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?
Despite frequent technical issues, Air India has no plans to ground its Boeing 787 fleet, but may seek compensation from the airframer for the financial loss suffered by the national carrier due to these glitches. On a day when Boeing delivered its thirteenth 787 aircraft, Air India Chairman and Managing Director Rohit Nandan said, “We have no such plans as of today to ground the 787s. It is for the regulators to take a view on the matter but we are quite satisfied with the quality of service we have received from this airplane and its economics.”
U.S. airlines, coming off a year of little traffic growth and big profits, will boost capacity and traffic slightly in fiscal 2014 before a short-term jump-start followed by a steady period of growth through 2034, the latest FAA forecast projects. For U.S. carriers, system capacity—international and domestic combined—is expected to increase 1.5% this year after a 0.8% bump in 2013, FAA says. It will then increase by an average of 2.7% per year for the remainder of the agency’s 20-year forecast.
The owners of London’s Gatwick Airport are preparing to firm up their plans for a potential second runway. In December, the airport was selected—along with London Heathrow—by the U.K. government’s Airports Commission as the potential site for the addition of a new runway in the southeast of England to boost airport capacity in the region. Both airports have now been requested by the commission to submit more detailed plans for the added runway options. The plans must be filed with the commission in May.
Farnair bought a 45% stake in the Thai cargo airline K-Mile from Malaysia’s Transmile group. Finance for the deal was sourced entirely from within the Switzerland-based express cargo operator. Suan Plu Thani Limited of Thailand remains the majority shareholder with 55%. The deal will see K-Mile upgrade its aging fuel-hungry fleet of three tri-engine 727-200Fs to newly converted 737-400Fs in the third quarter of this year.
Russia is taking lessons from NASA’s aeronautics and Europe’s Clean Sky programs in structuring its new civil aviation research effort, to begin in 2016. With $6 billion in government funding over 10 years to 2025, the National Aeronautical R&D Plan will be similar in scale to NASA’s aeronautics program, which runs at around $550 million a year. An overview of the plan was provided by Sergey Chernyshev, executive director of the TsAGI aero-hydrodynamic research institute, at the Greener Aviation 2014 conference in Brussels on Mar. 11.
Virgin America is set to begin using a relatively obscure but emerging form of satellite-based approach on five Airbus A320s by early April, with the equipage for its 48 other Airbus A320s and A319s starting by the end of the year.
Click here to view the pdf Fuel Watch: Global Jet Fuel Prices (midpoint) As of March 12, 2014, compared with previous week and previous year cts/gal prev. week prev.
Malaysian Airlines said Thursday reports that the missing MH370’s Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) sent transmissions for several hours after the 777-200 flight vanished from radar are false. “Engine data transmission reports are inaccurate,” Malaysian Minister of Defense & (Acting) Minister of Transport Hishammuddin Hussein said at a press conference. “Both Boeing and Rolls-Royce have told us they did not get any ACARS transmissions after 1:07 a.m. last Saturday.”
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.
Indian low-cost carrier SpiceJet has ordered 42 Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft, worth $4.4 billion, as part of its plans to modernize the fleet and find a potential investor. The country’s second-largest low-cost airline by market share expects to start taking delivery of the aircraft from 2018. “We will fund the acquisition through the sale-and-leaseback mode,” says S.L. Narayanan, group chief financial officer at Sun Group, the parent company of SpiceJet, soon after signing the deal at the India Civil Aviation Airshow in the southern city of Hyderabad.
Saudi Arabian hybrid carrier flynas is considering a flotation and is hoping to renegotiate its firm order for 20 Airbus A320s, plus 18 options, in favor of either A330s or A350s.
Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Group forecasts an improved business environment for 2014 following a tripling of its profit for 2013, helped by strong long-haul demand. The group says it added capacity and frequencies again late last year, after cutting these in 2012.
Qantas’ new code-share arrangement with Bangkok Airways will allow the Australian carrier to improve its connections to important leisure and secondary markets in Thailand. Under the deal, Qantas will put its code on Bangkok Airways flights from Bangkok and Singapore to six Thai destinations. One of these—Phuket—is already on the Qantas group’s network, but it will give the carrier an additional connection option.
Japan Airlines (JAL) has firmed up its reach into the Russian market with a new code-share deal with Russia’s S7 Airlines. JAL will add its code (JL) to S7 flights on 12 new destinations in Russia from March 19. These include routes between Moscow Domodedovo Airport and domestic destinations including St. Petersburg and Olympic host city Sochi.
