All Safety News – Page 1317

  • News

    Lycoming inspection

    1997-12-03T00:00:00Z

    The US National Transportation Safety Board has requested that all Textron Lycoming IO-320-B1A engines with older-style, thinner, propeller-mounting flanges be inspected for cracks after aerobatic manoeuvres, following the 1996 fatal crash of a Lancair 320. Source: Flight International

  • News

    Boeing slows 777-200X/300X product-development work

    1997-12-03T00:00:00Z

    Boeing has switched the emphasis of product-development work on the proposed 777-200X/300X ultra-long-haul and stretch derivatives for at least three months. The 300 staff working on the two planned variants are understood to have been switched from new-product development to focusing on reducing programme costs. Sources in Seattle say ...

  • News

    EC moves closer to setting up new air safety authority

    1997-12-03T00:00:00Z

    The European Commission (EC) will present plans to a meeting of European Union (EU) transport ministers this month aimed at creating a European aviation-safety authority. The new agency could be operational as early as 2000, says a well-placed EC official. Detailed work on pulling together recommendations on the role ...

  • News

    Airbus ponders its A3XX systems role

    1997-12-03T00:00:00Z

    Ian Sheppard/LONDON Airbus Industrie is considering passing responsibility for the integration of avionics on the proposed A3XX to a specialist, allowing companies outside the consortium to bid for the work. Speaking at the 1997 ERA Avionics Conference in London on 19 November, Michel Comes, director of systems at ...

  • News

    Future avionics architecture is proven

    1997-12-03T00:00:00Z

    A group of major European avionics manufacturers has designed an avionics architecture for future aircraft which will vastly reduce development and support costs and improve interoperability between aircraft and systems. The Industrial Avionics Working Group (IAWG) has completed a risk-reduction study into software techniques for integrated modular avionics (IMA) ...

  • News

    Europe's FAA?

    1997-12-03T00:00:00Z

    Alan George/BRUSSELS The European Commission (EC) is preparing to push radical new proposals to set up a European AviationSafety Authority (EASA) at a meeting of transport ministers later this month. The new agency, which will have sweeping powers, could be operational by 2000 according to well-placed sources in Brussels. ...

  • News

    Kitty Hawk refinances

    1997-12-03T00:00:00Z

    Fresh from its merger with the Kallita air-freight grouping, UScargo carrier Kitty Hawk has completed its refinancing, netting $39.5 million from a share offering and another $340 million through a bond issue. The cash will be used to fund the merger, which the carrier says makes it the world's seventh-largest ...

  • News

    Aeroflot rapped

    1997-12-01T11:40:00Z

    Following a safety incident in Seattle, US FAA investigators noticed that Khabarovsk Airlines, a renamed former Aeroflot division which now flies scheduled services from Russia's far east to Anchorage and Seattle, was using Aeroflot's operating certificate. The FAA has issued Khabarovsk with its own certificate but may penalise both Aeroflot ...

  • News

    Air China to go for IPO

    1997-12-01T00:00:00Z

    Air China is pressing ahead with plans for its own initial public offering despite the postponement of the listing by the CAAC's commercial arm, China National Aviation Corporation. Air China aims to shrug off its state control and partially privatise within two years. 'We'll float by 1999 at the ...

  • News

    Hub fever

    1997-12-01T00:00:00Z

    In many industries, concentration forces have led to a few large mass producers with a global reach, each striving to achieve the lowest unit costs through increased efficiencies and higher production volumes. In the airline industry, global alliances are being created to achieve similar goals. However, the individual airline operators ...

  • News

    BA in pursuit of leisure

    1997-12-01T00:00:00Z

    British Airways' much-hyped plans to launch a low-cost point-to-point carrier may herald a larger push into the European leisure market, including a standalone charter operation. BA has already come under fire for considering its own no-frills carrier to limit the advance in the UK market of low-cost players like ...

  • News

    Boeing hits bottleneck

    1997-12-01T00:00:00Z

    Boeing is trying hard to swallow a bitter pill of late delivery charges and costs linked to production delays and to get back on top of its aircraft production rate buildup. Boeing's decision to shut down its B747 and B737 production lines for a month follows a frenzy of ...

  • News

    Latin airport sales closer

    1997-12-01T00:00:00Z

    Brazil and Argentina are both looking to private investors to help finance airport expansion, as traffic in the region increases following the creation of the Mercosur free trade zone incorporating Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. Brazil has included airports on its list of assets to be privatised by the ...

  • News

    Hangover cure

    1997-12-01T00:00:00Z

    Karen Walker 'Swire prince' are words often whispered in the wake of David Turnbull, an acknowledgement of his rapid rise through the management strata of the Swire Group. His 21 years of experience at Swire have been tested severely over the last 12 months, however, since he inherited one ...

  • News

    China cries out for more

    1997-12-01T00:00:00Z

    The announcement of a $50 billion order by China for Boeing aircraft coincides with an unseemly scrap for the Airbus aircraft ordered four years ago. Some carriers are set to miss out on their request for Airbus A320s and A321s as demand outstrips the 30 aircraft ordered by China ...

  • News

    Southern belle

    1997-12-01T00:00:00Z

    Lois Jones Chairman Mao would not have approved. If, as Mao alleged, western-style commercialism and capitalism are corrupt, then China Southern Airlines is rotten to the core. As China closes the book on socialist economic dogma and emancipates its state-owned enterprises, China Southern is one of the first ...

  • News

    Garvey/Slater: great team work

    1997-12-01T00:00:00Z

    In her first major public speech as the US Federal Aviation Administrator, Jane Garvey may not have set the industry on fire, but the underlying message - coupled with recent announcements made by the Department of Transportation - was unmistakeable. Garvey is putting the FAA back on the straight and ...

  • News

    Alliances: decision time approaches

    1997-12-01T00:00:00Z

    There can be few more important commercial issues for airlines than the future shape of their alliances. A series of regulatory decisions about major alliances is about to be made. The outcome will determine the shape of the airline business, for the next several years at least. At the ...

  • News

    Airlines drop French polish

    1997-12-01T00:00:00Z

    French carriers are lining up to follow the lead taken by startups Virgin Express and EasyJet, with the first no-frills operator due to enter the market by the end of March 1998. A former EuroBelgian Airlines commercial director, Bernard Brejoux, is working on plans to launch a low-cost operation, ...

  • News

    Hong Kong lowers fees

    1997-12-01T00:00:00Z

    It sometimes pays to complain. Airlines have won their battle against the proposed fees at Hong Kong's new Chek Lap Kok airport, which were originally to have been double those at Kai Tak. After more than a year of heated negotiations, the airport authority has sliced between 25 per ...