NEWS
Ryanair Annual Profit Jumps 25 Percent
Ryanair, Europe's biggest budget airline, warned high fuel costs and a worsening economic outlook meant profit would slip by up to 20 percent in the coming year, the first fall in four years.
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Qantas To Cut Another 500 Maintenance Jobs
Australian airline Qantas said on Monday it is eliminating 500 jobs by merging maintenance facilities to save up to AUD$100 million (USD$98.4 million) annually, as high fuel costs and weak demand take a toll on airline profits.
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UK accepts eighth C-17 transport from Boeing
Boeing has delivered its eighth C-17 strategic transport to the Royal Air Force, less than two months after the UK finalised its latest order for the type. Handed over at Boeing's Long Beach final assembly site in California on 16 May, aircraft ZZ178 will enter use soon with 99 Sqn at RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire. The unit has logged more than 74,000 flight hours with its C-17s since fielding its first example in 2001, with many of these having been accumulated in support of the UK's military involvement in Afghanistan.
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Oman orders C295s for airlift, maritime patrol duties
Airbus Military has received a new order to supply eight C295 medium transport and maritime patrol aircraft to the Royal Air Force of Oman. Signed on 19 May, the deal will include the production of five aircraft dedicated as transports and three to be configured as maritime patrol assets, Airbus Military says. Deliveries will commence from the company’s San Pablo final assembly line in Seville, Spain in 2013.
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EADS and ST Aero finalise A330 conversion agreement
EADS and ST Aerospace have signed an agreement formalising their launch of an Airbus A330 passenger-to-freighter conversion program. Under the agreement, ST Aero will pay €110.5 million ($142 million) to subscribe to new shares in EADS EFW, the Dresden-based company that is also the main EADS passenger aircraft conversion facility.
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Bankruptcy court approves Delta DIP loan to Pinnacle
A US bankruptcy court approved Delta Air Lines’ (DL) $74.3 million in debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing for Pinnacle Airlines Corp., a significant provider of regional service for DL. The Memphis, Tenn.-based parent of Pinnacle Airlines, Colgan Air and Mesaba Aviation is in the middle of a Chapter 11 restructuring.
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New airline in Ivory Coast to launch in July
The West African state of Ivory Coast will again have its own airline this summer, when Air Cote D’Ivoire launches regional services in July. The airline is a partnership with Air France (AF) and the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED), the economic development agency of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN).
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United Continental pilots call for strike action
Leaders of the 12,000 ALPA-represented pilots at United Continental Holdings (UCH) have called for a strike vote after failing to reach a contract agreement through two years of post-merger negotiations. The parties began talks in May 2010 when United Airlines and Continental Airlines announced their merger plans. They jointly requested mediation by the National Mediation Board (NMB) in December 2010, which began Feb. 28, 2011.
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Delta trims capacity on transatlantic routes
Delta Air Lines (DL) said will cut capacity by 5% on transatlantic routes in the fourth quarter as a “proactive measure” against high fuel costs and a weakening euro. It will also reduce Pacific capacity by 1%-2%.
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Olympic Flame Takes Front Seat On London Flight
The cabin announcement was polite but firm: "Unless you happen to be the Olympic Flame, I'm afraid there is no smoking allowed."
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Thai Air Considering New Budget Airline
Thai Airways may set up a new budget carrier to tap strong demand in the regional no-frills sector and the group is on track to achieve its net profit target this year after a strong first quarter, its president said on Friday.
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Other News
Russian Federal Air Transport Agency Rosaviatsia announced it will spend RUB219.4 million ($7.2 million) to subsidize five carriers that service Kaliningrad (KGD)–Moscow and KGD–St. Petersburg routes. The program runs through Sept. 15. Aviation authorities signed contracts with five carriers that take part in the program—Aeroflot, Rossiya Airline, S7 Airlines, UTair and Ak Bars Aero.
Virgin Atlantic (VS) will cease service to the Kenyan capital of Nairobi from Sept. 23. VS cited increasing costs and a challenging economic background in both the UK and the African nation as the reasons for the decision.
US carriers’ on-time performance (OTP) in March improved over the same period a year ago, but was worse than February’s report. The US Dept. of Transportation’s (DOT) Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) reported that the 15 carriers which log on-time performance data posted an overall OTP arrival rate of 82.2% in March, up from 79.2% in March 2011, but down from 86.2% in February.
Aviation Partners Boeing (APB) has received FAA approval to install its blended winglets on the Boeing 767 converted freighter (767BCF). “Blended winglet technology installed on a Boeing 767-300ER/F/BCF reduces fuel burn by up to 500,000 gallons per aircraft per year while reducing carbon dioxide emissions by over 5,000 tons per year,” APB said in a statement.
Spirit Airlines launched daily Latrobe-Orlando service May 17.
Tiger Airways will increase 3X-weekly Singapore (SIN)-Haikou service to 5X-weekly Aug 1-31, and will operate 2X-daily SIN service to Kuching and Penang Aug 17-26.
Alaska Airlines will launch 4X-weekly Portland, Ore.-Kauai service Nov. 5.
Wizz Air will launch Ljubljana service to Brussels Charleroi (Oct. 29) and London Luton (Oct. 30).
AVIATION QUOTE
I don't think I possess any skill that anyone else doesn't have. I've just had perhaps more of an opportunity, more of an exposure, and been fortunate to survive a lot of situations that many other weren't so lucky to make it. It's not how close can you get to the ground, but how precise can you fly the airplane. If you feel so careless with you life that you want to be the world's lowest flying aviator you might do it for a while. But there are a great many former friends of mine who are no longer with us simply because they cut their margins to close.
— Bob Hoover
ON THIS DATE
---In 1878... Glenn Hammond Curtiss, pioneer of the first years of powered flight and rival of the Wright brothers, is born in Hammondsport, New York.
---In 1946... Royal Dutch Airlines, KLM, inaugurates a scheduled service to New York. It is the first European airline to open post-war flights to New York.
---In 1956…B-52 Stratofortress drops the US hydrogen bomb, a 3.75 MT device on (Bikini Atoll) Central Pacific, a first such air drop.
---In 1975…First flight of the Rutan VariEze N7EZ.
---In 1977... The Concorde makes a special trip from New York to Paris to mark the 50th anniversary of Charles Lindbergh’s historic flight on the same route in the Spirit of St. Louis; the airliner takes just 3 hours, 44 minutes, compared with Lindbergh’s time of 33 hours, 29 minutes.
DAILY VIDEO
EDITOR’S CHOICE
HUMOR
A Military Spec Never Dies It Just Goes On and On and ...
The US standard railroad gauge (width between the two rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches.
That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US railroads.
Why did the English build them like that ?
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
Why did "they" use that gauge then ?
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.
So who built those old rutted roads?
The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots first formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheelspacing.
The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Specifications and bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you maybe exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses. Thus, we have the answer to the original question.
Now the extraterrestrial twist to the story...
When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory had to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
So, the major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass.
And you wonder why it's so hard, to get ahead in this world...
TRIVIA
Word Jumble
What’s the theme?
1. NFALRKE
2. UFURCML
3. AXFOTB
4. BHSIDEF
5. GGEROLF
6. DOFUHNXO
7. CNFERE
8. REMFRA
9. FCSROE
10. GANOLF
