Virgin Australia’s share price dipped below 10 cents on Monday – days after credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded its outlook to negative.
The drop represents an enormous fall from a high of $2.19 in February 2007. Virgin played down the developments, claiming any speculation of the future of the business was “untrue and misleading”.
Last week, Australian Aviation reported that the wider group announced a $97 million half-year loss and its intention to cut its Tigerair fleet.
Jacobson, who was named the airline industry’s best CFO eight times, will remain at Delta while a successor is named and throughout the transition.
Paul Jacobson, Delta’s Chief Financial Officer, is retiring after a remarkable career at Delta that spanned more than two decades.
Jacobson will remain at Delta while a successor is named and throughout the transition. He joined the company in 1997 and was named CFO in 2012.
“Paul played a crucial role in Delta’s bankruptcy process and the strategy that led Delta to regain our investment-grade balance sheet while also investing billions in our people, product and service,” Delta CEO Ed Bastian wrote in a memo to employees Friday. “Paul has a gift for sharing financial messages that are clear, actionable and easily comprehended, ensuring that Delta people understand our financial standing, goals and path forward.”
Jacobson was named the airline industry’s best CFO eight times by Institutional Investor magazine’s poll of Wall Street analysts and investors. In his memo, Bastian also highlighted Jacobson’s service to the community, including his mission to raise awareness and funding for the American Heart Association after a member of his team experienced a heart attack at work.
Jacobson also helped establish the Delta Air Lines Aviation Education Building at his alma mater, Auburn University, providing resources for the next generation to learn to fly and pursue careers in aviation.
“When he leaves Delta later this year, his legacy will be our strong financial foundation and a best-in-class Finance team,” Bastian wrote.
On March 1, 2020, Amtrak is launching a series of updates to provide customers more options for savings. Amtrak is offering deeply discounted tickets and reduced fares. Keep an eye out for a variety of new, ultra-low Saver Fares in cities including Orlando, Tampa and South Florida —making travel a breeze in the Sunshine State. Discounted Coach fares start at just $9 – a savings of up to 50% off the base fare. Look for more of these offers on March 2!
To make these lowered fares feasible, Amtrak is implementing a few more restrictions on tickets. In an effort to better fit each customer’s need, Amtrak is revising the following:
Saver Fares: Our most discounted fares offered with the most restrictions – including no changes, upgrades or cancelations 24 hours after purchase.
Value Fares: Our standard fare offered with some restrictions – a fee may apply for cancelations or changes made within 14 days of departure.*
Flexible Fares: Our fare with the most flexibility built-in – including the ability to make no-fee changes and receive a full refund up to the moment of departure.
All fares include an array of amenities that come with Amtrak – including downtown-to-downtown service, no middle seat, ample legroom, the ability to earn Amtrak Guest Rewards points and one of the most generous baggage policies in travel. The change fee will not be applied to multiride, Rail Pass, pass riders, group reservations, sleeping accommodations, Acela First Class/non-Acela Business class, Flexible Fares, Unreserved Coach, corporate, Amtrak Guest Rewards Select Executive members, government fare plans and the first change to a reservation made prior to March 1, 2020.
*The change fee will not apply to Value fares if the customer is adding to an existing reservation (booked prior to March 1) or upgrading on the same train and day as the original reservation.
FILE PHOTO: Michael O’Leary of Ryanair at the Four Courts in Dublin
BERLIN (Reuters) – Ryanair <RYAAY> is prepared for further delays to the delivery of its Boeing <BA> 737 MAX airliners, its chief executive Michael O’Leary told German magazine Wirtschaftswoche, adding that he would only discuss compensation after the aircraft had been delivered.
The 737 MAX airliner has been grounded since March following two crashes which claimed 346 lives.
One of the world’s largest airlines, Ryanair has ordered 135 of the jets.
“We were meant to have 58 planes by the summer,” O’Leary said in the interview, extracts from which were published on Friday. “That went down to 30, then 20, then 10 and the latest is maybe only five. It’s possible we’ll only get the first jets in October 2020.”
In contrast to other airlines, including Turkish, Southwest Airlines <LUV> and Germany’s TUI <TUIFY>, which have already agreed compensation with Boeing, O’Leary added that he would only discuss compensation after the planes were delivered.
(Reporting by Thomas Escritt; editing by Thomas Seythal)
MEXICO CITY, Oct 25 (Reuters) – General Motors Co will gradually restart operations at several idled plants in Mexico beginning this weekend, after unionized workers for the U.S. automaker ratified a new labor contract, the company’s Mexican unit said on Friday.
The United Auto Workers (UAW) union announced earlier on Friday that its members had formally approved a new four-year labor contract with General Motors, ending a 40-day strike with the top American automaker.
GM said that by the end of next week all of its Mexican operations should be operating normally with all employees back to work.
In a statement, GM’s Mexican unit said its Ramos Arizpe motors plant will resume operating on Saturday, while its transmissions plant and Chevrolet Blazer assembly line located at the same facility will start back up on Monday. The Ramos Arizpe facility is located in the Mexican border state of Coahuila, just south of Texas.
All of the plants located at GM’s Silao facility, in central Guanajuato state, will restart on Monday.
Thousands of Silao workers had been furloughed as anxiety grew earlier this month among residents who viewed the facility as the city’s economic anchor.
Tensions over the future of manufacturing in North America were at the heart of the striking GM workers. The debate pitted U.S. labor advocates eager to reduce Mexico’s cost advantage against Mexican trade unions fighting to protect local jobs.
The strike began in September with UAW negotiators demanding higher pay for workers, greater job security as well as a bigger share of profits and the protection of healthcare benefits.
(Reporting by Anthony Esposito; Writing by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Sandra Maler and Leslie Adler)
FILE PHOTO: A Boeing 737 MAX aircraft is seen grounded at a storage area in an aerial photo at Boeing Field in Seattle
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration process for certifying new airplanes is not broken but needs to be improved, the chair of an international panel of air-safety regulators, tasked to review Boeing Co’s <BA> 737 Max, said on Friday.
Speaking on the sidelines of an event at a New York City college, Christopher Hart, chair of the multi-agency panel, said there was no need to question the agency’s overall way of certifying airplanes.
“The U.S. aviation system each day transports millions of people safely, so it’s not like we have to completely overhaul the entire system, it’s not broken. But these incidents have shown us that there are ways to improve the existing system,” Hart said, referring to fatal crashes of a Lion Air 737 MAX in Indonesia and an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX five months apart that killed a total of 346 people.
The MAX remains grounded and Boeing has not set when it will conduct a key certification test flight. Some in Congress and in aviation have criticized the FAA’s longstanding practice of delegating certification tasks to manufacturers.
Michael Perrone, who heads the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union, said at a House hearing in July that external entities designated by the FAA “are now performing more than 90 percent of FAA’s certification activities despite serious concerns that oversight is lacking.”
Hart, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and a licensed pilot, heads the Joint Authorities Technical Review, a panel including air-safety regulators from the United States, Canada, China, Indonesia, European Union and Brazil.
Reuters reported on Sept. 17 the review’s recommendations will include citing regulations that need to be harmonized internationally and where communications can be improved at the FAA and among international regulators, citing a person briefed on the matter.
Hart on Friday said the panel would release its recommendations to the FAA “shortly,” but declined to provide more details on the timeline. He said the panel’s goal was not for all of its members to agree, but to provide a wide range of opinions and recommendations to the FAA.
Hart spoke to students the Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology in Queens. Asked by a student whether passengers can be expected to fly again on a 737 MAX, Hart said he predicted people would “sooner or later forget” about the crashes and investigations.
“This will be the safest airplane out there by the time it has to go through all the hoops and hurdles,” he said.
He also was optimistic when asked whether the deadly crashes would spell the end for Boeing’s 737 MAX programme.
“It will be a cold day in hell before Southwest starts moving away from 737s because that’s all they got,” Hart said, referring to Southwest Airlines Co <LUV.N>, which has cancelled flights into January because of the MAX grounding.
A Southwest Airlines spokesman declined to comment directly on Hart’s comments but said the airline has “no plans to veer away from our all-737 fleet.”
(Reporting by Tina Bellon in New York; Additional reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
(Reuters) – Eleven passengers and crew were killed on Friday evening when their plane crashed near an airfield in Hawaii, authorities said, during what broadcasters said was a skydiving trip.
The twin-engine King Air plane, with eleven people onboard, went down soon after takeoff from Dillingham Airfield and there were no survivors, the Hawaii Department of Transportation (HDOT) said.
The fire service said the aircraft was engulfed in flames when fire crews arrived. “We are still gathering information as to the intent of the flight and what they were doing,” Honolulu Fire Department Chief Manuel Neves told a news conference.
The news report said the plane was on a skydiving excursion and the Federal Aviation Administration would investigate the crash.
The HDOT said Federal inspectors are continuing to investigate the cause of the crash.
Dillingham is a joint-use airfield operated by the HDOT under a 25-year lease from the U.S. army, according to its website.
Mérignac, France, 14 May 2019 – Today, Dassault Aviation officially launched the construction of an office building on its site in Mérignac, France, as a step of its “Leading our Future” transformation plan. The building will accommodate design, development and after-sales support teams for the firm’s civil and defense activities.
“This ambitious project reflects our aim to bring together some of the teams who design and support our aircraft and those responsible for producing them. It fosters collaborative working as part of the rollout of our extended design office concept. The principle is to integrate even more and whenever required, from the design phase, all the trades involved in the product life cycle. This building will not just house offices, it will be one of the means to reframe the interactions between Mérignac and Saint-Cloud. We are expecting better links between technical competence, product knowledge and customer services”, said Eric Trappier, Chairman and CEO of Dassault Aviation. “It is one of the focuses of our transformation plan which, without altering the DNA that has underpinned our century-long success, aims to make our company more flexible and more competitive to respond to the technology challenges ahead and the changes occurring in the world around us.”
The new building will offer 25,800 sq. m of surface area over four levels with a total capacity of 1,500 workstations including 24 modular collaborative work spaces and nine project offices. The building will also provide VIP rooms for our civil and military customers, a Falcon command center, rooms for aircraft system test benches, a Virtual Reality Center, an Immersive Reality Center and an auditorium.
The highest environmental standards will be applied including smart lighting and energy management, solar panels (4,000 sq. m), reinforced insulation, green roofs, and a heat recovery system.
Presided over by Eric Trappier, alongside Valérie Guillemet, Mérignac Site Manager, the “groundbreaking” ceremony was attended by many local elected representatives, particularly the President of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region Alain Rousset, the President of Bordeaux Métropole Patrick Bobet, the Mayor of Mérignac Alain Anziani and the Mayor of Bordeaux Nicolas Florian. Representatives of official services, as well as the region’s aviation ecosystem and the media were also present at the event.
Work is scheduled for completion at the end of 2020, and the building should be commissioned in 2021.
About Dassault Aviation
With over 10,000 military and civil aircraft delivered in more than 90 countries over the last century, Dassault Aviation has built up expertise recognized worldwide in the design, development, sale and support of all types of aircraft, ranging from the Rafale fighter, to the high-end Falcon family of business jets and military drones. In 2018, Dassault Aviation reported revenues of €5.1 billion. The company has 11,500 employees.
