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Aviation History
2002
2002 - 0011.PDF
AIR TRANSPORT REMARKETING GUY NORRIS / SEATTLE Boeing Aircraft Trading negotiates to place next batch of ex-SI A A340s Manufacturer also looks for home for ex-Air China and Malaysia Airlines 747s and 737s Boeing Aircraft Trading (BAT) is "beginning intensive" talks with prospective customers to sell the next batch of five ex-Singapore Airlines (SIA) Airbus A340-300s, following the recent completion of deals for the first five with Cathay Pacific and Khalifa Airways. "We are talking in the market place over the next five [aircraft], and we are looking at additional landmark deals this year," says BAT president Dinesh Keskar. BAT is also scouring the market for cus tomers for two ex-Air China Boeing 747-400s that it took in trade in October, two Malaysia Airlines (MAS) -400s and two "white tail" Boeing 737-700s, originally des tined for Midway Airlines. Describing the Khalifa Airways deal, first revealed in Flight Inter national (13-19 November 2001), as "one of the highlights of the year for our organisation", Keskar says the company ultimately plans to sell all 17 ex-SI A A340s over a four- year period. "We will be phasing them so there is no glut in the mar ket. We are trying to play fair, and we have to ensure a careful bal ance," he adds. As part of an earlier sale of 777s to SIA, Boeing agreed to buy back the A340s if the Singapore carrier did not sell them first. The first three ex-SIA aircraft placed with Cathay are on three-year leases, Boeing is building up its A340 expertise as it remarkets more SIA -300s while the exact terms of the lease with Khalifa for two aircraft are not known. The Algeria-based carrier, which has three A340-500s on firm order direct from Airbus, has also ordered a 777 full-flight simulator from CAE of Canada. Speculation is mounting that the deal is part of Boeing's wider strategy to gain a market foothold with established Airbus customers by placing the ex-SIA A340s with them, the in tention ultimately being to secure follow-on orders for the 111 200LR/300ER. Keskar acknowledges that Boeing had to overhaul and refurbish the CFM International CFM56-5C4 en gines of the ex-SIA aircraft to meet Cathay's requirements. Boeing has contracted Lufthansa Technik to maintain the aircraft. "We certainly know a lot more about the A340 than we did before," he says. Disposal of the ex-Air China 747- 400s stored at Marana, Arizona, is proving difficult in the present eco nomic climate, says Keskar who is more hopeful over faster disposal of the 737s in storage at Victorville, California. The manufacturer is also remarketing two MAS 747-400s which are available for delivery from early this year. SAFETY FAA slammed over its maintenance monitoring US auditors have slammed the Federal Aviation Administration's monitoring of airlines' mainte nance and inspection programmes. This latest audit stems from con cerns raised after the Alaska Airlines Boeing MD-80 crash on 31 January 2000. The Inspector General of the Transportation Department (IG) says the aviation agency's oversight of carriers, Continuing Analysis and Surveillance Systems (CASS), was inconsistent. CASS, introduced in 1964, is designed to give the FAA a way of holding airlines account able for monitoring their own maintenance. After the Alaska Airlines crash, the FAA concluded that the carrier improperly deferred maintenance and did not have ade quate controls or quality assurance. The IG, accompanying FAA offi cials on various CASS inspections, found that the FAA did not ens.ure deficiencies are remedied after they have been identified. In one case, flaws as far back as 1996 were un corrected four years later. In some instances, FAA inspectors merely attended a carrier's maintenance meetings and kept little documenta tion on inspections, "precluding effective trend analysis of inspection findings", says the IG, which wants better inspector training for evaluat ing CASS. Training now focuses on approving a carrier's CASS plan, mostly involving reviewing the CASS manual that a carrier has com piled, instead of testing the imple mentation Rather than annual CASS inspections, FAA inspectors conduct an annual risk analysis to see if a given carrier's CASS should be inspected. At Alaska, for exam ple, the FAA had not performed any CASS reviews between August 1988 and the January 2000 crash. Correction In our 11-17 December issue, we said EasyJet was introducing a third London Gatwick-Zurich flight. In fact the air line is adding a flight from Luton. It plans to start Gatwick-Zurich flights in February. • China Airlines (CAL) and SkyTeam member Delta Air Lines have agreed to codeshare on US domestic flights and between Taiwan and the USA from early this year, subject to government approval. Delta will sell seats on CAL's daily flights between Taipei and Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York Kennedy airport. CAL will, in turn, sell seats on Delta's domestic flights from Los Angeles and San Francisco to Atlanta, Dallas/Fort Worth, Salt Lake City, Tampa and Cincinnati. Meanwhile, Delta and French railway operator SNCF have started codesharing on SNCF trains from Paris Charles de Gaulle to eight French destina tions. • BWIA West Indies Airways has signed a strategic alliance with neighbouring LIAT, which gives the Antigua-based regional carrier access to BWIA traffic at its main hubs in Antigua, Barbados and Trinidad, in return for LIAT feeding pas sengers from the smaller Caribbean islands to the interna tional carrier. • Korean Air has resumed services to Guam and Saipan, following the US Federal Aviation Administration's recent decision to reinstate South Korea's safety oversight rating to category 1. • Frontier Jet, Mesa Airlines' new regional feeder operation for Frontier Airlines, will launch services on 17 February from Denver to Houston and San Jose. Mesa plans to add more destinations and have seven Bombardier CRJ200s flying by the end of 2002. • Uzbekistan Airways has resumed twice-weekly flights between Tashkent and Birmingham, UK, temporarily suspended since the US terrorist attacks. • United Airlines is launching services between Tokyo Narita and Taipei in April using slots made available by the opening of the new runway at the Japanese airport. • US charter operator Boston-Maine Airways has received approval to begin scheduled services. The Portsmouth, New Hampshire-based carrier, an affiliate of Pan Am, plans to connect with the airline on flights to destinations in New England, Florida and the Caribbean. www.flightinternational.com FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 1-7 JANUARY 2002 9
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