Piaggio Aerospace has secured European and US certification for the new landing gear on its Avanti Evo twin-engined turboprop, following an intensive flight-test programme. The system, designed and manufactured by Italian company Magnaghi, replaces the Dowty landing gear that has been a feature on all Avanti models – including the first Evo delivered in April to Greece’s Superior Ai...
BGS, an international provider of ground handling and aircraft fuelling services, is celebrating the fact of registering the 1 000 000th passenger using its own Departure Control System (DCS). Moreover, the system, already used for serving Wizz Air, Small Planet Airlines and other airline flights in Vilnius International Airport, is currently nearing its SITA Cute certification. The web-ba...
The bankruptcy of the Russia’s airline is the only way out of the situation and the decision may be taken at the meeting chaired by the PM Dmitry Medvedev, sources familiar with the situation say The decision of the Russian Government on Transaero’s bankruptcy will create problems for VEB Leasing as one of major lessors of the airline, a source in the aviation industry told TASS on...
Air India's twin troubles with its almost 25-year-old Airbus A320s and aircraft engines show no signs on ebbing. A 26-year-old AI Airbus A320 reportedly had an engine failure while flying on the Varanasi-Delhi sector on Thursday evening. The pilot got a stall warning from an engine just as he was about to begin descending for landing. He switched off the engine, declared an emerge...
Lockheed Martin has hailed progress on the Royal Australian Navy’s MH-60R Seahawk ‘Romeo’ project, with 14 of the 24 naval combat helicopters being acquired so far delivered ahead of schedule. Of those, 13 aircraft are already here in Australia, and one is in the US for the purposes of testing. Three more of the anti-submarine warfare/anti-surface warfare multi-mission helicop...
Cathay Pacific has commenced a second Boeing 777-300ER rotation to Sydney. Flight CX101 from Hong Kong, operated by B-KQR, arrived at Sydney a little after 1030 local time on Friday. The reciprocal CX100 took off from the NSW capital just past 1600. Upgauging a second of four daily Cathay flights between Hong Kong and Sydney from the Airbus A330-300 to the 777-300ER represents an eight pe...
The NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) has demonstrated a range of its fixed wing and helicopter firefighting capabilities at the Sydney International Regatta Centre in Penrith, including an impressive display by the recently arrived McDonnell Douglas DC-10 Very Large Air Tanker (VLAT). October 1 marked the official start of a two-year $9.8 million trial to allow the NSW RFS...
Jetgo has delayed the launch of its new Dubbo-Melbourne service after the regional carrier was unable to secure terminal space at Tullamarine and prevented from operating to Essendon Airport due to a lack of passenger screening facilities. The new three times a week offering was due to begin in late October and run on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays with 36-seat Embraer ERJ-135 region...
A Lockheed Martin C-130J aircraft operated by the US Air Force has crashed at Jalalabad airfield in Afghanistan. The crash occurred 19 minutes after midnight on Friday 2 October, says a statement from the 455th Air Expeditionary Wing based at Kabul’s Bagram airfield. It confirms that six military personnel and five civilians were killed in the crash. The aircraft was assigned t...
Chinese aviation manufacturer AVIC has expanded into the seaplane market, placing an order for 100 sets of floats to convert 19-seat Harbin Y-12s into amphibious transports, says a US supplier. Seattle-based Kenmore Air announced that AVIC is acquiring the floats for the Y-12 from EDO Floats, a subsidiary of the US company. The two-year conversion programme includes a plan to certi...
Norwegian (DY, Oslo Gardemoen) founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Bjørn Kjos has confirmed that his airline is in cooperation talks with fellow budget operator and rival,Ryanair (FR,Dublin Int'l ). Kjos told Bloomberg news in an interview that the negotiations pertain to the Irish LCC providing feeder traffic to Norwegian Long Haul (DU, Oslo Gardemoen)...
As a continuous business expansion program, designed to cope with the increased demands in narrow body aircraft maintenance, Garuda Maintenance Facilities (GMF) AeroAsia, a subsidiary of Garuda Indonesia, has completed the construction of Hangar 4, the world's biggest narrow body aircraft hangar with a maintenance capacity of up to 16 narrow body aircraft including one bay for aircra...
American Airlines officials say five passengers were injured on a flight from Grenada to Miami after the plane encountered some unexpected turbulence. American's Flight 982 landed at Miami International Airport shortly before noon Thursday without incident. Five passengers were taken to a hospital for minor injuries. The airline said in a statement that the seatbelt sign was on...
Drivers for the ride-hailing company Uber are now legally picking up passengers at the Salt Lake City International Airport. Airport officials say they've given the smartphone-powered company permission to start operating its UberX service as part of a one-year pilot program. Though both Uber and competitor Lyft used to pick up passengers at the airport, they pulled out months ago a...
Canada's Bombardier Inc is exploring the sale of a stake in any of its business areas, not just its rail unit, to ensure it can finish development of its delayed CSeries jet, according to four sources familiar with the situation. The Montreal-based company has hired investment bankers to look at a variety of financing options, the sources said, including selling aerospace or rail assets in...
Airbus CEO Fabrice Bregier remains confident that the European aircraft manufacturer will achieve its goal to deliver around 15 Airbus A350 XWB aircraft this year. "If we reach this target, I think we have secured a strong foundation for the future ramp-up of A350 production. It is always extremely difficult to produce an aircraft that is just certified," Bregier said. To...
Angel Jet Network (AJN), a Hong Kong-based charity providing medical transportation for underprivileged patients across the Asia-Pacific region, made its first flights last week. The organization, which is inspired by the U.S.-based Corporate Angel Network (CAN), uses flights in aircraft donated by private individuals and companies. The first three flights carried three orphans from the Chunhui...
Spirit Aeronautics announced today that the FAA Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) is now complete and the company is offering Future Airspace Navigation System (FANS) 1/A capability for Bombardier's Challenger 604 aircraft equipped with Rockwell Collins Pro Line 4™ avionics. The STC upgrade is straight forward and utilizes the current flight management system (FMS) and control displ...
Air France said on Thursday it plans to reduce its activities in 2016-2017 in order to safeguard its future, after talks with pilots over a restructuring plan failed on Wednesday. Air France, part of Franco-Dutch airline Air France-KLM , said in a statement that because of the impossibility of reaching an agreement on boosting productivity at the airline, the parent company board had mandated A...
Russian state airline Aeroflot said on Thursday it would not proceed with the acquisition of struggling competitor Transaero after its rival's shareholders failed to present an offer for the purchase of a 75 percent stake before the deadline. The decision leaves the future of Transaero, Russia's second-largest airline behind state-controlled Aeroflot, in limbo. Last month,...
The improving U.S. economy, in contrast to challenging economic circumstances affecting the rest of the world, seems to be reflected in the charter business, and activity has never been better, according to companies AIN interviewed for this special report. Charter/management firms report steady growth in fleets and business, from both management customers and buyers of charter...
