Recently in Asia-Pacific Category

Qantas CEO designate Alan Joyce made his international press debut at last week's roll-out in Toulouse of its first Airbus A380. Our man there Niall O'Keefe, the European editor of Flight, spent some time with Alan. As fellow Dubliners they got on like a house on fire.

On one of the major topics of the day, Joyce says he expects Qantas to be an active player in airline industry consolidation. The airline would make an "attractive partner", he says, and hence it would have flexibility in its merger position.

It has favourable fuel hedges in place and has ridden the wave of the commodities boom (resource companies make up a sizeable chunk of its corporate accounts). Joyce notes that the airlines hardest hit by the global slowdown are those based at financial centres, such as Hong Kong - the Australian economy, by contrast, remains strong. However, he recognises his airline's weaknesses an "end-of-line carrier" with a domestic market of 21 million.

Ever wanted to bomb along the runway in an airport fire truck and give a mighty blast on the water cannon?

OK, not in a real life incident of course, but for fun?

Now could be the chance, for move over Playstation and Nintendo Wii, Singapore's Aviation Academy has installed the world's first airport fire-fighting vehicle driving simulator.

It comes equipped with a full motion simulator - just like its aircraft simulator cousins - and can simulate day and night driving.

The sim was developed with Chartered Asia Technology Enterprise, a Singapore-based firm that specialises in airport-related technology and services.

Having failed to be named as the successor to long-time Qantas head Geoff Dixon, it comes as no surprise to this watcher of airline boardroom rotation to see its chief financial officer Peter Gregg deciding to quit the Australian carrier.

Gregg, 53, (above) missed out to fast-rising Alan Joyce, the young Irish-Australian who has led its low-cost subsidiary Jetstar to immediate profitability and strong brand recognition.

Joyce was named as Dixon's replacement a couple of weeks ago.

It's not all gold medals and national anthems, you know.

Some airlines are actually seeing a marked downturn in their traffic to China specifically because of the Olympic Games, which are currently being held in Beijing.

I learned this at a meeting yesterday in London with Finnair chief financial officer Lasse Heinonen and vice-president of financial communications and investor relations Taneli Hassinen.

As the Finnair guys briefed myself and my colleagues, David Kaminski-Morrow of Air Transport Intelligence and Olivier Bonnassies of Commercial Aviation Online, about the latest goings on at the Finnish carrier, we got talking about their strong focus on flights between Europe and Asia.

Here's what Mr Heinonen had to say: "The Olympics have been bad for airlines. Visas have been very hard to obtain, so travel to and from China has been difficult."

He added that Finnair's second-quarter load factors between Europe and Asia were 68%, a decrease of eight percentage points compared to the same time last year, and "China played a major role" in this.

This looks like being yet another stick to beat the airlines with, alongside record high oil prices and a global economic downturn. Still, I shouldn't think "the world's greatest Olympian" Michael Phelps will be losing any sleep over it!

Low-cost carriers have often led the way when it comes to cheeky advertising, and AirAsia has got about as cheeky as it gets with this advert promoting its service to the Thai resort of Phuket.

For other cheeky advertising ploys, many featuring low-cost carriers, read Flightglobal editor Mike Targett's blog on his top 10 most blatant uses of sex for an aviation-related marketing purpose.

Like many low-fare players the world over the Malaysian carrier is in the middle of a big sale at the moment. If you want to down tools and take off for Phuket it has two flights a day from its Kuala Lumpur base. Go for it.

Now might be one of the worse times ever to launch a new airline, but Korean Air's plans to bring Jini out of the bottle in mid-July are ploughing on. Here's what Korean Air said about its new baby.

The airline unveiled its livery the other day at a party in downtown Seoul. After initially being touted as a low-cost domestic player, Jini is now billed as a "premium short-haul carrier". Which puzzles and worries me somewhat. Surely, this thinking goes contrary to every new domestic launch in the past decade.

At any rate we'll look forward to more news from Jini on its pricing soon.

Anyone out there lost a Boeing 727?

Perhaps you've misplaced it at Vietnam's Hanoi International Airport? Which looks a rather smart facility as this website and accompanying shots illustrate.

Anyhow, I couldn't resist linking to this story from the BBC website which tells of a 727 that flew into Hanoi in late 2007. It arrived from Siem Reap in neighbouring Cambodia, the crew departed and no-one has come back since.

Anyone got any clues on this one?

In one of the most aggressive statements I've seen so far on the potential use of biofuels by carriers, Air New Zealand is aiming for 10% of its "total annual needs coming from environmentally sustainable fuels by 2013".

It is predicting it will use one million barrels of such fuel annually by 2013.

Air New Zealand is one of the latest carriers to announce flight tests of jet fuel-biofuel mixtures. A Rolls-Royce powered Boeing 747-400 test flight is expected to take place in Auckland in the last quarter of this year subject to final regulatory approvals and fuel testing by the engine manufacturer.

It says it will be the world's first flight test on a large passenger aircraft using fuel sourced from the plant jatropha.

The Airline Business and Flightglobal team has assembled some remarkable video interviews from this week's International Air Transport Association Annual General Meeting.

You can listen to immediate reaction from the world's largest gathering of airline bosses, with ex-airline CEO himself Peter Davies getting some fantastic interviews with among others:

* Willie Walsh, BA

* Fernando Conte, Iberia,

* Naresh Goyal, Jet Airways

* Mark Dunkerley, Hawaiian Airlines.

As a journalist I know how something is phrased can be critical. So, take a look at the opening line of this release from AirAsia X today: "AirAsia X, the pioneer Malaysian based long-haul low cost airline proves that it is here to stay and it is all set to spearhead Kuala Lumpur to greater heights as a global low cost hub."

The key phrase I've put in italics.

My interpretation of this is that AirAsia X is feeling the heat, at least in a public relations sense.

Here is a shot of AirAsia's Tony Fernandes (centre just in case you  didn't know) at the announcement of the third AirAsia X route from KL to Perth.