December 2008 Archives

Rather like the epic Aeroflot saga fought out between governments hand in hand with Boeing and Airbus, the ongoing THY Turkish Airlines contest is turning out to have a predictably long-drawn-out final scene.

Today Flight's extremely well-informed Turkish correspondent Tolga Ozbek reports that the decision, due to have been made before the end of the year, has been postponed to mid-January at the request of the bidders. Seems the talking is not yet over.

 It's official. UA, everyone else at Flight, and all our colleagues at New Scientist, Farmers Weekly, Personnel Today, and indeed Variety, Beleggers Belangen, and The Lancet are no longer for sale.

So we're all staying part of the Reed Business Information division of Reed Elsevier for the foreseeable. News still being digested by everyone for the moment. For once I won't rush to comment!

(When I say UA is not for sale, I mean, you know, everything's got a price...)

American is famously still the only one of the US majors not to have resorted to Chapter 11 to sort out its problems over the years, and analysts have always had mixed views as to whether that was smart or not.

I've been struck by two things about it: the detectable pride that many in the company take in that record, but also the continuously abrasive labour relations that seem to be a fact of life at American. How management there has the stamina for it I don't know. (I wrote about this before.)

Nevertheless, CEO Gerard Arpey has never expressed any regrets about the strategy and he's just taken the chance to not do so again in a speech at a Dallas Business Journal event carried in full at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's Sky Talk blog.

For a closer look at the ARJ21 you should go to this forum where member Caucfly has been working overtime on chronicling the first-flight. Lots of detailed images.

(Oh, and a Shaanxi Y-8 if I'm not mistaken.)

China's ARJ21 70-90-seat regional jet is flying and here's a decent pic of it, courtesy of General Electric.

GE of course provides the CF34 engines. And pretty well every other system on the aircraft is Western - mostly American in fact. Honeywell, Collins, Hamilton Sunstrand, Parker Hannifin, Moog - you get the idea. Liebherr-Aerospace from France in there somewhere too. Structures, however, pretty well all Chinese. Quite how much it all owes to McDonnell Douglas' activities in China back in the 1990s is debatable - certainly shades of DC-9 with winglets wouldn't you say.

If you're not British, and maybe even if you are, you're possibly not as familiar with the internal policy twists of the UK Conservative Party as you are with, say, those of the US Democrats. So a quick reprise...

A couple of months ago even those people who follow these things closely were astonished when shadow transport secretary Theresa Villiers suddenly announced one fine morning that, if elected, the Conservatives would scrap the proposed third Heathrow runway. In fact, quite a few actual members of the Conservative party were astonished, and more so when leader David Cameron gave the policy his support. This is the Party of Business, remember.

Whichever side of the argument you're on, it's baffling why you would at this stage commit yourself to a firm position on one of the most controversial questions in London when there may not be an election until 2010. In short, neither supporters nor opponents understand why Ms Villiers did what she did.

Anyway, one result is that some of her fellow Conservatives created a group opposed to the policy and supporting the third runway. I mean, they're just trying to help. And there is still time for the Conservatives for International Travel to have a branding re-think. But until then, yup, they're C-FIT.

Unless they see fit to do a little more research.

(For those interested, more on the subject from political blogger Iain Dale. And a possible explanation for la Villiers' behaviour in our Aviation and the Environment blog.)

The Onion has a couple of gloriously surreal aviation items running. For you air transport folks there's American Airlines' plans for new fees...for non-passengers...

And for you military specialists, news of the first open try-outs for The Blue Angels.