Qantas CEO Alan Joyce faces another grilling from Australian lawmakers this week, as politicians and unions spar over whether to repeal the law that restricts foreign ownership of the carrier.
The Single European Sky (SES) initiative has been touted as the largest climate-protection project undertaken in the European aviation sector. The full implementation of both pillars of the project—airspace consolidation and technology upgrades—could reduce fuel consumption and carbon-dioxide emissions by 10% per flight, according to the European Commission.
At least 38 Democratic and Republican senators, a sizable portion of the Senate, are joining Airlines 4 America and the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Dept.’s calls for the Transportation Department to demur on Norwegian Air International’s application for a foreign air carrier permit. The senators last week signed on to a letter to Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx claiming NAI’s application violates the spirit, at least, of the E.U.-U.S. “Open Skies” agreement.
While the vast majority of all aircraft accidents still occur in the landing phase, research shows that nearly all pilots who fly professionally ignore company policies regarding go-around procedures. Why pilots ignore the policies and decide to land is lesser known. But William Curtis of Canadian research firm Presage says, “No other single decision can have such an impact on the industry accident rate.”
The political situation in Ukraine may force the U.S. to reconsider its airborne supply route into Afghanistan. Tensions on the Crimean peninsula have remained high since Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych was ousted from government in February. Last week, Russia announced it was sending troops and attack helicopters for new exercises near the border with Ukraine. The U.S., meanwhile, is assisting NATO training efforts, deploying 12 F-16s and 300 personnel to Poland and six F-16s to Lithuania.
Hawaiian Airlines’ recent route cuts don’t signal any wider problems with its international network or the carrier’s overseas growth strategy, says CEO Mark Dunkerley. Expanding to new international destinations has been one of the cornerstones of the carrier’s strategy, and it has added a slew of new routes since 2010. However, in the past few weeks it has announced the suspension of flights from Honolulu to Taipei and to the Japanese city of Fukuoka.
The National Transportation Safety Board will lose one of its longest-sitting members with the departure of Chairman Deborah Hersman on April 25. Hersman announced March 11 that she is leaving to become president of the National Safety Council. Hersman was appointed to the safety board as a member in 2004, filling the slot vacated by John Goglia, and became chairman in 2009. In a low-profile agency that in the past frequently grappled with board vacancies, fewer than a handful of people have served a decade or longer.
By Sean Broderick, Jens Flottau, Guy Norris, Adrian Schofield
The story of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 reads like bad fiction—a perfectly safe aircraft disappears from radar on a scheduled flight, and the extensive international search-and-rescue effort that ensues finds few clues. It is not fiction, but it should be in light of the technology to monitor aircraft and the massive amounts of operational data available.
Following a brief respite from severe smoke and haze pollution over the Indonesian island province of Riau caused by forest fires, the problem resurfaced on Friday, resulting in more airport closures. Officials canceled all flights to and from Sultan Syarif Kasim airport in the provincial capital of Pekanbaru, only days after it had reopened following a previous “Dangerous-Red” visibility closure.
Asia's millions of newly wealthy citizens are keen to travel, and new low-cost carriers are boosting fleets and routes to serve them. But the region's air traffic regime is inconsistent and non-homogeneous—which is why Singapore is taking steps to develop more localized air traffic management expertise.
Hybrid carrier flynas is considering partnerships and joint ventures as a way to develop its short- and mid-haul operations outside its Saudi Arabian home market. Flynas, which operates 24 Airbus A320s and is about to take three A330s, has its main operations from Jeddah and Riyadh. It opened a new short-haul base in Madinah last December, positioning two A320s at the airport, and is poised to open another two-aircraft base in Dammam next month.
With contracts awarded for designs of initial supersonic X-plane concepts, NASA's High Speed Project is working on a new set of foundational technologies, instrumentation and test techniques that will prepare the way for its development later this decade. “The High Speed Project feels the next major step is to build a flight demonstrator, and we're trying to do everything we can to be prepared for when the time comes,” says Tom Jones, High Speed Project deputy project manager at NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center at Edwards AFB, Calif.
The Senate aviation subcommittee let the commercial sector air its desires last week about congressional action. For the most part, commercial representatives agree about what they want: maintain higher, earlier funding levels for the FAA's NextGen ATC modernization effort and keep pressure on the agency to provide results to industry. They also want Congress, the White House and even the American public to stop eyeing commercial aviation as an automated teller machine, or “piggybank,” and treat it more like a national asset.
Prompted by Ryanair’s move to launch a base at Brussels Airport, Brussels Airlines is expanding its capacity with two more Airbus A319s and reviewing its commercial offerings. The two A319s are in addition to an A320, which was budgeted last year and forms part of the carrier’s fleet harmonization toward an all-Airbus operation, as part of an continuing cost-reduction program.
In the last decade, Congress has moved increasingly toward the use of multi-year contracts to save on big-ticket defense programs. But the Pentagon's current long-term budget plans call for stopping the purchase of Sikorsky MH-60 helicopters one year before its current fixed-price, multi-year agreement expires. That prompts the contractor to raise the specter of the decision reversing the trend in multi-year contracting.
In its rush to prove the business case for airlines to buy and use next-generation air transportation system (NextGen) avionics, the FAA faces a quandary: What happens if trials designed to show positive results reveal the opposite?
Responding to a congressional mandate, FAA wants industry input on how a drug and alcohol (DA) testing program for certain employees at agency-certified repair stations outside the U.S should be crafted. The advanced notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM), set for publication March 17, seeks industry input on a DA testing program requirement for so-called FAA foreign repair station employees that work on FAA Part 121 operator aircraft.
FAA remains positive about the long-term outlook for turbine business aircraft even as the agency continues to moderate its annual forecast and predicts a shrinking piston fleet. In the agency’s Aerospace Forecast for fiscal 2014-2034, FAA is predicting the general aviation fleet will increase at an average annual rate of 0.5%, from an estimated 202,865 aircraft in 2013 to 225,700 in 2034. The annual rate of growth matches that of last year’s forecast, but the total number of aircraft is down significantly.
At capacity-constrained airports around the world, high winds are a major cause of flight delays and cancellations, often as a result of the knock-on effects of reduced airport flow rates. Landing aircraft currently have to maintain set distances apart due to the wake vortices occurring from the wingtip, but research has shown that in strong headwinds, ground speeds on approach are reduced and the effect of the vortices is quickly dissipated, potentially allowing the distances separating the aircraft to be reduced.
The National Air Transportation Association, working with the Transportation Security Administration, is rolling out a Known Crewmember program that will expedite access to sterile areas of airports for Part 135 and 125 pilots. Known Crewmember, a risk-based screening system, has been in place for Part 121 pilots since 2011. NATA President Tom Hendricks helped develop the program during his tenure with Airlines For America (A4A), and worked with A4A and the Air Line Pilots Association to bring the program to on-demand pilots.
