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 U.S. Air Mobility Command this week awarded an estimated $2.3 billion in contracts to civil air carriers, slightly more than the $2.2 billion awarded last year.
U.S. airline passenger numbers grew just 0.9% for the first six months of the year, according to statistics released recently by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Unsurprisingly, U.S. carriers' international passenger numbers grew fastest, up 5.9% in the first half of the year compared with 0.2% growth in domestic travelers. Traffic increased 2.6% while capacity dropped 0.6%. Load factor increased by 2.5 percentage points to 79.5%.
Controllers at New Delhi's Indira Ghandi Airport have begun operational use of a new airport surface monitoring system installed by Sensis Corp. The Surface Movement Guidance and Control System (A-SMGCS) gives better situational awareness and conflict alerts, integrating a range of surveillance sources such as multilateration, radar and automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B). The New Delhi system provides taxi route conformance monitoring, and controllers are alerted when an aircraft deviates from its assigned taxi route.
