Huge fire closes Nairobi international airport

A "massive" fire shut down Nairobi's international airport Wednesday with flights diverted to regional cities, officials said, as firefighters struggled to put out the blaze in east Africa's most important transport hub.

"There is a serious fire at JKIA (Jomo Kenyatta International Airport), but we are doing everything possible to avert a crisis," said Mutea Iringo, a senior official at the interior and national coordination ministry.

Firefighters were tackling the blaze but were "running dangerously low on water", the interior ministry said in an appeal to traffic to give way to trucks ferrying water to the airport.

"Apart from emergency landings, all flights into and out of JKIA have been cancelled ... (the) airport has been shut down," added Iringo.

The fire broke out shortly before dawn.

There were no initial reports of casualties, but Iringo said the fire was "massive", adding that the arrivals and immigration sections were "totally damaged".

Flights were being diverted to other airports, including the port city of Mombasa, the interior ministry added.

Images on Kenyan media showed flames rising high in the sky and billowing clouds of black smoke out of the main arrivals and departures terminal, with dozens of police and fire trucks at the scene.

The airport serves as a regional hub for east Africa, with many long-distance international flights landing there to connect to countries across the region.

Kenya National Disaster Operation Centre, in an update given at 0500GMT, said that while the blaze had been brought under control in the international departures areas, fire was still burning at the arrivals terminal.

All roads around the airport had been closed except to emergency traffic, it added.

"This is a major crisis," said senior transport ministry official Michael Kamau.

The blaze comes two days after aircraft were delayed for several hours after the failure of a fuel hydrant needed for refuelling the planes.

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Virgin Australia expects loss of US$98m for year

Virgin Australia said Monday it was expecting a full-year loss of A$95 million to A$110 million (US$84 million to US$98 million) due to a range of factors, including the tough economic environment and restructuring costs.

In updated guidance for the financial year ended June 30, 2013, Virgin said its performance had been hit by the "difficult economic and competitive environment", costs associated with its transformation, and Australia's carbon tax.

"As a result of these factors, Virgin Australia expects a statutory loss after tax in the range of $95 million to $110 million," it said in a statement.

Virgin Australia said costs included the transition to the new Sabre booking and check-in system, transaction costs related to the acquisition of Skywest Airlines and the acquisition of 60 per cent of Tiger Airways Australia.

It also confirmed that the pre-tax costs of the carbon tax, a levy on Australia's biggest polluters, for the 2013 financial year would be $45-$50 million.

It said the carbon tax cost was "unable to be recovered due to weak economic conditions and the competitive environment".

Virgin Australia, the country's second largest carrier after Qantas Airways, last year posted a full-year net profit of A$22.8 million.

"Although today's update is disappointing and notwithstanding a challenging environment, we have made significant progress on the execution of our game change programme," Virgin Australia chief executive John Borghetti said.

"We now have the right platform in the Australian market to generate sustainable earnings benefits."

The airline said forward domestic bookings as at 30 June, 2013 were about six per cent higher than the same time last year and it expected domestic capacity growth in the first half of the 2014 financial year to be within three to four per cent.

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Boeing exec avoids Dreamliner questions, touts new jets

A Boeing executive on Friday declined to answer questions about Dreamliner's growing list of problems less than two weeks after another grounding, as he touted the troubled aircraft's new models.

A Qatar Airways 787 Dreamliner resumed flights on Wednesday after being grounded due to what the US plane manufacturer said was the replacement of "technical components".

The plane was out of action from July 22, an industry source told AFP.

The fuel-efficient plane has suffered a string of woes largely tied to its lithium-ion batteries, including a four-month worldwide grounding at the start of the year and a fire onboard an empty Ethiopian Airlines plane at London's Heathrow airport last month.

On Friday, Scott Fancher, vice president and general manager of airplane development at Boeing, told a Tokyo press briefing that the firm was preparing to introduce new versions of its 787 Dreamliner as well as the long-range 777 and smaller 737.

The company was planning a test flight of its larger and more energy-efficient 787-9, due to come into service next year, he said, adding that its successor would likely be in the air by 2018.

But Fancher declined to discuss the current Dreamliner's problems or the battery system on its revamped model. Japanese battery maker GS Yuasa has been the global supplier for power packs in Boeing's Dreamliner.

"It is a detailed design question, not the sort of thing we are talking about," Fancher said in a response to a reporter's question about the Dreamliner battery.

"I'm not going into a lot of detail on design details," he added.

Despite a lengthy investigation, Boeing has not identified the root cause of the Dreamliner's battery problems, but said it put safeguards in place to prevent future incidents.

Japan's two biggest airlines, All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines, were sideswiped by the grounding of Boeing's new aircraft that began in January, forcing them to cancel hundreds of flights until the plane was allowed to resume flying in June.

The pair, which have been the Dreamliner's biggest customers, have so far stuck with the plane, saying it was key to their expansion drive.

But the carriers are in talks over compensation for what they said was more than $200 million in combined lost revenue from the grounding.

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Airline traffic rises on winds from Asia, eurozone

World airline traffic grew by 5.9 per cent in June, driven by strong demand from the Asia-Pacific region and helped by a steadying of the business climate in the eurozone, the International Air Transport Association said on Wednesday.

In the first six months of the year, traffic increased by 4.8 per cent on a 12-month comparison, and the global industry could turn in an overall net profit this year of nearly US$13.0 billion IATA said.

"The stability in the eurozone, albeit tentative, is giving a boost to business and consumer confidence," IATA managing director Tony Tyler said.

The overall passenger load factor, a critical measure of the percentage of seats filled, was 81.7 per cent which "shows that airlines are efficiently meeting increasing demand for travel," he said.

But IATA warned that the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China, the so-called BRIC countries, was slowing.

Much of the growth of airline traffic is being driven by growth of the economies, and of business and tourist travel, in and from the Asia-Pacific region. This is also a big factor in estimates by airliner manufacturers Airbus and Boeing of huge future demand for aircraft.

Another key factor for airlines is the cost of fuel, and Tyler noted that "oil prices remain high".

However, "the industry is still on track to make US$4.00 per passenger this year for a global net profit of US$12.7 billion.

"But there is little margin for error and even a small change in the second half of the year could shift the outlook significantly," Tyler said.

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Air France to cut 2,500 jobs next year

Air France on Wednesday confirmed its intention to cut around 2,500 jobs in 2014 as part of a wide-ranging restructuring drive that has already seen thousands take voluntary redundancy.

The airline has been struggling to cope with the rise of low-cost airlines and competition from Middle Eastern and Asian carriers.

A spokesman said the proposed cuts would be made without forced redundancies, saying the exact amount "will be discussed and quantified with unions this fall. It could be a little more than half of the redundancies identified in 2012."

The measure is part of a major restructuring drive called Transform 2015, which has already seen more than 5,000 employees take voluntary redundancy.

The news comes after the company's CGT union branch earlier Wednesday said management had broken the news to employee representatives at a works council meeting.

The restructuring drive has helped parent company Air France-KLM cut huge losses although it says more cost-saving is needed.

The group last week announced net losses of 793 million euros for the first half of 2013, against wider losses of 1.27 billion euros in the first half of last year.

Chief executive Alexandre de Juniac at the time welcomed improving results, but warned that further measures would be adopted to reduce costs, including staffing cuts.

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SIA cuts pilot training time

Singapore Airlines (SIA) has cut pilot training time by three months and will close one of its two facilities in Australia. Instead of 90 weeks, cadets will undergo a 78-week course - in Singapore and at SIA's Jandakot facility in Perth.

The school in Maroochydore, Queensland, which opened in 2002, will be shut down next March, said SIA spokesman Nicholas Ionides. The changes reflect developments in training technology and procedures, he added.

He told The Straits Times: "This is not intended as a cost-cutting measure and is not related to a surplus of pilots." There will be no impact on the quality of training, he stressed.

SIA froze cadet pilot recruitment about 18 months ago amid slower-than-expected growth, and has asked junior pilots to volunteer for unpaid leave. Its pilots are trained by its subsidiary, Singapore Flying College.

Before, a cadet would spend 34 weeks in Singapore, 44 in Jandakot and the last 12 weeks at the Maroochydore school where they undergo jet aircraft training in small planes. Today, state-of-the-art training devices are capable of replicating realistic operational scenarios, Mr Ionides said.

Cadets are also exposed to the jet environment and curriculum very early in their pilot training.

This negates the need for the specific jet exposure offered at Maroochydore, he said. Additional training modules have also been incorporated into the programme that new pilots undergo in Singapore before they become first officers.

At the Maroochydore facility, 12 out of 15 staff have left. The last few will stay until closing day, Mr Ionides said. The school's three flight simulators and four Cessna C510 Mustang aircraft will be sold.

Pilot training experts pointed out that increasingly, airlines are adopting programmes that aim to put new pilots into commercial jets with more relevant hands-on experience.

Instead of spending as much as 80 per cent of training time in a light aircraft, new pilots now make more use of flight simulators and techniques that build interpersonal and communication skills to prepare them to operate in a multi-crew environment.

The new multi-crew pilot licence programme is certified by global civil aviation bodies including the International Civil Aviation Organisation. It is also supported by the International Air Transport Association, the global voice of airlines.

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AirAsia Japan to cancel hundreds of flights

AirAsia Japan has said the budget carrier will cancel hundreds of flights over two months before it ceases operations under the current brand at the end of October.

AirAsia Japan, operated jointly by Malaysia-based AirAsia and major Japanese carrier All Nippon Airways (ANA), will suspend 14 daily flights from September 1 to October 26, according to a company statement.

The carrier said the cancellations, which will reportedly affect 14,000 passengers, was because of a lack of planes to service all its routes.

The affected routes include flights linking Seoul to the central Japanese city of Nagoya and Tokyo to the northern city of Sapporo.

The carrier will cease operations by the end of October, just over a year after it started flying out of Tokyo's Narita airport in August.

Announcing the dissolution of AirAsia Japan in June, the Malaysian carrier cited a "fundamental difference of opinion between its shareholders on how the business should be managed, from cost management to where the domestic business operations should be based".

ANA, however, said the venture dissolved because it was not well known in Japan and could not register profits.

The Japanese carrier plans to launch a new budget brand in November.

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