All air transport news – Page 2284
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News
Qantas picks RB211 power for 747-400s
Qantas has selected the improved Rolls-Royce RB211-524GT turbofan for its three recently ordered Boeing 747-400 passenger aircraft, clearing the way for a decision on a powerplant retrofit to the Australian carrier's 18 747-400s. The airline opted for the R-R engine after a competition involving the General Electric CF6-80C2 and ...
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Routes
-Iberia and Royal Air Maroc have signed a code-sharing agreement. -Swissair has added four new destinations to its route network, with the introduction of scheduled services from Zurich to Malabo (once weekly) and Skopje (four flights a week), as well as daily flights to Bologna and Venice in co-operation with ...
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Workshop
-Gulf Aircraft Maintenance (GAMCO) and Pratt & Whitney Eagle Services have signed a memorandum of understanding to "-further define business arrangements" to incorporate GAMCO into its global engine support operation. -Rotables management specialist Arinmar has signed a three-year agreement with British Aerospace RegionalAircraft to manage the repair and overhaul of ...
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Xian signs Y-7 deals with five Chinese domestic airlines
Xian Aircraft (XAC) has signed initial sales agreements with five domestic airlines for 11 Y-7-200A passenger aircraft, following recent Chinese airworthiness certification of the improved twin-turboprop development. China's Changan Airlines, Guizhou Airlines, Sichuan Airlines, Swan Airlines, and Zhongyuan Airlines have each signed letters of intent to take two to ...
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Alenia turns down Aerospatiale shareholding offer
Julian Moxon/PARIS The president of Alenia's defence division, Pier Francesco Guarguaglini, has rejected an invitation to become a shareholder in Aerospatiale and has questioned the French Government's "logic" in its approach to restructuring the European missiles industry. In French financial daily Les Echos, Guarguaglini says Alenia wants to ...
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Airline comeback disguises Asian crisis
Kevin O'Toole/LONDON Airline profits rebounded strongly to near record levels last year, says the International Air Transport Association (IATA),but director general Pierre Jeanniot again warns that margins remain too low and that the headline figures disguise the crisis still unfolding in Asia. The detailed figures, issued in the ...
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Thai puts aircraft deliveries on hold as financial woes bite
Paul Lewis/SINGAPORE Thai Airways International has been forced to place on hold the delivery of seven new Airbus and Boeing aircraft as it struggles to secure $700 million in financing. At the same time, the state-owned carrier has moved a step closer to partial privatisation with Thai Government approval for ...
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Ailing Tigers
Anyone still nursing hopes that the Asian downturn would prove to be a short, albeit sharp, shock to the region's once buoyant airline industry, will have struggled to retain their optimism in the face of the extraordinary news pouring out over the past fortnight. Perhaps most ominous was the ...
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Australian purchase
Australia is close to finalising its purchase of Lockheed Martin/Rafael AGM-142 medium range air-to-ground precision guided missiles. Canberra announced its intention to buy the weapon two years ago and Lockheed Martin expected that details on the scope and value of the sale would be worked out before the end of ...
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Ageing airliner census 1998
SUPERSONIC Aerospatiale/BAe (BAC) Concorde Of the 20 Concordes built, 14 were delivered to Air France and British Airways between 1975 and 1980, and 13 remain in service. The remaining six aircraft - two prototypes, two pre-production aircraft and two production aircraft - were used for testing and not ...
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Supersonic rising sun
Paul Lewis/MITIKA Japanese engineers have long displayed a distinctive flair for futuristic transportation thinking. While there may be a tendency in the West to confine many such notions to the realms of science fiction, it is worth remembering that Japan is the home of the Shinkansen "bullet train" and the ...
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New-entrant blues
Dave Higdon/WITCHITA, KANSAS It IS a long, arduous path from membership of the kitplane-producing community to becoming a certificate-holding member of the production-aircraft industry and not one of the three US companies travelling the route has actually reached its goal - yet. Although all three companies started their aircraft development ...
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Countdown to Sea Launch
Tim Furniss/LONDON Paul Duffy/MOSCOW A precise satellite launch service to all orbital inclinations from a single location is something that, until now, no launch site operator could claim. Payloads cannot be launched into polar orbits safely from Cape Canaveral in Florida, for example, without flying over the USA. Meanwhile, the ...
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FTC bans Boeing sale to Bell
Guy Norris/LOS ANGELES The US government's Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has blocked the sale of Boeing MD500/600 helicopters to Bell Helicopter Textron, forcing Boeing to put the two production lines back on the market. The MD500/600 lines were sold to Bell in March following Boeing's decision to opt ...
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IATA approves millennium bug plan
Graham Warwick/WASHINGTON DC The International Air Transport Association (IATA), which estimates that the so-called "millennium bug" will cost the airline industry $1.6 billion, has won approval from airlines for a plan to ensure that airlines, airports, air traffic control providers and manufacturers work together to minimise the effect of ...
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Crisis spreads to China as airlines make losses
The Asian economic downturn has begun to have an impact on the Chinese air transport industry, with the country's 11 largest carriers announcing for the first time a collective loss of ¥1.7 billion ($206 million) in the opening quarter of the financial year. According to the state-run China ...
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GPA plans to shed GE Capital
Kevin O'Toole/LONDON GPA could re-emerge from the shadow of GE Capital, with plans to buy out of the agreements signed five years ago when the US finance giant stepped in to rescue the Irish leasing company from near collapse. A memorandum of understanding has been agreed between the ...
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EGPWS move leads Korean Air safety drive
Korean Air (KAL) is to begin fitting its entire fleet with enhanced ground proximity warning systems (EGPWS), starting in July with the delivery of new Airbus Industrie A330-200/300s and Boeing 777-200/300s. The airline warns, however, that some of its future widebody deliveries may be delayed because of the economic ...
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Surprise share plan changes UK's air traffic control chart
David Learmount/LONDON Privatisation of the UK air traffic control (ATC) system has been put back on the political agenda, with the year-old Labour Government mooting the sale of 51% of the Civil Aviation Authority's National Air Traffic Services (NATS). ATC privatisation has been a running issue within UK ...
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Carriers push Airbus on LCDs
Paul Lewis/SINGAPOREAirbus Industrie is being pressed by major international carriers to offer a choice of new liquid crystal display (LCD) systems in the cockpits of future aircraft, as the consortium narrows the final selection of vendors to Rockwell Collins and Sextant Avionique. The European consortium plans to fit its A320/A330/A340 ...