Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Contracting Opportunity Announcement The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority has issued a solicitation for the following project: RFP 1-14-C005: Air Service Development Consultant
If an airline orders more than 100 new aircraft, then two months later says that 95% of its annual maintenance and engineering contracted work is up for re-tender by 2017, the industry should take note. While EasyJet did exactly this in July and September, the news does not signal a seismic shift in its operations. Rather, the carrier is continuing to do what it does well—run a lean, low-cost operation. EasyJet considered proposals from Airbus, Boeing and Bombardier over a 20-month period, but Airbus’s final price seemed to clinch the deal.
Airbus and Copenhagen-headquartered Satair in February plan to open their first joint warehouse, a facility in Singapore. Both companies already operate their own spares and sales offices in Singapore, but this new joint facility will consolidate their operations to gain synergies and triple the number of spare parts available, Marcus Jungermann, Airbus’s vice president-material and logistics operations, tells Aviation Week on the sidelines of MRO Europe in London.
While at least three new entrant low-cost carriers (LCCs) are preparing to launch in Thailand, incumbent LCC Thai AirAsia is not standing still, adding aircraft and routes to strengthen its network. Thai AirAsia has had three Airbus A320s delivered this year, bringing its total to 30 A320s. It expects to receive another five by the end of the year, making 2013 the carrier’s biggest year for growth since it was established in 2004, a Thai AirAsia spokeswoman tells Aviation Week. Another eight A320 deliveries are scheduled for 2014.
GE Aviation, expanding on an existing program, is developing a used life-limited parts (LLPs) history designation that will certify a General Electric powerplant’s most critical parts as being operated amid the most optimal configurations. Under the TRUEngine LLP program—announced yesterday in London at MRO Europe—LLPs that are maintained to the manufacturer’s standards and operated with all so-called influencing parts maintained to those standards will be stamped TRUEngine LLP-certified.
Airbus today may officially launch a new version of its A330 widebody at the Beijing Aviation Expo. “We are going to have a product announcement in Beijing,” Airbus Chief Operating Officer-Customers John Leahy said yesterday at an event in London, although he declined to comment further.
Driven largely by rapid growth in emerging markets, Airbus expects that airlines and lessors will order close to 30,000 new aircraft over the next 20 years. Only around 10,000 of these will be used to replace older jets; around two-thirds of the demand will come from the expected growth, Airbus says in the latest version of its Global Market Forecast. Despite the slow sales of its A380, the manufacturer remains adamant that around 1,700 such aircraft will be needed in the next 20 years.
Stagnation in Europe’s airline industry will be a drag on the region’s aircraft aftermarket, which will grow slower than the world average over the next decade despite measurable expansion in Eastern Europe, forecasts revealed at Aviation Week’s MRO Europe conference.
Electric propulsion is already here, albeit on a small scale, and now NASA is looking ahead to the technology that would be required to power a regional aircraft in 10-20 years or a narrowbody airliner in 30-40 years. But the agency plans to start small, with tests to first understand, then model the behavior and efficiency of electric propulsion system components. These will feed into ground, and potentially flight, tests of a distributed propulsion system that would be closely integrated with the airframe.
The Luxembourg government is in talks with four bidders over the sale of its 35% stake in Cargolux, including Chinese investor Henan Civil Aviation Development and Investment Co. (HNCA). “The HNCA company, being one of the potential candidates which have expressed their interest in the Cargolux stake, is in close talks with Luxembourg,” the government said in a statement. The government would not disclose any more details.
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Allegiant Air is slowly returning MD-80s to service with compliant evacuation slides, and remains on track to put all of its available MD-80s back into service by Oct. 1, the carrier says. The airline late last week grounded all 49 of its in-service MD-80s to inspect emergency slides after discovering that its inspection intervals did not comply with slide manufacturer Zodiac’s standards. By the end of Sept. 23, the airline had 32 MD-80s back in service, and expected to be caught up on its flight schedule by the beginning of service today.
London Gatwick Airport says the U.K.’s economy would benefit more from a second runway at Gatwick rather than a third at London Heathrow Airport. Stewart Wingate, Gatwick’s CEO, tells the Financial Times that a move by one of the three alliances from Heathrow to the city’s second airport would be a prerequisite for the runway expansion to proceed. “If an alliance were to move down at some future point into Gatwick, not only would there be room for the alliance to grow—from a U.K.
The boards of directors at AMR Corp. and US Airways Group have, as expected, approved an extension to their proposed merger agreement, a decision that allows the two companies to pursue legal action against the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) without fear of breaching a contractual deadline to finalize the deal.
With natural gas forecast to be relatively cheap and abundant in the U.S. for decades to come, the Energy Department is funding research aimed at reducing the cost of gas-to-liquid (GTL) conversion for transportation fuels. The Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (Arpa-E) has awarded $34 million in contracts to 15 projects to develop biocatalyst technologies to convert natural gas to liquid fuels. Another $33 million has been awarded for 18 contracts to develop new ways of producing lightweight metals.
Allegiant Air expects to need at least another week before its flight schedule is disruption-free and its entire MD-80 fleet is available, as it works to get the model’s evacuation slides in compliance with manufacturer’s recommendations.
AirAsia has taken another step toward aligning its Philippines operations with the rebranding of Zest Airways, one of two local carriers partly owned by AirAsia. Philippine aviation authorities granted approval for the carrier to change its name to AirAsia Zest, and the new aircraft livery will feature the AirAsia group’s familiar red and white pattern.
