Murdo Morrison: October 2011 Archives

Next week's Flight International - out on 25 October - has our annual comprehensive round-up of the narrowbody and widebody airliner market, with features, among others, on freighters, ultra-large aircraft as well as the latest single-aisle contenders from Airbus, Bombardier, Boeing, the Chinese and the Russians.

Our equivalent package for the sub-100-seat sector follows on 1 November.

Next week's issue also contains a special section on military surveillance aircraft, and our report from the Seoul air show.

If you are a fan of the 787 or want to read the definitive story of one of the most ambitious airliner programmes of recent times, you cannot miss next week's Flight International, out on 18 October.

The issue contains a special Dreamliner supplement, detailing the saga of Boeing's new "plastic fantastic" from its conception in the early 2000s to its entry into service with ANA almost a decade later.

Ever wondered how the Flightglobal team covers a major air show or convention like NBAA? Check out our fly-on-the-wall mini-documentary, one of a number of videos from the Las Vegas event, which finished on Wednesday.

http://tinyurl.com/6cb4e8x

The team's frenetic four days at NBAA are finished, and the show itself draws to a close today. Over the course of those days, we have produced three Flight Evening News - distributed each day of the show at 4pm and the only show daily to bring visitors "today's news today" - three issues of our interactive Flight Daily News and a six-page report for the 18 October issue of Flight International. In addition, there has been a landing page with all the material we have put together from the convention, including video - hosted by Runway Girl Mary Kirby - pictures, news and social media.

You can catch up with issues two and three of the interactive magazine by clicking on these links.

NBAA Day 2 iFDN http://cde.cerosmedia.com/NBAA_2011_Day2/1B4e9558be1572e012.cde

NEWS: Dassault makes inroads into China
VIDEO: Rockwell Collins sets sights on light jet market
PHOTOS: Images from the show
FEATURES: Cutaway drawing of the Cessna CJ4

NBAA Day 3 iFDN http://cde.cerosmedia.com/NBAA_2011_Day3/1Q4e95723129072012.cde

 NEWS: Quest Kodiak bears all in executive sales push

VIDEO: Acropolis shows off ostentatious ACJ319

PHOTOS: JetSuite wins over wealthy investors

FEATURES: Cutaway drawing of the Dassault 2000S

The Flightglobal operation at NBAA in Las Vegas is in full swing and we are all over the show. The second Flight Evening News has just come out and is being distributed outside the convention centre as I write. The front page splash is Eclipse Aerospace's decision to relaunch the very light jet as the Eclipse 550, with much of the manufacturing in Poland.

For those of you not at the show, the first edition of the interactive Flight Daily News is in the final stages of production and will be published tomorrow. It's packed with video, pictures and news from the opening of the convention.

From tomorrow, we'll be putting together a five-page report for Flight International.

To top it all, our bloggers and Twitterati are covering all the breaking news on social media.

You can access everything on flightglobal.com/nbaa

Arrived last night in Las Vegas for the first time since NBAA was here last time in 2004. For most delegates it will be great to be back in the world's party capital after six years of alternating between Atlanta and Orlando. Even if you've been to Vegas many times, the sheer scale and kitsch of the mega hotels on the Strip blows your mind. And when you haven't been to the city for a few years, the skyline probably looks markedly different. They are not too hidebound by heritage here. Most of the old "mob-era" hotels have been knocked down to be replaced with modern, themed monoliths. The first time I came to Vegas, in 1992, Treasure Island, where we're staying, and the Mirage towered over that part of the Strip. Now they are surrounded and dwarved by even taller and more opulent establishments.

It is interesting to compare the fortunes of Vegas, and the hospitality sector in general, with those of the business aviation industry. Their tendency to expand fast and expensively in the good times can leave both with excess capacity when fortunes dip. Vacations in Vegas, like owning and operating a corporate jet, can be a nice to have rather than a necessity of life. With the US economy faltering, it is easy to be pessimistic about the immediate fortunes of both.

Las Vegas's economic performance, high-rolling just a few years ago, is near the bottom of 150 cities around the world, and its reliance on domestic tourism and construction make its recovery prospects faint, according to a survey by the Brookings Institution and London School of Economics.

For the domestic business aviation sector, it is difficult to see things getting much better soon. As I've said before, the fortunes of manufacturers and those service providers who can offer their services in emerging markets will depend on how well they perform outside North America (and Europe).

Tonight, Honeywell releases its benchmark annual forecast for the industry. It will be interesting to see how optimistic the technology company is. 

We in the UK are very good at looking after our historic castles, stately homes and monuments, but when it comes to preserving icons of our wonderful engineering heritage it can be a different story.

That's why the Vulcan to the Sky Trust do such a fantastic job in keeping the last surviving V-Force bomber, XH558, airworthy. With only charitable donations and occasional corporate support to rely on, the trust admits it lives a hand to mouth existence in raising the £2 million needed each year to keep the iconic delta-winged aircraft in the air.

So it is to be hoped that a significant coup pulled off by the trust will help raise its profile - and much needed cash - during its 60th birhtday next year (XH558 itself dates from 1960).

To mark another 60th anniversary, the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth, the aircraft is being renamed The Spirit of Great Britain, and with the blessing of Buckingham Palace will take part in next year's celebrations of Her Majesty's coming to the throne.

Throughout the year, XH558 will carry a leather bound book of good wishes containing names of individuals, families and businesses. It will be presented to Her Majesty at the end of the season.

Although negotiations are still taking place, Vulcan to the Sky Trust chief executive Dr Robert Pleming says he would love the Vulcan to take part in a tribute flypast for Her Majesty, possibly including an appearance over all four capital cities of the kingdom.

"This is going to be a fabulous celebration of everything that is Great in Britain," he enthuses. "It's a dynamic, powerful reminder of the best that we as a nation can achieve."

Three members of the Royal Family have flown the Vulcan: the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales and Prince Michael of Kent, who was at the event on Wednesday in London to launch the plans.

Next year also marks the 30th anniversary of the only time the Cold War bomber was used in anger, during the Falklands campaign, when on 1 May 1982 Sqn Ldr Martin Withers led a bombing raid on the Argentinian-occupied Port Stanley airfield.

You can keep abreast with next year's activities on www.vulcantothesky.org

Meanwhile, you can never get enough of these images (courtesy John Dibbs). 

To NBAA in Las Vegas today. It will be interesting to see how the show shapes up. The North American economy is languishing - like Europe's - and it's difficult to see much optimism for charter operators, while corporate flight departments (those that own their own executive jets) are hunkering down rather than looking at much in the way of replacement or additional equipment.

That said, the USA is where business aviation started and taking a corporate jet is a way of life for many of its executives. Infrastructure is established with plenty of fixed base operations, easy access to airports and little in the way of red-tape. Despite its troubles, it is still a thriving sector and the size of next week's show - filling the giant Las Vegas convention centre - will be testament to that.

The growing appetite for business jets in the emerging world is also a bright point for manufacturers and those service providers with the ambition and resources to tap into the opportunity. In China, no self-respecting billionaire (and there are plenty of them these days) wants to be without his personal jet, while in Russia, Brazil, India and the Middle East everyone from tycoons to corporations flying staff to far-flung mining, forestry and gas field operations are pushing up demand for private aviation. 

So while NBAA remains very much an inwardly-focused North American show - the region's operators debating regulations and business - manufacturers and service providers exhibiting there will have as much an eye on markets overseas than at home.

I'll be blogging daily from the show from tomorrow.

Need a complete brief on the business aviation sector ahead of next week's NBAA show in Las Vegas? Look no further than the 4 October special issue of Flight International.

The feature package includes our annual census of the business aviation market, which depicts in graphics the changing shape of the global fleet. We have a special feature on one of the newest business jet manufacturers - Honda - as well as one of the oldest, Cessna, fighting back after a devastating dip in fortunes.

We preview the NBAA show itself and look at two of the biggest issues affecting NBAA members in North America: the threatened ability to keep its customers' details private and the new rules surrounding security at one of the USA's most important business aviation gateways, Washington National.

Mike Gerzanics takes a trip in the latest Block-Point version of the Hawker 4000. Find out what a difference he thought the latest changes make. Plus John Croft takes a close look at visual displays and the rival philosophies being touted by arch rivals Honeywell and Rockwell Collins.

In news, we report from Helitech, Europe's premier civil rotorcraft gathering, examine Liebherr's aerospace strategy and discover why business aviation operators are worried about airspace restrictions in England's south-east around next year's Olympic games.

Spent last week in Hong Kong carrying out interviews for our China Careers Guide, which is published with Flight International 29 November issue. We interviewed and filmed representatives of Cathay Pacific, Metrojet, Dragonair and Hong Kong Airlines. I'll be doing some interviews with airlines from mainland China by phone, as a lack of visa meant visiting anyone "over the border" impossible.

The China publication - which will be come in an interactive version as well as print - is a follow-on to our Middle East Careers Guide, which we have published for the past four years. The latter - or the Gulf at any rate - is a region I know much better than China, and comparisons between Dubai/Abu Dhabi/Doha and Hong Kong especially are tempting.

Both have airlines desperate for pilots as they rapidly acquire aircraft. Both regions have cultures that are heavily influenced by British culture and have huge ex-pat populations from the UK and the English-speaking world in particular. English co-exists with Cantonese or Arabic as the lingua franca. Both Hong Kong and Dubai in particular are cities on steroids - frenetic, fast-moving, commercially-driven and high-rise, and a melting-pot of ethnic influences. All four cities are ports: huge air and sea hubs.

But the comparisons do end. Hong Kong is a very liveable city where walking or taking the superb metro system is easier than driving. The rugged, empty territory around the tightly-packed city itself, where you can hill walk, is arguably more appealing than the desert surroundings of the Gulf cities.

I'll be examining the Hong Kong lifestyle more in the supplement, finding out what it's like to life as well as work in China's special administrative zone and former UK territory.