January 2011 Archives

In Dubai this week with colleague Michael Gubisch to cover Aviation Week's MRO Middle East show.

Keep up with news and video via flightglobal.com/mromiddleeast and on Twitter at #mromiddleeast and flighteditor.

We'll also be covering the big developments from the show in Flight International 8 February.

There can be few more exciting markets in aviation at the moment than India. It may not have the fast-growing long-haul airline giants of the Gulf or the sheer manufacturing potential of India; its airports and infrastructure are a shambles and the world's biggest democracy suffers many of the ailments of a country that struggles to feed, let alone provide a comfortable standard of living for its massive population.

Yet when it comes to aviation and aerospace, the country is going places fast. An educated, emerging middle class is keen to travel the world and traverse the country: airlines and modern airports will arrive to meet that demand. India abounds with entrepreneurs keen to tap the country's hard-working, English-speaking and highly IT-literate workforce. A cumbersome and over-interventionist state still gets in the way at times, but India means business.

Next week, ahead of Aero India in Bangalore (9-13 February), our 1 Feburary issue has a 14-page special on aerospace and aviation in India. We look at the big fighter contest, being fought over by the world's leading warplane manufacturers, as well as India's own progress in developing aircraft programmes and an aerospace industry. If you are not a subscriber make sure you order your copy now to stay abreast of developments in arguably the world's most fascinating aviation marketplace.

Meanwhile, flightglobal.com is the place to follow all the news and analysis in the run-up to and during the show. Our team will be keeping you updated via a news feed on a landing page, an interactive Flight Daily News, video, blogs and Twitter. If you are going to Bangalore, look out for Flight Daily News, our show newspaper distributed free to attendees every morning of the event.

Next week's (25 January issue) cover star is the new Russian regional jet with the coverline proclaiming Superjet on a surge. Sukhoi's Italian-based sales partner Superjet International is confident that the latest sale, to Mexican carrier Interjet (whose mocked up aircraft appears on the cover) and upcoming hoped-for European certification will herald a breakthrough in terms of Western orders. While the Superjet's fortunes are better than they have been for some time, there is reason for caution, as we point out. At least two "customers", whose orders were widely trumpeted some years back, have quietly disappeared from the backlog.

Regional and smaller narrowbody types figure large in this week's news section. We examine the likelihood of a 90-seat ATR type and reveal that Virgin America - launch customer for the Airbus A320neo - came close to opting for the Bombardier CSeries as Toulouse dithered on announcing its new narrowbody plans.

We also assess the Airbus and Boeing year-end figures. What do they tell us about the state of the big two's performance and prospects?

With the MRO community converging in Dubai in just over a week's time, our Middle East maintenance special charts the latest twists and turns of the sector in that region.

And we have a feature on the Miracle on the Hudson A320's journey from river to aviation museum in Charlotte, Flight 1549's destination on that fateful day, where it will be preserved as an aviation icon 

Cutaway drawings are at the heart of what Flight International is about. Once again in 2011, our artists Giuseppe Picarella and Tim Hall have a packed schedule, travelling to factories around the world to peer inside the most intimate workings of the latest aircraft programmes.

They and their predecessors have been at it for over 70 years and the archive of drawings - available to view and buy on our Flightglobal images store - charts a remarkable history of aircraft design. The art of the cutaway has changed dramatically too, from line drawings in the early days to the sophisticated, full-colour, but still largely hand-drawn representations of the 21st century.

Posters this year to look out for include Bombardier's CRJ1000 (29 March), the Northrop Grumman Global Hawk in NATO AGS guise (28 June), the Cessna Citation CJ4 (4 October) and the Grob G120TP (8 November).

The A320neo in IndiGo colours is Flight International's cover this week following the news that the Indian low-cost carrier is committing (but, note, not yet firmly ordering) to 150 of the re-engined narrowbody, plus 30 "old-style" A320s.

We have an opening spread which looks at what Airbus plans to do now with the programme, the status of the engine battle between CFM and Pratt & Whitney and the robustness of India's air transport market and its airlines' order bank.

Safety and operations editor David Learmount's annual survey of airline safety tallies the incidence and causes of accidents in 2010 and examines why the industry's safety record has refused to fall for eight years, after a century of improvement.

I had driven past the air centre at Chateauroux in central France several times on holiday before I realised the main purpose of this remote but seemingly busy airport. The vintage of the often oddly-liveried 747s and other aircraft parked around the terminal ought to have given me a clue.

Chateauroux airport does offer freight and charter services, but its main role is a final resting place for elderly aircraft. A scrapyard, or more precisely a recycling centre.

Aircraft recycling is becoming big business as our cover story in this week's issue (11 January) explains. The front cover pictures the upright nose of a DC-10. Environmental pressures and high fuel costs mean increasing numbers of older generation airliners are being retired rather than kept in service. Those same pressures are pushing the industry to come up with more innovative ways of reusing bits of aircraft and sending less material to landfill.

Kerry Reals' piece - which has some great pictures of aircraft being torn apart - looks at the latest techniques in dismantling and recycling and the various political drivers behind them.

Our Environment special also examines progress on the European Union's Clean Sky initiative and how worries about hazards to air navigation are putting the blocks on some green initiatives by and around airports.

If Chinese fighters are your thing, read what we think about the J-20, Beijing's supposed fifth-generation warplane, grainy pictures of which have emerged over the past few weeks.

We also have early details of last year's safety performance by the industry. David Learmount will be unveiling the full picture in our 18 January issue.

And there is news on how Korean Air plans to configure its A380s.

Cost of a tarnished dream is our take this week (4 January) on the latest 787 crisis for Boeing. Flightblogger Jon Ostrower assesses whether the airframer can ever make a profit on its flagship product, with some fascinating revelations about Boeing's sales process and a timeline charting the progress of the troubled Dreamliner programme from its promise-filled launch at the 2003 Paris air show.

Also in this issue, our writers look ahead to 2011 with forecasts for their beats and specialist sectors. Find out what we think about how the year will play out for the airliner manufacturers in terms of orders and deliveries, what the big news will be in avionics and engines and what the boom areas will be for defence aviation.