Ramon Lopez/WASHINGTON DC
US SCHEDULED airlines are expected to report net profits of $2 billion for 1995, says the US Air Transport Association (ATA) in its year-end report.
The ATA says that long-haul carriers earned $2.2 billion in the first nine months of the year, and the organisation is predicting a break-even fourth quarter. As a result, the US airline industry is expected to report its first annual profit since 1989 because of an improved economy, higher air fares and lower fuel prices. Between 1989 and 1994, the nation's scheduled air carriers lost $13 billion.
Safety statistics were marred by the 20 December crash of an American Airlines 757 near Cali, Colombia, claiming 160 lives. Up to that point, US carriers had recorded only one major accident in the year, when scheduled cargo carrier Millon Air lost an aircraft on 28 April in Guatemala City, killing six people.
There were also two fatal accidents, with nine fatalities, among the US regional airlines. One death resulted from a crash in Alaska on 25 February and eight people were killed in an Atlantic Southeast accident in Carrollton, Georgia, on 21 August. This compares with three major airline accidents, with 71 fatalities in 1994, and three fatal accidents with 88 fatalities among the scheduled commuter airlines, the same year.
US airline employment levels at the end of the year had slipped marginally, to 542,500 people, down from the 1994 figure of 543,325. Since 1990, more than 120,000 airline employees have now been laid off or furloughed because of the industry's five-year slump.
ATA member airlines' jet-airliner fleets totaled 4,611 aircraft at mid-year, an increase of 161 from 1994. The industry had nearly $26 billion worth of new aircraft on order in June, in spite of canceling or delaying hundreds of aircraft orders, says the ATA.
Source: Flight International
