Adrian is Auckland bureau chief for Aviation Week, based in New Zealand. He covers commercial aviation in the Asia-Pacific region.
Adrian was previously based in Aviation Week’s Washington office for nine years, writing for a range of the group’s publications and covering many aspects of the commercial aviation industry. He has won Australasian and international awards for his aviation writing.
Prior to joining Aviation Week in 2002, Adrian covered aviation industry and policy issues for two other publishing companies in Washington. He has also worked for newspapers in Texas and New Zealand, covering a wide range of topics. Adrian graduated from Auckland University with a degree in history and English in 1992.
The grounding of Qantas’s six Airbus A380s due to a Nov. 4 engine failure has caused major operational headaches for the carrier. The 450-seaters carry a large proportion of passengers on the airline’s key long-haul routes to Los Angeles and London and a fifth of its international travelers overall. The first problem Qantas faced was how to handle more than 1,200 stranded passengers, mostly in Los Angeles. The carrier scrambled to put more Boeing 747-400s on its A380 routes and cleared the backlog by Nov. 8.
Qantas Airways has reshuffled its fleet in order to provide a “contingency schedule” while its Airbus A380s remain grounded. The carrier previously said that its A380s would not return to service before Nov. 12, but its latest statement gives no timetable. The airline is merely saying that the A380s “will not return to service until there is complete certainty that the fleet can operate safely.”
Qantas Airways has removed three Airbus A380 engines after finding problems during checks, and at least two have been replaced with spare engines. All six of Qantas’ A380s have been grounded for examination, following the uncontained failure of a Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine that forced flight QF32 to return to Singapore on Nov. 4.
