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Aviation History
2002
2002 - 1390.PDF
• BMI British Midland has started daily services between Leeds Bradford and Cork in Ireland. • Singapore Airlines will suspend services to Kath- mandu in Nepal this month due to poor demand. • Alaska Airlines has begun daily ser vices between Orange County, California, and Vancouver, using a Boeing 737-700. • Austrian Airlines has resumed three times weekly flights between Vienna and Montreal and Toron to. • JAT Yugoslav Airlines will begin Belgrade-Beirut-Dubai flights this month. Initially, three weekly flights will operate, increasing to four a week from mid-June. • American Trans Air is to charter four Boeing 737- 800s to Milwaukee-based Funjet Vacations, a subsidiary of Mark Travel, under an 18- month agreement running to December 2003. The aircraft will operate in support of the US cruise ship market. • Luxair started a weekly service bet ween Luxembourg and the Bulgarian resort city Varna on the Black Sea on 5 May, using a 50-seat Embraer ERJ-145. • Tarom has added a Luxem bourg stop to its twice-weekly services between Bucharest and New York Kennedy. • Ukraine International Airlines has launched direct weekly services between Kiev and Zurich. • On 15 June, American Airlines will begin weekend Boeing 757 services from New York Kennedy to Grand Cayman and Boeing 737 services from Boston twice weekly to Port-au- Prince, Haiti, and on Saturdays to Providenciales, Turks & Caicos Islands. • Korean Air has increased its Chinese desti nations from eight to 12, with the introduction of services from Incheon to Jinan and Xiamen, and from Daegu to Yantai and Gwangju to Shanghai. • BWIA West Indies Airways has start ed a three-times weekly service between its Port of Spain hub and Paramaribo in Surinam. • Xiamen Airlines has started twice-weekly services from Fuzhou to Kuala Lumpur. • GB Airways will add a ninth Span ish destination on 3 November, launching a twice-weekly flight from London Gatwick to Almeria. AIR TRANSPORT STRATEGY TOM GILL / LONDON BAE is to refocus civil arm following RJX termination Regional Aircraft division bids to reposition itself in effort to move back into profitability BAE Systems' loss-making Regional Aircraft division is to reinvent itself as a customer service provider for all categories of airliner after the 2001 cancellation of the Avro RJX regional aircraft programme, its only civil manufacturing activity. Under a new managing director, Alan Fraser, it will invest £20 mil lion ($29 million) in IT, building spares stocks over the next two years and restructuring costs associ ated with concentrating activity at three main sites by mid-2003. Prestwick, Scotland, will be the hub of engineering and support by year-end, while asset management will centre on Hatfield, and spares at Weybridge. It will also maintain a support and asset management centre in Washington DC, a spares operation in Sydney, Australia, and customer training and engineering in the former manufacturing plant at Woodford, near Manchester, UK. The Regional Aircraft sales opera tion in Toulouse, which was origi nally created through the abortive AI(R) joint venture with ATR, is to close. This will affect up to 200 employees, although some will relocate. The division's payroll should stand at 1,150 by mid-2003. The Regional Aircraft division's yearly sales figure, excluding "residual" manufacturing, is £170 million. The aim is to maintain this while lowering costs, says Fraser. BAE is the world's largest regional aircraft lessor by fleet size, with a portfolio of 447 BAe 146s, ATI's and Jetstream 31/32s and 41s. It plans to add other types such as Airbus A320 family models - and possibly more BAe 146s and ATP freighters. BAE won $60 million of new leas ing business last year, when leasing income totalled $260 million. Customer support is also diversi fying, and accounts for around 70% of the business, with current deals to be spares provider for Embraer and Raytheon illustrating the type of business BAE wants to increase. Fraser says the engineer ing division, which accounts for 11% of sales, is considering con verting BAe 146s into freighters, and pushing its ATP cargo conver sion. "Third party" engineering work with Airbus and Boeing will also be "stepped up". The firm is hopeful about cur rent trading, saying its customers' spending on spares and support has returned to pre-11 September levels. But, while leasing activity is "returning", oversupply has led to "short-term rental discounts". BAE will concentrate on service provision now it no longer builds airliners SECURITY DAVID LEARMOUNT / LONDON I ATA defines global biometric system A system to ensure biometric per sonal identification security is inte grated and interoperable at airports worldwide has been initiated by the International Air Transport Association working with a SITA- led industry group. Known as S-Travel (secure travel), the system will authenticate identity, track passengers from check-in to board ing, and serve as the basic security check for airside employees. Trials will begin "later this year", says telecommunications provider SITA. Meanwhile, IATA will define the enrolment procedures to en able airlines to register frequent fliers and their own employees. SITA will work with IATA to develop industry standards to "ensure provision of an interopera ble global solution". After identity checks, those regis tered would be issued with a smart card containing biometric data and digital certificates. SITA says this "will be able to interface and be interoperable with current and future airport infrastructures". IATA and SITA will jointly provide the individual digital certificates, GEMPLUS the smart cards, and Keyware the biometric technology integration. • Amsterdam Schiphol airport is to link up with IBM to offer a bio metric identity check system to other airports. In use at Schiphol since October, the Automatic Border Passage system consists of iris-scanning reconciled against individual identity smart cards. 12 7-13 MAY 2002 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL www.fliqhtinternational.com
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