Southwest Airlines confirmed today that it has submitted a bid that would allow the airline to assume ATA Airlines' rights to operate at New York's LaGuardia (LGA) Airport through a purchase of ATA Airlines. The bid was submitted in connection with the publicly announced auction process in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Indianapolis and consistent with the Federal Aviation Administration's recent rule clarification regarding LaGuardia's slots.

Southwest is working with ATA Airlines with respect to the terms and conditions of the bid. The bid does not contemplate operating ATA, but it is intended to allow Southwest to acquire the LGA slots.

The $7.5 million bid seeks to obtain the rights to 14 slots at LaGuardia that are currently held by ATA Airlines, which filed for bankruptcy protection on April 2, 2008. Those 14 slots would permit an operation of up to seven daily roundtrip flights at LaGuardia. Southwest would not acquire, as a part of its bid, any aircraft, facilities, or employees of ATA.

FULL ARTICLE - PR Newswire

Reuters - Alaska Air Group is in talks with Canadian manufacturer Bombardier about deferring deliveries of Q400 turboprop aircraft to its Horizon Air unit, the company said in a filing on Tuesday.

The move comes as Alaska Air and other US airlines cut jobs and flights to counter the effects of a slowing economy that has reduced demand for air travel.

"Horizon is in discussions with Bombardier about deferring future Q400 aircraft deliveries and retiming them to coincide with the successful remarketing and transition out of the CRJ-700 aircraft," Alaska Air said in the filing.

Bombardier's turboprop line had enjoyed a resurgence earlier this year as rising fuel prices drove carriers to order more efficient aircraft. But in recent months, fuel costs have dropped along with the outlook for global economic growth.

The company said Bombardier has already proposed a deferral schedule that would include the delivery of one aircraft by the end of this year, five next year, five in 2010, and the last three sometime later.

"We are continuing to negotiate and the schedule is subject to change," Alaska Air said.

The Seattle-based company is also expecting some delays in the delivery of 737-800 Boeing aircraft due to a machinists strike.

A federal judge has ordered the pilots union at United Airlines to end an "unlawful campaign of sick leave abuse, pilot intimidation and other actions" that has caused hundreds of flight cancellations.

The airline's parent, UAL Corp, said on Tuesday the court granted a motion for preliminary injunction against the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) and four individual pilots that UAL has accused of deliberately disrupting operations.

UAL alleges the union actions were payback for the company's decision to cut 950 pilot jobs this year.

FULL ARTICLE - Reuters

Reuters - Operators of international private plane flights to and from the United States will be required to electronically provide full advance manifests of their passengers and crew an hour before departure, the US Department of Homeland Security said on Monday.

The rule is aimed at closing a security gap by making private aircraft comply with similar notification rules required of commercial airlines, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in announcing the rule.

"We're placing considerable emphasis on raising security in the general aviation sector," Chertoff said

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Also on Monday Chertoff signed an agreement with Ireland under which commercial and private passenger flights to the United States from Shannon and Dublin airports can receive full pre-clearance screening before departure, streamlining passenger entry into the United States.

The department said airline passengers who have undergone the pre-clearance screening can have their checked luggage automatically transferred to domestic or international connecting flights.

Private aircraft flying through Ireland will be able to use the pre-clearance procedures to any US airport without having to stop at a pre-designated airport customs clearance.

The prescreening operations are expected to start at Shannon in 2009 and Dublin in 2010, the department said.

American Airlines, United Airlines and Continental Airlines Inc., stung by fuel costs and a drop in traffic, face a new challenge: what to do with planes valued at $2 billion now idled or set to be grounded through 2009.

With virtually no U.S. buyers for the 276 mostly older, less-efficient jets, the carriers are shopping the aircraft in emerging markets such as Russia while prices tumble and frozen debt markets damp sales, analysts and marketers say.

The lack of buyers leaves three of the biggest U.S. airlines saddled with storage expenses and, at American and Continental, lease payments on jets they're no longer flying. Some models may fetch as little as half what they did in 2007, said Douglas Runte, a Piper Jaffray & Co. analyst in New York.

FULL ARTICLE - Bloomberg News

Pilots at JetBlue Airways Corp. have filed a petition to establish an independent union, becoming the first group of employees at the Forest Hills-based discount carrier to organize.

The JetBlue Pilots Association said on its Web site it has filed papers with the National Mediation Board for the right to bargain for 2,000 workers. JetBlue is the largest carrier in the nation without organized labor groups.

FULL ARTICLE - Newsday

Senior managers of the Federal Aviation Administration jeopardized safety at D/FW Air Traffic Control by hiding traffic controllers' mistakes and instead blaming pilots for errors, a federal watchdog office has reported.

What's worse, when ordered to clean up their act after getting busted several years ago, the FAA's senior managers apparently followed few, if any, suggestions, according to a report from the U.S. office of Special Counsel.

Darrell Meachum, southwest region vice president for the National Air Traffic Controllers Union, said controllers feel vindicated by the report.

Pilots, though, are perturbed.

"For airline pilots, it's challenging enough flying in and out of D/FW airport without the additional worry you might get wrongly accused of some sort of operational error," said Scott Shankland of Allied Pilots Association.

The Office of Special Counsel's 24-page report reaffirms what whistleblower Anne Whiteman told WFAA-TV (Channel 8) in July 2007 -- that senior managers at D/FW' Air Traffic Control covered up mistakes and used pilots as the scapegoat.

The underreporting of errors continued, even after the FAA was told to clean up its practices.

FULL ARTICLE - Dallas Morning News

Reuters - Air France cut two-fifths of long-haul flights and half its other services on Friday as pilots began a four day strike in a protest of the age of retirement.

The carrier expected some 80 percent of services at partner airlines Brit Air, CityJet, Regional, CCM and Airlinair to operate, it said in a statement on its web site on Friday, adding that regional unit Brit Air would be hit most.

Air France added that it could not rule out further last-minute flight cancellations.

"Air France is expecting very significant disruptions to its activities and apologizes to all passengers for this situation, which it strongly deplores," the airline said in the statement.

The strike started at midnight local time on Thursday and is due to last until midnight on Monday and will likely cost the airline EUR100 million (USD$124.9 million), Chairman Jean-Cyril Spinetta said on Thursday.

Calling the protest over the retirement age "useless and dangerous", Spinetta said in an open letter to unions the strike could worsen the impact of an industry-wide crisis.

Transport officials have warned of severe disruption at French airports over the weekend due to the strike, called by some unions over plans to increase the retirement age to 65.

Spinetta said the extension would be optional and pilots would still be able to retire at 60 if they wished.

He said European safety authority EASA would in any case soon increase the maximum pilot retirement age to 65 and that France would have to fall in line with this measure.

Reuters - Boeing pushed back the schedule on the latest version of its 747 jumbo by several months, blaming supply-chain problems, limited availability of engineering resources within the company, and the recent machinist strike that stopped work at the plane maker's plants for 58 days.

It said on Friday that the first 747-8 Freighter would now be delivered in the third quarter of 2010, rather than the previous target of late 2009. That chiefly affects Japan's Nippon Cargo Airlines and Luxembourg's Cargolux Airlines, which made the first orders for the plane in 2005.

The passenger version of the plane, called the 747-8 Intercontinental, will now be delivered in the second quarter of 2011, rather than the previous target of late 2010.

That affects Germany's Lufthansa, the only airline that has signed up to buy 747-8 passenger version, ordering 20 in 2006.

The 747-8 is Boeing's biggest-ever plane, seating 467 passengers in a standard three-class layout. It is Boeing's nearest competitor to the 500-plus seat A380, made by EADS (Paris:EAD.PA - News) unit Airbus.

Boeing Co., the world's second- largest commercial planemaker, will delay deliveries of 737 model aircraft because of faulty parts and repair existing jets, hampering a recovery from a two-month machinists strike.

``It's a big deal,'' said Michel Merluzeau, an aviation consultant at G2 Solution in Kirkland, Washington. ``They're going to miss their production numbers by a huge margin this year.''

A Boeing supplier has been using bad nutplates -- inch-long fasteners that attach wiring and other components to the inside of the 737's body -- since August 2007, said Vicki Ray, a spokeswoman in Seattle for Chicago-based Boeing. The parts may be installed on 394 of the planes that Boeing built between August 2007 and October 2008, according to its Web site.

The delays for the 737, the world's most widely flown jet, complicates Boeing's effort to resume shipments after a strike by machinists idled factories for two months through Nov. 2, shaving more than $10 million a day from Boeing's profit. The world's second-largest commercial-plane maker, which was building more than 30 737s a month before the walkout, hasn't yet given customers a new timetable for their planes on order.

FULL ARTICLE - Bloomberg News