November 2010 Archives

In a bid to become a more formidable opponent to rival Melbourne Tullamarine airport, Avalon airport plans to introduce a connecting rail-bus service to the airport.

Under the plan, CBD passengers will be able to take the V Line regional train to Lara station and then a connecting shuttle bus to Avalon airport. The service will cost less than $10 one-way, says David Fox, the Executive Chairman for Linfox Airports, which owns Avalon.

"Within the next two months there's going to be some announcements," Fox says at Tuesday's celebration marking the start of flights from Tiger Airways, a major boost for the airport. (You can read more about Avalon and Tiger's plans on our Air Transport Intelligence newswire.)

The only existing public transport option is a limited frequency bus that costs $20 one-way, or $36 return, for the approximately 40 minute trip to the CBD. There are currently no buses between Lara station and Avalon airport, although taxis make the trip for $15-20 one-way.

Rival Tullamarine airport offers one-way fares to the CBD for as low as $12 for the 20 minute bus ride. The shorter trip and lower fee has been in Tullamarine's favour, which Avalon is aware of.

"We're going through the process of identifying the differences between Tullamarine and ourselves here at Avalon. At the end of the day it's ten minutes," Fox says.

Drivers are already benefiting from Avalon's lower parking charges, Fox says. Avalon charges $49 for a week's parking where as Tullamarine charges $77 in a distant long-term lot. Fox also points out that unlike at Tullamarine, there are no road tolls to Avalon.

"There are huge cost savings to the punter who's flying," Fox says.

Avalon positions itself as Melbourne's--and Australia's--only low-cost airport. But airlines are not currently realising the airport's full cost benefit due to lacking fuel infrastructure.

Airlines pay a seven to eight cent per litre premium on fuel trucked in to the airport, Avalon CEO Justin Giddings says. The airport is lobbying the state and federal government to fund an $8m project to extend a pipeline one kilometre to the airport and build two fuel tanks for on-site fuel access.

This afternoon the news a Qantas A380 suffered an uncontained engine failure after departing Singapore for Sydney caused the Twitterverse to explode, or should I say have an uncontained failure?

That's what the chatter was: uncontained and a failure. The initial rumour was the aircraft crashed in Indonesia. The Twitterati are not to be blamed for regurgitating that as the rumour originated with the media, who presumably wanted to be first out with it, regardless if it was accurate or not; regardless if hundreds of people had been killed or not.

Once everyone knew there was no crash, the hype continued unabated with users following the aircraft's movement until it was on the ground at Singapore and the passengers had been re-accommodated.

Yes, this was another recent Qantas engine failure with Rolls-Royce engines (although on a different aircraft). Yes, the Qantas A380 fleet has been grounded. But this is not the first time the fleet has been grounded as a safety precaution. Or the second time.

Yet there are engine failures and other incidents around the world that go unreported. Closer to home, pilot fatigue and training are major safety concerns but out of the public's eye. I'm not going to open the debate on why the Australian media has a penchant for reporting on Qantas incidents or what the effect of outsourcing aircraft maintenance is.

I pondered on Twitter why there would be little to no reaction if the engine failure was on, say, an Air Astana A320. Here's one response: "Probs because Air Astana isnt a multi M$ global brand like Qantas. Plus this was on an A380, so its a 'big deal.'"

Exactly. We don't care about safety. We care about brands and big, shiny, and expensive toys.

Only this past Tuesday a Lion Air 737 overshot an Indonesian runway with no fatalities. The only comment I saw about that incident was along the lines of: "another day in Indonesia".

Rather than rushing to cover and discuss a crash that wasn't a crash, effort should be given to preventing real crashes.

Aviation fans in Melbourne (or watching Melbourne on TV) yesterday were graced with wall-to-wall visuals of the Emirates logo for Cup Day. The real treat though came in the afternoon when Emirates A380 A6-EDA tracked over from Sydney as EK5388 to conduct a flyover of Flemington Racecourse at 1100 feet (see flightpath), which Flickr user 1ncorrect inadvertently captured, below, during a time lapse photography session.

The jet lumbered around northern Melbourne, which I can attest to as I was indulging in a nap on the public holiday and awoke to the sound of four Engine Alliance GP7200 engines and then saw the jet heading straight towards me. It was the best alarm clock I've ever had.