Op-Ed Columnists – Page 13
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Opinion
OPINION: Is the industry facing a pilot shortage?
Japanese airlines are having to cancel schedules because they have too few flightcrew. American carriers, especially regionals, have the same problem. Ryanair is having to migrate crew around its network to patch up holes in local rosters.
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Opinion
COMMENT: Business jet gamblers roll the dice again
Look around the business jet industry today and on the surface the view is quite impressive. The marketplace abounds with a flashy array of major product upgrades and clean-sheet designs in various stages of development, while stage whispers gossip of yet-unannounced aircraft launches still to come.
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Opinion
COMMENT: Aviation industry must prepare for US financial shocks
Like the outbreak of a deadly virus in Southeast Asia, the eruption of a volcano in Iceland or a devastating tsunami in Japan, the global aviation industry faces another sudden and apparently uncontrollable financial shock.
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Opinion
ANALYSIS: Aviation Partners, Boeing split opinions on 737 wing-tips
Aviation Partners has started showing airlines a split-tip winglet with blended, "scimitar"-edged feathers as a retrofit option that the joint venture estimates...
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Opinion
COMMENT: The difficulties of aircraft delivery timetable planning
Farnborough visitors could feast their eyes on a fantastic array of new airliner hardware that was on parade. But customers for this advanced breed just wish that the production effort could be conducted as smoothly as their aerial displays
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Opinion
COMMENT: New model armies
Asia-Pacific's network-carrier royalty is under attack from all sides, forcing the region's leading airlines to re-evaluate long-established business models as they try to work out how to compete in a rapidly evolving marketplace
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Opinion
COMMENT: Is there some comfort to be found in expensive fuel?
Sustained oil prices are ratcheting up the pressure on airlines to find more ways to tackle costs that are under their control. But with the industry pointing in the direction of unknown territory, could there also be some comfort to be had from expensive fuel?
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Opinion
COMMENT: How the giant plates are shifting for alliances
Giant plates are shifting within the global alliances, and the outcomes could have lasting consequences for the losers. The major offensive, of course,...
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Opinion
COMMENT: The pressure is on to turn paper to reality
A coffee-break chat at the recent Airline Business Network USA conference in Tampa, Florida, highlighted the blind faith airlines are willing to...
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Opinion
Comment: Business jet market fails to pay the Piper
The demise of Piper Aircraft's great hope for the future, the Altaire personal jet, may signal a new sensibility in the aerospace industry: just because you can afford to build something does not mean you should.
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Opinion
Initial ECJ opinion on EU ETS legal challenge expected soon
The European Court of Justice's senior legal advisor is poised to put forward an opinion on the challenge against the inclusion of aviation in the EU's emissions trading system (ETS), brought forward by the Air Transport Association of America (ATA) and three of its members.
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Opinion
Comment: Oh, for perfect vision
Good news this week from Airbus, whose experts forecast the world's air operators will buy nearly 28,000 new jets between now and 2030 - more than doubling the size of the fleet to the high side of 31,000.
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Opinion
Comment: Champagne on ice tastes all the sweeter
You might wonder what Boeing has to do to catch a break. Just as its 787 widebody finally rolls toward commercial service, the high-power beams lighting up Everett turn out not to be theatrical spotlights, but rather the headlamps of an oncoming express that carried a late delivery of trouble.
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Opinion
Comment: A high-profile tragedy yields opportunities
Maybe the Paris air show distracted attention from the Tupolev Tu-134 crash at Petrozavodsk in June. Maybe there was a collective weary shrug, a resigned attitude of "this is Russia", or perhaps the loss of 40-odd people on a chartered Soviet jet did not meet some notional threshold for a ...
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Opinion
Comment: Governments be gone
Europe's aerospace giant has been an undeniable success story since its creation a decade ago from national champions. It is long past time for the politicians to get out of the way
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Opinion
Comment: How to escape from development hell
What lessons does the Boeing C-17A Globemaster III hold for the Lockheed Martin F-35B? ...
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Opinion
Comment: Aviation is safer since 9/11
A decade on from the cataclysmic impact of 9/11, aviation is statistically more secure, but suicide bombers still kill on the ground and terrorists remain an unpredictable opponent
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Opinion
Comment: Does Boeing's new 737 have the Max factor?
When Boeing launched the last iteration of its ubiquitous 737 back in 1993, the head of its Renton plant declared it had "built and delivered more than 2,500 and we expect to deliver another 2,500".
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Opinion
Comment: Art of war masterclass
Every battle is won before it is even fought, an ancient treatise on conflict says. Airbus seems to have demonstrated this by swooping on Boeing's sacred turf with military precision
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Opinion
Comment: Safety's bad guys persistently offend
Safety is in a rut, it seems. Mostly it is stuck there because the bad guys are not getting any better, despite pressure - and assistance - from the outside and, occasionally, attempts at self-improvement.