May 21, 2012 - 12:10 PM ET
IJet named co-founder and president Bruce McIndoe to serve as CEO and appointed travel and medical assistance veteran John Rose as COO. McIndoe succeeded Stephen Hoffman, who left the travel risk management and intelligence firm to "pursue other professional interests," according to iJet. Rose is charged with overseeing day-to-day operations and business development. His career has included 15 years at travel insurance and assistance firm Travel Guard Worldwide and a stint as a travel and information program director for the U.S. Department of Defense. IJet said the new appointments "follow four years of double-digit revenue growth for the company."
May 18, 2012 - 01:30 PM ET
The number of passengers traveling in international premium cabins grew by nearly 9 percent year over year in March according to data
released this week by the International Air Transport Association. While the
impact of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the political uprisings in the
Middle East curtailed premium volumes in March 2011 and therefore
"exaggerated" the gains this year, IATA indicated that premium
travel, underpinned by healthy business demand, remained strong. "We
estimate that premium travel was about 4 percentage points higher this March
than it would have been in the absence of the Arab Spring and Japan
earthquake," according to IATA, "but that still has the market
growing at a solid rate of over 4 percent in March."
May 10, 2012 - 10:25 AM ET
GDS industry bookings in April kept up a 4.6 percent year-over-year rate of increase enjoyed during the first quarter, but April growth in the Americas was more sluggish at under 1 percent, according to Travelport executives. The officials were speaking with analysts about Travelport's March quarter results, including a 3.5 percent increase in Americas segments booked. Europe fell 1.9 percent and the company's smaller Middle East-Africa and Asia-Pacific regions grew by 5.7 percent and 3.9 percent, respectively. Overall Travelport segments increased 2.4 percent to 98 million in the quarter. Travelport narrowed its net loss in the March quarter to $11 million from $23 million a year earlier on 4 percent higher revenues of $550 million.
May 09, 2012 - 01:40 PM ET
Concur announced a duty-of-care service to help companies locate and alert travelers and employees in a particular region in an
emergency. The service links a corporate human resources database with travel
bookings and itinerary data to enable companies to communicate to those
affected via email, text or voice calls, Concur president and COO Raj Singh
told attendees at its user group meeting.
May 08, 2012 - 12:40 PM ET
The Global Business Travel Association appointed two travel buyers and two supplier representatives to a new advisory board for Asia. Buyer members are HSBC corporate business travel manager Jenny Ng and UBS Asia/Pacifc regional travel head Debbie Winston. Supplier members are Carlson Wagonlit Travel global business travel consultant Paul Boyle and Roger Pfund, Radius Asia/Pacific general manager for corporate sales and client services. According to GBTA Asia regional director Welf Ebeling, "Our first tasks as a group will be to establish the roadmap for education in the region and to identify a chairman to head up the new GBTA Asia advisory board in the long term. The network will be looking for further board members in the following months to be fairly represented in this ethnically and politically diverse region."
May 07, 2012 - 11:50 AM ET
Delta Air Lines officially has abandoned the Atlanta-Shanghai route. According to a May 3 memo filed with the U.S. Department of Transportation, Delta returned to DOT the seven U.S.-China frequencies it had been using to serve the route. Those frequencies, according to a DOT spokesman, will be made available "to another carrier that requests them." The carrier launched nonstop service between the two cities in 2008, but suspended it twice, first in light of "the economic slowdown" and then in January 2012 as a result of high fuel prices and "our overall capacity reduction."