American Airlines adding more flights in markets

American Airlines is adding more flights in existing markets and rolling out new international and domestic service to give customers more scheduling options. The airline said Tuesday that it will now have daily nonstop service between Los Angeles and Shanghai. It will have another daily nonstop route between New York and Budapest, Hungary. Flights between Chicago and Helsinki, Finland will start on May 1.

American affiliate American Eagle will provide new nonstop service to Albuquerque, N.M.; Boise, Idaho; El Paso, Texas; Houston Bush Intercontinental; Oklahoma City; Phoenix; Salt Lake City; Sacramento, Calif. and Tucson, Ariz. All of the flights will depart from Los Angeles. American will increase its daily service from Miami to Madrid from one flight it two flights. It will also raise the number of flights between New York JFK and Barcelona to 11 weekly flights from seven. In addition, American will restart daily seasonal service between Boston and Paris; Chicago and Dublin, Ireland and New York and Manchester, England.

Southwest airlines: US to order emergency checks of older 737s

The US government will order emergency checks of dozens of Boeing 737s after Southwest airlines was forced to ground planes over safety concerns. Southwest cancelled hundreds of flights after a five-foot tear opened in the fuselage of a plane 20 minutes after taking off from Phoenix on Friday. The Federal Aviation Administration has now ordered fuselage inspections of older 737-300, -400, and -500 models, involving what could be time-consuming and repetitive electromagnetic checks. "This action is designed to detect cracking in a specific part of the aircraft that cannot be spotted with visual inspection," FAA administrator Randy Babbitt said. Boeing will offer its own advice to airlines outlining specific inspection steps. The FAA said most of the 80 jets needing checks in America are planes flown by Southwest, and have accumulated high numbers of take-offs and landings. Foreign regulators are expected to adopt the FAA order for airlines they regulate, covering another 95 planes worldwide. Southwest is already carrying out its own round of voluntary emergency inspections following Friday's emergency in Arizona.


Flight 812 was heading from Phoenix to Sacramento when the tear opened in the fuselage. Southwest has struggled with fatigue cracking on its older aircraft, which safety experts and other industry insiders attribute to the aggressive way it uses those planes. Friday's incident was the second time in two years that a Southwest plane experienced a fuselage rupture soon after takeoff at more than 30,000 feet. Both planes landed safely. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the latest incident andis likely to take a fresh look at Southwest's maintenance practices and FAA oversight of the carrier. "They are going to be pushed very hard on this," said one safety expert familiar with the thinking of transportation investigators. Southwest cancelled 600 flights over the weekend and another 70 yesterday as it worked to inspect planes and get them back into service. Southwest hoped to complete the checks on Tuesday.

Hawaiian Airlines reaffirms commitment to Japan

Hawaiian Airlines today reaffirmed its commitment to Japan and its broader plan of expansion in Asia. President and Chief Executive Officer Mark Dunkerley said, “The earthquake and the tsunami which hit Japan on March 11 devastated the littoral communities in North Eastern Japan. All of us at Hawaiian send our deepest sympathy to those who have lost loved ones and who themselves face an uncertain future as the process of rebuilding gets underway. As a company, and as citizens of an ocean side community with close ties to Japan, we have a special connection to those in need in Japan and we are engaged in a broad array of efforts aimed at supporting them as they rebuild their lives. We wish we could do more.

“While other airlines have announced service reductions to Japan, we have no plans to reduce our daily service to Tokyo, and we remain committed to launching new service to Osaka beginning July 12. It is clear from our current results that we are seeing a significantly less severe downturn in traffic than is being reported by other companies in the airline and tourism sectors. At the same time, discussions with our travel partners in Japan indicate that while a downturn is currently upon us, they expect a recovery in bookings after a short interval.”

Ethiopian Airlines receives $40m loan from African Development Bank

The African Development Bank Board of Directors approved a second lien corporate loan of $40 million to Ethiopian Airlines in Tunis on March 23, 2011. The approved loan is an additional fund for partial financing of the purchased five Boeing 777-200LR aircraft, besides what has been availed by Citibank N.A., African Finance Corporation (AFC) and Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank (PTA). “Ethiopian would like to thank the management and Board of the African Development Bank for their support. The support vividly reflects AfDB’s firm commitment to advance the growth of aviation in Africa”, said Ato Tewolde G. Mariam CEO of Ethiopian Airlines.

The African Development bank supports the continent’s economic and social development by promoting investments as well as providing its regional member countries with technical and financial assistance. Ethiopian Airlines has ordered the most modern aircraft direct from the manufacturers to meet the growing demand for increased capacity and additional destinations, ensure the comfort of its customers as well as build an environmentally friendly fleet. The orders include ten 787-Dreamliners and ten 737-800s from the Boeing Company as well as twelve A-350-900s from Airbus. Ethiopian recently has received three of its Boeing 777-200LRs and will receive two more in April and July of this year.

Lufthansa's A380 takes off on maiden flight

Lufthansa currently flies Boeing 747-400 aircraft on the route. With the new service, Miami joins the following North American airports that have existing or looming A380 service: Los Angeles, Montreal, New York JFK, San Francisco, Toronto and Washington Dulles. For Lufthansa, Miami will be its third A380 destination in the U.S., joining New York JFK and San Francisco.

"We are extremely excited to introduce our new, flagship A380 aircraft as the very first in the Miami market," Jens Bischof, Lufthansa Vice President, The Americas, says in a release. "I applaud Miami International Airport's management team for their determination to become A380-ready." And, as you might expect, the news was enthusiastically received by officials at Miami International. "Lufthansa's announcement of the A380 coming to MIA is a pinnacle moment we have eagerly anticipated for many years," Miami-Dade Aviation Director José Abreu says in the Lufthansa release. "We are honored to be one of the first U.S. airports Lufthansa has chosen for A380 service and we greatly look forward to welcoming the historic first flight from Frankfurt in June."

American Airlines suspends 2 of 6 daily flights to Japan

American Airlines is suspending two of its six daily flights to Japan next week due to a slump in traffic since the big earthquake and tsunami.American said Wednesday it will suspend the flights on April 6 and resume them on April 26. One goes from New York to Tokyo's Haneda Airport, and the other flies between Dallas and Tokyo's Narita Airport. The move by AMR Corp.'s American Airlines follows Delta Air Lines Inc.'s decision last week to suspend service to Haneda, although Delta continues flying to Narita.
American said it will continue operating the other four daily flights to Tokyo Narita from New York's Kennedy Airport, Dallas, Chicago and Los Angeles. Demand for travel to Japan has been hurt by power shortages and fear about radiation leaking from a damaged nuclear power plant. Japan Airlines said this week that its international traffic had fallen 25 per cent since the March 11 earthquake, and it cut flights to Honolulu and Hong Kong.
American declined to say how much its traffic on U.S.-Japan routes has fallen."I can say demand out of Japan is higher than demand into Japan," said American spokesman Ed Martelle. American said it will go ahead with Friday's scheduled launch of a trans-Pacific joint venture with Japan Airlines, or JAL. American's vice-president for Asia, Theo Panagiotoulias, called it "a difficult decision" but one that would support customers and Japan. AMR, the only big U.S. airline company to lose money last year, has pinned much of its hopes for renewed profit on the American-JAL business deal, which it expects will boost lucrative international ticket sales.

Delta, SkyTeam partners take aim at Florida

Delta and its SkyTeam partners are beefing up their presence in Florida, combining to add three new trans-Atlantic routes as well as three routes within the state. Delta on Saturday began nonstop service between Miami and London Heathrow with one daily round-trip flight on Boeing 767-400 jets. The London route follows another added from Miami by Delta partner KLM, which on Sunday began flying four nonstop flights a week to its hub in Amsterdam. KLM is using MD-11 jets on that route.

On June 7, Air France -- another of Delta's key partners -- will begin nonstop service between Orlando and Paris Charles de Gaulle. Air France will operate three flights a week on that route using Boeing 777-300ER aircraft. Delta says in a press release that "the airlines will operate the new Florida flights under their trans-Atlantic joint venture, an agreement, which also includes Alitalia, that allows the partners to coordinate flights and share costs and revenues of the service. For customers, it means more choices for booking, destinations and schedules, additional opportunities to earn and redeem miles and consistent service regardless of which airline operates the flight."