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Continental Airlines plans to exit the SkyTeam alliance with Delta Air Lines, Air France and others after its last flight Oct. 24 and join the rival Star Alliance shortly thereafter, CEO Larry Kellner said today. The October date jives with Houston-based Continental’s previously announced plan to begin new service to Frankfurt, Lufthansa’s global hub, on Nov. 1.

Boeing, whose new 787 Dreamliner is about two years late, said a customer canceled all 15 of the planes it had on order. The planes, valued at about $2.6 billion at list prices, were scheduled for delivery late in the next decade, Boeing said in a statement today. The cancellation, which was from a customer who had asked Boeing not to disclose its identity, reduces the backlog to 895 from 910, company spokesman Todd Blecher said.

Singapore Airlines said Wednesday it will cut some regional and long-distance flights to better match capacity with demand. Flights to be reduced include services to Hyderabad, Mumbai and New Delhi of India, Bangkok of Thailand. Frequency on the all-business class flights to Los Angeles and Newark airports of the United States will be reduced. There will also be fewer options to London and Zurich. However, the company said it will commence four times weekly services to Kuwait, via Abu Dhabi, from March 15. It will also increase flights between Singapore and Cairo from three times a week to four from March 12.

The fourth quarter of 2008 proved to be a good one for Las Vegas-based Allegiant Air. The airline reports its profits rose as revenue increased and expenses, especially for fuel, dropped. Allegiant Air parent Allegiant Travel Company reports fourth-quarter earnings of $18.2 million dollars, up from $4.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2007. Officials at the airline believe its ripe for continued growth this year.

A FedEx ATR-42 cargo plane crashed during landing Tuesday morning at Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport. The crash happened just after 4:30 a.m. Tuesday as the ATR-42 twin-turboprop aircraft was arriving from Fort Worth Alliance Arport in a freezing mist. Officials say the plane came down at the end of the runway, veered off and caught fire. Loomis said the fire was quickly extinguished. He said weather wasn’t a factor in the crash, but Munoz says the plane had skidded off the runway. The plane was operated by Coeur d’Alene, Idaho-based Empire Airways under contract with Memphis, Tenn.-based FedEx Corp. Both crew members suffered minor injuries.

France has ordered its banks to lend five billion euros (US$9.74 billion) to airlines and transport firms to help them pay for European-built planes, the finance ministry announced on Monday. European manufacturer Airbus is facing a revenue shortfall as the world economic crisis undermines the ability of its customers to pay for a huge back-log of airliners ordered from the Toulouse-based firm. World demand for new aircraft could plunge 50 to 60 percent in 2009 due to the global economic crunch and tight credit, Airbus chief executive Thomas Enders said Sunday.

Premium air travel is continuing its slump as travelers cut back on how much they spend to fly. The number of passengers buying first-and business-class tickets fell 11.5 percent in November compared with the same month a year earlier, according to the International Air Transport Association. The decline was led by a 17.7 percent drop in travel across the Pacific, with the number of trans-Atlantic trips decreasing 9 percent. The plunge was the sixth in a row and exceeded October’s decline of 6.9 percent.

British Airways said Monday that it is in line to record an operating loss of £150 million for the current financial year. In a statement BA said the global credit crisis and the decline of sterling were behind the revision. The news comes despite an anticipated four percent year-on-year rise in revenue and traffic volumes in line with the market average. In addition, fuel costs are expected to be broadly unchanged at about £3 billion due to the lower price of fuel being offset by the deteriorating pound.

Eight passengers were hurt and two were taken to local hospitals Thursday morning after a Northwest Airlines jet from Tokyo to Honolulu encountered severe turbulence over Midway Island. One flight attendant also was hurt and was taken to Queen’s Medical Center in serious but stable condition with head and neck injuries. The Airbus A330 landed in Honolulu without further trouble shortly after 8 a.m. local time. Flight 22 carried 285 passengers.

Aero-News is reporting that airlines are increasingly more willing to delay or outright cancel airplane deliveries in 2009. Of the airlines surveyed, in 2008, only 8% of the responses indicated a willingness to delay or cancel orders, however this month, 33% said they are likely to delay or cancel. Boeing is partially shielded from cancellations due to a large backlog of plane orders it has on the books, and while this won’t have huge impacts on 2009, it is likely to impact Boeing staffing and revenue figures for possibly late 2009 and certainly into 2010.

Pilots of the Finnish airline Finnair oppose calls by the airline for reduced benefits, and threaten to start industrial action on February 11. The strike will begin if no settlement is reached before that. According to Finnair, an overtime ban imposed by the pilots could lead to cancellations of flights already on Saturday. If no settlement is reached, the pilots will be off work on February 11, 13, 16, 18, and 20.

Southwest Airlines, historically the U.S.’ most profitable carrier, on Thursday reported a loss for the quarter, but a profit for the year. The airline said that it lost $56 million in the fourth quarter, including special items, compared with a $111 million profit in 2007. Full-year profit fell to $178 million, from $645 million in 2007. Southwest said it had reduced its aircraft deliveries for 2010 to 10 planes, and disclosed plans to trim its operations a further 4% nationally due to softening demand.

Dallas Love Field (DAL) will undergo a $519 million capital improvement project that is slated to start in June, the Dallas Morning News reported Thursday. Among other things, Love Field will see its existing terminals replaced with a 20-gate concourse and will get an expanded baggage area. New gates in the concourse will begin opening in 2011, the paper said. The timing of the project will coincide with the end in 2014 of federal restrictions on how far planes can fly from the airport, and will double its capacity from a current 4 million passengers per year to 8 million, the newspaper reported.

Singapore Airlines has announced that it has taken delivery of the first of an order of 19 Airbus A330-300 aircraft. The aircraft has a two class configuration, with 30 seats in Business Class and 255 in Economy Class. The airline stated that it will progressively use the new aircraft on regional and medium-haul routes between Singapore and cities in Australia and Japan. The first will enter commercial service on 30 March, on the Singapore-Brisbane route.

Divers on Wednesday found the missing jet engine that broke off a US Airways plane when it splashed down in the Hudson River, locating it in mud about 65 feet below the surface. NYPD officers working with a sonar expert from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration had gotten a reading Tuesday of an object 16 feet long and 8 feet wide near the spot where Flight 1549 made its emergency landing. Divers went into the icy, murky water Wednesday and located the left engine in about 10 minutes, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said.

The rest of the Airbus A320, with its right engine still attached, was placed on a barge and has been taken to a New Jersey marina to be studied by investigators. There was no immediate indication when National Transportation Safety Board salvage crews would retrieve the engine from the river bottom. All 155 people on board the flight, which was bound for Charlotte, survived.

Photo: The wreckage of US Airways flight 1549 in the icy waters of the Hudson River prior to recovery (Photo Copyright Gerard Isaacson)

UAL Corp, the parent company of United Airlines, posted a fourth-quarter loss of $1.3 billion and said it would cut 1,000 jobs by the end of 2009. This is in addition to a series of layoffs announced in December. By the completion of all planned layoffs, the airline will have trimmed 30 percent of its work force. In the quarter, the company lost $1.3 billion, or $9.91 a share, as the company was hit hard from losses on fuel hedges, driven by dropping oil prices in the later part of 2008. In the fourth quarter a year ago, the company lost $55 billion, or 47 cents a share.

American Eagle, the regional affiliate of American Airlines, will begin nonstop jet service between Yeager Airport in Charleston, West Virginia (CRW), and New York’s La Guardia Airport (LGA), beginning April 7. American Eagle will operate the twice-daily service with 37-seat Embraer ERJ-135 jets.

Airlines that do business at the world’s busiest airport are playing hardball in talks over new lease agreements, threatening to move some flights to other airports if they can’t maintain competitive costs on fees they pay. The master lease agreements that apply to airlines at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport do not expire until September 2010, but talks between the sides have already heated up. Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines Inc., the world’s biggest carrier, and discount carrier AirTran Airways, a unit of Orlando, Fla.-based AirTran Holdings Inc., say that if their costs are too high they may be forced to move some connecting flights to other airports. Neither Delta nor AirTran is considering pulling out of Atlanta altogether.

Photo: Atlanta Hartsfield Airport is the busiest airport in the world in terms of passengers handled annually. (Photo Copyright Kevin Cook)

The Czech government approved on Monday two-round tender conditions for the sale of national carrier Czech Airlines (CSA), pushing ahead with the privatization despite a deepening global economic crisis. The government plans to sell its 91.5 percent stake in the airline, expected to fetch up to 5 billion crowns ($241.8 million), by September. CSA had a history of losses before breaking even in the past two years thanks to cost-saving measures and the sale of non-core assets. Russia’s Aeroflot, CSA’s fellow member in the SkyTeam alliance, is the only airline that has shown public interest in the Czech airline so far.

Estonian Air is still flying high among Baltic carriers thanks to loans from controlling share holder SAS airlines. The short-term loans will be used to pay salaries, purchase fuel, as well as purchase new aircraft. SAS has given the Estonian airline monthly short-term loans of around 2 million euro, reported Marika Priske, secretary general of the Economy and Communications Ministry.