All Safety News – Page 1353
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News
Alitalia on path to privatisation as state and IRI cut back stake
Kevin O'Toole/LONDON Italy's giant state-holding company, IRI, has agreed to cut its stake in Alitalia to 60% in what is being billed as the first step towards the flag carrier's privatisation, which could now come in 1998. The deal, agreed at a meeting of the IRI board on ...
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BAe wins Boeing work
British Aerospace has confirmed a contract from Boeing to supply "machined components" for the Next Generation 737. The deal marks a coup for BAe's aerostructures business, which has be pushing hard for more work from Boeing, although the group points out that its Airbus agreements prevent it taking any major ...
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Frontier bids for WestPac
Graham Warwick/WASHINGTON DC A US bankruptcy-court judge will make a decision on 3 December between rival bids for Western Pacific Airlines. Frontier Airlines, which called off plans to merge with WestPac earlier this year, has switched tack and is bidding to take over its bankrupt would-be partner. WestPac ...
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Safe and sound
Once in a while, a proposal emerges that has so many clear benefits and so few potential dangers, that the only question is why it is still just a proposal. Within a few weeks, Europe's transport ministers will be faced with just such a compelling idea when they are asked ...
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Boeing's long stretch
Guy Norris/SEATTLE BOEING'S stretched 777-300 carries a list of superlatives almost as long as the aircraft itself. The latest member of the Boeing family is the largest twin-engined aircraft ever built, the world's fastest widebody twin, the longest airliner ever made and the first transport big enough to replace the ...
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Asia's economic haze
Brent Hannon/KUALA LUMPUR Concerns over the state of the once-unstoppable Asia-Pacific airline market were underlined again as the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) met in Kuala Lumpur in mid-November for the 41st assembly of presidents. The latest figures show a 25% drop in collective operating profits over ...
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Unleaded avgas 'more expensive'
Fuel supplier Phillips 66 has warned that environmental pressure to switch to unleaded aviation gasoline could increase US avgas prices by up to 50%. The Oklahoma-based firm expects today's 100-octane low-lead (100LL) avgas to be available for the next five years, but admits that pressure to eliminate this last ...
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Beriev restarts flight testing of Be-103
Beriev has resumed flight tests of its Be-103 utility amphibian, three months after the first prototype was destroyed in a crash at the Moscow air show. The second, six-seat, prototype had its maiden flight on 17 November from the Russian design company's airfield in Taganrog. The aircraft is is ...
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Lycoming inspection
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
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Boeing slows 777-200X/300X product-development work
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 ...
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EC moves closer to setting up new air safety authority
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 ...
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Airbus ponders its A3XX systems role
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 ...
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Future avionics architecture is proven
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) ...
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Europe's FAA?
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. ...
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Kitty Hawk refinances
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 ...
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Aeroflot rapped
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 ...
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Air China to go for IPO
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 ...
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Hub fever
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 ...
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BA in pursuit of leisure
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 ...
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Boeing hits bottleneck
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 ...