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Aviation History
1991
1991 - 2623.PDF
AIR TRANSPORT ANA selects P&W power for 777 All Nippon Airways (ANA) has chosen Pratt & Whitney (P&W) to power its fleet of up to 25 Boeing 777s. dealing yet another blow to the Rolls-Royce (R-R) Trent 870 programme. ANA has followed 777 launch customer United Airlines in se lecting P&Ws PW4073 for the new twinjet, in a deal worth up to ¥95 billion ($713 million). ANA was the second customer for the 777, announcing its order for 15 firm aircraft and ten options in December 1991. The ANA announcement is the second major reversal for R-R within six weeks, following British Airways' decision to go for General Electric's (GE's) GE90 on its fleet of 777s. Al though R-R launched the Trent 870 in September with an order from Thai Airways (Flight Inter national, 11-17 September), that 777 package has not yet been submitted for formal Thai Gov ernment approval. Industry ANA chose the PW4073 in preference to the R-R Trent 870 sources say" that neither GE nor P&W has abandoned hope for the order. R-R had been hoping to cap ture at least one more major carrier before December to jus tify the launch decision, and the ANA announcement caused its share price to drop to 144p (from 150.5p) on the London Stock Exchange. The company's last realistic hope of a major Trent 870 order before the end of 1991 is Cathay Pacific, which will announce its choice be tween stretched Airbus A330- 400s or Boeing 777s by the end of October. Cathay Pacific has chosen R-R to power the ten A330-300s it has ordered, and has indicated that it will take the Trent 870 if it buys 777s. • AEA predicts traffic volume turnaround The Association of European Airlines (AEA) says that by the end of 1991 the loss in passenger traffic volume over last year will have been stemmed, and it is predicting substantial traffic growth for 1992. It emphasises that the 1991 passenger total will be no more than in 1989. Conditions in 1992 should favour a resumption of underly ing traffic growth, which is ex pected to be 6-7% in Europe, it says. Growth could reach as high as 10% if some of the "lost" traffic from January-March 1991 is recovered. The AEA expects 6% growth to be maintained at least for 1993 and 1995. In the interven ing year, inauguration of the tunnel under the English Chan nel is expected to hit UK-Europe Brussels Zaventem will not he as empty in 1993 airline traffic, "...although the overall reduction should be no more than one percentage point". The one bright spot for air lines this year has been a turn away from negative yield, ac cording to AEA statistical infor mation manager David Hender son. Addressing the Avmark In ternational Conference on Eu ropean aviation in London, in late September, he said: "Prelim inary information for the first half year indicates [a recovery] from ruinously low yields of early 1990". Increased fares and the application of yield manage ment have re-established "a trend in line with the last two years' inflation rates", he added. Henderson confirms the view that the traffic downturn seen in August 1990 originated before the Gulf crisis. While'- traffic had been unusually healthy .in late- 1989, he says: "The entire Euro pean industry was seriously concerned about increasing cost pressures and declining yields", by mid-1990. D Dan-Air hopes to be revived by refinancing plan Dan-Air has announced a £50 million rescue plan de signed to restore the ailing UK- based independent carrier to profitability. The plan involves almost doubling the scheduled share of Dan-Air's services and modernising and rationalising the fleet. The refinancing scheme will see 107.5 million new shares in Dan-Air's parent company, Da- vies & Newman, being placed at 50p a share with 19 leading UK business institutions, and the equity base of the company will be almost doubled by the move" Under the plan, Dan-Air in tends that scheduled services will account for 62% of turnover instead of the present 34%. The rationalisation of the fleet in volves reducing the charter ele ment to just 15 aircraft, standardising the jet fleet on the Boeing 737-300/400 and British Aerospace 146, and reducing the average age of the planned 34- aircraft fleet to 5.4 years. • NEWS IN BRIEF COMPASS TO COURT Brian Grey, president of Aus tralian carrier Compass, says there is "an 80% chance" that planned court action will re verse the airport terminal leases which give Ansett arid Australian a near-monopoly on critical terminals in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. Leases on govern ment-owned terminals, granted to Ansett and Austra lian pre-deregulation, gave the two carriers shared con trol of the terminals but re quired them to make limited gates available to new en trants. Compass has since been sub-leasing space from Australian, but the two carri ers have been in almost con tinuous dispute. Success would enable Compass to di versify its fleet and move into other significant markets with smaller aircraft. FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 9 - 15 October, 1991 17
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