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.
FAA's annual aviation forecast shows that airlines are keeping a tighter lid on capacity than the agency expected, while growth in other indicators, such as load factor and yield, is beating earlier projections. The agency believes U.S. system capacity will rise by 2.8% this year, down from previous forecasts of 4.6% growth. Capacity actually shrank by 0.2% last year -- versus FAA's prediction of a 0.9% rise -- although both numbers are obviously close to flat. The new estimates are part of FAA's 2007 Aerospace Forecast that was released yesterday.
A House oversight hearing yesterday proved once again what a tough task FAA faces in convincing lawmakers to approve a new aviation funding system -- and also demonstrated the strength of the general aviation lobby on Capitol Hill. Several members of the House aviation subcommittee told FAA Administrator Marion Blakey they are concerned that the new funding system will increase GA costs too much. These lawmakers also focused on another complaint by GA industry groups, that collecting user fees will create new bureaucratic costs.
The LAN Airlines group recently reported its February load factor climbed by five points to 80.5%, with international loads showing the largest increase. Systemwide traffic jumped 27.6% for the month on a 19.7% capacity increase. International traffic -- which comprised 87% of total passenger traffic -- increased 31.3%, compared with a 23% capacity increase. This resulted in international load factor growth of 5.2 points to 82.1%. Domestic traffic in Chile was up 7.3% on a capacity hike of 3.8%, for a load factor rise of 2.3 points to 71%.
