Aviation Report

Russian aircraft certification authority IAC AR on Friday approved type certification for the Sukhoi Superjet 100 clearing the way for first delivery of the long-delayed aircraft, which rolled out in September 2007 and made its first flight nearly three years ago. The program was formally launched by Sukhoi in 2004 as the RRJ (Russian Regional Jet). "The type certificate confirms the compliance of the aircraft with the IAC certification norms and airworthiness directives thus opening the way to start commercial operation," Sukhoi Civil Aircraft Co. stated, noting that it was also granteda design organization approval certificate from IAC AR. Launch customer Aeroflot holds firm orders for 30 SSJ100s plus 15 options while Armavia, which has two on firm order with two options, was expected to take first delivery. Source :  http://atwonline.com/aircraft-engines-components/news/sukhoi-superjet-100-wins-type-certification-russian-authorities-013?cid=nl_atw_dn

After a decade of multibillion-dollar losses, U.S. airlines appear to be on course to prosper for years to come for a simple reason: They are flying less. By grounding planes and eliminating flights, airlines have cut costs and pushed fares higher. As the global economy rebounds, travel demand is rising and planes are as full as they've been in years. Profit margins at big airlines are the highest in at least a decade, according to the government. The eight largest U.S. airlines are forecast to earn more than $5 billion this year and $5.6 billion in 2012. U.S. airlines are in the midst of reporting fourth-quarter results that should cap the industry's first moneymaking year since 2007. "The industry is in the best position — certainly in a decade — to post profitability," says Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly. "The industry is much better prepared today than it was a decade ago." The airlines' turnaround has benefited investors — the Arca airlines

An explosion that occurred at Moscow Domodedovo Airport around 4:30 p.m. local time Monday is believed to have killed at least 35 people and injured dozens of others. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said in televised remarks that evidence points to "a terror attack" at Russia's busiest airport, while US President Barack Obama condemned what he called an "outrageous act of terrorism." The blast detonated inside DME's international arrivals hall, reportedly just outside customs clearance, where crowds were gathered awaiting arriving passengers who had claimed bags from flights arriving from around the world. Medvedev said he was forming a "task force" to immediately begin investigating "while the trail is still warm." He said a "special [security] regime" would be put in place at all Russian airports and other "large transport facilities," but did not specify details. Even as first responders tended to the dead and w

Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) -- EasyJet Plc tumbled 16 percent, the most in 6 1/2 years, after Europe’s second-biggest discount airline said its first-half loss may double after fuel costs rose and icy weather and strikes caused flights to be canceled. The pretax loss for the six months to March 31 will be as much as 160 million pounds ($256 million), versus 78.7 million pounds a year earlier, Luton, England-based EasyJet said today. Disruption from Britain’s coldest December on record and walkouts by air-traffic controllers in France and Spain lifted costs by 18 million pounds and 6 million pounds respectively in the first quarter, wiping 7 million pounds from profit, EasyJet said. First-half kerosene costs may be 30 million pounds higher. “With oil close to $100 a barrel, fuel is a big, big issue,” said Gert Zonneveld, an analyst at Panmure Gordon in London with a “buy” rating on the stock. “And in the economic climate we’re in it’s more difficult to compensate with price increases, especi

What Is NextGen? NextGen is an umbrella term for the ongoing, wide-ranging transformation of the National Airspace System (NAS). At its most basic level, NextGen represents an evolution from a ground-based system of air traffic control to a satellite-based system of air traffic management. This evolution is vital to meeting future demand, and to avoiding gridlock in the sky and at our nation’s airports. NextGen will open America’s skies to continued growth and increased safety while reducing aviation’s environmental impact. We will realize these goals through the development of aviation-specific applications for existing, widely-used technologies, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) and technological innovation in areas such as weather forecasting, data networking and digital communications. Hand in hand with state-of-the-art technology will be new airport infrastructure and new procedures, including the shift of certain decision-making responsibility from the ground to the c

Southwest Airlines this month commenced Required Navigation Performance procedures for approaches at 11 airports, asserting that "these new efficient flight procedures and enhanced avionics" will save the LCC $16 million annually. The airports at which SWA is inaugurating RNP are Amarillo, Birmingham, Boise, Corpus Christi, Los Angeles, Chicago Midway, Oakland, Oklahoma City, West Palm Beach, Raleigh-Durham and San Jose. It added that full implementation of RNP at all airports it serves would lead to more than $60 million in reduced costs annually. SWA has modified more than 444 aircraft with GPS and RNP software, including transitioning 343 737NGs from EFIS to PFD/ND, and completed more than 30,000 pilot training events The Dallas-based airline said in a statement that implementing RNP procedures marks the "culmination of a four-year project with partners Boeing, GE and Honeywell." VP and COO Mike Van de Ven added, "This milestone culminates substantial effo

Minister for Ecology, Sustainable development, Transportation and Housing Nathalie KOSCIUSKO-MORIZET and Secretary of State for Transportation Thierry MARIANI announced the merger between ENAC (National School For Civil Aviation) and SEFA (Operations Service for Aeronautic Formations) that becomes the biggest European university for Civil Aviation under the single name ENAC. For more than 60 years, the ENAC has been unique in the field of graduate education as well as in the field of aeronautic formation. It teaches all the technical and scientific courses necessary for running the air transportation industry : - Project and Operations Civil Engineers, Controllers, electronics engineer for safety systems - Commercial Airline Pilots - Qualified technicians ... This merger will mean that : - studying materials and equipments -such as flight and control simulators- will be shared between the two institutions - strenghten the interactions between the various courses : engineers and contr

On board its Airbus A380s, Air France customers travelling in La Première and Business class can discover the gallery, an area dedicated to culture and art. Throughout the year, in partnership with leading art galleries, exhibitions which are renewed every month are shown on video screens.  This month, the gallery will be showing a video by Benoît Broisat, called “Bonneville” (2004), from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. This video is a silent walk through Paris, his home town, a black and white cartoon: a poetic journey in time and space. In February, Air France will be showing three videos by Mark Lewis, a Canadian artist living in London who represented Canada at the biannual Venice Art Festival in 2009: ‘Centrale’ (1999), ‘Rush Hour, Morning and Evening, Cheapside’ (2005) and his latest video, ‘Hendon FC’ (2010). These three videos are from the Arsfutura collection. In March, the artist Bob Wilson will be exhibiting artistic portraits of personalities, notably Brad Pitt, Isa

IATA won what it called "a major court victory" in its dispute with Sabre over IATA's use of billing and settlement data stored in GDS databases for its PaxIS airline intelligence product when the Ontario Superior Court of Justice dismissed Sabre's claim that PaxIS violated confidentiality obligations. Sabre filed the suit in 2006. IATA said the court's Jan. 11 decision found "that IATA acted lawfully in developing the PaxIS products based on data from its BSPs. The court also rejected each of Sabre's arguments that IATA owed Sabre a duty to use BSP data solely for settlement purposes and not for 'commercial' products such as PaxIS. Lastly, the judge determined that Sabre could not claim confidential rights to the airline ticketing data." In a statement, IATA DG and CEO Giovanni Bisignani said the decision "brings clarity to the marketplace. We are pleased that we can continue to provide the aviation, travel and tourism industries wi

About 25,000 Iranians have reacted to last week’s crash of Iran Air flight 277 by joining an online protest against sanctions that prevent Iran from purchasing new aircraft and spare parts.  The protesters believe sanctions undermine aviation safety standards and are therefore to be blamed for a string of air accidents that have claimed the lives of hundreds of Iranians.  Seventy-seven people were killed on January 9 when a passenger plane with some 105 passengers and crew aboard crashed in northwestern Iran. The Boeing-727 plane, which according to Iranian media was 37 years old, broke into pieces when it attempted to make an emergency landing in a snowstorm near the city of Orumiyeh.  It was the latest in a series of air crashes blamed on Iran’s aging air fleet, which reportedly uses spare parts bought on the black market or taken from older aircraft. Experts have said that U.S.-imposed sanctions prevent Iran from updating its 30-year-old American aircraft.  According to "Th

How much would it take to get you to give up your seat on an overbooked airline flight? Delta Air Lines is telling customers to name their price -- in some cases before they even leave for the airport. Delta, like other airlines, has long had a system of asking for volunteers to be bumped to a later flight  in exchange for vouchers toward future travel. Some passengers make a sport out of volunteering and thrive off free flights they collect. Now, Delta is taking the system one step further. It has turned the voluntary bumping system into an auction that starts online with travelers' bids, a move some industry observers say may be a first among major carriers. If a flight is overbooked, travelers checking in at an airport kiosk or online see a screen asking them if they'd like to submit a bid for the value of a travel voucher they would take to be bumped. Customers enter a dollar amount. Delta makes clear that it accepts lower bids first. While Delta previously asked for v

Wouldn’t it be nice to know how an airline may treat you in advance? TripAdvisor thinks so. On Wednesday, the travel website, best known for its user reviews of hotels, added user reviews to its flight search engine, TripAdvisor Flights. Jami Counter, senior director of TripAdvisor Flights, said the website has so far collected more than 3,500 airline ratings from travelers, "and we expect it to grow quickly.” Airlines are rated from 1 to 5 "stars" and also by the percentage of travelers who recommend them. During a flight search, visitors to TripAdvisor can click on a carrier's name to view its ratings. If they sign in as TripAdvisor members, they can also add ratings of their own, on a scale of 1 to 5, in eight categories: baggage handling, check-in experience, in-flight amenities, in-flight service, punctuality, reasonableness of fees, seat comfort and value. In another addition, Trip Advisor's "Fees Estimator," which previously calculated baggage

In the largest deal in civil aviation history, Delhi-based low-cost domestic carrier IndiGo has placed an order for 180 aircraft with European-aircraft maker, Airbus. The deal is valued at $15.6 billion. The deal will see IndiGo acquire 150 eco-efficient ‘neo' series A-320 aircraft, a model that was launched in December. The remaining orders are for the standard A-320s aircraft. IndiGo already has 37 A-320s in its fleet. Airbus officials said that the aircraft delivery will take place in a phased manner from 2016 to 2025. Late last year, the airline got ‘in-principle approval' by the Ministry of Civil Aviation for import of aircraft in the future. Financing not divulged Declining to go into the financing details for the deal, the airline President, Mr Aditya Ghosh, said that IndiGo will follow the same financing method as was used for purchasing 100 Airbus aircraft, a deal that it concluded in 2005. However, the method has never been made public. The airline will start taki

Airbus claims its A320neo will offer as much as a 15-percent fuel burn improvement over the standard A320 family. Airbus’s launch last week of a new engine option for its A320 single-aisle series has for the moment turned the proverbial spotlight directly on rival Boeing and its own line of narrowbodies. Indeed, the competitive implications of re-engining the 737–or not–now appear unequivocal. If Boeing chooses not to follow suit with the 737, by 2016 the new line of A320s, dubbed the A320neo, could hold a double-digit fuel burn advantage over the Boeing product. Granted, the airplane will cost some $6 million more than the standard A320s, but Airbus apparently feels it has received enough positive feedback from potential airline customers to justify the project’s more than €1 billion ($1.3 billion) development cost. No matter what Airbus ultimately spends on the new product, the move poses something of a dilemma for Boeing. Just this week, Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Jim Albau

Follow-up :  http://aviationreport.blogspot.com/2010/06/airplane-airbags.html Federal accident investigators issued a report Tuesday strongly endorsing aviation air bags as a potentially far-reaching safety enhancement to reduce fatalities and injuries in private plane crashes. But as expected, the National Transportation Safety Board didn't recommend mandatory implementation of such technology, which already is installed on the majority of recently-built general aviation aircraft but hasn't been retrofitted on older models. Overall, only about 7,000 of the roughly 200,000 general aviation aircraft licensed in the U.S. are now equipped with air bags. At the end of the safety board's session, Chairman Deborah Hersman called on manufacturers to voluntarily provide air bags as standard equipment on more private planes rolling out of their factories. Reflecting the board's growing support for expanding the technology to tens of thousands of other aircraft built long befo

Ryan air has recently launched another agressive campaign in Europe with cheaper than ever fares. In today's (01/11/2011) widely distributed French newspaper Le Monde, The 5th page was entirely covered with a huge ad for flights for 8€ taxes included with Ryan Air. The black and white advertisement might have cost even less as its design is really poor and built around the catchline : an immense '8€'. A small font line at the bottom of the page nevertheless warned that the offer was "only available until the 01/10/2011" as is customary with Ryan Air's noisy communication methods. In the same newspaper British airways had a quarter of a page for new Orly Heathrow flights and Air France had a very small banner commenting on the increase of its frequency to Berlin. Both ads were colored. Is it true? On Ryan Air's website, we were able to book one-way flights from Lille to Barcelona and from Lille to Porto for only 6€ which is even cheaper than was announced

New York-based Bernstein Research believes the airline industry is firmly in the recovery period on a global basis, citing four key positive indicators—“increasing traffic, rising load factors, higher yield and positive operating profits.” In a recently released client report, Bernstein said that after an unusually short down cycle and trough period, partially attributable to the rise of emerging markets and the globalization of demand, “airline traffic has been steadily rising since 2009 in all regions, with the exception of the interruption by the Icelandic volcano eruption in March 2010.” It continued, “Global load factors are at levels comparable to, or higher than, levels seen in the last cycle on a seasonally adjusted basis. Yields have improved significantly from 2009 levels; however, they are still not quite back at 2008 levels.” Bernstein added that it is seeing a broad-based recovery in profitability, with all the major US airlines and most European and Asian airlines f