The FAA is to field a NASA-developed tool for flight-sequencing and spacing at nine major U.S. airports in 2018-22 to enable better use of fuel-saving optimized-profile descents.
Allegiant Air announced that this fall it will add four new routes to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, all with less-than-daily service. Allegiant will start Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on Oct. 1, and Akron-Canton, Ohio, on Oct. 2. It will begin Rochester, New York, on Oct. 9, and Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Dec. 16. Allegiant—which will fly to 16 cities from Fort Lauderdale by December—will be only airline flying nonstop on all of the new routes. Rochester is a new market for Allegiant.
“The industry has clearly shown there is no need” for such an aircraft, Spohr told Aviation Daily in an interview at the Star Alliance Chief Executive Board (CEB) meeting. “Passengers are demanding more and more point-to-point directions; they will only connect at hubs when it is necessary or cheaper.”
The airline will be the 28th member of the alliance. It is filling a gap left by the departure of TAM, which switched alliances to Oneworld as a result of its merger with LAN Airlines to form the LATAM Group.
Rolls-Royce is entering the concept design phase for the High Temperature Turbine Technology demonstrator (HT3), which is designed to deliver advanced turbine technology for the company’s recently unveiled Advance and UltraFan engine developments.
The cutback to just 12 aircraft per year comes despite signs of increasing health in the international freight market and a yet-to-be-finalized deal with cargo-operator Volga-Dnepr, announced at last week’s Paris Air Show for up to 20 aircraft.
The airline, announced as a new Star Alliance member at the group’s Chief Executive Board meeting, could have access to 10 Airbus A350-900s on order by its parent Synergy Group, which also controls 52% of Avianca Holdings in Colombia.
The announcement demonstrates JetBlue’s commitment to Boston, from where it operated only 54 daily departures as recently as 2008. By January 2016, JetBlue will reach 118 daily flights, and by summer 2016, it expects to have 140.
Air Canada seeks a Rouge fleet of 25 widebody aircraft, and while it has enough 767s at mainline that it could transfer over, the airline has decided that not all of the aircraft will make the switch.
Delays with the NextGen airspace modernization program should not be used as a reason for privatizing U.S. air traffic control, says Edward Bolton, head of the program, who is concerned the spin-off of ATC from the FAA could disrupt the progress now being made.
Eduardo Munhos de Campos, who was vice president for sales at Embraer until October last year, is heading efforts to establish a single, unified worldwide commercial structure for the Sukhoi Superjet 100 (SSJ100). Plans to bundle the commercial and marketing activities of Superjet Sukhoi Civil Aircraft Company (SCAC) and its Italy-based affiliate, Superjet International (SJI), were made more than a year ago—but progress had been slow—partially due to the restructuring of Finmeccanica and management changes at United Aircraft Corporation (UAC).
ICAO found oversight problems with Thailand’s Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) during a safety audit earlier this year, and as a result some countries—including Japan— have restricted new service by Thai airlines.
The company has confirmed it will install the vortex generators in front of the aircraft’s Fuel Over Pressure Protector cavities, which when left unmodified can produce a high-pitched whistling noise, generally recorded when the aircraft is around 10-25 mi. from touchdown.
Year-over-year premium international traffic was up 4.9% in April, bettering March 4.6%, IATA notes. But bigger-picture trends continue to suggest the relative stagnation since mid-2014 is not going away anytime soon.
The carrier’s previous CEO, Stefan Pichler, departed to lead Air Berlin in February, although he remained as a board member with Fiji Airways. The carrier confirmed it was interviewing three candidates in April, and Viljoen was believed to be one of them.
The two-year research project, funded by the U.K. Civil Aviation Authority, focused on methods of gauging the fatigue levels of individual pilots rather than taking a generic approach of controlling duty hours, a practice used in fatigue-risk-management systems.
Aerospace must embrace the technology sector or risk its business being disrupted by the fast pace of development in other industries, says Airbus Group CEO Tom Enders, speaking at the AIAA Aviation 2015 forum here June 22.
American Airlines is bolstering its schedule for ski season, adding two new winter routes from Los Angeles and three from Chicago. From Los Angeles, American will fly an Airbus A319 to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and an Embraer 175 to Montrose, Colorado. From Chicago, American will fly A319s to Jackson Hole, E175s to Montrose, and Bombardier CRJ-700s to Aspen, Colorado. All services will operate daily from Dec. 17, 2015-Jan. 4, 2016, and on Saturdays through April 4.
Delta says the two gates were “abandoned” by United Airlines, and Southwest has been operating flights from the gates, giving it effective control of 18 of the 20 gates at Love Field. Virgin America operates the other two gates.
Safe Air works extensively with military customers, but also performs some MRO work for Air New Zealand as well as for airlines in Australia and elsewhere.
