The US heartland is a popular stumping ground in an election year and Des Moines International is the politicians' portal to get there. Reporters covering such rituals as the Iowa caucuses noticed a difference this year at the Iowa state capital's airport, however. Last October Des Moines went live with its airportwide wireless LAN with coverage in the terminal, ramp areas, concourse, car rental lots, general aviation lobbies and some private hangars.
Charles Darwin wrote, "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." British Airways CEO Rod Eddington warns that achieving that responsiveness is extremely difficult-"Changing airline culture is like trying to perform an engine change inflight," he maintains. While not all legacy airline CEOs have to face as daunting a task as that, the magnitude of reform required to meet the actual or threatened competition from low-cost carriers is enormous, and for many airlines seemingly impossible to achieve.
Five years ago, only a relative handful of Italian and international business travelers were aware of the existence of Milan's Orio al Serio airport, or as it is more commonly known, Milan Bergamo. Today, you'll see more denim and backpacks than Armani inside the terminal. Lots more.
What a difference two years make. When ATW last reviewed the market potential for passenger-to-freighter conversion programs (9/02, p. 48), airfreight was just beginning to claw back from its most severe contraction since the early 1970s. The winding down of high-priority Y2K-related technology shipments, followed by the bursting of the dot.com and telecom bubbles and then 9/11, resulted in world airfreight traffic (FTKs) falling 6.6% in 2001, according to Arlington, Va.-based MergeGlobal.
Evolving business models and driving down costs will be key topics at the European Regions Airline Assn. General Assembly beginning Sept. 29 in Vienna. The annual meeting of Europe's Regional airline industry attracts a diverse crowd of independent and fully aligned carriers as well as a smattering of others sharing common interests and has become a much-anticipated forum at which to discuss issues impacting the sector. ERA members include some 70 airlines along with some 230 representatives from Europe's airports, manufacturers and suppliers.
The scarcity of new developments announced at this year's Farnborough air show stood in stark contrast to the overall feeling of relief that pervaded the attitude of show exhibitors, relief that the cycle finally has turned the corner and business is in the first stages of recovery. Forecasts started to trend upward and building rates are following slowly.
John Kern is surprisingly calm for a man on a mission to save an economy. Kern, director of FAA's Joint Planning and Development Office, is at the helm of the US's latest and presumably greatest attempt to jolt the curb-to-curb air transportation experience, a do-or-die manifest if the $10 trillion US economy is to remain constraint-free on the global stage.
There's hope for O'Hare. The world's busiest airport can be fixed. It won't be easy, it won't be quick and it certainly won't be cheap, but it can be done.
Last winter was not good for Vienna International Airport. It's not that the airport suffered a major slump in traffic--quite the contrary. Passenger throughput increased by 15% in the cold weather months Jan. 1-March 31 on the year-ago period, while aircraft movements rose by 11% year-on-year.
The biggest airport in the US is getting bigger. With its 16,000-ft. sixth runway-the longest commercial landing strip in the nation-a year old, Denver International is starting on the first terminal expansion of its nine-year life. It will spend about $100 million to build an extension to Concourse A, chiefly for Frontier Airlines, and another $45-$50 million on better facilities for United Airlines' Regional operations at the end of Concourse B.
France is Europe's largest tourist destination, with 75.5 million visitors annually including some 15.5 million Germans, 12.7 million Britons and 12 million Dutch flocking to the country. Per capita GDP is above the European average, and with 61 million inhabitants it has the largest population in Western Europe after Germany. Yet air travelers in France have fewer opportunities to take advantage of low-cost airlines than those in almost any other country in Europe.
Fifteen months after American Airlines' unionized employees agreed to some $1.7 billion in pay and benefit reductions and productivity improvements in order to keep the airline aloft, management and workers are striving to create a new corporate culture reminiscent of the remarkable transformation achieved at Continental Airlines a decade ago. The drive to change the way the carrier does business reflects AMR Corp.
People may not be out in the streets demonstrating for change, but they are at their home PCs and Internet cafes making bookings for seats on a revolution sweeping across Asia. The era of the low-cost carrier has arrived and perhaps sooner than most would have expected in a region still making the transition from tightly drawn bilateral agreements to freewheeling open skies arrangements.
When the first A320 was delivered to launch customer Air France in October 1987, it represented a revolution in commercial aircraft flight control technology and also featured the most extensive use of automation and computerization on any civil transport flightdeck. Today, with Boeing having embraced fly-by-wire in its two most recent new aircraft programs, and when even regional jets such as the Embraer 170 offer it, it may be difficult to recall the controversy generated by the aircraft.
The transformation of commuter/regional airlines over the last 40 years has been nothing short of dramatic. Deregulation, cabin-class airliners, codesharing and top-shelf management have helped change commuter carriers from marginal players with shaky finances into billion-dollar Regionals that have become part of the industry's core.
It was a January luncheon in New York City, a rather small, intimate affair, that gave birth to the Air Transport World Industry Awards program. During that luncheon, ATW founder, publisher and editor Joe Murphy handed out 10 awards to airline executives from around the world. The Airline of the Year for 1974 was United Airlines.
When the Beatles arrived in New York in February 1964, they stepped off Pan Am's 707-320 Clipper Defiance, a first-generation pure-jet aircraft that was less than five years old. The classic 707-the longer-range, turbofan-powered 707-320B-was then quite new. A week before the Fab Four's US debut, Hawker Siddeley handed over a brand-new Comet 4 to Kuwait Airways. A brand-new Comet, by gad.
In 1964, the US airlines were looking forward to a record year, especially for travel to Europe. With 88.52 million passenger enplanements, up from 77.4 million the previous year, they were not disappointed. They might have been, though, had their vision stretched to the end of the century: Their numbers were a drop in the bucket compared with the 666.15 million enplanements of 2000.
Airline relationships with each other have gone through an extensive period of maturation during the past 40 years, most dramatically in the international arena. The industry has transitioned from a close-knit association of thinly spread operators legally coordinating commercial activities in a sanctioned cartel, self-regulating fares and service levels to provide maximum benefits for both airline and passenger-or so they claimed-to today's system of alliances battling on a global stage increasingly open to free-market competition.
In the early 1960s there still remained in service a few of the A/N radio ranges that in the 1930s first brought electronic navigation to the aviation community, rudimentary devices that gave precise guidance on just four courses to and from the station. But in 1964 the transition was nearly complete to a new system of navigation based mostly on VOR (VHF Omni Range) and DME (Distance Measuring Equipment) stations for overland en route navigation and ILS (Instrument Landing System) for precision approaches.
As ATW's first issue was being prepared for its debut in 1964, another baby was born to the commercial aviation industry: The Semi-Automatic Business Research Environment went live on March 4, 1964. It was an unwieldy name, inevitably shortened to Sabre, and it indeed would prove to be a sharp-edged weapon. It also would revolutionize the travel industry.
Airlines in 1964 were very excited about technology. The industry that had been pushing the limits of piston engines and propellers since the 1930s recently had been presented with the greatest gift imaginable-a deus ex machina if there ever was one-the jet airplane.
Unambiguous in the products it provides, Airbus Training offers its customers something those customers don't always want: The most efficient way to fly Airbus aircraft.
With its year-round fine weather, excellent beaches and inexpensive hotels and restaurants, Tunisia is a natural alternative for Europeans eager to enjoy a holiday on the Mediterranean without paying Southern Europe prices. Tunisair capitalizes on that market, particularly in the summer months when it operates its aircraft as much as 16 hr. per day on mostly short- and intermediate-haul flights into Europe.
The 9/11 hijackings that launched America's global war on terrorism have led to more than two years of debate over what can and should be done to ensure the security of the passenger cabin and, by extension, the cockpit. So far, the only government-imposed requirement upon airlines has been a fortified cockpit door, although the US also has permitted, albeit reluctantly, the arming of airline pilots on a voluntary basis.
