24 Apr Oh-Ha - Angolan pilot lands at wrong airport
Angola's flag carrier TAAG, already banned from flying to Europe, said Friday it had suspended a pilot and his co-pilot for landing at the wrong airport in the Zambian capital Lusaka.
The pilot landed the Boeing 737 at Lusaka City Airport when he should have landed at Lusaka International Airport during a regular stopover from Harare to Luanda on April 17, TAAG said in a statement.
"Because this is a serious incident, Angola's Aviation Authority and TAAG have opened an investigation into the matter," it said. "TAAG regrets the grief this has caused to passengers and reiterates its promise to deliver a service with the highest security standards."
The state carrier was banned from EU airspace in 2007, the same year one of its planes crashed, killing six people on board. The government fired TAAG's board last year and created a commission to investigate and improve safety.
Angola expects the airline to be allowed to fly to Europe later this year. http://uk.news.yahoo.com
18 Apr The latest at Newsnow.co.uk
FlyGlobespan warns it must clip its wings - The Scotsman 11:42 17-Apr
-BUDGET airline FlyGlobespan has warned that it expects the gloomy economic outlook to have an impact on spending in the year ahead. The Edinburgh-based firm said it is working to match supply to demand on its core routes and is aiming to cut costs.
This is your captain: we'll arrive on time (Passenger nos down/punctuality up) - The Times 11:45 17-Apr
Easyjet Airbus A320 - fins (Vertical Stabilizers and not Finns) really ain't what they used to be - Airline Business 11:31 17-Apr
Qantas delivers bad news - The Courier-Mail 15:39 17-Apr
-Qantas this week said it, too, would have to ground and sell aircraft, about 10 from its 230-strong fleet. It said earnings would nosedive into the red in the second half of fiscal 2009, resulting in annual profit falling up to 80 per cent short of target.
Virgin Atlantic asked the U.S. Department of Transportation to call for more documents from British Airways Plc and AMR Corp.’s American Airlines as the pair seek antitrust immunity for a proposed alliance - Bloomberg 16:11 17-Apr
Jet Airways to link more European cities..has expanded its code-share agreement with Brussels Airlines to add European cities of Marseille, Toulouse, Geneva and Vienna to its existing international network, said a press statement. Hindu Business Line, April 17
Delta you can't come to Nigeria with that clapped out 767 - Airline Business 09:16 17-Apr-09
Lufthansa A340-600s suffer cabin air contamination - Airline Business 16:03 16-Apr-09
SIA traffic plummets 23% - Air & Business Travel News 13:44 16-Apr-09
Bournemouth Airport Shut By Emergency Landing - Bournemouth Daily Echo, Dorset 21:10 16-Apr-09
Leeds Bradford receives major blow to expansion plans - Passenger Terminal Today 09:20 17-Apr-09
12 Apr Ryanair on rong runway on Sardinia / Qantas-MAS talks collapse / LTN drop off charges last straw
Ryanair flight lands on taxiway at Cagliari
Italian investigators have opened an inquiry after a Ryanair aircraft touched down on a taxiway whilst landing at Cagliari today (12 Apr) - 3 days after the airport's runway re-opened after modernisation. The aircraft had been arriving at the Sardinian airport from Girona in Spain.
Ryanair's timetable shows that the airline operates a morning flight, FR9265, on the route. Cagliari Airport's arrival information states that this service landed at 11:32 today.
Ryanair has a fleet exclusively comprising Boeing 737-800s (Yet to be confirmed by ENAC).
Cagliari Airport's runway 14/32 re-opened on 9 April following a modernisation programme which included installing sensors in the pavement layers to monitor stresses created by departing and arriving aircraft. The data collected will be used to refine maintenance.
ENAC says no-one was injured in the Ryanair incident but it is to examine the "level of preparedness" of the crew. Ryanair could not immediately be reached for comment on the event. (FlightGlobal via Newsnow.co.uk 12 Apr)
Qantas, MAS talks collapse
QANTAS has scrapped plans for a joint maintenance venture with Malaysian Airlines, abandoning a move that raised suspicions engineering jobs would be moved offshore. (WAToday.com.au from SMH via Newsnow.co.uk)
Luton Aiport drop-off charges are just plane stupid (The Mirror 12-Apr)
Anger raging in the UK as airports cash in on passengers. After Blackpool charging £10 for "airport improvement" and various other airports charging for everything from plastic bags required by security to getting to the airport in the first place, London-Luton's drop off charge (goodbye and kiss drops) for very limited dropping off of passengers has been the final straw in airport chicanery. (Link at newsnow.co.uk)
12 Apr Emirates plane centimetres away from major air crash
An Emirates plane came just centimetres from crashing at Melbourne Airport, authorities have revealed.
The fully-laden jet carrying 225 passengers and bound for Dubai last month had to use the entire 3,600-metre-long runway 16 but failed to become airborne until the last moment, News Limited newspapers say.
The pilots managed to pull the nose up sharply but smashed the jet's tail into the ground and also took out airport strobe lights 170 metres from the end of the runway.
The plane then took out navigation antennae before barely clearing the airport's boundary fence half a kilometre away. "It was as close as we have ever come to a major aviation catastrophe in Australia," an aviation official told News Limited. (AAP http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/latest/5492644/emirates-jet-crashed-melbourne/ April 12, 07:01)
07 Apr Dubai shrungs off economic woes with new budget airline
Dubai appeared to shrug off a slowdown in global air travel and its own financial crisis, announcing on Monday the launch of its first budget carrier, a sister company to high-flying Emirates airline.
Flydubai will take to the skies in two months, with flights to Beirut on June 1 and to Amman on June 2, company chairman Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum told reporters. "We are committed to bringing a new option to the market and to growing the region's budget air travel business," said Sheikh Ahmed, also chairman of Emirates. "This will benefit our economy, our people, and tourism business as a whole."
The Gulf emirate first announced the establishment of flydubai in March 2008, with a start-up capital of 250 million dirhams (67 million US dollars).
Flydubai will operate two next-generation Boeing 737-800 aircraft on the Beirut and Amman routes, and have four aircraft by the end of the year, he said. Dubai owns the largest Middle East carrier, Emirates, and has the busiest airport in the region which handled more than 37 million passengers in 2008, a nine percent increase from 2007.
The new airline will be based at Dubai Airport. It was first expected to use Dubai's al-Maktoum International airport, but the new hub is running behind schedule and is now expected to open in 2010 instead of this year.
The neighbouring emirate of Sharjah operates Air Arabia, while Kuwait's Jazeera Airways operates from Dubai and Kuwait, Bahrain Air flies from the neighbouring Gulf archipelago, and Nas from oil-rich Saudi Arabia.
Air Arabia is the Middle East's first and largest no-frills carrier, which carried 3.6 million passengers in 2008 and saw annual profit surged 35.6 percent to 138.9 million US dollars.
Dubai's once-booming economy was hard-hit by the global economic crisis, which tightened the noose on finance available for Dubai businesses, especially the massive real estate sector -- once the main engine of growth.
But Middle East air travel appears to be bucking a global slowdown, as the region's carriers saw a rise of 0.4 percent in international traffic in February, compared to the same period a year earlier, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA). IATA reported a sharp decline in air travel in February, as global passenger numbers nosedived 10.1 percent from the year before while freight traffic fell by 22.1 percent. (SMH Apr 7, 03:59 via newsnow.co.uk)
06 Apr No survivors in Indonesian military air crash
An Indonesian military aircraft carrying 24 people has crashed into an airport in West Java, killing everyone on board. Witnesses said the aircraft was shaking before it erupted into a giant fireball on impact [AFP]
The Fokker-27 was attempting to land during a regular training flight when it crashed and burst into flames during stormy weather on Mon, 110km southeast of Jakarta and was carrying 6 crew members, 1 instructor and 17 special forces trainees. Witnesses told the Antara state news agency that the aircraft, which was said to be over three decades old, was shaking before it erupted into a giant fireball upon impact. An investigation is under way. Accidents are not uncommon to the Indonesian military's fleet of ageing aircraft. (via Newsnow.co.uk > aljazeera.net)
