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.
Boeing engineers repairing the Ethiopian Airlines 787-8 stranded at London Heathrow Airport for five months since it was badly damaged by an emergency beacon fire have replaced a large section of the upper fuselage structure and refitted the tail unit as part of efforts to return the aircraft to service early next year.
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AirAsia’s Indian joint venture will be delayed a couple of months beyond the planned December launch, says a senior Indian government official. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation’s Director General Arun Mishra says the airline, AirAsia India, must first take possession of its fleet, which requires an import license. Then “we should be able to give the permit in the next two months,” says Mishra. AirAsia in July announced plans to invest $30 million to start a low-cost airline in India with local investors the Tata Group and Telestra Tradeplace.
Trials with free route operations between Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport and eight airports in Italy have reduced flights by up to 35 nm each segment, saving 6 min. of flight time, 200 kg of fuel and 600 kg of emissions. The free route operations were part of the Weekend Free Route for Environmental Efficiency, or We Free, project, which was developed within the Single European Sky ATM Research (Sesar) program and the European Route Network Improvement Plan to boost performance of Europe’s air transport system.
NASA’s Langley Research Center in 2015 expects to begin flying a dynamically-scaled jet-powered unmanned aircraft system (UAS) with swept wings and a T-tail similar in form to a MD-90 to gather data to help the FAA create extended stall envelopes for flight simulators. The FAA earlier this month finalized a rule that will require airlines to begin providing stall recovery and other enhanced training to pilots in the simulator in 2018, a capability the devices do not currently have.
The European Commission (EC) is taking Portugal to the EU’s Court of Justice for failing to guarantee independence of the airport slot coordinator which, the EC asserts, may distort fair competition. The Portuguese slot coordinator is part of Aeroportos de Portugal (ANA), the country’s airports operator, slot coordination personnel are employed by ANA and the coordinator’s budget is approved by the ANA board of administration. The EC considers that under these circumstances the slot coordinator “cannot function independently and autonomously from ANA.”
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Vueling, taking advantage of Alitalia’s financial problems, is developing Rome Fiumicino Airport into its second largest base in Europe and will locate eight Airbus A320s at the carrier’s first base outside of Spain offering full transfer service. The airline says passengers will have access to 550 “Vueling-to-Vueling” city-pairs through Rome Fiumicino.
Judge Sean Lane, who is overseeing AMR Corp.’s Chapter 11 reorganization, yesterday said a decision on the airline’s proposed merger with US Airways could be made in the next few days and likely before the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday on Nov. 28. Approval, which is expected, will allow the two operators to proceed with their consolidation and unite by their new deadline of mid-December. The two companies had planned to complete the merger in August, but this was deferred while the companies settled a dispute with the U.S. Justice Department.
