All Systems & interiors articles – Page 836
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News
Continental is open to merger offers from major US airlines
Kevin O'Toole/LONDON Continental Airlines chairman Gordon Bethune says that the carrier is still open to merger offers from its major US rivals, but, in the meantime, plans to push ahead with its rapid international expansion outside any global alliances. Bethune confirms that an approach was made to Delta Air Lines ...
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Alitalia plays down privatisation but closes on alliance decision
Kevin O'Toole/LONDON Alitalia chairman Fausto Cereti is downplaying the chances for a quick privatisation of the Italian flag carrier, despite the announcement by its parent state-holding company, IRI, that it will cut its stake. The choice of a European alliance partner is promised within weeks, however. Cereti says ...
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First class goes
Sabena will drop its first-class service from 25 February, 1998, having discovered that most passengers travelling in the section were either upgraded from business class or were travelling free because of other privileges. The airline operates with first-class cabins to Johannesburg, Kinshasa, New York and Tokyo. Source: Flight ...
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Dasa delivers first European ISS component to Russia
Daimler-Benz Aerospace (Dasa) has delivered the first European component of the International Space Station (ISS) to Russian partner RSC Energia. The Bremen-based Space Infrastructure unit of Dasa has handed over the computer and software for the Data Management System - Russia (DMS-R), a control, navigation and data-processing centre for ...
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IATA establishes N Korean trials
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has invited five Asian and US carriers to participate in flight trials through North Korea's Pyongyang Flight Information Region (FIR), following the installation of a new direct-communications landline to South Korea. A Cathay Pacific Airways Boeing 747-400 freighter, en route from Anchorage to ...
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Singapore seeks fighter trainers
Singapore has requested proposals for a fighter-training system which will include simulators for the Lockheed Martin F-16, McDonnell Douglas A-4S and Northrop F-5E. Bids are due in by mid-December. Bidders could include CAE Electronics, Hughes Training, and Lockheed Martin with Thomson Training &Simulation. The Integrated Fighter Training (IFT) contract ...
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Global warning
As the world's environment experts began to assemble in Kyoto, Japan, for the United Nations (UN)summit on global warming, amid the general pronouncements on climate change come some timely reminders that aviation remains firmly among the industries on the target list for environmental activists. Among its other positioning papers ...
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Airbus ponders its A3XX systems role
Ian Sheppard/LONDON Airbus Industrie is considering passing responsibility for the integration of avionics on the proposed A3XX to a specialist, allowing companies outside the consortium to bid for the work. Speaking at the 1997 ERA Avionics Conference in London on 19 November, Michel Comes, director of systems at ...
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Alitalia on path to privatisation as state and IRI cut back stake
Kevin O'Toole/LONDON Italy's giant state-holding company, IRI, has agreed to cut its stake in Alitalia to 60% in what is being billed as the first step towards the flag carrier's privatisation, which could now come in 1998. The deal, agreed at a meeting of the IRI board on ...
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Braathens settles into KLM alliance
Ian Sheppard/OSLO Braathens SAFE has entered into a co-operation agreement with Northwest Airlines, strengthening its alliance with KLM and allowing it to link its Scandinavian routes to the US carrier's Detroit and Minneapolis hubs through Amsterdam's Schiphol and London Gatwick. Anders Fougli, Braathens director of planning, says that ...
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Future avionics architecture is proven
A group of major European avionics manufacturers has designed an avionics architecture for future aircraft which will vastly reduce development and support costs and improve interoperability between aircraft and systems. The Industrial Avionics Working Group (IAWG) has completed a risk-reduction study into software techniques for integrated modular avionics (IMA) ...
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SIA is set to become star in the East
The Star Alliance looks set to gain a seventh member as Singapore Airlines (SIA) officially broke away from its long-standing alliance with Swissair and Delta Air Lines on 25 November in favour of a wide-ranging partnership with Star-founder Lufthansa. Lufthansa chairman Jurgen Weber, speaking after the signing in Singapore ...
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Dasa plans commercial Eureca
Andrzej Jeziorski/MUNICH Daimler-Benz Aerospace (Dasa) is planning to launch a commercially funded industrial-applications mission using the free-flying, retrievable Eureca space platform from the US Space Shuttle in 2000. A European Space Agency-funded flight of the German-built Eureca, equipped with 71 different experiments, was conducted in 1992-3 after deployment ...
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France's Fairlines poised for December start-up
Julian Moxon/PARIS Fairlines, the exclusively first- and business-class French airline, will be launched on 8 December, with services linking Paris/Charles de Gaulle, Milan/ Malpensa and Nice. Initially operating a pair of leased, ex-Sunjet International Boeing MD-81s, but with ambitions to add up to eight more, Fairlines president Francois ...
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Safe and sound
Once in a while, a proposal emerges that has so many clear benefits and so few potential dangers, that the only question is why it is still just a proposal. Within a few weeks, Europe's transport ministers will be faced with just such a compelling idea when they are asked ...
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Air China to go for IPO
Air China is pressing ahead with plans for its own initial public offering despite the postponement of the listing by the CAAC's commercial arm, China National Aviation Corporation. Air China aims to shrug off its state control and partially privatise within two years. 'We'll float by 1999 at the ...
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Alliances: decision time approaches
There can be few more important commercial issues for airlines than the future shape of their alliances. A series of regulatory decisions about major alliances is about to be made. The outcome will determine the shape of the airline business, for the next several years at least. At the ...
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Autumn break is big turning point
The severe turbulence seen in global equity markets this autumn will have a lasting impact on the climate in which publicly-quoted corporations operate. In purely economic terms it almost certainly signals an end to the exceptional growth seen around the world over the last few years. But its financial impact ...
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Hitch for BA and Qantas
Alliance partners planning extended codesharing between Europe and Australia have had their strategies thrown into disarray by the Australian government's route rights authority. In a draft ruling the Canberra-based International Air Services Commission (IASC) shocked Qantas and British Airways by saying it will refuse them permission for a wide-ranging ...
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BA in pursuit of leisure
British Airways' much-hyped plans to launch a low-cost point-to-point carrier may herald a larger push into the European leisure market, including a standalone charter operation. BA has already come under fire for considering its own no-frills carrier to limit the advance in the UK market of low-cost players like ...