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Aviation History
1998
1998 - 2804.PDF
Am TRANSPORT NEWS IN BRIEF • SABENA TURBINE FAILURE A Sabena Boeing 737-200 with 104 people on board suf fered an uncontained star board engine failure just after take off from Brussels Zaventem for Lisbon, Por tugal, on 26 September. Upwind from runway 25R, engine parts from the Pratt & Whitney JT8D-15 rained on the village of Diegem, damaging cars and houses. The crew shut down the engine and headed for the North Sea to dump fuel, then returned to Brussels and made a safe landing at Zaventem Airport. • FAA APPOINTMENT The US Federal Aviation Administration's Thomas McSweeny has been given the job of associate adminis trator for regulation and cer tification. He replaces Guy Gardner, the former astro naut, who quit the US avia tion agency to pursue a career as a motivational speaker. Since 1993, Mc Sweeny served as director of the FAA's Aircraft Certif ication Service, where he was responsible for airworthiness of US commercial aircraft. German operator goes solo ANDRZEJ JEZIORSKI/MUNICH GERMAN TOUR operator Frosch Touristik Internat ional (FTI) is to found its own air line. Operations are due to get under way early next year with a fleet of three Airbus A320s. The name of the airline and its home base remain to be announced. According to FTI chairman Dietmar Gunz, the new airline will not affect the existing co-operation with Britannia Germany. "We will continue to stick to our contracts and serve long-haul destinations in the Caribbean and USA with our partner," he says. Munich-based FTI says that Britannia Germany, an offshoot of UK charter operator Britannia Airways, has also been serving the Mediterranean holiday destina tions of Majorca and Malta for the tour operator with Boeing 767s, but, from the fourth quarter of this year, the partnership will be restricted to long-haul operations. The tour operator says it expects to receive assistance from UK shareholder Airtours, which owns 29.03 % of FTI, and has the option of buying all the FTI Group's shares up to 2002. Airtours is the second biggest travel group in Europe and already owns three airlines - Airtours International in the UK, Air Belgium and Scandinavia's Premiair. The recent acquisition of FTI shares by Airtours is expected to spell the end of Britannia's link with the tour operator once existing contracts expire in 2001. Britannia is owned by Airtours rival Thomson Travel. Britannia flies all its routes from Germany for FTI Group mem bers. According to the carrier, it intends to develop co-operation with other German tour operators in the future, but has not estab lished any other partnerships to date. With Thomson Travel seek ing to build up its business in Europe, the airline could be wait ing for its parent to provide cus tomers after 2 001. FTI has hired Herbert Kracker, previously head of operations at Britannia Germany, as its new air line's head of operations. Britannia Germany operates two 767-300ERs and will shortly take delivery of a third. The airline will add Orlando in Florida, Banjul in Gambia and Cancun in Mexico to its destinations this year. • Swissair parent SAirGroup says that it is about a month away from closing a long-awaited deal to buy up to 49.9% of German charter operator LTU. The company says that the due diligence process has been completed and that the two items remaining to be resolved are the final sale price and which party will hold the remaining shares. LTU is now mostly owned by the Colne family, which founded the company. A further 34.3% is held by the Westdeutsche Landes- bank, which is understood to be planning to retain a 10% stake. The SAirGroup says that it is interested only in the airline side of LTU's business, and that it needs an appropriate partner to run tour operator LTU Touristik. Sources close to the talks say that Deutsche Bahn, the German railway net work, is interested, as is the Swiss tour operator Hotelplan. Thom son has also been involved in the negotiations, but sources say that the UK company appears to have backed away recently. European Union regulations prevent SAirGroup from buying an outright majority in the Ger man company. The Swiss group says, however, that it is aiming for the biggest stake it can buy. SAirGroup says that the acquisi tion would help it establish a foothold in Europe. "In our multi- hub strategy it would be very inter esting to have Diisseldorf, which is only 35min flying time from Zurich," the group adds. • DHL standardises on A30064 freighters for European services HERMAN DE WULF/BRUSSELS DHL INTERNATIONAL is standardising on the Airbus A300B4 freighter for its European operations and says it will need more than the 14 aircraft it has already agreed to acquire. The European arm of DHL has its main hub in Brussels handling some 2 50t offreightanight. DHL had been relying on a mix ture of turboprop freighters such as the Lockheed L-188 Electra, and the Boeing 72 7 tri-jet, but me com pany decided last year to begin switching to a widebody. The express cargo carrier has five A300B4Fs operational, with two more to be delivered before the end of the year and another five in DHL wants more A300Fsfor its night operations into Brussels 1999. All the cargo conversions are being carried out by Daimler-Benz Aerospace Airbus. DHL says high growth, coupled with environmental pressure to keep the number of aircraft move ments down, means there is a demand for bigger aircraft. "The A300B4-200F carries 42t [of cargo], while our 727s carry only 2 Ot. We do not want to increase the number of aircraft movements at Brussels Airport," says the compa ny, which aims to keep the number of aircraft movements at the pre sent level of 56 a night. While the European fleet, man aged by DHL's Brussels-based subsidiary European Air Transport, has introduced the A300B4F, plans for a similar move by the company to introduce the A3 00B4F in North America have been delayed. US domestic arm DHL Airways has an agreement with Airbus to take seven ex-Thai Airways Inter national A300B4s to operate from its hub in Cincinnati, Ohio. Although original plans called for the aircraft to enter service this year, a delay in the return of the aircraft to Airbus has put back their intro duction until at least mid-1999. • 16 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 7 - 13 October 1998
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