement. He said
Continue reading “European Lowcost Airline ,Norwegian Air Shuttle´ starts flights in Argentina”
The Ryanair Holdings PLC on November 7th lifted its outlook for long-term passenger growth and nonticket sales. Ryanair said it now expects to carry 200 million passengers a year by March 2024, or 20 million more than previously projected.
The airline expects to gain customers through expansion and retrenchment of other airlines in the face of stiff competition. Sales for the July-to-September period, traditionally the busiest for the airline, advanced 2% to €2.4 billion. The Irish carrier said its board had approved a €550 million share-repurchase program, the airline’s eighth, to be carried out through February 2017. Continue reading “Ryanair: overall expansion plans”
A summary on an Interview with Carsten Spohr by ,Modern Weekly´:
“After Carsten Spohr took lead of the Lufthansa Group in more than two years, the group experienced some major issues from internal integration, route adjustment, Germanwings incident to personnel strikes. In the handling of all these major topics, Spohr always overcame the difficulties from three points, namely quality, efficiency and innovation and led the Group to a new height.”
In the end of September, the Lufthansa Group has taken the most critical step in China market, as Spohr signed the Joint venture contract with China Airlines. The commercial Joint Venture is scheduled to commence in the spring of 2017. Spohr believes China, the second largest aviation market in the world, has great potential and is very important for the Lufthansa Group. As DNA of Lufthansa, quality doesn’t only mean the excellent quality of services, but also means Lufthansa attention to flight safety. Continue reading “Quality, Efficiency and Innovation”
Preliminary negotiations between the management of the Italian company and the German carrier to involve it in a recapitalization of up to €400m. Alitalia’s new route to becoming a high flyer once again could be drawn by the end of the year by taking on board one of the world’s biggest carriers, Lufthansa, which has expressed interest several times in the past eight years.
According to the reconstruction by Il Messaggero, the meeting should focus on the plans for the airline’s relaunch, on which work is ongoing as a result of the company’s precarious health. A way out might be identified in the dialogue Continue reading “Alitalia seeking agreement with Etihad-Lufthansa”
Back in the 1990s, British Airways, the nation’s flag-carrier, proclaimed itself to be “the world’s favourite airline” in a long-running and hugely successful advertising campaign. Watching its iconic TV commercials from sofas across the country, many Brits-a pint-sized, starry-eyed Gulliver among them-swelled with pride at what was, at the time, a genuinely treasured national asset. Economist.com: “BA should be careful; reputations are more difficult to win back than to lose”.
“Were British Airways to run the same campaign today, it would probably stir a mixture of derision abroad and embarrassment at home”. (Economist.com: Little by little, British Airways is chipping away at its good name /19.08.2016).
In recent decades the Persian Gulf carriers have dethroned BA as the standard-bearers for long-haul service, while a new breed of low-cost carriers has attacked its short-haul dominance.
Continue reading “Reputations are more difficult to win back than to lose”
German national carrier Lufthansa is in talks to rescue its arch-rival Air Berlin, ,Handelsblatt´ has learned. Europe‘s biggest airline is negotiating with Gulf carrier Etihad, Air Berlin‘s biggest shareholder with a stake of just under 30 percent, to acquire parts of the struggling airline that has been making losses for the past 10 years.
According to Handelblatt Etihad has shored up Air Berlin with credit of several hundred million euros in the past. But Germany‘s second-largest airline has kept on hemorrhaging money because it overreached itself with its ambition to be a premium carrier, budget and charter airline all in one. Lufthansa appears to be interested in taking over all Air Berlin routes that don‘t go via the hubs in Düsseldorf or Berlin, as well as around 40 leased aircraft including their crews.
The planes could join the fleet of Lufthansa‘s budget subsidiary Eurowings. The talks are scheduled to be completed by October at the latest. Up to now the three companies declined to comment.
If the deal happens, Air Berlin chief executive Stefan Pichler could Continue reading “Rescuing the arch-rival?”
Boeings history startet July 15, 1916. From producing a single canvas-and-wood airplane the Company turned in the last 100 years into the world’s largest aerospace company.
http://www.boeing.com/boeing100/
Birthday congretulations also came from competitor Airbus:
Once the stuff of dreams…..
http://www.king5.com/tech/science/aerospace/boeing-celebrates-100-years/261860933
List of sources: Boeing, USA Today