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Furlough of FAA inspectors also slows airline’s introduction of new Airbus planes
Delta Air Lines Inc. forecast sluggish revenue growth for early this year in part because of business lost to the federal government shutdown.
The Atlanta-based carrier said Tuesday that it expects first-quarter unit revenue—a key industry metric—to be flat or rise at most by 2% as federal workers travel less during the spending fight between the Trump administration and Congress.
Chief Executive Ed Bastian said the shutdown would cost Delta this month about $25 million in revenue from government travel. The airline also attributed its tempered outlook to a stronger U.S. dollar and to the timing of this year’s Easter holiday in April, which pushes a busy travel period beyond the first quarter.
This is an excerpt from The Wall Street Journal.
Rate of planes coming too close to each other hasn’t changed, but air-traffic controllers’ resources ‘are starting to run thin,’ union official says
U.S. aviation officials have compiled data that statistically support, for the first time, Trump administration statements that the partial government shutdown hasn’t jeopardized air-traffic-control safety.
The data, according to one person briefed on the details, indicate that serious traffic-control deviations—incidents of planes coming dangerously close to each other in the air or on the ground—have remained flat from levels a year ago. Such incidents are typically captured by computers and other automated means.
The statistical summary, covering the duration of the shutdown through the end of last week, also shows a 4% overall drop across a broader range of air-traffic-control deviations, this person said.
This is an excerpt from The Wall Street Journal.
Move aims to help reduce its shipping costs, reliance on carriers such as UPS and FedEx
An Amazon-branded Boeing 767 freighter flies over Lake Washington during the Seattle Seafair Air Show in August 2016.
Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -0.56% on Friday said it would lease another 10 freighter aircraft from Air Transport Services Group Inc., ATSG -1.42% as the online retail giant expands its air cargo operation.
The expanded deal also gives Amazon the ability to buy up to a 39.9% stake in the Wilmington, Ohio, air-cargo transportation company and includes multiyear extensions of the current aircraft leases between the companies.
This is an excerpt from The Wall Street Journal.
Smaller, ultraefficient long-range airliners are overtaking the once celebrated giant of the sky; crammed seats and fewer perks<br>
About a year ago, a Boeing BA 0.41% 747 operated by Delta Air Lines took off from Atlanta for a three-hour flight to Pinal Airpark, a boneyard for unwanted aircraft in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert.<p>
The once celebrated giant of the sky, which had transformed international travel with its size and range, had flown its last flight for a U.S. airline.
Delta has replaced its fleet of jumbo jets with Airbus A350s, one of a new breed of smaller, ultraefficient long-range airliners. Nearly every other airline in the world is doing a version of the same thing, replacing huge jets with smaller ones.
This is an excerpt from The Wall Street Journal.
Boeing Co. BA -is facing unusually public criticism from a major customer, Lion Air, as the two try to minimize fallout from a fatal crash.
Accident investigators are months away from determining the precise cause of the Oct. 29 crash that killed 189 people when the new Boeing 737 MAX 8 plunged into the Java Sea. Lion Air on Monday said it had reached a deal with a Dutch marine company to resume searching for the plane’s cockpit voice recorder.
Initial information pointing to potential maintenance, operation and design issues, however, has escalated a spat that exceeds typically private finger-pointing following a major airliner accident.
“I’m very disappointed with the way Boeing has behaved,” Lion Air co-founder Rusdi Kirana said in a recent interview.
This is an excerpt from The Wall Street Journal.
LONDON—More than 100 flights at one of Europe’s busiest airports were grounded Thursday by drone operations that authorities say were a deliberate attempt to disrupt travel.
Police and military forces were involved in the response, Britain’s aviation minister Liz Sugg said. Sussex police said the drones were of an “industrial specification,” rather than a toy or amateur unmanned aircraft.
The incident, at Gatwick Airport—Britain’s busiest after London’s Heathrow—amplifies concerns about the threat to commercial flights from unmanned aircraft.
The drone flights near the airport began late Wednesday and continued into Thursday, the airport operator said. Some flights, including to the U.S., were grounded and others diverted to land at other airports, stranding, diverting or delaying tens of thousands of passengers in the run-up to the busy holiday travel period.
This is an excerpt from The Wall Street Journal.
This is an excerpt from The Wall Street Journal.
An automated flight-control system on Boeing Co.’s 737 MAX aircraft, which investigators suspect played a central role in the fatal Oct. 29 jetliner crash in Indonesia, was largely omitted from the plane’s operations manual.
Additionally, it was the subject of debate inside Boeing, government and industry officials say.
Pilots of Lion Air Flight 610 battled systems on the Boeing 737 MAX for 11 minutes after the plane took off from Jakarta
They lost that fight and it crashed into the Java Sea, killing all 189 people on board. Boeing is devising a software fix and trying to reinstill confidence in the cockpit systems of the 737 MAX, which U.S. airlines have called safe.
This is an excerpt from The Wall Street Journal.
JAKARTA, Indonesia—Lion Air’s co-founder says the giant low-cost carrier may cancel orders for more than 200 planes as relations between the two companies sour over an air crash that killed 189 people in October.
“I’m seriously considering canceling it,” Rusdi Kirana, co-founder of Indonesia’s Lion Air Group, told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. He cited “disappointment” with a Boeing statement last week that he said appeared to cast blame on Lion Air for the Oct. 29 crash of Flight 610. The new Boeing 737 MAX jet plunged into the Java Sea shortly after takeoff.