The state-run Airport Authority of India (AAI), which manages the majority of the country’s airports, is aiming to earn $240 million during the current financial year, which ends March 31. The profit is expected to come as a result of growth in revenue after the country’s Airports Economic Regulatory Authority (AERA) recently revised airport tariffs, AAI Chairman V. P. Agrawal says.
Click here to view the pdf Top Carriers: Arab Air Carrier Organization Monthly Traffic: October 2013 Top Carriers: Arab Air Carrier Organization Monthly Traffic: October 2013 RPK % Chg. ASK % Chg.
The FAA has ordered inspections of Boeing 747-8 forward engine mount barrel nuts and bolts after cracked nuts were found on two aircraft, including a Boeing test airframe. The Dec. 2 airworthiness directive (AD), which was immediately adopted, orders operators to follow initial and repetitive inspection instructions issued by Boeing in a Sept. 27 alert service bulletin. The bulletin has yet to be made public.
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines plans to transfer its Boeing 737 fleet to regional subsidiary KLM Cityhopper. The decision was taken after the airline failed to reach an agreement with its cabin crew union over unit cost reductions as part of the broader restructuring effort, dubbed Transform 2015 plan. The KLM fleet transition is to generate €20 million ($27 million) in savings.
China Southern Airlines and Qantas have struck a code-share agreement that will give the Chinese carrier access to new Australian cities, and the Australian carrier a second gateway into mainland China. The deal will enable Qantas to put its code on China Southern’s flights from Australia to its hub at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, and beyond that to four Chinese cities. In return, China Southern will code-share on 10 domestic routes from three of its Australian gateways.
Transport Canada has ordered Bombardier Q400 operators to correct a “design deficiency” that can trigger uncommanded nose wheel steering inputs. The flaw is in the steering control unit (SCU), which can develop an open circuit that goes undetected. “A sustained open circuit could result in an uncommanded and unannunciated nose wheel steering input,” the directive says. Bombardier learned about the issue after probing an in-service incident of uncommanded nose wheel steering during pushback from a gate.
Maintenance-management applications at even the largest airlines are still a mixture of old systems, newer applications and plenty of work in progress. Among the carriers that the International Air Transport Association ranks as the Top 10 in passengers transported in 2012, those in the U.S. are furthest behind, those in Europe are the most advanced and one in China is taking an in-house approach.
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Click here to view the pdf Arab Air Carrier Organization Monthly Traffic, September 2013 Arab Air Carrier Organization Monthly Traffic, September 2013 RPK % Chg. ASK % Chg.
The U.S. Embassy in Manila says a FAA team is currently in the Philippines to discuss the country’s safety classification, although a further visit may be needed before an upgrade can be granted. FAA officials are meeting with their counterparts in the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP), under the auspices of the FAA’s international aviation safety assessment program. This appears to be a higher-level delegation than the FAA teams that have visited the Philippines over the past several months.
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Calling Africa “high on [its] priority list,” the International Air Transportation Association (IATA) is dedicating resources to help the continent’s airlines improve safety as part of the region’s broader effort to meet global standards by 2016, IATA CEO and Director General Tony Tyler says. One of IATA’s initiatives is providing training to 10 African airlines so they can perform IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) gap analyses to identify areas ripe for improvement.
Fiji Airways is taking another step in its strategic overhaul by rebranding its regional subsidiary Pacific Sun as Fiji Link. The new name will align better with the parent carrier, which changed its own name from Air Pacific to Fiji Airways in June. The rebranding of the regional operation as Fiji Link will become official in the middle of 2014, when it takes delivery of a leased ATR 72-600.
AMR Corp. and US Airways are seeking to close their merger on Dec. 9, the Nov. 27 approval of the Dallas/Fort Worth-based carrier’s reorganization plan by the bankruptcy court overseeing its Chapter 11 restructuring.
Ryanair plans to set up a base at Brussels Airport in February as part of its strategy to add more primary airports to its network and attract premium passengers. The low-cost carrier (LCC), which revealed on Nov. 26 it would establish a base at Italy’s Rome Fiumicino Airport, also confirmed it will introduce flexible fares for business passengers in the first quarter of next year 2014 and that it is in talks with several global distribution system (GDS) companies and online travel agents, including Google.
Virgin America by mid-2014 will likely be the first airline to begin using a new NASA-developed software application designed to help pilots save time or fuel by optimizing routing and altitude during the climb and cruise portion of a flight. The capabilities are part of the NASA Langley Research Center’s Traffic Aware Planner (TAP), an advisory application designed to be installed on electronic flight bags (EFBs) in the cockpit. Armed with a time or fuel-saving alternative, pilots contact air traffic control to ask for a change to their route and altitude.
The world will not change on Sept. 30, 2015, the deadline set by Congress for the FAA to ensure safe integration of civil unmanned aircraft systems into the U.S. National Airspace System (NAS). But it should be a world in which operators of civil unmanned aircraft systems (UAS)—public entities and commercial enterprises—will find it easier to gain access to the skies.
Airbus is offering incentives for A320-family operators to upgrade legacy flight management guidance computers (FMGCs) with newer systems designed to prevent runway overruns, according to a European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) bulletin. The program, in place since mid-summer, targets about 385 older A319s, A320s and A321s currently in service. The program replaces FMGCs with updated logic and Runway Overrun Warning/ Runway Overrun Protection System (ROW/ROPS).
Indonesia’s Lion Air is moving closer to completing the first phase of its new maintenance, repair and overhaul facility in Batam, which will help it handle the massive number of aircraft deliveries the carrier has scheduled and make it a player in the third-party MRO market.
Airbus A380 operators are facing mandatory checks for fatigue cracking in a specific belly area after scheduled maintenance checks uncovered damage. The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has issued a proposed airworthiness directive (PAD 13-173) that, if adopted, would require “detailed inspections” along the belly frame leading edge profile at fuselage frames 35-37.
The 34-member working group (WG) that studied flight path management agrees that airline pilots need more tools to maintain so-called hand-flying skills, but stopped short of suggesting specific remedies, or even agreeing on a baseline for what solid manual piloting means.
