Most non-aviation people believe life’s lone certainties are death and taxes. Those who understand aircraft operations know there is at least one more: maintenance downtime.
The leaders of United Airlines and Lufthansa say they are alarmed by the lines for inbound travelers at U.S. airports at a time when sequestration-related budget cuts may be making them worse.
Saab Sensis has won a contract from NASA to develop scenario-based verification and validation methods for researchers developing new automated systems for the aviation industry. The work is part of a broader effort within NASA’s Aviation Safety Program and the aerospace industry to develop tools to assess the safety of automated systems in air traffic control and in cockpits for both current and future operational concepts.
FAA inspectors and systems specialists are still sorting out where services may be fully scaled back as they prepare for rolling furloughs set to take effect April 21 under sequestration. But they do know that the cuts will be significant and have a ripple effect once in place. Along with shuttering contract towers and furloughing controller staff, thousands of FAA inspectors and systems specialists who maintain the air traffic control system are facing shortened weeks and up to 11 days of furlough over the remaining five months of the fiscal year.
Boeing yesterday conducted a flight test on LN86, the aircraft being used for 787 tests, which the company says were unrelated to a fix for the aircraft’s lithium-ion batteries. The aircraft, also known by its Boeing production designation as ZA272, originally was expected to make a test flight on March 30, but for unknown reasons this was canceled. Boeing says the “flight is unrelated to the ongoing 787 battery certifcation testing. The battery cerification demonstration flight will take place in the coming days.”
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Airlines for America, United Airlines and American Airlines are urging the U.S. Transportation Department (DOT) to follow through on its threat to punish Alitalia unless Italian authorities change the differentiated fee structure at their country’s airports.
Click here to view the pdf Top Carriers: Berlin Tegel - Munich, March 15-21, 2013, Ranked By Scheduled Seats Top Carriers: Berlin Tegel - Munich, March 15-21, 2013, Ranked By Scheduled Seats Daily Each Way
Lufthansa Group will use about two-thirds of the long-haul order it plans to place later this year for replacement and the remaining third for growth, says Juergen Weber, chairman of the carrier’s supervisory board. Weber will not disclose the number of jets the airline plans to order, but says that at the very least it will be sufficient to replace the Airbus A340 and Boeing 747-400 aircraft in its fleet. The carrier currently has 48 A340s and 25 747-400s in service.
As the aviation community braces for a wave of contract air traffic control tower closings beginning next month, key House and Senate Republican lawmakers are questioning the decisions behind the closures.
The Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (Speea) is “shocked” to discover that Boeing “intends to eliminate Flight Standards and Simulator Instruction pilot positions” when it moves all pilot training to its Miami facility. The company says it informed the union that it does not have “open positions for those [job] classifications” in Miami within Boeing Flight Services (BFS), the business unit that operates its training centers.
Malaysia’s Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) has appointed Italian company ENAV to improve air traffic management (ATM) and throughput at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA), Malaysia’s busiest hub. Under a separate initiative, it also plans to introduce performance-based navigation (PBN) procedures at KLIA. ENAV was appointed after a competitive tender process, DCA Director General Azharuddin Abdul Rahman told Aviation Week last week on the sidelines of the LIMA Airshow in Langkawi, Malaysia.
The FAA’s sequester-driven move to close 149 airport towers likely will delay some 1,500 scheduled weekly flights at 55 airports nationwide, slamming regional flights operated by the big U.S. majors and many others. A new study from masFlight, the aviation operations-data specialist, concludes that some 22 airports could see 10 or more flights per hour affected at peak times, with arrival and departure delays likely, especially in bad weather, as regional air traffic control centers struggle to sequence and meter clearances to maintain aircraft separation.
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The capacity cuts prompted by the consolidation of the largest U.S. airlines has enabled the sustained profits that are starting to attract long-term investors, says United Continental Holdings Chairman, President and CEO Jeff Smisek. “Capacity discipline has been incredibly valuable to this industry,” Smisek said last week in a policy-laden speech at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Aviation Summit in Washington. “Capacity discipline is profit maximizing,” added Smisek, noting that consolidation also makes airlines more efficient.
A lawsuit filed by the Spokane Washington Airport Board against the FAA’s planned closure of the air traffic control tower at Felts Airfield early in April questions the agency’s logic in deciding which towers should be shuttered. The FAA on March 22 said it would close 149 contractor-staffed towers, including Felts, in three phases, starting April 7 and ending in May. The closures, which are part of the agency’s effort to trim $637 million from its fiscal 2013 spending plan due to mandatory sequestration cuts, is expected to save $33 million.
