December 2010 Archives

2010 saw the Flightglobal team cover airshows across three continents. Here's a review of this year's airshows.

SINGAPORE
The biennial Singapore airshow kicked off the year and we used the show to premiere our new interactive version of our show news, Flight Daily News. It was a quiet show but there was one decent order, and that came from Hong Kong Airlines for six A330-200 aircraft. Boeing was also examining extending the 737's nosegear in order to accommodate new engines, but that re-engined 737 has not come to fruition yet.

• Catch up on the Singapore show here.

EBACE
At Europe's largest business aviation show, Hawker Beechcraft announced it was planning a single-engined turboprop, Gulfstream said its G650 achieved M.925 cruise, and Middle Eastern airlines continued to buck the trend by taking on business jets for new ventures.

• More from EBACE here.

ILA
The German airshow's big headline was from a non-German airline looking, likely, to make more inroads in Germany: Emirates announced an order for 32 more A380 aircraft, bringing its order for the type to 90.

The order was announced in the presence of German Chancellor Angela Merkel (right), whose nation is one of the key partners in Airbus. With Emirates agitating for more flights into Germany, we say the order at ILA was no coincidence.

• Read more articles and see photos and video from ILA here.

FARNBOROUGH
The year's largest airshow featured the international premiere of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. See here for photos of the aircraft's Spitfire-accompanied flypast on departure (video of the departure here).

Some other highlights included: Russia's Irkut giving details of its MS-21 aircraft and unveiling a cabin interior mock-up, and Virgin America signing an MoU for up to 60 A320 aircraft.

At the show we premiered our new show website pages. See here for more information.

• Also see here for more news, photos, video, digital editions, and more from Farnborough.

OSHKOSH
The annual EAA AirVenture Oshkosh show quickly followed Farnborough and brought a whole different scope of memories, the foremost of which was the presence of more than 23 DC-3/C-47 aircraft.

Also at the show Cessna unveiled the High Sierra and Sikorsky unveiled its Firefly electric helicopter.

• More from Oshkosh here.

• Read more from NBAA here.

ZHUHAI
The biennial Chinese airshow had lots of newsworthy items about the country's indigenous aircraft. Comac unveiled a C919 interior mock-up, announced the aircraft's first orders from six companies, and also let its ARJ21 test interior be seen for the first time.

There were also a number of indigenous UAVs, including mock-ups, on display. See here for a video tour of some of them.

• More from Airshow China here.

MEBA
The biennial Middle East Business Aviation show in Dubai brought headlines in a range of sizes. Airbus announced it was preparing to deliver its first A380 for a VIP customer, Egypt's Spot Air outlined its growth plans, and the Middle East's first business aviation airport opened.

• There's more news from MEBA here.

Well that was it for 2010. Enjoy what remains of the year and look forward to our coverage next year of some of the big shows including Aero India, Asian Aerospace, the Paris Airshow, Oshkosh, NBAA, and Dubai.

Much of the aviation news we cover and the airlines and fares you fly would not be possible without the work of Alfred Kahn, who died Monday at the age of 93.

Appropriately referred to as the "father of deregulation" for aviation, Kahn as chair of the now-defunct Civil Aeronautics Board oversaw the dismantling of a system that controlled which airlines could fly where, and for how much. That occurred on 24 October 1978 with the passing of the Airline Deregulation Act.

Deregulation enabled existing airlines to grow and new airlines to come into the scene. Low-cost airlines in particular benefited, leading some obituaries to credit Kahn--for better or worse--as giving us cheap flights.

Here's a look back through the Flightglobal archive at deregulation and Kahn's CAB tenure.

Challenges with bureaucracy, hopes for low fares
In January 1978, we wrote an article about Kahn's first six months as chair of the CAB, saying his "attitude to his job is probably best summed up by that old US Army Air Force expression: 'The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer.'"

Kahn spoke about his displeasure for the Bermuda II bilateral agreement between the UK and US, signed in 1972 and remaining in force (with modifications) until an open skies agreement in 2008, and how he was trying to exert greater control over international aviation, albeit to the displeasure of the Transportation Department. His seemingly roguish moves would prove to be nothing compared to deregulation.

Despite the challenges he was facing, Kahn was upbeat about the future he was seeing. He told us he was "delighted" Freddie Laker's Skytrain filed to serve Los Angeles, saying standby and budget fares "give low-fare benefits and fill empty seats, meaning cost savings are possible and therefore saving scheduled service", which would produce "hundreds of millions of dollars of benefits".

Kahn on "merger fever"
In August 1978 we wrote that "merger fever" had struck the US: Texas International was trying to take over National Airlines, North Central and Southern looked to merge, and Continental and Western were in merger negotiation. Kahn's response was, "It's an epidemic, now don't mis-quote me, I didn't say it was a disease." Kahn was not as strong an advocate for mergers and largely left merger decisions to his successor.

Northwest sees benefit from Kahn
Some airlines were warming up to Kahn's fair game approach, with Northwest Airlines saying in February 1978 it might benefit under a Kahn-led CAB as previously the airline's efficiency was not being rewarded with new international flights; Kahn was inclined to not protect airlines whose costs were higher.

Envisioning UK-US open skies
Kahn was not pleased with the Bermuda II agreement, calling it "restrictionist", but said low-fare progress between the US and UK was going "moderately well". His long-term goal was to see more airlines operate between the two countries, but that vision would not be realised until three decades later.

On the subject of deregulation, Kahn remarked, "with the President on our side we shall be able to open up the US market quite quickly...I can't say how long deregulation will take, but in a year's time we should have progressed far enough to say that US domestic markets are opened."

"Bribing" Israel for low fares
So committed to low fares was Kahn that he remarked how the US "bribed" Israel into offering lower fares in exchange for El Al gaining access to four additional US points.

Death sentence for CAB
The passing of the Deregulation Act was a "death sentence on Civil Aeronautics Board", we wrote. Under the historic measure the CAB's authority would gradually end, at which point "US domestic air transport will then become a virtually free market. Prices will be uncontrolled, and carriers will be able to enter and leave markets at will. New carriers will only have to prove
their fitness and ability to offer service in order to compete with the established airlines."

The Deregulation Act was the first major dismantling of a US government body since 1935.

Deregulation passed, moving on from CAB
Days after passing the landmark bill, Kahn resigned as chairman of the CAB to head up President Carter's anti-inflation programme. We concisely described Kahn's 15 months at the CAB as "brief but eventful". The CAB would be disbanded in 1985.

Mixed feelings for deregulation
Former Northwest Orient chairman Joseph Lapensky said at a 1985 conference in London, "I do not carry the candle for deregulation in this part of the world."

Lapensky said airlines were too ambitious, citing the 120 airlines that went bust between 1980 and 1984.

He also took offence with the rise of "mega-carriers" like American Airlines and United Airlines. Speaking of United in the deregulated era, Lapensky remarked "Now this 900lb gorilla can sit anywhere it wants."

A decade on and still supporting deregulation
We reported in 1987 of Kahn's testimony to the Senate Commerce Committee, in which he said that the massive expansion in air travel had "given rise to a number of problems, notably congestion, delay, mistreatment of customers and uncertainty about safety".

Kahn attributed these problems primarily due to the government's failure to fulfill its responsibilities. He said they "cried out for correction" by Congress, but added that the result "should not be a return to the old regime of protectionist, anti-competitive regulation, but for the Government to do more vigorously and effectively what it should never have stopped doing".

"My business is not in prediction"
At a September 2008 address to Airport Council International, Kahn made the above remark about the government being unable to absorb oil costing $150 a barrel. But his quote was also in context for his reflection on what, we wrote, deregulation brought: "increased air traffic has led to congestion, which has led to delays and unhappy flyers and that has led to calls for government reregulation."

But on the upside, Kahn said, "The industry in the last 30 years gave the public something it had not received before: high quality, space, and low cost. It catered to a variety of demands and abilities today so that we had an enormous spread of fares."


So which airline will be the first to name an aircraft after Kahn?


Photo credits (and yes I know they're all from the wrong era): AirSpace user Global Ranger, coalburner, and apgphoto.

Here's our review of the year's first flight highlights. Think a first flight we did not mention is worthy of being included? Let us know by leaving a comment.

29 January: PAK FA FIFTH-GENERATION FIGHTER
Flown from KnAAPO's Komsomolsk-on-Amur site, the PAK FA was piloted by Sergei Bogdan, and "performed excellently", says Sukhoi. Read more...

8 February: BOEING 747-8
RC501 rotated on runway 34L at 12:39 PT as the skies cleared over Everett, Washington giving Mark Feuerstein and Tom Imrich blue sky to take the first 747-8F on its maiden sortie. Read more...

18 March: AC313
The triple-engined 13.8t AC313 is a development of the Harbin Z-8 military helicopter, itself a 1980s derivative of the Aerospatiale SA321 Super Frelon that was first flown in 1962. Read more...

29 March: HAL LIGHT COMBAT HELICOPTER
HAL managing director Ashok Nayak says performance was good during the flight, on 29 March at HAL's base in Bangalore. He says future testing aims to reduce the aircraft's overall weight and improve manoeuvrability. The 5.5t helicopter, a derivative of HAL's Dhruv advanced light helicopter, is being developed for the Indian armed forces.  Read more...

4 June: SPACEX FALCON 9
The Falcon 9 is one of two vehicles NASA is funding as part of its commercial orbital transportation system (COTS) program for hauling cargo to and from the International Space Station. The other booster is the Taurus II and its Cygnus capsule, built by Orbital Sciences. Orbital plans its first launch next year. Read more...

6 June: F-35C

The 55-minute flight on 6 June by CF-1 -- the first carrier variant -- may seem a minor event in the history of the F-35 program.. But, in the sweep of naval history, CF-1's airborne debut will be remembered as a "very historic day", Lockheed Martin Vice President Tom Burbage says. Read more...

7 July: First night flight of SOLAR IMPULSE
HB-SIA took off from Payerne air base in Switzerland at 07:51 local time with the project's co-founder and chief executive André Borscherg on board. It will spend the day ascending to an altitude of 8,500m (27,900ft) while the sun charges its batteries ahead of the planned night flight. Read more...

29 June: EURO HAWK UAV
The first Northrop Grumman Euro Hawk unmanned air vehicle completed its debut flight on 29 June, launching a six-month flight test process before delivery to Germany by the end of the year. Read more...

29 July: USAF HC-130J
Flown from the company's Marietta site in Georgia on 29 July, the HC-130J is configured as a combat tanker for use in support of personnel recovery missions. Read more...

14 November: S-70i BLACK HAWK
The aircraft is the second International Black Hawk to have undergone final assembly in Mielec. The first was shipped to the USA and performed its debut sortie from West Palm Beach, Florida on 1 July, and is having unspecified mission equipment installed. Read more...

17 November: PICADOR
Company president Avi Leumi says the debut flight lasted for 20min and enabled the development team to "acquire very important data". Further test flights will take place soon, he adds. Read more...

30 November: FURY 1500
During the hour and a half flight from the airfield at the US Army's Ft. Hunter Liggett in California, the new version of the Fury was flown using AeroMech's proprietary mission management software, knows as SharkFin. Read more...

21 December: HONDAJET
Honda Aircraft on 21 December announced first flight of a production-representative HondaJet featuring its distinctive, wing-mounted General Electric HF120 turbofan engines. Read more...

29 December: TU-204SM?
As we put the finishing touches on this list, the Tu-204SM was due to make its maiden flight on 29 December. Read more...

We're still taking it easy for the holidays, so until we resume our normal coverage, enjoy this unique Christmas card video from--who else?--Air New Zealand, the airline known for its quirky videos.

The holiday cheer continues on the Flight Blog, with this photo from Fail.org. (Santa) hats off to US Airways for having a sense of humour.

This reminds me of the Alaska Airlines' new baggage "rules" on flights from Alaska.

With the holidays upon us we thought we should with you this photo from AirSpace photographer sunshine band. Sunshine Band captioned the photo: "When he is not building toys for good boys and girls, he is de-icing aircraft at Bangor, Maine, USA."

Looking in the archive we can see how Flightglobal used to celebrate the festive period. Here are a couple of discoveries.

1942   the second year of lighthearted breaks in the serious business of wartime aviation

2000 Uncle Roger's festive quiz

After Christmas lunch, why not escape more indulgence by putting your aviation knowledge to the test with this year's Unlce Roger Festive Quiz.

So what does United chief executive Jeff Smisek think of his carrier's new livery?

With a laugh he jokes at an address in Sydney, "Well I created it so I like it a lot."

There were many macro questions--fleet, routes--for United chief executive Jeff Smisek during an address in Sydney last week, but some aviation hobbyist questions were not forgotten.

United Airlines is the only airline (that we are aware of) that offers live air traffic control as an audio channel on its on-board entertainment system. United calls it "From the Flightdeck", but the live ATC feed is better known for the audio channel it is featured on, and thus "channel 9".

United's merger partner, Continental, does not offer channel 9 or anything like it. When asked if United would extend channel 9 to Continental's aircraft, Smisek had this to say:

I know a lot of our United customers enjoy it. We've looked at that and that's a very expensive addition to our fleet, so I don't think we're going to be doing that anytime soon.

Smisek says the Continental-United merger will give it $1.2 billion annual savings "but we have a lot of priorities for that capital." Pegged amongst other items is a refurbishment of economy class on the carrier's 747-400 aircraft. Smisek hopes to realise that upgrade by the time United receives its first A350 XWB aircraft in 2016.

All year - our 102^nd to be precise - Flightglobal has been serious about aerospace, interpreting the latest business, programme, operational and technical developments across the global industry. However, the run up to Christmas gives us the chance to relax our content rules - so, now is the time of year to find out if you are a budding Total Aviation Person as you pit your wits against Uncle Roger in our festive quiz.

 

We've seen a lot of funny safety videos but this video from jetBlue's Long Beach employees is less laugh-out-loud funny and more sway-along enjoyable, and also focuses on the company's ground operations.

After you view the video we have one question for you: isn't it a FOD hazard to be dropping all of those signs on the tarmac?

Mark your calendars to catch the spectacle or keep your eyes covered: Sir Richard Branson will don an AirAsia X flight attendant uniform on 21 February and serve passengers on an AirAsia X flight between London and Kuala Lumpur.

(Update: Branson's flight will now be 1 May, Tony Fernandes says.)

AirAsia's marketing department is teasing us with this Photoshop concoction on the right, but it may not be far off from what we'll see.

"Branson will have to serve and even clean the toilets throughout the flight while wearing the high heels and the red AirAsia stewardess uniform," AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes says.

He adds Branson will also have to wear makeup and shave his legs as AirAsia does not permit "hairy stewardesses". But don't worry: Fernandes says Branson can keep his beard.

The unusual, perhaps unsightly, occurrence is the result of a bet made nearly a year ago between Branson and AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes.

The two were looking to promote their respective Formula One racing teams--Virgin Racing for Branson, Team Lotus for Fernandes--and agreed the owner of the team that performed worst in the F1 season would have to be a flight attendant on the other owner's airline. After losing last month, Fernandes gave Branson an AirAsia uniform and has now announced Branson's appearance on the 21 Feb flight.

Seats on the flight (which is not yet on AirAsia's reservation system) will be auctioned off with the proceeds going to a charity of Branson's choice.

Branson, never one to miss a savvy business opportunity, remarked on the Virgin Group owning a portion in Fernandes's AirAsia X: "The only positive thing is we own 20 per cent of his company so I'll be able to get some promotion for a company I have a stake in."

Should you feel any remorse for Branson, do consider that he perhaps had this coming. In 2003 he offered a similar bet to then-Qantas CEO Geoff Dixon over if Virgin Atlantic could start flights to Australia within a given time period. Virgin Atlantic did, but the Qantas boss didn't take Branson up on his offer, saying "We are running an airline, not a circus."

The site of a catering truck collapsed on the wing of an Emirates A380 reminded me of this clip from "Top Gear" in which the show organises a race between a tug, fire engine, baggage cart, catering truck, passenger bus, and movable stairs (screen grab above).