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.
Japanese and U.S. negotiators were moving closer to an Open-Skies accord at press-time Friday after making considerable progress throughout the day. Sources said the two differences between the parties had been whittled down dramatically, and it looked like a deal could be achieved. This represented a major change from the situation Thursday afternoon, when it appeared the negotiators were running out of time (DAILY, Dec. 11).
Congress last week approved a three-month extension for the FAA’s operating authority, with the Senate passing the measure on Thursday night. The Senate approval was by unanimous consent, and followed an earlier vote by the House. The extension is through the end of March, and is the eighth since the FAA’s last full authorization expired in 2007.
The fallout continues from an air traffic control problem last month that caused nationwide flight delays, with FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt ordering a review panel to examine the Nov. 19 outage of the FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure (FTI). Hundreds of business jet operations and airline services nationwide were delayed when a glitch in the FTI disrupted air traffic management services (BA, Nov. 23/237).
