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.
Premium traffic on international routes rose 1.7% year-on-year in December, the first month since May 2008 that has seen a positive growth rate. Economy traffic, which has been in positive territory since September, improved 5% year-on-year in December, according to the International Air Transport Association. Despite its stronger finish to the year, premium traffic was still down 15.8% for full-year 2009. IATA calculated that premium traffic lost about six years of growth during the latest down cycle, while economy traffic lost just over two years.
Jens Flottau (Frankfurt), Andrew Compart (Washington), Adrian Schofield (Washington)
The Oneworld airline alliance has staved off the potentially disastrous loss of leading Asian member Japan Airlines, allowing it to refocus on major headaches the alliance is dealing with in other parts of the world.
Alaska Airlines saw a healthy surge in demand in January, with mainline traffic rising 9.5% on a capacity hike of just 1%. This increased the carrier’s load factor by six percentage points to 77.7%. For Horizon Air, traffic went up 10.4%, compared to a 1.2% capacity gain, with load factor rising 5.7 points to 68.8%. Mainline on-time rate was 85.7% in January, a big improvement from the 71.5% reported in January 2009.
