With start of production likely to begin as early as September, Boeing says 50% of the design documents necessary to build the 747-8 Freighter are completed. The designs will flow to its own factories and suppliers, so they can begin production of parts, assemblies and production tools. First deliveries to launch customers Cargolux and All Nippon Cargo Airlines are set for late 2009.
Chinese airports handled 388 million passengers last year, the civil aviation administration says. That was up 16.8% on 2006, but the growth rate slowed from the previous year’s 19%. International passenger numbers grew faster than domestic numbers. More than a tenth of air travelers in China pass through Beijing Capital International Airport. It handled 48.5 million in 2006. -
To list an event, send information in calendar format to Ingrid Lee at [email protected] (Bold type indicates new calendar listing.) MARCH 10-11 — Federal Aviation Administration, 33rd Annual Aviation Forecast Conference, Washington, D.C., 202-267-5370, e-mail: [email protected] MARCH 10-12 — Flight Safety Foundation 20th European Aviation Safety Seminar — EASS, Bucharest, Romania, 703-739-6700
Korean Air’s budget offshoot, Air Korea, will probably begin operating in May, the transport ministry says. At least three no-frills carriers are planning to start up in the country. The others are Asiana’s Air Busan and a franchisee of Singapore’s Tiger Airways with majority Korean ownership.
Both the Air Transport Association and the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association are conspicuously not on the list of 35 groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AIA, pressing the Senate to act quickly on FAA authorization. “We will address this issue individually with members of Congress,” ATA says. AOPA says it wants “to avoid any confusion about our position” in supporting the Senate Finance Committee bill and the House-passed legislation “that uses aviation taxes, not user fees, to help pay” for ATC modernization and the Airport Improvement Program.
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U.S. airlines want FAA to change its Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast mandate to reduce the cost of acquiring the needed avionics and to provide benefits sooner, so they can reap a return on an investment; at stake is spending in the range of many tens of thousands of dollars’ per aircraft.
Defective fan blades on General Electric CF34-3B1 engines should be taken out of service before another inflight fire or engine failure occurs – so says the National Transportation Safety Board.
Republic Airways Holdings, parent company of Republic, Chautauqua Airlines and Shuttle America, reported its airlines generated some 712.7 million revenue passenger miles in February, up 39.7% from February 2007. Capacity was up 37.9% to some 1 billion available seat miles, while load factor improved 0.9 percentage points year over year to 70%. Some 1.4 million passengers were carried in the month, up 43.4% from February 2007.
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Airbus has named Thales as supplier for two more elements of the A350XWB, the electrical power conversion system and, teamed with Diehl, the common Remote Data Concentrators (cRDC), which are part of the integrated modular avionics. Thales this year was already named the integrated modular avionics system partner for the A350. The power system win is Thales’s first with Airbus in this area of operations, says Francois Quentin, Thales senior VIP in charge of aerospace.
Tiger Airways will this year add two Airbus A319s to its Australian operation so it can use airports smaller than those needed for its A320s, maybe including Sydney’s general aviation facility, Bankstown. Introducing scheduled jet services at Bankstown would be an almost revolutionary move in Australian commercial aviation because it would finally create competition for Kingsford Smith Airport, which handles almost all of Sydney’s traffic.
Few of the 190 ICAO member states are living up to their obligations to implement secure cargo programs, says IATA head Giovanni Bisignani. IATA recently surveyed 32 states, and found that only 23 have regulated agents and only 22 allow “known shippers.” Further findings were that there is “little alignment or mutual recognition of standards.”
Southwest is not letting the prospect of weakening demand slow its capacity growth. The carrier saw capacity jump 9% in February, although it still managed to improve load factor due to a larger increase in traffic. Loads were up 1.8 points to 68.6%, with traffic rising 10.8%. For the first two months of the year, traffic increased 7.8% on a 7% capacity hike, resulting in load factor rising 1.1 points to 66.3%.
You can now register online for AVIATION WEEK events. Go to www.aviationweek.com/conferences or contact Lydia Janow, 212-904-3225 or 800-240-7645 ext. 5 (U.S. and Canada only) MARCH 12-13 — Aircraft Data, Phoenix, Ariz. APRIL 15-17 — MRO/MRO Military/AVIATION WEEK’s Interiors, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. SEPT. 23 — Green Aviation, Madrid, Spain SEPT. 24-25 — MRO Europe, Madrid Spain OCT. 15-16 — MRO Asia, Singapore NOV. 18-19 — Aerospace & Defense Finance, New York, N.Y.
FAA plans to move its ATC System Command Center into a new custom-built facility, after occupying a leased building in Herndon, Va., for the past 14 years. The new facility will be adjacent to FAA’s Potomac terminal radar approach control in Warrenton, Va. Construction is expected to begin in January and finish in 2010. The project is estimated to cost $45 million, but once completed, the new building should yield $2 million in annual cost savings.
Angela Gittens will take over as director general of Airports Council International in April, replacing Robert Aaronson, who plans to retire. “This position brings together everything I’ve learned and applies it on a global scale,” Gittens told The DAILY. “Airports worldwide have issues in common, and ACI’s role is to bring that together and share best practices.”
Delta has promoted and brought on new executives under its maintenance, operations and airports divisions. Tony Charaf has been promoted to president of Delta TechOps maintenance division. The move emphasizes the airline’s commitment to continue expanding its multimillion-dollar maintenance, repair and overhaul business.
The prestigious Collier Trophy will this year be awarded to the industry and government teams responsible for developing the automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast program (ADS-B), the National Aeronautic Association says. FAA and UPS experts who were instrumental in the ADS-B program were also named as Aviation Week Laureates last week.
The Fiscal Year 2009 budget resolution passed by the House Budget Committee supports full-funding for FAA’s Airport Improvement Program. House Transportation & Infrastructure Chair James Oberstar (D-Minn.) says the budget rejects the $765 million cut to AIP proposed by the Administration, and provides $3.9 billion for AIP in FY2009, increasing to $4.1 billion in 2011.
Mesa’s Hawaii-based interisland carrier Go posted traffic results better than those recorded in the company’s mainland operation in February. Go generated some 7.23 million revenue passenger miles in the month, up 1.83% from the same month of 2007. Capacity was down 6.24% from the previous year to 10.97 million available seat miles. Load factor, meanwhile, improved from 60.54% in February 2007 to 65.92% just last month. The Hawaiian operation scored an on-time rate of 82.4% in the month and logged an overall completion factor of 99.9%.
Defective fan blades on General Electric CF34-3B1 engines should be taken out of service before another in-flight fire or engine failure occurs, according to the NTSB. In its recommendation, the safety board cites two previous fan blade failures, both involving Bombardier CRJ-200s. One was on an Air Nostrum flight in 2006, the other on an Atlantic Southeast Airlines flight in 2007.
