Aviation

Bloomberg The Pentagon is accelerating production of Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 jet even though the planes already delivered are facing “significantly longer repair times” than planned because maintenance facilities are six years behind schedule, according to a draft audit. The time to repair a part has averaged 172 days—“twice the programme’s objective”—the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s watchdog agency, found. The ...

Bloomberg Ryanair Holdings Plc’s pilot uprising shows little signs of abating, with an ad-hoc group demanding that a wage increase offered to crews at London Stansted airport be doubled and extended across the budget airline’s European bases. The unofficial European Employee Representative Council made the proposal to pilots after cockpit crews at Ryanair’s biggest base rejected the existing offer, according ...

Bloomberg PT Garuda Indonesia is targeting a return to profit next year after a loss in 2017 as the flag carrier works to reduce expenses and operations improve. The airline is predicting a profit of $75 million in the second half ending December but won’t be able to post a profit for the 12-month period following a larger loss in ...

Bloomberg Securing a “made-in-US” label for Bombardier Inc.’s C Series jet by building another assembly line in Alabama would cost only “a few hundred million dollars,” Airbus SE’s No. 2 executive said. The new facility is crucial to Airbus’s strategy for increasing US sales of the Canadian plane while avoiding stiff trade penalties imposed by the Trump administration. Bombardier projects ...

Bloomberg JetBlue Airways Corp. has withdrawn its flights from a dozen online travel sites in the first phase of a broader effort to trim $20 million from its ticket-selling expenses. JetBlue is remaining with larger agencies including Priceline.com and Expedia Inc., along with Expedia’s Travelocity.com and Orbitz.com units. The airline favours sites like Kayak Software Corp.’s Kayak.com where consumers can ...

Bloomberg In the span of a one-hour conference call, Wall Street’s confidence in the leadership of United Airlines plummeted. Analysts pressed Chief Executive Officer Oscar Munoz and President Scott Kirby on how they planned to deal with rising costs and falling pricing power. Would they rein in growth in the face of fare weakness? Provide more detail on revenue initiatives? ...

Bloomberg Airports are the gateway through which we escape our daily drudgery. They allow us to wing our way to vacations, family reunions, even business junkets. But tainting every trip is the prospect of stress and frustration that comes with negotiating an infrastructure that envelops us from fare shopping to seat belt-click. There’s the ticketing counter, the kiosks, the bag ...

Bloomberg South African Airways Chairman Dudu Myeni will leave the state-owned airline in a shake up of the board scheduled for early next month, as the finance ministry puts new management in place to turn around the unprofitable carrier. Myeni, who is friends with South African President Jacob Zuma and heads his charitable foundation, is the most prominent of a ...

Bloomberg The deal that ceded control of Bombardier Inc.’s C Series jet programme to Airbus SE was the best option to save jobs in Quebec and ensure the industry’s future in the Canadian province, Economy Minister Dominique Anglade said. The entry of the European plane maker brings in a “selling firepower” that Bombardier doesn’t have, opening up markets for the ...

Bloomberg By relinquishing control of its C Series jets to longtime rival Airbus SE, Bombardier Inc. is scaling back its ambitions to build jetliners for the world’s airlines. The deal marks a step away from what had been touted as the crown jewel of Canada’s biggest aerospace company before it was tarnished by cost-overruns and trade disputes. With the future ...