Archive for May, 2010
The global company managing animal and pet flight & relocation affairs launches a remarkable new service for pet owners flying pets across the globe – professional pet escort
MOSCOW Dr. Eytan Kreiner, founder and CEO for Animal Airways: “Animal Airways’ main goal is to provide pet owners around the world with reliable, high quality, creative, profitable and most importantly – pet friendly – solutions for pet aviation transportation and relocation internationally.”
Animal Airways offers a wide pet-travel-package that includes: veterinarian treatment and pre flight consult, handling forms and regulations for every country worldwide, ticket booking for pet owners and pets, flight kenneling (fitting international standard) supply, cargo coordination, vehicle transportation for pets to and from terminals Etc.
Four million pets are transported by air every year when 200,000 pets are shipped worldwide as cargo shipping. The Cargo solution is a solution pet owners try to avoid but sometimes, especially in relocation cases or when countries or airline companies require – there is no other choice but to ship pets as cargo, an option that is hard both on the pet and its owner.
Pet owners across the world find themselves dealing with a big amount of anxiety when sending their pets alone on international flights as cargo shipping. Dispatching pets alone through a cargo flight is not a pet friendly solution for those flights are longer, ground hours are longer (loading and unloading cargo planes last hours!). Also, cargo flights are much more difficult to coordinate and they are far more expensive than regular flights. Therefore, Animal Airways established the new revolutionizing service – The pet escort service – that guarantees a comfortable, safe, cost-worthy and most important – pet friendly, flight solution, so that pets will not be shipped unsupervised.
The professional pet escort team includes animal-loving, medically trained and experienced in the field of international aviation members accompanying the pet through the whole flight, starting with the check-out process, accompanying him to the plane, arriving with him to final destination and personally handing him to the owner or representative at the final destination. When the pet fits a small flight kennel, the flight escort will sit with them in the main passenger cabin taking care of all its needs. In case the flight kennel is too big for the main cabin, the pet escort will personally place the pet in the luggage compartment, making sure the conditions for pet travel takes place (temperature, ventilation Etc.).
The pet escort service is one of many products and services invented and developed by professional veterinarians, pet-flight managers and project coordinators at Animal Airways, a team of professionals with a vision – turning this world into a pet-friendly world – one where pets and families travel together as one unit.
Animal Airways is advancing its international activity with a new branch recently opened in Moscow and plans to open 3 more branches within a year in the following destinations: Kazakhstan,Ukraine and Saint Petersburg. We are seeking for new affiliates within the fields of relocation-companies, ground-handling, vehicle shuttle companies, travel-agencies, commercial airlines, HR companies and Veterinarian-related businesses in east Europe, and is opened to new global opportunities following recent expansion.
For more information Contact:
Sofia Vinokurova. Moscow (Russia) + 7(495)-766-4390 + 7(985)-766-4390
: UK 44-203-051-40-87 USA 1866-PET-2-FLY
WWW.ANIMALAIRWAYS.COM
LAN Airlines S.A. and its subsidiaries, one of the leading airlines in Latin America, reported its preliminary monthly traffic statistics and punctuality indicators for April 2010.
System passenger traffic for April increased 0.1 percent as capacity rose 7.1 percent. As a result, the Company’s load factor decreased 5.0 points to 71.6 percent. International passenger traffic accounted for approximately 69 percent of total passenger traffic.
Domestic passenger traffic in Chile, Argentina, Peru and Ecuador rose 6.6 percent as capacity increased 5.3 percent. As a consequence, the domestic load factor for the month increased 1.0 point to 74.6 percent. International passenger traffic for April declined 2.7 percent while capacity increased 7.9 percent.
Accordingly, the international passenger load factor for the month decreased 7.7 points to 70.3 percent. During April, demand continued to show the impact of the earthquake that affected Chile during February causing lower demand especially on regional routes and North American routes.
During April, cargo traffic increased 39.6 percent. This increase was mainly due to the recovery in imports to Latin America driven by Brazil; a seed season considerably better than the previous year, and the increase in operations to Europe with the B777-200 freighter fleet. In-line with the higher demand, capacity grew 24.3 percent.
As a result, the cargo load factor rose 8.0 points to 73.6 percent. During April, 90.6 percent of the Company’s total flights left on time based on a fifteen-minute standard (all departures leaving within fifteen minutes of the scheduled departure time are considered as “on-time”). This represented a decrease of 0.3 points compared to April 2009.
FORT WORTH, Texas — /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — The congressional mandate to screen 100 percent of air cargo transported on all passenger planes will go into effect on Aug. 1. American Airlines Cargo is working to raise industry awareness about the law by bringing together an expert panel to discuss cargo screening and what it means to the private sector.
“With the 100 percent screening mandate only months away, we hope to help shippers and freight forwarders in our industry better understand the law’s potential impact and what steps they can take to prepare for the challenges they will face,” said Dave Brooks, American Airlines Cargo President.
The panel will be broadcast live on UStream, Wednesday, May 26, at 2 p.m. EDT. By visiting UStream’s Air Cargo Screening show page, viewers will be able to watch and ask questions in real time.
Expert panelists will include:
Dave Brooks, President, American Airlines Cargo Division
Doug Brittin, General Manager, Air Cargo, Transportation Security Administration
Brandon Freid, Executive Director, Airforwarders Association
Ken Konigsmark, Senior Manager, Supply Chain & Aviation Security Compliance, Boeing
Jeffrey Sural, Counsel, Alston and Bird’s Legislative & Public Policy Group, will serve as moderator.
Panelists will also discuss the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) program to distribute cargo screening throughout the supply chain – the Certified Cargo Screening Program (CCSP). CCSP allows manufacturers, shippers, air forwarders and air carriers to receive certification to screen cargo at their own facilities. For more information visit www.tsa.gov.
A recorded version of the panel broadcast will be available to watch on the UStream Air Cargo Screening show page.
About American Airlines Cargo
American Airlines Cargo(SM), a division of American Airlines, Inc., provides over 100 million pounds of weekly cargo lift capacity to major cities in the United States, Europe, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Latin America and Asia. American, American Eagle and the AmericanConnection regional airlines serve more than 250 cities in over 40 countries with more than 3,400 daily flights. The combined network fleet numbers more than 900 aircraft. American provides one of the largest cargo networks in the world, with cargo terminals and interline connections available across the globe. For more information visit www.AACargo.com.
SOURCE American Airlines Cargo
WASHINGTON – The Air Line Pilots Association, Int’l (ALPA) participated in the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Public Safety Forum on Professionalism in Aviation this week to underscore the exemplary professionalism of airline pilots, who safely flew more than 10 million flights in the United States and Canada in 2009.
“ALPA pilots have demonstrated a commitment to professional excellence since the Association was founded in 1931,” said Capt. John Prater, ALPA’s president. “We commend the NTSB for challenging our industry to do even more, because professionalism is a shared responsibility among the regulators, the airlines, and airline workers. If a link is lost anywhere in this chain, our industry fails its passengers and all who depend on a safe transportation system.”
Three ALPA pilots were asked by the NTSB to make formal presentations to assist in identifying the attributes of professional pilots as well as innovative ways to promote the highest possible professionalism standards within the industry. Representing ALPA were Capt. John Sluys (ALA), executive vice-president and chair of ALPA’s Professional Development Group, Capt. Tim Flaherty (DAL), chair of the ALPA Air Traffic Services Group, and Capt. John Rosenberg (DAL), chair of ALPA’s Professional Standards Committee.
Numerous government and industry presenters cited ALPA’s long-standing dedication to professionalism as expressed in ALPA’s Code of Ethics, which was adopted by the Association’s Executive Board in 1956 and still serves as the “gold standard” of professionalism across the industry today. Although professionalism issues are extremely rare, ALPA maintains a robust professional standards program that proactively employs time-tested techniques including peer-to-peer counseling to swiftly address any personal or performance-related issue that holds the potential to compromise flight safety.
During the forum, ALPA presenters challenged the airlines to promote greater opportunities for strengthening pilot professionalism including:
Adopting and supporting an airline code of ethics to create a professional corporate culture that recognizes and values the contributions of pilots to the company’s success;
Adopting a professional standards program at all Part 121 airlines;
Recognizing and addressing the negative impact on pilot professionalism when the company or the regulator acts in an unprofessional manner or attempts to undermine captain’s authority;
Using sophisticated pilot selection tools and methods during the pilot hiring process;
Overhauling education, training, and certification requirements for future airline pilots;
Including the subjects of professionalism and ethics in airline training;
Promoting pilot mentoring programs; and
Encouraging the continued evolution of effective crew resource management training while respecting captain’s authority.
ALPA also urged the FAA to help pilot and controllers go “back to basics” with respect to pilot-controller communications. A better understanding of each other’s roles and responsibilities is needed and could be facilitated in part by the restoration of familiarization flights for air traffic controllers.
“While ALPA pilots operate thousands of flights safely every day, the union takes extremely seriously its shared responsibility to ensure that our industry does not rest in pursuing even higher standards of professionalism,” continued Prater. “The NTSB forum this week has served to remind everyone that a true industry-wide partnership is needed and that all the stakeholders within government and industry must commit and engage.”
As a result of this forum, ALPA expects that the NTSB will summarize and identify potential actions that would lead to improvement. ALPA looks forward to working with the industry to implement the enhancements that will make our already safe industry even safer.
Founded in 1931, ALPA is the world’s largest pilots union, representing nearly 53,000 pilots at 38 airlines in the United States and Canada. Visit the ALPA website at www.alpa.org.
CONTACT: Linda Shotwell, 703/481-4440 or media@alpa.org
Source ALPA
US Airways Group, Inc. announced April and year-to-date 2010 traffic results. Mainline revenue passenger miles (RPMs) for the month were 4.7 billion, down 5.0 percent versus April 2009. Mainline capacity was 5.7 billion available seat miles (ASMs), down 2.5 percent versus April 2009. Passenger load factor for the month of April was 82.7 percent, down 2.1 points versus April 2009.
For the month of April, US Airways’ preliminary on-time performance as reported to the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) was 88.6 percent with a completion factor of 99.6 percent.
May 19, 2010
WASHINGTON — There are signs that future airline pilots will be less experienced, less ethical and in short supply, a panel of experts told an aviation safety forum on Tuesday.
While there are more pilots than there are airline jobs today, the reverse is likely to be true as airlines recover from the economic recession and begin hiring again, experts on pilot hiring and screening told the National Transportation Safety Board. The coming shortage may likely fall heaviest on regional airlines, who generally employ less-experienced pilots at lower salaries, they said.
There are about 54,000 pilots working for major airlines, nearly 19,000 regional airline pilots and about 2,500 qualified pilots available for hire in the U.S. today, said aviation consultant Judy Tarver, a former pilot recruiter for American Airlines. She estimated that airlines will need to hire about 42,090 pilots over the next decade, due to retirements and anticipated industry growth.
Panel members said there are far fewer military pilots leaving for jobs with airlines. Fewer college students say they want careers in aviation because they see it as an economic dead end, and airlines are increasingly having to compete with corporations for pilots.
The comments came as the safety board began a three-day forum on how to get more pilots and air traffic controllers to consistently strive for a high-level of professionalism. The impetus for the forum is a series of high-profile incidents over the past year in which the conduct and judgment of pilots and controllers have been called into question, including the crash of a regional airliner near Buffalo, N.Y., that killed 50 people.
The safety board said the crash occurred after the plane stalled because the pilot pulled back, instead of pushing forward, on a key piece of safety equipment. But they also cited a series of errors and unprofessional conduct by the pilot and first officer leading up to the accident.
Paul Rice, a pilot and spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association, said he was skeptical that a willingness to break rules and flout authority among younger pilots is any different than past generations of young pilots.
However, he said he shared the panel’s concern that there will be a shortage of experienced pilots at regional airlines, which account for half of all domestic flights and are the only scheduled air service to about 400 communities.
Roger Cohen, president of the Regional Airline Association, said any pilot shortage won’t affect safety because pilots are trained, certified and tested.
Airline travel today is safer than ever before, but the Buffalo crash and other incidents are warning signs that safety may be eroding because of an attitude of “casual compliance” by a minority of pilots, said Tony Kern, a former Air Force lieutenant colonel and author of five books on pilot performance.
Source: AP
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — A man was arrested this week trying to board a flight out of Puerto Rico while carrying weapons that included a stun gun, a switchblade knife and four box cutters, U.S. authorities said Wednesday.
Jose Pol, 59, a resident of Rhode Island, was passing through a security checkpoint at the U.S. Caribbean territory’s main international airport Monday when Transportation Security Administration agents discovered the weapons in his carry-on luggage, the FBI said.
U.S. authorities said they had not found any evidence linking the case to terrorism.
In Rhode Island, the man’s son, also named Jose Pol, said the suspect’s girlfriend believes he was bringing the knives to help her cut boxes at her job in the produce section of a Wal-Mart. He described his father as a packrat who hoards belongings and said he may have been collecting the other weapons as toys.
“It don’t surprise me,” the 23-year-old Pol said in an interview at his home in Pawtucket. “It was dumb of him doing that.”
The suspect remained in custody as investigators tried to determine his motive. U.S. prosecutors have charged him with attempting to board an aircraft with concealed dangerous weapons, a charge that carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
“We continue to investigate his motivation and if he has any affiliation with any terrorist or other organization,” said Harry Rodriguez, an FBI spokesman in San Juan.
Pol was scheduled to take a JetBlue flight to Boston when he was arrested by FBI agents.
According to an FBI affidavit, a TSA agent noticed irregularities when Pol’s luggage went through an X-ray scanner and sent him for a secondary search. Officers then discovered the knives as well as two lighters, six batteries, a button device with a wire that gives off an electric charge when pressed, a flight simulator program and New York City information cards.
Pol was waiting to be assigned a public defender. Detention and bail hearings were scheduled for Friday.
The U.S. attorney’s office in San Juan said Pol was originally from Mayaguez in western Puerto Rico but now lives in Rhode Island.
The younger Jose Pol said his father is a U.S. Army veteran who served in Vietnam and currently works part-time.
He said FBI agents spent several hours looking through his father’s belongings at his home in Pawtucket and left without taking anything.
“They don’t think he’s a terrorist. They’re just suspicious of why he had so many things on him,” said Pol, who added that his father had been visiting his parents in Puerto Rico.
Associated Press Writer Michelle R. Smith in Pawtucket contributed to this report.
Source:The Associated Press.
WASHINGTON — /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Air Transport Association of America (ATA), the trade organization for the leading U.S. airlines, yesterday filed a legal challenge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, responding to the National Mediation Board (NMB) issuance of a voting rule change for union representation. ATA issued the following statement:
“Today, ATA filed a lawsuit(1) seeking speedy review of the National Mediation Board final rule, which dramatically changes the procedures by which airline and rail industry union representation elections are conducted. This new rule turns 75 years of history on its head without compelling justification.
“ATA believes that the National Mediation Board failed to identify any material change in circumstances to support the new election procedure – a procedure that it last rejected only two years ago. The NMB decision to abandon an election procedure that the Supreme Court twice has upheld, which has allowed unions to effectively organize the rail and aviation industries, and which has served the public interest in avoiding disruptions to the vital national aviation and rail transportation systems, is both disappointing and puzzling. ATA looks forward to a quick resolution to this case, so that airlines and their employees can move forward together and more efficiently address their mutual goals.”
Annually, commercial aviation helps drive more than $1 trillion in U.S. economic activity and nearly 11 million U.S. jobs. On a daily basis, U.S. airlines operate nearly 26,000 flights in 80 countries, using more than 6,000 aircraft to carry an average of two million passengers and 50,000 tons of cargo. ATA airline members and their affiliates transport more than 90 percent of all U.S. airline passenger and cargo traffic. For additional industry information, visit www.airlines.org.
(1) ATA members participating are ABX Air, Inc.; AirTran Airways, Inc.; Alaska Airlines, Inc.; ASTAR Air Cargo, Inc.; Atlas Air, Inc.; Delta Air Lines, Inc.; Evergreen International Airlines, Inc.; Federal Express Corporation; Hawaiian Airlines, Inc.; and JetBlue Airways Corp.
SOURCE Air Transport Association
Brazilian no-frills airline GOL’s profit declined in the first quarter due to an increase in costs in the period. GOL reported a first-quarter net profit of 23.9 million Brazilian reals ($13.3 million), down from BRL61.4 million a year earlier.
“The reduction was due to the average 3.5 percent appreciation of the US Dollar against the Brazilian Real, which generated exchange variation expenses on foreign-currency-denominated liabilities, and the recognition of income tax and social contribution on net income as a result of taxable income during the quarter,” GOL said in a statement.
The company ended the quarter with a net debt of BRL1.74 billion, down from BRL2.94 billion in the year-ago period. Operational costs totaled BRL1.54 billion in the first quarter, up from BRL1.4 billion last year.
Net revenue rose 14 percent to BRL1.73 billion in the first quarter. The company said its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and aircraft rental costs, or EBITDAR, totaled BRL405 million in the period, up from BRL359.3 million.
The EBITDAR margin was 23.4 percent in the first quarter, compared with 23.7 percent last year. Figures were compiled using international financial reporting standards, or IFRS, accounting criteria.
May 16, 2010
LONDON – Two of Europe’s busiest airports closed early Monday morning as a dense cloud of volcanic ash drifted from Iceland, aviation authorities said.
The airspace over London’s Heathrow Airport closed at 1 a.m. local time Monday (0000 GMT; 8 p.m. EDT), Britain’s National Air Traffic Service said in a statement late Sunday night.
In Amsterdam, Schiphol Airport, another of Europe’s biggest air travel hubs, was closed until 2 p.m. local time Monday, a statement on Dutch airline KLM’s website said.
The restrictions affecting Heathrow — as well as Gatwick, Stansted and London City airports — will be in place until at least 7 a.m. local time (0600 GMT) Monday, the aviation authority said.
Airports across Britain and Ireland were closed for much of Sunday because of the drifting ash. The shifting of the no-fly zone southward will allow airports in northern England — including the key cities of Manchester and Liverpool — to reopen after 1 a.m. local time.
But all airports in Northern Ireland, as well as some Scottish facilities, will remain shut.
In Ireland, Dublin’s international airport closed early Sunday evening until at least 12 p.m. Monday (1100 GMT, 7 a.m. EDT). Some airports in Ireland’s west were closed and will reopen at different times Monday, but Shannon and southern Cork were open “until further notice.”
The British air traffic agency said the ash cloud was changing shape and moving south, toward Oxford, England, 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of London. Britain’s weather service says the northwest winds should shift midweek, redirecting the ash away from Britain.
German authorities sent up two test flights Sunday to measure the ash cloud, one from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the other from Lufthansa, the country’s biggest airline.
The DLR plane flew to southern England then continued north, collecting data from between 10,000 to 23,000 feet (3,000 to 7,000 meters). The Lufthansa Airbus A340-600, equipped with special scientific gear, left Frankfurt to fly over northern Germany, the United Kingdom and parts of Scandinavia.
All the data from both flights was immediately sent to aviation authorities in the U.K, the Netherlands and Germany, said aerospace center spokesman Andreas Schuetz.
Ash can clog jet engines. The April 14 eruption at Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokul volcano forced most countries in northern Europe to shut their airspace between April 15-20, grounding more than 100,000 flights and an estimated 10 million travelers worldwide. The shutdown cost airlines more than $2 billion.
In southern Iceland, activity at the volcano fluctuated Sunday but did not get more intense, civil protection official Agust Gunnar Gylfason said. He blamed the closures on shifting winds.
“What really changes the situation is the weather pattern,” he said.
The Icelandic weather service said “presently there are no indications that the eruption is about to end.”
Airlines complained bitterly over the air space closures last month, calling them an overreaction. The European air safety agency last week proposed drastically narrowing the continent’s no-fly zone because of volcanic ash to 120 miles (190 kilometers) like the one used in the U.S. The proposal still must be approved.
Virgin Atlantic’s president, Sir Richard Branson, criticized British authorities for Sunday’s no-fly zone. British Airways agreed, calling the approach “overly restrictive and not justified on safety grounds” and saying airlines are best qualified to determine whether it’s safe to fly.
“The closing of Manchester airspace once again is beyond a joke,” Branson said in a statement. He said test flights have “shown no evidence that airlines could not continue to fly completely safely.”
A spokesman for Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority called Branson’s remarks “surprising” because airline representatives and engine manufacturers last week had agreed to find a way to ensure planes could fly safely in the volcanic ash.
“We as an organization can’t just say, ‘Oh, I’m sure it’s all right, go fly without evidence it’s safe,’” Jonathan Nicholson said.
British Airways, facing cabin crew strikes beginning Tuesday, said it had canceled a small number of flights out of Manchester. The airline’s chief executive, Willie Walsh, is to meet with British Transport Secretary Philip Hammond on Monday.
Eurostar, which runs trains between Britain and continental Europe, said it was adding four extra trains — an additional 3,500 seats — between London and Paris on Monday.
Eyjafjallajokul (pronounced ay-yah-FYAH-lah-yer-kuhl) erupted in April for the first time in nearly two centuries. During its last eruption, starting in 1821, its emissions rumbled on for two years.
Source: AP