Bradley Perrett covered China, Japan, South Korea and Australia. He is a Mandarin-speaking Australian.
Before joining Aviation Week in 2006 he was a macroeconomics, politics and aerospace journalist with Reuters. Perrett holds a bachelor’s degree in law from Macquarie University, Sydney. He left Aviation Week in 2020.
A Boeing 737-800 operated by Lion Air struck cattle in a night landing at Gorontalo, Indonesia, on Aug. 6. Two of the 110 passengers aboard suffered minor injuries in the evacuation. Three cows were on the runway when the aircraft, registered PK-LKH, landed at 9:13 p.m., a Lion Air source says, unable to explain why the cows were there. When the landing gear hit one of the animals, the brakes were damaged. “One of the cows also became tangled in one of the rear [main] landing [gear], affecting the steering,” the airline says.
The coming generation of 90-seat turboprops will be more powerful than the aircraft now garnering the most orders, the ATR 72. But some of the intending manufacturers are pushing more than others for high power, and therefore high speed and fast climb—at the cost of fuel efficiency.
