Budget airline easyJet has reported a 6.1pc increase in passenger numbers but a slip in the number of occupied seats on its flights. The FTSE 100 airline flew 6.37 million customers last month, up from 6 million in April 2015. EasyJet’s load factor - an industry measure of the percentage of seats that were actually occupied - fell from 90.8pc a year ago to 90.4pc last month. The res...
Let's be honest. Flying — for most people — means being crammed into a pressurized metal tube with small portholes. Even large business jets with eight-figure price tags offer very little in terms of natural sunlight. Now Embraer has come up with a revolutionary interior that's straight out of a sci-fi flick. With an interior-design concept called the Kyoto Airship, Em...
In the April 2016 issue of Airways, Andreas Spaeth wrote about Dutch carrier KLM’s (Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij or Royal Dutch Airlines) introduction of the Boeing 787-9 into its fleet. Initial destinations served by the new aircraft included Abu Dhabi, Muscat, Rio de Janeiro, Osaka, Delhi, Hangzhou, Xiamen and Chengdu. And on May 4, San Francisco (SFO) was added...
A Ryanair passenger was arrested Thursday night after he shouted a bomb threat while his plane was landing. The man was aggravated that flight crew refused him a beer, and decided to exact revenge by claiming there was a bomb onboard, according to local reports. The flight from Tenerife landed in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, at 9:28 p.m. local time. As the plane was preparing to land, t...
A start-up company hosted in an ESA business incubator is developing the world’s first vertical takeoff and landing aircraft for personal use. The electric two-seater will open the door to a new class of simpler, quieter and environmentally friendly planes available from 2018. “Our goal is to develop an aircraft for use in everyday life,” explains Daniel Wiegand, CEO and one o...
Pilots at a South Korean airline are suing their chairman after he claimed that “flying is easier than driving a car”. The union at Korean Air, South Korea's flag carrier, has filed a lawsuit to the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office against Cho Yang-Ho, who is also the president of the Olympic organising committee for PyeongChang's 2018 Winter Games, for conte...
On 14 October 1947, US test pilot Chuck Yeager did what many thought was impossible. Strapped into the seat of the Bell X1 rocket plane – painfully so, having broken two ribs a few days before in a horse-riding accident – Yeager became the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound. While Yeager’s name may be the one celebrated in the record books, there were other pilots...
The municipality of Kaunas decided on May 3rd to provide 500,000 euros to the low-cost airline Wizz Air to help it operate more flights from Lithuania's second-biggest city, reports LETA/BNS. The city expects that this will help attract more tourists. Wizz Air asked the city to co-fund four new flights from Kaunas Airport, with plans to fly to the Dutch city of Eindhoven and the Nor...
Norway’s SHT air accident investigation board is to resume its search for missing components from the Airbus Helicopters H225 which crashed near Bergen on 29 April. In a statement, SHT says the main focus of its search will be “for parts connected to the main gearbox”, and that this will “continue as long as required”. Preliminary information contained in an eme...
This year has seen Starspeed operate in its 60thcountry: Something that 40 years ago would have seemed impossible. When Starspeed started in the VIP helicopter management and charter business in 1978, the privately owned aircraft were mainly small, single-engined helicopters. They were used only in good weather, within a locally defined area of operations, for short hops as an alternative...
GainJet Aviation has added a new long range executive jet to its fleet, adding a third Bombardier Challenger aircraft, a CL605. The aircraft, registration SX-SHC, was delivered on 15 April 2016, and it is available for charter based between Amman, Jordan and Athens, Greece. The CL605 can carry 12 passengers. The cabin features four individual VIP seats, a club-four dining seating area, and a fo...
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has completed the first deployment of the AeroVironment RQ-20A Puma AE unmanned air vehicle to the Antarctic, where it supported a US Coast Guard resupply mission. It operated onboard the US Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Star in support of the annual operation Deep Freeze deployment, taking on the role of manned helicopters in providing...
