NewsCommercial
Newer aircraft models reach maintenance milestone
Widebody airframe MRO providers will soon start seeing more of the newer twin-aisle airliners, many of which will be due for heavy checks in 2015 and 2016. Aviation Week statistics show decreasing MRO activity for four-engine planes as the twin-engine craft grow in popularity.
LinkAirlines
Alaska, Sabre sign agreement covering ancillary sales
Alaska Airlines and Sabre have inked an agreement that will allow travel agencies to sell Alaska ancillary services by late 2015. "Our top priority is to provide our customers with options so travelers can purchase the optional products and services they value most, and Sabre has been an important partner in helping achieve this goal," said Andrew Harrison, senior vice president of planning and revenue management for the carrier.
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American Airlines awaits Dreamliner delivery
A Boeing 787 Dreamliner destined for American Airlines took a three-hour flight on Tuesday near a Boeing facility in Everett, Wash. "We expect to welcome our first 787 into the fleet in the first quarter of 2015," said Matt Miller, spokesman for American.
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American Airlines unveils new "American Way" magazine this month
An updated version of American Airlines' in-flight magazine, "American Way," debuts this month and will appear on all US Airways and American flights. "The revitalized 'American Way' comes as American makes a huge investment in the customer experience with improvements to our aircraft, our lounges and the airports we serve,” said Fernand Fernandez, VP of global marketing.
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JetBlue debuts service between SFO and Las Vegas
JetBlue Airways announced the launch of new service between San Francisco and Las Vegas. The carrier offers two daily flights on the route, using Airbus A320 aircraft. Flights depart San Francisco International Airport at 9:25 a.m. and 12:45 p.m., and arrive at Las Vegas McCarran International Airport at 11:01 a.m. and 2:20 p.m., respectively. Flights from Las Vegas to San Francisco depart at 7:00 a.m. and 12:50 p.m., and arrive at 8:40 a.m. and 2:31 p.m.
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Qatar Airways To Cut Fuel Surcharge
Qatar Airways will cut its fuel surcharge following the drop in crude oil prices, the company's chief executive told reporters. "As far as the fuel price reduction is concerned, there will be no reduction in the ticket fare, but there will be a reduction in the fuel surcharge that we were charging," Akbar Al Baker told a news conference. He declined to comment on exactly how much the cut would be or when it would be implemented. Al-Baker said the cut would not be directly related to a percentage drop in crude prices of more than 50 percent since June.
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United F/As Claim Fired Over Security Concerns
A group of 13 flight attendants say they were illegally fired by United Airlines after refusing to fly on a Hong Kong-bound plane last July that had a "threatening" message scrawled under its tail. In a complaint to the US Department of Labor, they said the words "Bye Bye" and two faces, one smiling and the other "devilish," were found finger-drawn in oil grime under the auxiliary engine of the Boeing 747 at San Francisco Airport. The flight attendants, all with 18 or more years of experience, said the airline refused to deplane the passengers and conduct a security inspection. They said they disobeyed orders to work, believing the lives of more than 300 passengers and crew on the jet could be endangered. After a delay, the July 14 flight was eventually cancelled. United accused the flight attendants of insubordination and fired them all, according to the complaint.
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United announces Seattle pilot base plan
United Airlines is shuttering its pilot base at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Though the closure isn’t official until March, Wednesday is the last day when the 39 United pilots at the base will be scheduled to start or end their trips out of Seattle. The move parallels the closure of United’s flight-attendant base at Sea-Tac, due to be final by the end of this month. United continues to fly out of Seattle, but it has reduced its presence over the past year as Delta and Alaska Airlines have expanded.
LinkAirports
LAX to invest $4B in updates
Los Angeles International Airport plans to spend $4 billion to update its infrastructure, including adding a people mover and connecting the airport to the city's Metro. "This should all have been done long ago (and proposals have been floated time and time again), but at least it's finally moving ahead," writes the Cranky Flyer blogger.
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LAX handled record number of passengers in 2014
Local tourism in 2014 set its fourth record in as many years, city officials announced Tuesday, and Los Angeles International Airport exceeded its 14-year-old peak for airline travel and is now the nation’s second-busiest airport.
The airport handled more than 70 million passengers last year, far surpassing a record of 67.3 million travelers set in 2000, according to economic data released at a news conference at LAX.
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Tulsa airport kicks off "Fly Tulsa" campaign
Officials at Oklahoma's Tulsa International Airport are looking to encourage local residents to start their vacations with flights from their hometown airport. The newly launched "Fly Tulsa" campaign encourages travelers to post photos on social media sites of themselves with the airport's Golden Driller statue for a chance to win a free trip.
LinkMilitary
E-2D units will command future UCLASS fleet
The US Navy has decided to embed its future unmanned surveillance and strike aircraft in the same air wing that operates the Northrop Grumman E-2C/D, an airborne command and control platform. The decision settles a philosophical debate within the navy over who should have command over the unmanned carrier launched airborne surveillance and strike (UCLASS) aircraft during operations. Options under review as late as August included operating UCLASS aircraft as a standalone unit, as a detachment to a wing of Lockheed Martin F-35C fighters or as a detachment to a wing that includes the E-2C/D. Naval officials quietly announced their decision in a little-noticed directive released last month. That notice, dated 18 December, says a new UCLASS unit called the “fleet introduction team” will be established on 1 October.
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F-35 program office defends gun and sensor
Two critical close air support systems – a 25mm cannon and an electro-optical targeting system (EOTS) – will be available on the Lockheed Martin F-35 by 2017 and will meet expectations, say program officials on 7 January. The F-35 joint program office (JPO) defended both systems against what it calls “nameless/sourceless/baseless reporting” in recent weeks, but acknowledged one new development problem for the gun and some operational limitations for the Lockheed-built EOTS sensor. Contrary to a report that the General Dynamics GAU-22 gun is unable to be fired until 2019, the JPO says it will be delivered when the Block 3F software becomes operational. That delivery date is now scheduled in Fiscal 2017 with aircraft built in the ninth lot of low-rate initial production (LRIP-9).
LinkRegulatory
FAA Sets New Air Safety Rule
The US FAA will require domestic airlines to put in place proactive safety measures designed to highlight risks, deter accidents and make air travel safer. The FAA rule, which was four years in the making, requires US airlines and freight carriers to submit so-called "safety management system" plans within six months and implement them within three years. While the US air safety record has been improving steadily, air travel fears have been stoked by a string of high-profile accidents around the world, including the disappearance of a Malaysian Airlines airliner last March with 239 people on board. Last month, another Malaysia-affiliated carrier, Indonesia AirAsia, crashed near Borneo killing 162 people. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said at a news conference that both the US and the industry have set a goal of reducing domestic fatalities by half between 2010 and 2025.
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FAA proposes changes to NYC airport slot award process
The Federal Aviation Administration is proposing changes to the way slots are traded or purchased at major New York City-area airports, creating a secondary market where airlines would bid publicly on slots.
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US Senator Urges Tighter Screening For Airport Workers
Employees at US airports should face tighter security screening, a US senator and a New York prosecutor said on Wednesday, two weeks after a baggage handler was charged with helping to smuggle 153 guns onto flights from Atlanta to New York. Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said he asked the US TSA to require that all airline and airport employees be physically screened every day before work, his office said in a statement. While pilots and flight crews must pass through metal detectors at airports, the people who repair and clean planes, load luggage and work in areas beyond the security checkpoints are not screened.
LinkSpace
SpaceX, USAF Eye Mid-2015 For Falcon 9 Full Certification
The U.S. Air Force and Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) are now targeting midyear for full certification of the launch upstart’s Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket to loft Pentagon payloads into orbit. Officials had hoped to achieve this goal by the end of last year, and a service statement says "substantial progress" has been made. But 20% of the tasks associated with the certification still remain, according to an Air Force statement. "In a relatively short period of time, SpaceX has made historic progress as a launch provider and helped prove how effective competition can be in the civil space industry – all while bringing commercial space launches back to the United States," said Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves, commander of the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC). "This progress also includes establishing itself as a DOD launch provider and continuing to work with the Air Force to fully demonstrate its ability to comply with National Security Space standards for interface with and delivery of our nation’s most critical payloads to multiple orbits.
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Aviation Quote
Limited in his nature, infinite in his desires,
Man is a fallen god who remembers heaven.
— Alphonse de Lamertine
On This Date
---In 1944…First flight of the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star.
---In 1945... The Mitsubishi J8M1 rocket-fighter makes its first flight in Hyakurigahara, Japan.
---In 1959…First flight of the Armstrong Whitworth AW.650 Argosy G-AOZZ.
---In 1980…A Mooney 231 lands in San Francisco, after flying coast to coast non-stop, setting a record by completing the flight in 8 hours and 4 minutes.
---In 1982... The Airbus A300 becomes the world’s first wide-bodied airliner to be certified for operation by a flight crew of two.
---In 1989…British Midland Flight 92 crashes while attempting an emergency landing at East Midlands Airport, killing 47 of the 126 on-board. The left engine had experienced a fan blade rupture on the Boeing 737-400 (registered G-OBME), and confusion with previous 737 models caused the pilots to think the right engine had failed, which they promptly shut down. While on approach, power was added to the ailing left engine, causing it to completely fail, and the aircraft to subsequently fall short of the runway onto the M1 motorway.
---In 1994…The Russian Soyuz TM-18 is launched, bringing cosmonaut Valery Polyakov to Mir for a record time of 437 days in space.
---In 1996…A Moscow Airways Antonov AN-32B (registered RA-26222) being operated by Air Africa, crashes at N’Dolo Airport in Kinshasa, DR Congo. The aircraft had difficulty building airspeed and went off the end of the runway and into a street market, where about 350 people were killed.
---In 2003…Turkish Airlines Flight 634, an Avro RJ100 (registered TC-THG) crashes on approach near Diyarbakir Airport in Turkey. The approach was being shot in heavy fog, and there were only 5 survivors among the 80 people aboard.
---In 2003…Air Midwest Flight 5481 crashes on departure from Charlotte-Douglas International Airport, killing all 21 on-board. Operating for US Airways, the Beechcraft 1900D (registered N233YV) had received faulty maintenance on the elevator cables, resulting in the inability of the flight crew to control the aircraft, leading to a stall.
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