The Biz Buzz

American Shipping Group is now TOTE Inc.

A name familiar in the Tacoma shipping community, TOTE, is now the moniker for a nationwide maritime company.

American Shipping Group, formerly parent company for TOTE, a shipping company connecting Tacoma with Anchorage, has become TOTE Inc.

TOTE Inc. has reorganized American Shipping Group’s five independently managed businesses into three groups, maritime, logistics and ship management. Here’s what’s included in each group:

· TOTE Maritime: Totem Ocean Trailer Express and Sea Star Line

· TOTE Ship Management: Interocean American Shipping

· TOTE Logistics: Alta Logistics and Spectrum Logistics

The company chief executive said the renaming decision was straightforward.

“We …

Russian hockey league teams will fly only in Western jets

Teams in Russia’s Continental Hockey League henceforth will only fly in Boeing or Airbus jets, the league decided this week.

The decision to ban flying in Russian-made planes came in the wake of a September crash that killed all members of a Russian hockey team as its Russian-made Yak-42 was attempting to takeoff.

The league also banned flights in aircraft more than 15 years old.

Airlines selected by the clubs for charter flights also must meet stringent financial and training standards.

An investigation of the crash blamed the tragedy not on the plane, but on insufficient flight crew training.

That …

Draft plan calls for Port of Tacoma to develop common user terminal

The draft of a new Port of Tacoma strategic plan calls for creation of a new common user container terminal, more cost-competitive rail service, development of the Tacoma as a strategic military port and attraction of more break bulk business to its terminals.

Those and other initiatives are designed to restart the port’s growth engine, which has been sputtering since the start of the recession more than three years ago.

The draft plan is the result of more than a year’s work by consultants, port commissioners and staff members.

A common user terminal would allow smaller customers who don’t want …

UK will buy eighth C-17 from Boeing

Britain’s Prime Minister, David Cameron, announced this week the country will buy another C-17 military cargo plane from Boeing.

The four-engine jet will augment the United Kingdom’s existing fleet of C-17s and C-130 cargo planes. The UK has ordered 22 A400M turboprop cargo planes from Airbus, but those planes’ development is still running behind schedule. The first A440M is now set to be delivered to the UK in 2015.

Boeing is now aggressively marketing the C-17 to foreign governments to keep its Long Beach, Calif., production line operating. The U.S. Air Force has said it won’t be ordering more of …

Frontier Airlines adding Sea-Tac service to Colorado Springs

For the first time since the demise of low-cost carrier Western Pacific Airlines, Sea-Tac will have a non-stop connection to Colorado Springs beginning this spring.

Frontier Airlines announced this week it will begin four-times weekly service to the southern Colorado city on May 18. The flight will connect the two cities on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays through Sept. 16. On the days, Frontier isn’t flying the Sea-Tac-to-Colorado Springs route, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, the airline will provide non-stop service from Colorado Springs to Portland.

The airline will serve the route with an Airbus A319 aircraft with 138 seats. …

Boeing brags its new plane’s range will match or surpass Airbus

The upcoming version of Boeing’s best-selling 737, the 737 Max, will have range as good or better than its rival plane from Airbus, the A320neo, a Boeing vice-president claimed today.

Randy Tinseth, Boeing’s commercial airplanes marketing vice president, told FlightGlobal that the Max will have a non-stop reach that make it more than competitive with Airbus’s new version of its A320 family of single-aisle jets.

In recent weeks, Airbus executives have disparaged the 737 Max, claiming the plane won’t roll out on time and won’t meet Boeing’s claims for fuel mileage or weight.

The 737 Max is now scheduled to …

Air India seeking $1 billion from Boeing for airliner delivery delays

India’s financially-ailing flag carrier, Air India, is asking Boeing for up to $1 billion to compensate it for delays in delivering 787 Dreamliners to the airline, sources in India said today.

Reuters India reported the airline is in negotiations with Boeing over the compensation issue.

Air India is already some $4 billion in debt and has asked the Indian government for help to remain afloat. The airline isn’t the only Indian carrier suffering in the current economy. The company’s three other major airlines, Kingfisher, SpiceJet and Jet Airways, saw their stock decline steeply last year as they battled for market …

Good Samaritan Hospital becomes state’s first LEED Gold hospital

The latest addition to Puyallup’s MultiCare Good Samaritan Hospital, the nine-story, $300-million Dally Tower, has received the Green Building Institute’s LEED Gold award.

The hospital tower, which doubled the space at Good Samaritan, is the state’s first hospital structure to win the high award for energy and resources conservation, said Tacoma’s MultiCare Health System, the hospital’s parent company.

The tower opened for patients a year ago. The hospital tower includes 78 patient rooms and a new emergency department for the hospital.

The gold award was based on the new building’s water and energy saving features including two green roofs, rain …

Dreamliner demonstrates long reach with 7,679-mile flight from Seattle to Bangkok

Continuing with its year-long publicity and familiarization tour, Boeing’s sixth test 787 Dreamliner today landed in Bangkok after a 7,679-mile non-stop flight from Seattle.

Bangkok is the latest stop on a tour that has already has taken the plane to China, the Mideast, Africa, Ireland and several destinations in the U.S.

The composite-bodied aircraft is some 20 percent more fuel efficient than its metal-bodied predecessors in the twin-engine, mid-sized airline fleet allowing it to fly non-stop between more distant cities.

The aircraft Saturday is scheduled to fly from Bangkok to Singapore for that city’s annual air show where …

TrueBlue net income up 91 percent in fourth quarter

A brisk demand from energy companies and holiday businesses for temporary workers gave Tacoma-based labor provider TrueBlue Inc. an earnings boost in the fourth quarter, the company reported today.

TrueBlue’s net income was up 91 percent for the fourth quarter of 2011 to $7.56 million from $3.96 million in the fourth quarter of 2010. Revenues during last year’s fourth quarter were $350.2 million, up 12 percent from the same period a year earlier. Adjusted for the one-week shorter accounting period in 2011, revenues were up 22 percent, the company said.

For the entire year, net income was up 55.2 percent …