Whether by coincidence or divine providence, the fact that Boeing has acknowledged it faces significant challenges to delivering the 787 on schedule just weeks before the first A380 delivers to Singapore Airlines helps to put some perspective on the 18-month delay that Airbus faced with the A380. With first flight of the 787 now set for late November or December, Boeing may have fewer than six months to complete the flight test and certification program in time for the planned May 2008 delivery to ANA.

No one connected with commercial aviation can watch what is happening in Brazil without feeling a strong sense of dismay and deja vu. A second horrific airline accident within 10 months has thrown the air transport system into chaos and the government into crisis and caused the Brazilian populace, including, apparently, the country's president, to lose faith in the safety of air travel.

ne of the staples of professional wrestling (we're talking about the stuff on TV, not the Olympic sport) is that the referee is always looking the other way when the bad guy picks up a chair to bash his opponent in the head. But that same referee is always perfectly positioned to spot the most minute rule infraction by the good guy.

What do airlines and personal computers have in common? Well, it turns out that both are equally bad for the environment. According to a study cited in the Belfast Telegraph, the information technology industry generates around 2% of CO2 emissions worldwide or about the same as commercial aviation (1.6%). Perhaps now Greenpeace, which has criticized "binge traveling" (see Odds & Ends, p. 128), will go after "binge downloading" and "binge texting" and the harm these 21st century practices ostensibly are doing to the environment.

To get a sense of the excitement that the possibility of owning an airport is generating these days, consider that within the past six weeks, more than $6 billion was committed separately to purchase control of three of them. None of the airportsBudapest Ferihegy, Antalya Airport in Turkey and Leeds Airport in the UKcracked ACI's Top 50 last year, but that didn't matter.

We'll admit to having been caught off guard by the European Council's approval of the US-EU open skies agreement (set to be signed formally at the end of April). With Washington having withdrawn its foreign control NPRM last fall and two previous open skies agreements having failed, there seemed little reason to predict success this time. We also had not expected the Franco-German alignment to prevail over the UK aviation establishment, which had made clear its lack of enthusiasm for the deal.

Back in the days when most people still got their information from the local newspaper, editors had a saying: "Never foul up on a slow news day." Unfortunately, in the era of the 1,440-min. daily news cycle, every day is a slow news day because no amount of information can satisfy the appetite of the media monster technology has spawned.

IS IT SAFE? WILL IT MITIGATE A looming pilot shortage? Will it reduce training costs over time? These are but a few of the questions raised by ICAO's new Multi-Crew Pilot License, an alternative method of training air transport pilots by relying far more heavily on simulators than on actual flying time and greatly compressing the amount of time it takes to train an airline pilot (ATW, 10/05, p. 51). For example, under the MPL the applicant may spend as few as 60-70 hr. at the controls of an actual aircraft.