DWS Aviation

Rolls-Royce, the United Kingdom-based manufacturer of aircraft engines, has announced that it is planning to reduce its global workforce by up to 2,000 “to cope with the global downturn and delays to the Boeing 787 and the Airbus A380.”

Air New Zealand, the national flag carrier of New Zealand and the country’s biggest airline, plans to dismiss 200 full-time employees, change schedules and reduce capacity in order to cut costs as demand for international flights has slowed down.

Qatar Airways, the flag-carrier airline of Qatar, based in Doha, and Iberia Airlines, the flag carrier of Spain, are among over one dozen investors which have expressed a preliminary interest in buying the ailing Olympic Airlines, the  national carrier of Greece.

Yet another airline has gone under. Sterling Airlines A/S, the low-fare carrier based in Copenhagen, Denmark, has been declared bankrupt after its Icelandic owner, Palmi Haraldsson, was hard up for cash.

Southwest Airlines Company, the low-cost airline based in Dallas, Texas, the United States, has posted its first quarterly loss in 17 years.

LTE International Airways, the budget airline based in Spain, has suspended operations owing to the carrier’s financial crunch.

UAL Corporation, the parent company of United Airlines, has suffered a net loss of $779 million, or $6.13 per share, in the third quarter of 2008.

Petters Aviation and its subsidiaries have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Petters Aviation, a wholly owned unit of Thomas Petters Incorporated, owns MN Airline Holdings, the parent company of Sun Country Airlines based in St Paul, Minnesota, the United States.

Olympic Airlines, the flag-carrier airline of Greece, and Pantheon, a holding company set up to replace the loss-making Olympic, are on sale.

The two pilots who shocked the airline industry by dozing off during a flight and sending air traffic controllers into panic mode have now received their licenses back.

Yet another airline, the United States-based DayJet, has closed shop. DayJet Services LLC, a provider of regional air-taxi service, began service to Pensacola and four other cities in Florida, the United States, in October 2007.

Alitalia, the flag-carrier airline of Italy, has posted on the company’s website an invitation calling for bids from investors before September 30, 2008, in a last-ditch attempt to rescue the troubled airline.

Close on the heels of the United Kingdom-based travel operator XL Leisure Group closing shop, another British holiday firm, K&S Holidays, has collapsed, putting the air travel industry in further trouble.

  Airline industry worldwide is expected to suffer combined losses to the tune of about $5.2 billion in 2008, which is almost $3 billion higher than what was forecast in June 2008, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

  As a part of its continuing efforts at downsizing flights, American Airlines, headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, the United States, has sent notices of possible layoffs to 469 employees at airports in 5 cities in the United States.

Zoom Airlines, the Canada-based low-fare trans-Atlantic airline which suspended all operations on August 28, 2008, and filed for bankruptcy protection owing to its deteriorating financial position, has said its total debts come to about  £20 million-£25 million.

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) of Australia, the country’s national aviation regulator, has warned Qantas Airways Limited that its “maintenance has fallen below the airline’s own benchmarks and needs to improve.”

Southwest Airlines Company, the biggest low-cost airline in the United States, has said it will not abide by the deadline for paying a fine of $10.2 million imposed on it for having flown its jets without required inspections.

Investigators in Spain are trying to find out whether the Spanair’s MD-82 plane that crashed last week had gained adequate speed for takeoff and also whether the ill-fated aircraft’s flaps operated properly.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) of the United States has said it is launching an investigation into the “multiple security violations” by American Eagle Airlines at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of the United States is conducting a 30-day special review of its certification of Eclipse Aviation’s very light jet (VLJ), the Eclipse 500.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has warned that airlines worldwide are likely to lose over $6.1 billion in 2008 because of the exorbitant prices of aviation turbine fuel as well as geo-political instability, with Asia – particularly China and India – also now starting to feel the pinch of the international slump.

In the latest in a series of mechanical glitches that have been troubling Qantas Airways, the national airline and flag carrier of Australia, a flight from London to Sydney in Australia was delayed by over 15 hours owing to problems with the plane's rudder.

Qantas Airways, already embattled by a series of technical glitches that led to grounding of about half a dozen aircraft recently, suffered yet another setback when its 6 Boeing 737-400 aircraft were grounded on the night of August 12, 2008, because of irregularities in maintenance records. Following the latest incident, Australia’s ...

The number of flights in and out of the United Kingdom has witnessed a drop for the first time since the recession that followed the September 11 terror attacks, as a result of the exorbitant costs of fuel which have forced airlines to reduce services.

There has been yet another incident of mechanical fault on a Qantas Airways’ plane – this time, on a domestic flight heading from Melbourne to Canberra.

Qantas Airways has completed examination of all oxygen tanks aboard its fleet of Boeing 747-400s aircraft (jumbo aircraft). This has been done in an attempt to find out the cause of the on-board explosion in the Qantas Airways’ jumbo jet on a flight from London to Melbourne in Australia on July 25, 2008.

Soaring fuel bills have forced Australian airline Virgin Blue, owned by Richard Branson, to ground two more aircraft. A three per cent reduction in route capacity has brought overall cuts by the airline to 12 per cent since last month.

By the end of the current year, high fuel costs would spell doom for as many as 7000 employees at American Airlines.

American Airlines will reduce flights at many airports in the United States as well as overseas later in 2008.