All air transport news – Page 2468
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News
Dash 8-400 favourite at SAS
Kevin O'Toole/Stockholm An official announcement on the selection of a new 70-seat turboprop for the SAS Commuter fleet is imminent, says the Scandinavian airline, with an order expected for as many as 20 Bombardier de Havilland Dash 8-400s, to be used alongside the existing Saab 2000 50-seaters. ...
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ValuJet crash blamed on total US safety-oversight failure
Ramon Lopez/WASHINGTON DC The cause of the ValuJet Airlines McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32 crash on 11 May, 1996, was failure by the US aviation-safety system to keep hazardous material off a commercial transport aircraft, according to the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) official accident report. ValuJet, the Federal ...
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Rushing Russia
In May this year, Russia's deputy economics minister Andrew Svinarenko told the Aviaexport/Flight International conference in Moscow that the industry must change, and that the Government cannot and will not continue to support the present mix of over-diversification and over-capacity. That is a fine sentiment, but one of little substance ...
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Eurofighter partners agree on worldwide marketing/sales deal
Paul Lewis/SINGAPORE The four Eurofighter consortium partners have reached an internal agreement on dividing up areas of responsibility for worldwide marketing and sales of the EF2000 combat aircraft. According to senior sources within the consortium, the agreement was approved in May by member companies Alenia, British ...
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Lockheed tests F-22
Lockheed Martin has begun taxi trials in preparation for the first flight of the F-22, possibly by the end of this month, after testing the fighter's 156kN (35,000lb)-thrust Pratt & Whitney F119 powerplants at full afterburner, with the aircraft tied down. A series of minor software problems, including over-sensitive sensors ...
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Northrop Grumman hawks advanced radars for fighters
Ramon Lopez/WASHINGTON DC NORTHROP GRUMMAN is taking orders for improved versions of the APG-66 and APG-68 fire-control radars, according to vice-president for avionics systems James Pitts. The advanced systems include the APG-68 Agile Beam Radar (ABR), the active electronically scanned-array variant of the radar installed in ...
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Advanced wing for the Beaver wins approval
A CANADIAN company has received supplemental type-certification for a replacement wing which enables the gross weight of the de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver to be increased. Vancouver, British Columbia-based Advanced Wing Technologies (AWT) says that it already has orders for the C$95,000 ($73,000) modification from operators in Alaska, Australia and Canada. ...
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KLM pursues European plans
Kevin O'Toole/LONDON KLM says that it will continue to press ahead with plans to increase its presence across Europe, having signed its latest partnership deal with Norway's Braathens SAFE- backed with a 30%equity stake. KLM, which took full control of Air UK earlier this year and ...
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Olympic will buy 737-800s
Julian Moxon/paris Olympic Airways is to acquire a fleet of Next Generation Boeing 737s and Airbus A340s. The airline is close to resolving its long-running dispute with the European Commission (EC), which has held up payment of the last two tranches of its state aid. Resolution of the ...
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BMW Rolls-Royce presses Bonn to finance Tu-334
Andrzej Jeziorski/MOSCOW German engine manufacturer BMW Rolls-Royce has appealed to the Bonn Government to give financial backing to the Tupolev Tu-334 102-seat regional jet. "We believe that some of the financial assistance and credit which the German Government is giving Russia for commercial projects should be ...
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United buys time for regional-jet deal with Atlantic Coast Airlines
United Airlines has agreed to reimburse the aircraft-lease and flight-crew costs for Atlantic Coast Airlines' (ACA) Bombardier Canadair Regional Jets (CRJ) until the end of the year, giving the carrier more time to reach an agreement with its pilots . ACA had planned to begin an independent regional-jet ...
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Volga-Dnepr signs up for Il-96T
Ilyushin has signed an agreement with Russian cargo carrier Volga-Dnepr covering the sale of four Il-96T freighters, with two options. The aircraft manufacturer's chief designer Igor Katyrev says the agreement does not constitute a firm contract at this stage, although Volga-Dnepr has scheduled the first delivery for 1999. ...
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Myasishchev forms a US joint venture for Gzhel production
The Myasishchev Design Bureau has formed a joint venture with Cartwright Aviation of Virginia, aimed at eventual US production of the M-101T Gzhel light turboprop aircraft. According to the Russian concern, the US Ìrm will assemble M-101Ts for the USmarket from parts made and supplied by the Sokol ...
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ESA astronaut qualifies as Soyuz TM commander
Tim Furniss/LONDON Thomas Reiter, the European Space Agency's German air-force astronaut, has become the first foreigner to qualify to command a flight of the Russian three-crew Soyuz TM. Reiter, a veteran of a 179-day shift aboard the Mir 1 space station in 1996, which included two ...
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GATX Airlog close to returning reworked cargo 747s to use
Graham Warwick/WASHINGTON DC Two airlines have started work to return to service two Boeing 747 freighters grounded in mid-1996, when the US Federal Aviation Administration imposed load restrictions on the GATX Airlog cargo conversion. Airlog says that work to recertificate the conversion is "about 80% complete" ...
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Tests complete on first 'Block 4' GE90
Boeing has completed flight and performance tests of the first 777-200IGW (increased gross weight) powered by the "Block 4" variant of the General Electric GE90-90B turbofan. The aircraft is being refurbished at the company's Everett site in Washington before delivery to Lauda Air in late September. ...
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Marketplace
++ Virgin has confirmed that it will add two new Airbus A340-300s in 1998 (Flight International, 13-19 August ) but that one of the aircraft will be acquired on a four-year operating lease from International Lease Finance (ILFC). The aircraft will be delivered in March 1998, and will be joined ...
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Mesa Air regional-jet operation experiences a sluggish start
Mesa Air Group says that its Texas-based regional-jet operation, started in May with two Bombardier Canadair Regional Jets (CRJs), is growing more slowly than anticipated. Marketing of the initial Fort Worth-Houston service is being intensified, and Fort Worth-San Antonio flights will be added in September, with a San Antonio-Colorado Springs ...
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Japanese consortium prepares plans to launch regional airline
An Okinawa-based Japanese business consortium is drawing up plans to launch an airline within three years, to operate domestic routes and, possibly, international services in the longer term. A group of 32 island investors led by Okinawa Electric Power has established a new company called Southern Cross to ...
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Canada's Royal takes over CanAir cargo
Montreal-based Royal Aviation has acquired the assets of CanAir Cargo, and added the Ontario-based overnight-freight carrier's six leased Boeing 737-200 freighters to its fleet. Royal plans to maintain CanAir's coast-to-coast cargo network, which produced revenues of C$49 million in 1996, and will convert at least three additional 737s ...