This week's ABTN news in brief
Lithuanian Airlines goes out of business
flyLAL - Lithuanian Airlines has gone out of business after it failed to reach a rescue deal with a Swiss investment fund.
A statement by the Baltic carrier said a deal to sell it to SCH Swiss Capital Holdings had fallen through.
It was now unable to continue to run operations or "satisfy the demands of its creditors" and had decided to cease operations from today (January 19).
It last flight was the 19.30pm service last night form Amsterdam to the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.
www.flylal.com
Spain switches from air to rail
Spain is seeing a major switch in travel from air to rail as the country opens more of its high speed train lines.
Rail passengers on the Madrid-Barcelona route have increased by 28% since the last stretch of the track was opened in February.
The rail journey now takes 2 hours 35 minutes with trains travelling at 220mph.
Spain has also opened high speed track linking its capital to Valladolid, Segovia and Malaga.
At the same time, the national airline Iberia cut domestic capacity in December by 21.9% but also saw a drop in its domestic load factor of 5.1% to 68.6% and a drop in revenue of 27.3%.
Whereas 72% of travellers used air a year ago for inter-city journeys, the figure is now down to 60% with experts predicting it will be 50-50 within two years.
www.iberia.es
Frankfurt gets go ahead for expansion
A German court has given the go ahead for work to start on a fourth runway and third terminal at Frankfurt Airport.
The court rejected please that work should be delayed while a series of lawsuits were held.
Environmentalists and local residents had filed suits objecting to noise levels form night time flights.
The court will still hear the suits later this year.
Plans by Fraport AG, owners of the hub, to build a new runway and a third terminal at Germany's largest airport were approved by the state of Hesse, where Frankfurt is located, in December 2007.
www.airportcity-frankfurt.com
Global hotel construction drops 6%
The number of new hotels being built worldwide is falling according to the latest survey from Lodging Econometrics (LE).
The Global 2009 Hotel Pipeline Report has revealed a 6% average worldwide decline in projects and rooms between Q2 and Q3 2008.
The number of projects and new rooms in Europe has fallen 7% and 4% respectively, close to the global average.
Asia Pacific and Africa are among the worst hit overall, with projects down 11% and 9% respectively, although every region has shown a decline.
Despite faring better than most in terms of pipeline projects, room openings in Canada and the Caribbean/Mexico/Central America regions have fallen the most, at 9% and 10% respectively.
LE blamed the decline on recession in some regions, the delayed impact of the banking crisis and the resulting fall in leisure and business travel.
LE said loans and financing have been much harder to attain, affecting large projects the most.
But LE has offered the industry some hope predicting 2,804 new hotels and 425,615 new rooms next year as projects financed before the downturn are completed.
www.lodgingeconometrics.com
Finnair estimates 500 job losses
Finnair hopes to save €25m in personnel expenses with 500 redundancies and temporary lay-offs.
Employment throughout the entire Finnair group will also fall by 400 as fixed-term contracts come to an end, the result of statutory employer-employee ‘YT' negotiations.
Anssi Komulainen, Finnair's senior vp human resources, said: "As a result of this exceptionally long and thorough process, we managed to limit the number of redundancies.
"Lay-offs will be widely applied to the company's personnel, and they will be arranged so as to minimise disruption to the flight programme."
More than 3,000 Finnair staff will be layed-off for 2-3 weeks at a time, another cost saving measure. Others have volunteered to give up their holiday pay.
The YT negotiations began in June last year. Pay cuts and the relinquishing of holiday pay and rises were rejected as alternatives to redundancies last September.
www.finnair.com
First Luggage to dominate after mergers
Door-to-door luggage service First Luggage has merged with its three closest US rivals.
First luggage owns 60% of the new group which now includes Luggage Express, Sports Express and Virtual Bell-Hop.
All four brands will continue to exist with a combined annual turnover of $5m.
Gideon Kasfiner, founder and ceo of First Luggage, said: "This is a great deal for First Luggage, considerably expanding our business and making the company easily the world's dominant player.
"Despite the downturn, we anticipate strong growth rates for the business over the next few years as airlines increasingly look to charge more for passengers' luggage."
www.firstluggage.com
CWT signs deal Business Travel Extras deal
Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT) has signed an agreement with Business Travel Extras, a provider of airport parking and travel-related services.
CWT said a "simple" online booking facility will "unlock significant potential cost savings" for its corporate travel customers.
Nigel Turner, CWT's director of public sector and industry affairs, said: "At a time when all companies are focusing hard on their costs, this service should help our customers to realise further savings in their travel programmes."
www.carlsonwagonlit.com
Dusseldorf Airport breaks record again
Dusseldorf Airport has broken its record for passenger figures for the fifth year running.
The airport broke the 18m mark, carrying 18,151,184 last year. 228,531 aircraft took off and landed from Germany's third largest airport.
The number of passengers and aircraft movements rose 1.8 % and 0.3% respectively compared to 2007.
"The main moving forces of growth in 2008 were Lufthansa and the Air Berlin Group," said an airport spokesman.
Both airlines pushed transit numbers from 5% to 8% on average. Numbers from the US rose by 20% thanks to Lufthansa.
http://www.dus-int.de/dus_en