The Qatari national airline already operates three daily services to Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG) with Airbus A340 and A380 aircraft, and now appears to have secured traffic rights to fly three times a week each to Nice-Côte d’Azur and Lyon-Saint Exupéry, respectively.
SmartPath, to date the only FAA-certified system on the market, is installed at several airports around the world, including Newark, Houston, Sydney and Frankfurt.
Two airline industry heavyweights focus their growth ambitions on the North Texas metroplex area; one eyes domestic expansion, the other branches out internationally.
The crew of an Aer Arann ATR 72 flying for Aer Lingus is credited with “good airmanship” in finding a way to remove salt deposits that had completely blocked the view forward from the twin turboprop’s windscreen while attempting to land at the Cork Airport in January 2014.
Until now, the military has driven development of unmanned aerial vehicles. But the U.S. Navy X-47B’s recent aerial refueling demonstration could be a transition point for the fledgling industry, in which commercial players are increasingly pushing the technical edge.
Hainan Airlines is negotiating with General Electric and Rolls-Royce for engines for the 30 Boeing 787-9s that it plans to order, even though it uses GE GEnx engines for 10 new 787-8s it has in service, an industry official says.
Early this century, Asian airlines’ major accident rates improved markedly. Now they are drifting higher again, and the industry association wants tighter regulation.
MAS is understood to have decided to phase out its six Airbus A380s over time in an effort to reduce its long-haul capacity and to focus on a more regional network, a significant part of its restructuring.
A panel of cybersecurity experts is expected to report back to the FAA by mid-2016 on whether the agency should issue new guidance or aircraft certification rules to prevent the intentional hacking of aircraft avionics systems, according to the Government Accountability Office.
Gogo’s 2KU system, which Delta Air Lines will begin installing on more than 250 narrowbody aircraft starting next year, “is going to be the magic that makes ‘take rate’ accelerate,” Gogo’s CEO said in an interview.
The FAA says airlines may be able to begin using ground-based augmentation systems (GBAS) for satellite-based Category 3 instrument landings that culminate in a 50-ft. decision height or an automatic landing by 2018, offering a lower-cost alternative to legacy ground-based instrument landing systems (ILS).
The association’s data analysis shows that smaller Asian carriers, following years of dramatic safety improvements, are now suffering more crashes than they did around 2010. This seems to point to how new airlines are assessed as a cause for concern.
