October 30, 2008 – 12:27 pm
An intensely interesting situation has arisen in Europe after Lufthansa assumed outright control of UK carrier bmi after chairman Sir Michael Bishop exercised a £318 million option to sell them his stake, lifting the German carrier’s equity to 80%. Sir Richard Branson, who shares Virgin Atlantic 51:49 with the less than thrilled owners of Singapore [...]
By Ben Sandilands
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Posted in Uncategorized
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Tagged AirAsia, airline consolidation, bmi, British Airways, JetBlue, London Heathrow, mergers & acquisitions, Michael Bishop, Pacific Blue, Qantas, Richard Branson, Singapore Airlines, V Australia, Virgin America, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Blue
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October 28, 2008 – 5:00 pm
Qantas has announced a $20 million settlement with the ACCC in relation to price fixing within its freight division in Australia. It has previously settled its liability for similar conduct by its employees in the US, and says it could take several years to conclude its involvement in related investigations in Europe and elsewhere which [...]
October 27, 2008 – 5:27 pm
Jetstar keeps trying to entice Tiger Airways to ‘come out and play’. The current ‘playground’ is Adelaide, which Tiger has been trying to mark as its own with recent announcements of new routes from the city. Today’s Jetstar response has been to announce new flights from Adelaide to Perth and Cairns from February, with introductory [...]
October 23, 2008 – 11:24 am
What a shame Qantas didn’t shine a bit more of the spotlight on the original article when its first A380 inaugurated commercial services by the giant Airbus at LAX this week. That small object on the left in this photo by Joshua Bray is John Travolta’s own Boeing 707-138B, painted in the V-jet livery in [...]
October 23, 2008 – 10:11 am
A great shot of an EVA Air of Taiwan 747 leaving Schiphol Airport at Amsterdam, taken by Dutch photographer Points1. The image was found on The Lowy Interpreter together with some interesting foreign affairs stories that have yet to make it into the general media. Apparently the distance between the fence and the edge of [...]
October 20, 2008 – 5:10 pm
If the TV coverage of this morning’s inaugural Qantas A380 departure from Melbourne to Los Angeles is a good guide the fully laden jet took off in 23-25 seconds. That is incredibly prompt for a jet with all 450 seats occupied for a 14 hour flight. The Boeing 747-400s the bigger jet replaces could never [...]
October 17, 2008 – 12:03 pm
The US Federal Aviation Administration or FAA has put up a new resource on Lessons Learned from major crashes. So far there are 11 accidents on the website with plans to expand it to 40. With several of them outside the US already on the list it is possible that an Australian accident that changed [...]
By Ben Sandilands
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Posted in Uncategorized
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Tagged air crashes, Airbus A330, Ansett-ANA, ATSB, black box, Boeing 777, David Warren, FAA, flight data recorders, Lessons Learned, Malaysian Airlines, Qantas, Vickers Viscount
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October 14, 2008 – 8:06 pm
The ATSB media briefing this evening, at a time and place almost no-one could attend and without dial-in facilities, has described the QF 72 accident as being caused by a ‘unique’ fault in the jet’s computer linked control systems. A detailed statement issued after the briefing puts the spotlight on one of three sets of [...]
October 14, 2008 – 3:01 pm
The ATSB has called a media conference to update the public on its QF 72 inquiry for this evening, coincidentally after most of the first editions of tomorrow’s newspapers will be locked up. Earlier today someone in CASA drew the technical media’s attention to this list of airworthiness directives that apply to the Airbus A330-300 [...]
October 10, 2008 – 3:56 pm
The ATSB held another briefing on the QF 72 accident today which includes an animation of the episodes of uncontrolled flight, a pitch up from level cruise and two dives which might even squeeze in between the financial crisis coverage on tonight’s news casts. In fact it resembles some of the graphs of the flight [...]
