This Week in WAN

World Airline News, June 2, 2000

June 4, 1999

Chinese airlines were offloading expensive wide-body aircraft to their foreign routes as a final attempt to offset increasing losses at home as the back end of the Asian financial crisis continued to ravage the South east Asian state. The move followed drastic cuts in domestic airfares, a conciliatory reduction by the Civil Aviation Authority of China (CAAC) in airline ticket taxes in half to five percent, and CAAC demands to slash internal capacity by five percent.

The UK's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) - voicing European concerns that would eventually escalate to the hushkit dispute with the U.S. - stated that a new aircraft noise standard should be established by the end of 2001 if the industry was to maintain compliance of environmental law being ratified throughout the European Union. "More airports will regulate (noise controls) if governments do not and while that might be attractive to politicians as they don't need to make a decision, I am not convinced that is the best answer for the industry," Dave Tompkins, head of operations at the CAA's Economic Regulation Group, said. Elsewhere, Alfred Kahn, the father of U.S. airline deregulation, warned that predatory pricing practices, such as those of American Airlines at Dallas/Ft. Worth under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice could lead to re-regulation.