Bombardier wins Lufthansa order for CSeries jets
Bombardier wins Lufthansa order for CSeries jets
* Initial deal for 30 planes, option for 30 more
* New CSeries expected to “sell like hotcakes”
* Bombardier shares 4.6 percent at C$2.71 (Recasts, adds analyst quotes; in U.S. dollars unless noted)
TORONTO, March 11 (Reuters) – Bombardier Inc won its first firm order for its new CSeries commercial jetliner on Wednesday with a $1.53 billion deal for 30 airplanes from Deutsche Lufthansa AG .
The order, which sent Bombardier shares up as much as 15 percent, moves the Montreal-based company into closer competition with bigger rivals Boeing and Airbus . The CSeries seats between 110 and 149 passengers, and is Bombardier’s largest plane to date.
Bombardier shares rose 12 Canadian cents, or 4.6 percent to C$2.71, down from an intraday high of C$2.99.
“The marketplace that they’re pursuing is a group of geriatric planes plus the bottom end of the Boeing and Airbus range,” said Richard Stoneman, an airline analyst with Dundee Capital Markets.
He said the CSeries aircraft will initially replace Lufthansa’s BAE Systems’ BAE146 model, that was produced from 1978 to 1992.
The agreement also gives the German airline an option to acquire 30 more of the new jets, which will be operated by Lufthansa’s Swiss International Airlines unit.
Lufthansa, Europe’s second biggest carrier, became the launch customer for the CSeries aircraft family in July 2008 when it signed a letter of interest for up to 60 planes, Bombardier’s aerospace division said in a statement.
The new plane series is seen as a key development for Montreal-based Bombardier, which is the world’s third-largest maker of civil aircraft and the No. 1 maker of rail equipment.
The aircraft, scheduled for delivery from 2013, will let Bombardier branch out from its current lines of regional jets and turboprops, which carry up to 100 passengers.
Bombardier says its advanced technology allows the CSeries to operate while using 20 percent less fuel than the older Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 families.
The CSeries will also be the greenest single-aisle aircraft in its class, the company says.
“It’s going to sell like hotcakes,” Jacques Kavafian, an airline analyst with Research Capital, told Reuters.
“The company has five years to develop its backlog, so we’re not worried about the current economic environment.
“They’re building this airplane for the next 25 years. The economy will turn around and people will continue to travel and airlines will continue to look at cheap economic airplanes and this one is the most economic in its class.”
Bombardier shares have fallen about 39 percent so far this year as the market for its corporate jets weakened with the global economy and consumer air travel stalled.
The company said last month it would lay off 1,360 people because of the downturn in the business jet market.
Bombardier has said an expected 10 percent rise in orders for commercial aircraft could offset that softness.
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VIENNA, March 13, 2009 (AFP) Austrian Airlines, in the process of being taken over by German flag carrier Lufthansa, said Friday that high fuel prices, the financial crisis and a slump in demand pushed it deeply into the red last year.
AUA said in a statement that it turned in a record net loss of 429.5 million euros (554 million dollars) in 2008, compared with a profit of 3.3 million euros a year earlier. “2008 was an extraordinarily difficult year for the Austrian Airlines Group,” board member Peter Malanik said.
“While our prospects gave us good reason to be optimistic in the early months of the year, the situation worsened rapidly due to the extremely high price of fuel, which was quickly followed by a dramatic fall in the volume of bookings due to the world financial and economic crisis,” Malanik said.
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Ametnik: Ryanairi tualetitasu idee oli “nali”
BERLIIN, 12. märts, AFP-BNS – Odavlennufirma Ryanair juht “tegi ainult nalja”, kui ta käis välja ettepaneku reisijatelt lennukis tualeti kasutamise eest raha küsida, ütles lennufirma pressiesindaja neljapäeval Saksa ajalehele.
Eelmisel kuul vapustas Ryanairi reisijaid Michael O’Leary ähvardus, et lennukites võidakse tualetiustele paigaldada lukud, mille avamiseks on vaja ühenaelast münti.
Ryanairi pressiesindaja Saksamaal Anja Seugling ütles päevalehele Ostthüringer Zeitung, et “see kõik oli vaid nali” ja lisas, et O’Leary mõtles ilmselt lihtsalt valjusti.
O’Leary on Iirimaa üks jõukamaid ärimehi ja tal on halastamatu kuludekärpija maine.
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Travel industry sees business bookings slump lasting
* Amadeus says leisure travel bookings seen at bottom
* British Airways sees business travel doing “very badly”
* Lufthansa’s Swiss says recovery could start in Q3, Q4
* Emirates sees growth opportunities amid “doom and gloom”
* Germanwings wins as business travellers go for low-cost
BERLIN, March 12 (Reuters) – Airlines and travel companies say they do not expect the slump in bookings by business travellers to recover anytime soon as the global economic crisis keeps company travel budgets tight.
The volume of business travel bookings done through agencies dropped 20 percent in January and February compared with only a 12 percent drop in leisure travel bookings, the head of commercial operations at Amadeus, a leading booking system provider to travel agencies, said on Thursday.
“We have a feeling that leisure bookings reached the bottom in the last four to five weeks. Business travel is still getting worse,” Philippe Chereque told Reuters at the ITB travel fair.
The yield on business travel has dropped around 20 percent to 25 percent, Chereque said.
Airlines and tour operators are struggling to remain profitable as businesses and individual consumers cut travel during the recession.
The world’s airlines lost up to $8 billion in 2008, the International Air Transport Association said last week, and few are willing to guess when business travel will start to pick up again.
“If we’re honest, we’d have to say we don’t know,” said Harry Hohmeister, Deutsche Lufthansa unit Swiss’s Chief Network and Distribution Officer told an audience at the ITB fair.
Hohmeister said that if one believed economists, business travel bookings could start recovering in the third or fourth quarter of the year.
British Airways sees business travel doing “very badly”, said Gavin Halliday, head of BA’s European business said. The UK carrier warned last week that it expected an operating loss in its financial year through April 2010 and hinted that job cuts may be on the cards.
Lufthansa, which vies with Air France-KLM to be Europe’s biggest airline, said on Wednesday that it saw its 2009 operating profit falling from 2008. It said the end of the tunnel could come in 2010.
Companies that have not imposed travel bans on its employees are booking cheaper tickets, a trend that has helped low-cost carriers such as Ryanair and EasyJet win market share in the crisis.
“You see more neckties in the tail of the plane now,” Amadeus’ Chereque said.
Lufthansa’s low-cost Germanwings unit has also seen growth in its business travel segment, which accounts for about 40 percent of its revenue, unit head Thomas Winkelmann said.
Some airlines are still planning to add capacity in 2009 and aim to tap into markets where demand is still strong, such as in Africa and the Middle East.
Dubai-based Emirates will boost its capacity by around 20 percent in its financial year starting on April 1 as it adds new large planes, including seven mammoth A380 aircraft. Emirates European manager Nabil Sultan said the company would deploy the new planes to destinations where demand was still high and would try to attract tourism customers. “I still see opportunities amid the doom and gloom that you hear about,” Sultan said.
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Cancellations outweigh orders at Airbus, Boeing
PARIS, March 12, 2009 (AFP) – European aircraft maker Airbus said Thursday that cancellations on orders for planes had exceeded new orders since the beginning of the year, matching a similar trend at US rival Boeing.
Airbus said in a statement there had been six orders and 14 cancellations for the company between January 1 and February 28.
Data on Boeing’s website showed that the US jetmaker had 22 orders and 32 cancellations between January 1 and March 10.
The announcement came as a source close to Airbus told AFP that the Dubai-based airline Emirates was seeking a delay in the delivery of several long-haul A380 superjumbo jets because of financing difficulties.
The airline is Airbus’s biggest customer for the A380, having ordered 58 of them. “Emirates could delay deliveries on several planes … They are in talks” with Airbus, the source said on condition of anonymity.
Emirates “is beginning to have problems for the first time. We always relied on this type of company as a major stable client,” the source said. A spokeswoman for Airbus said discussions with clients were confidential. And in Dubai an Emirates spokesperson said: “We had a routine meeting with Airbus to discuss aircraft delivery positions down the line. Like all airlines, Emirates continues to assess all options for its fleet and route operations.”