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Aviation History
1996
1996 - 0992.PDF
Am TRANSPORT ^ft " % •111 Ryanair boosts UK route network IRISH INDEPENDENT AIRLINE RYANAIR has further expanded its route network to the UK, with the launch of a new service from Dublin to Bournemouth in southern England. The airline will use a Boeing 737 on the daily flight — making nearly 100,000 seats available on the route in the first year. Ryanair has also recently announced new services from Dublin to Leeds- Bradford and Cardiff airports, and is expanding its services, with the start of operations between UK destinations. Hong Kong urges second runway for Chek Lap Kok PAUL LEWIS/HONG KONG HONG KONG'S NEW Air port Authority (AA) is press ing the Government to begin construction of a second parallel runway at Chek Lap Kok, before the airport opens in April 1998. The second runway could be com pleted as early as the end of 1998, if the project is given the go-ahead this year, says the AA. The north ern runway, however, falls outside the phase-one building plan, and Hong Kong would require China's approval for the extra funding. AA estimates put the cost of con structing the runway at HKS4-5 billion ($510-650 million). As sociated work would include build ing a second terminal arm and aircraft apron-parking, to handle additional northern runway traffic. The HKS49.8 billion financing package agreed with China in 1995, covering phase one, includes a S3.4 billion contingency fund, part of which could be used to finance building the second runway. • "There are various ways in which it could financed, but, until we get a little further in discussions with the governments involved, we've not selected anyone," says AA chief executive Dr Henry Townsend. The second runway is needed to cope with faster-than-anticipated growth. Without it, within a year of the airport's opening, peak-time traffic will exceed the 37-38 move- ments-per-hour capacity of the sin gle southern runway. Hong Kong's existing Kai Tak Airport is already operating in excess of its design capacity, having handled 27.4 million passengers in 1995, a figure which is set to rise to over 30 million by April 1998, when the airport is due to close. "We're turning away 200 appli cations a week for scheduled flights," says Hong Kong civil-avi ation director Richard Siegel. It is planned to increase runway capaci ty from 29 to 30 aircraft an hour after May, with upgraded radar data-processing software, and up to 31 by 1998. • Track deviation was cause of 11-76 crash PAUL DUFFY/MOSCOW ALEXANDER VELOVICH/MOSCOW THE KRASNOYARSK Avial-inii Ilyushin 11-76 freighter which crashed on 5 April, killing all 21 people on board while descend ing to land at an airport in the Siberian Far East, appears to have crashed because it deviated from its approach track to save running out of fuel, according to early reports. Air traffic control (ATC) gave the aircraft clearance to descend to 2,950ft (890m) for Petropavlovsk without knowing that it was some 35-40km (19-22nm) south of the normal, 8km-wide approach corri dor, says Ivan Levandovsky, head of the regional Federal Aviation Ser vice directorate. The aircraft hit a mountain at about 2,900ft, some 40km from the airport. Levandovsky says that some of the local radars had been unser viceable and that controllers could not see the aircraft at low altitude on radar anyway because of the mountainous terrain. Actual track has since been determined from military radar. The aircraft had taken off from Novosibirsk in central Russia for Petropavlovsk in the Kamchatka pen insula with a cargo of 57t of meat. Payload limit was 40t, says Levan dovsky, who adds that there were probably unregistered passengers on board. Wth 1.5h to go, having met unfavourable winds, the crew had asked ATC for permission to shortcut the airways routeing to save fuel. ATC clearance was not given, but the crew may have elect ed to route direct anyway. • Investigators studying the 7 December, 1995, crash of a Kha barovsk Air Tupolev Tu-154B, which came down 200km east of Khabarovsk, are now suggesting that the most likely cause of the accident was fuel-feed selected from wing tanks on one side only. • The Faucett Airlines Boeing 737-200 which crashed on a night approach to Lima Airport, Peru, on 29 February, was lower than its captain believed it to be when it hit a hillside, say accident investiga tors. Data from the aircraft's cock pit-voice recorder and flight-data recorder reveal that, when the pilot reported the aircraft's altitude as 9,500ft, the 737 was at 8,640ft, about 850ft lower than the mini mum approach height. J Denim plans casual look for crew DUTCH START-UP airline Denim Air plans to dress its cabin crew in jeans and denim shirts and jackets, introducing a ca sual look to the business of air trav el on the route linking Eindhoven and London. The airline hopes that the mar keting ploy, together with a quality one-class inflight service, will set it apart from the two incumbents on the route, KLM Cityhopper and BASE Regional Airlines. The denim theme was also cho sen with an eye to developing a leisure market from Eindhoven, home of the Philips electrical giant. Twice-daily weekday return ser vices to London City Airport are due to begin on 26 April, using two Fokker 50s. Flight frequencies will be reduced at weekends. Denim Air has been formed by private in terests, with businessman Hamid Kerboua and a major Dutch bank as principal shareholders. The Denim Air inaugural is part of a flurry of new services at Lon don City. On 1 April, Belgian air line VLM opened a link to Diisseldorf Express Airport at Monchenglad- bach in Germany, also with Fokker 50s, and UK newcomer World Air lines plans a start-up before 7 May, operating British Aerospace 146- 200s to Amsterdam. Yet another new airline, Euroscot, intends to serve Edinburgh from July. • 12 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 24 - 30 April 1996
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