Southwest Airlines, the nation’s biggest low-cost carrier, said in a surprise announcement on Monday that it had agreed to buy its smaller rival AirTran Airways for $1.4 billion. The planned merger would be the third in the last two years in the battered airline industry, after Delta Air Lines bought Northwest in 2008, and the tie-up between United Airlines and Continental, due to be completed on Friday.
With all of the negative press at times about Airlines and pilot’s training it is great to see a Crew respond to their training and save the day. The Flight Crew who safely guided their stricken airliner to a safe landing at New York’s JFK Airport were Captain Jack Conroyd and ATP Graduate and ATP Regional Jet Program Instructor First Officer Larkin Newby.
American Eagle has informed ATP that it will continue to hire
pilots at a robust rate for the remainder of 2010. In addition, Eagle has
reported to ATP that they will hire even more, up to 300 new pilots, throughout
the year in 2011.
American
Airlines parent AMR Corp. says a key third-quarter revenue figure will rise
between 9.8 percent and 10.8 percent compared with a year ago.
Regional
airline operator SkyWest Inc. said Thursday that August traffic increased 4.6
percent compared with a year ago but there were a few more empty seats due to
an ambitious expansion plan.
Airlines seem to be starting to order aircraft in
respectable numbers again after a period in which cancellations or
postponements dominated. Airlines are ordering new airliners in increasing
numbers in what has become a steady stream of new contracts.
U.S. airlines carried 65 million passengers in June, the government said Thursday, 2.3 percent higher than the same month a year ago but still down from pre-recession levels.
In a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) that reflects the universal nature of
pilot fatigue, the FAA on Friday announced a plan to fight crew fatigue at Part 121 carriers by setting new flight time, duty and rest requirements. The proposed rules would
be the same for all types of Part 121 flights (passenger and cargo airlines):
domestic, flag (international) or supplemental (unscheduled).
Boeing says the airline industry
will need to hire more than one million workers over the next 20 years to
prepare for a wave of 30,000 new aircraft according to CNN.
AirTran
Airways has signed a new financing arrangement with Norddeutsche Landesbank
Girozentrale (NORD/LB), one of the largest state-owned banks in Germany, to
provide permanent financing to the airline for Boeing 737-700 deliveries in
2011.