Poor quality file pix of dual liveried BA-SQ Concorde

One of the frequent comments in discussions about the Qantas-Emirates partnership is the ‘invisibility’ of the Qantas brand for those who get punted on to Emirates airliners to Europe out of Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, the capitals abandoned by the Australian flag carrier in favor of code shared reservations.

These are passengers who, if they agree to be passed off, are now flown in airliners that don’t look like Qantas on the outside, are nothing like Qantas on the inside, and only have a QF designator on the boarding pass and itinerary print-out in place of the previous ‘real’ Qantas experience.

Perhaps part of the solution is the dual liveried jet, like the British Airways Concordes that flew painted as Singapore Airlines on their port side and BA on their starboard side.

That service operated between Singapore and London via Bahrain between 1977-1980, more as a trophy route than anything else, as detours to avoid Malaysia and India air space restrictions saw it fly around Sri Lanka and take about 4.5 hours for the flight, compromising payload and saving only two hours over a more direct subsonic flight.

Meaning the dual livery worked, but not the economics of supersonic flight at the end of Concorde’s operational tether.

However an Emirates A380 painted in Qantas livery on one side wouldn’t face such problems. And if the split paint job was applied to Emirates 777s we could at last see the big Boeing twin jet in Qantas colours.

Rob Sharp, CEO of Tiger Australia, supplied photo

Shares in Singapore Airlines fell 4.54% in a rout on the Singapore Stock Exchange today after its fourth quarter operating losses widened and the company issued a gloomy outlook for its current financial year to 31 March 2014.

By contrast Tiger Airways Holdings, in which it holds a 32% stake, reported a strong profitable turnaround in its 4Q to 31 March this year result, even though its Australian division remained in loss in the period but saw improved sales and yields.

The sale of 60% of Tiger Airways Australia to Virgin Australia, 19.9% owned by Singapore Airlines, isn’t expected to be completed until mid July, making today’s developments a report about the diverging fortunes of full service and low fare Singapore carriers that may be relevant to the differing trajectories of these types of airlines in this market.

The misfortunes of Singapore Airlines are reported succinctly by Bloomberg here. They contrast to some weak mind rubbish being run by News.com which dresses them up as ‘good’ and appears to be written straight off the Singapore Airlines press release that preceded the SGX debacle.

(Question. Why would we pay News titles to subscribe to rehashed media releases when Bloomberg provides a balanced well research story for free?)

Turning to Tiger, the SGX filing shows that the consolidated activities of Singapore, Australia, Indonesia and Philippines carriers made an operating profit of $SG 12.7 million for the last quarter of its 31 March 2013 financial year, which mightn’t seem like much, but compared well to a combined operating loss of $ 17.2 million in the corresponding quarter of FY12. (All figures in Singapore dollars).

Singapore was the only profitable Tiger operation in the quarter, making $21.5 million in the three months, compared to a corresponding loss of $6.7 million in 2012. Tiger Australia narrowed its last quarter losses to $15.1 million in 4QFY13 from a corresponding $17.7 million in 4QFY12. However the really interesting figure in the Australian results was an 82% growth in revenue on an increase of 77.5% in traffic.

This shows how crippled Tiger Australia was by limitations imposed by CASA on its sectors and thus fleet utilisations following the airline’s decision to ignore Australian air safety rules and its grounding and supervised return to service.

There is a bigger set of questions hovering over the differing fortunes revealed by Singapore Airlines and Tiger today, concerning where the money in airlines is to be made these days.

The answer appears to be that it is the low cost, low fare and, often, high fee tight pack shorter haul carriers that make the profits. If this persists as an answer it will have the effect of growing market share at the expense of full service carriers, encouraging them to also reduce the quality of their product in order to curb the costs of serving a shrinking demand base of gradually declining relevance.

It’s an issue that might be on the management mind in Virgin Australia as it refines its intentions and goals for Tiger Australia.

In the meantime, and seemingly undeterred by the changes affecting it, Singapore Airlines will reveal new seat and cabin products early in July for introduction on part of its fleet from later this year.  This will, if the history of Singapore Airlines innovations continues, be a problem for competitors like Qantas and Emirates as it chases their higher yielding customers.

What congestion? Good until 2049! A Paul Sadler photo courtesy AirServices

Well, that has to be the best news for a new airport in the Sydney basin for years.

Sydney Airport chairman, Max Moore Wilton, has given Fairfax Media the definitive commitment not to put SACL’s hand up to exercise its first right of refusal to build a second Sydney Airport at Badgerys Creek when the NSW and Federal governments jointly decide they must go ahead with a project vital to the continued economic health of the city and its state.

It’s a white elephant, it’s a waste of billions of dollars, and not even the two airlines who are Sydney Airport’s biggest (and unhappiest) customers Qantas and Virgin Australia know what they are talking about when they support it if we are to conclude that the chairman’s damnation of the proposed airport means SACL will never participate in such a folly.

Terrific stuff Mr Moore Wilton. This means the risk of more disgraceful price gouging at Sydney Airport going unchallenged by a Sydney West Airport held captive by the current airport through the, let’s guess, harmonisation of charges is gone.You’ve relinquished your right to extend your airport monopoly ownership over all of Sydney.

Sydney can now look forward to an independent, competitive, and for much of the metropolitan area, more convenient airport.

Thank you for getting out of the way of keeping Sydney the great gateway to Australia.

On the negative side a lower AUD drives fuel costs higher, very quickly for motorists, and very decisively for airlines subject to whatever benefits they may claw back through currency as well as fuel hedges.

At a revenue level a continued and deepening drop in the AUD will also kill the outbound boom in travel to the US and Europe including the UK,  which is a particularly serious issue for Qantas, for its major international competitors in this market, and for travel agents.

The consequences of prolonged AUD weakness cannot be overstated for the Australian pursuit of good value discretionary travel abroad.

Nor will the ‘more competitive’ Australian exchange rate see a rebound in inbound tourism replacing one for one a collapse in outbound demand.

This is because the major sources of inbound tourism to Australia are broke, or crippled.  Even if the AUD were to plunge more sharply, British tourism to Australia is unlikely to return to the boisterous days of drunken English cricket tourists or beach bogans lurching around public places chanting ‘three dollars to the pound’.

Those lager louts are now unemployed, and the really obnoxious ones, from the banking and financial services sectors, are ‘from’ those sectors, and living off savings or working in other industries, in so far as the UK actually makes anything anymore.

A cheap Ryanair or easyJet or Wizz flight to Spain, Portugal, Italy or Hungary is a powerful competitor to a long range holiday to Australia, even if the Pound ends up buying two Australian dollars later this year.

Similarly the Abenomics miracle in Japan, which is steeply and conscientiously lowering the value of the Yen much more sharply than the recent decline of the AUD, is while good for spurring the Japan economy, also good for making overseas holidays for the Japanese market even more expensive.

However in time a lower Australian dollar will greatly improve or restore the attractiveness of longer range inbound tourism to this country, subject to the scale of economic recovery in the US, Europe and Japan in particular.

On the positive side, despite higher fuel, a lower Australian dollar should improve domestic travel activity by benefiting the national economy by restoring prosperity to those most influenced by the health of exporting industries, and to a degree, what is left of manufacturing in this country.

Resources, agriculture, manufacturing and financial services sectors will all benefit from a lower Australian dollar, and they in turn drive travel for business purposes.

The Australian airlines will have to weather the more immediate negatives of a lower AUD to benefit from the longer term improvements it will bring, making this yet another challenge on top of their self-inflicted wounds from capacity wars.

However if the AUD were to fall closer to 90 cents US many of the adverse cost comparisons that analysts like to make comparing Qantas to the cheaper labor costs of major rivals in Asia would begin to evaporate.

Qantas and Virgin Australia run very productive and cost efficient enterprises which are made to look ordinary when measured in USD comparisons distorted by an overvalued AUD.   But if, for example, the AUD was at parity with the Singapore dollar, or the exchange rate for the Hong Kong dollar was to come back from as high of close to 8:1 to something like the 5.5: 1 ratio that prevailed around the start of the century, both airlines today would look much better.

Any claimed advantages for offshore maintenance of Australian aircraft will also come under pressure as they become more costly in terms of a fallen AUD.

However the Australian carriers would lose current advantages they would have in reequipping with newer technology jets at near record high exchange rates with the USD or the Euro.

A falling Australian dollar is good for the country, less good for its airlines.

There is no such guidance from Qantas.  Which is not to say it won’t as a group remain in profit or fall into loss.

But in the six months to 31 December the Qantas group would have on various sober estimates have been in small loss without the taking into account of  $125 million in compensation from Boeing for Dreamliner delays.

In the current and rapidly closing last half of this financial year Qantas and Virgin have lacerated themselves with a classic fail strategy of engaging in a capacity war which is only just starting to show signs of lessening, because each carrier has sent plenty of signals via the media in recent weeks that ‘enough is enough’.

Yesterday Virgin Australia shareholders returned the favour by sending its management their own ‘enough is enough’ message by dumping the stock. Even though they were given what purports to be certainty that the enterprise will end the full year in profit.

The savage truth about Virgin Australia is that the airline itself pointed to a $50 million screw up in handling the switch to a new computer reservations and revenue leveraging system by giving away a huge slice of its business to Qantas by cutting out flights during the IT upgrade.

The most elegant summary of this inelegant miscalculation is in this article by Adele Ferguson in today’s Fairfax Media.

Virgin boss John Borghetti blamed the profit downgrade on a softening in demand in the fourth quarter and the introduction of the Sabre reservation system in the third quarter, which is believed to have cost the airline $50 million in lost revenue.

The $50 million came from a decision to reduce schedules by 15 per cent to take pressure off the new reservation system and avoid any chaos or customer disruptions as staff learned the new reservation system.

The decision to scale back services was a big price to pay because in effect it handed $50 million to Qantas on a platter. The hope was that the $50 million blip would be recovered in the fourth quarter, giving the airline a similar earnings profile as 2012.

Instead, demand softened and Borghetti had no option but to downgrade its earnings, something its rival Qantas seems to have done without making an official statement to the Australian Stock Exchange.

The 17 per cent fall in Virgin’s share price seems like a massive overreaction, particularly given the company’s yields are rising, which suggests its strategy to encroach on Qantas’ lucrative corporate and government accounts is working.

Ferguson also rattles the impending ‘boardroom from hell’ scenarios that have diverted Virgin watchers ever since the possibly too clever reorganisation of the airline into Virgin Australian Holdings to get around the traditional limitations on foreign investment in an Australian flag carrier offering both domestic and international services.

The current one is focused on Etihad, but be assured, anything is possible if Singapore Airlines, Air New Zealand and Etihad all lock horns.

Absent a decent Qlink 717 photo, here is a Q400 lost amid the big jets Source: Qantas

Something more than interesting is on the way in the battle for Canberra corporate and government accounts as QantasLink prepares a fleet of refurbished Boeing 717s to take on Virgin Australia’s Embraer 190s.

While the jet showdown has been on the cards for some time, Qantas is keeping the actual seating in the 717s secret for the time being.

Which undoubtedly fuels suspicion that it might emulate Virgin’s Über exclusive six seat business class E-190 cabin, arranged two seats by one over two rows, within the wider cabin of the 717.  Or it might not.

Plane Talking is trying to second guess smart people in both airlines, and three across premium business class seating in a 717 is definitely in the ‘nuclear option’ type of response, since it is obviously less efficient than the less comfortable four across premium seating encountered in 717s and their common fuselage with MD-80/90 series and original DC-9 jets which set the cabin width and height for the jet which was called the MD-95 before the reverse takeover in which Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas.

This is what QantasLink says today:

QantasLink will upgrade the interiors of five Boeing 717 aircraft to include Business Class and in-flight entertainment for all passengers.

QantasLink Executive Manager John Gissing said the additional five aircraft, which Qantas announced in January 2013, will be in addition to our existing fleet of 13 B717 aircraft operating across Australia.

“QantasLink will introduce a full Business experience on these aircraft, including market-leading seats, premium food and drinks and exceptional onboard service,” Mr Gissing said.

“We will also be providing individual in-flight entertainment for all customers – both Business and Economy – and are currently testing the latest technology.

“The continued investment in our fleet shows the commitment and confidence that we have in the Australian domestic market and regional Australia.”

Mr Gissing said QantasLink would be progressively introducing the five aircraft into service from late 2013, after the interior improvements are completed.

“The first aircraft will be used on Sydney-Canberra, Brisbane-Canberra and Melbourne-Canberra, with the B717 aircraft size and configuration ideally suited to these routes,” he said.

Cobham, which currently operates QantasLink’s fleet of Boeing 717 aircraft, will operate the five additional aircraft.

The amenity of the Virgin Australia E-190s is unmatched at present by any single aisle jet flying domestic routes in Australia. Even in economy there are wide seats four across, that is, no middle seats, and the seats are far more comfortable than the tight fit four across fittings in the competing turbo-props, the QantasLink Q400s and the Virgin Australia ATR 72s.

Canberra is going to be spoiled for choice.

A rare natural colour rendition of an Emirates A380 at altitude

While they will all be flown by the same A380, there will be four Emirates flights a day using the giant Airbus through Brisbane Airport from 2 October, a Dubai arrival and departure and an Auckland arrival and departure.

The confirmation of the date that had been widely anticipated by retail agents will bring Emirates A380 return flights between Australia and its Dubai hub to four each way each day, two each way from Sydney, and one each way from Brisbane and Melbourne.

There could also have been a daily Emirates A380 each way between Perth and Dubai from July, however the management of Perth airport continues to struggle to meet the expectations of airlines serving Australia’s resources capital at many levels.

The Emirates announcement also demonstrates how the Qantas-Emirates ‘giveaway’ or business partnership will work in the future. The growth will be provided by Emirates, flown on Emirates jets, and for the overwhelming benefit of Emirates’ owners.

Since the end of March when the giveaway took effect Qantas has ceased one stop flights between Brisbane and London (and shortly afterwards, Frankfurt) in favour of buying code-shared seats on Emirates jets.

This lowering of the Australian flag carrier’s presence on all but the Sydney and Melbourne routes to London has met with immense media and analyst enthusiasm, even though it means a smaller Qantas, and one that is no longer  an airline for all of Australia on the kangaroo routes.

It also assumes that what customers Qantas had kept in those markets would do their patriotic duty and fly on the Emirates services pretending they were Qantas jets, and make connections to cities other than London in Dubai.

This is part of the Emirates statement:

16 May 2013, Brisbane, Australia: Queenslanders will have the opportunity to experience the state of the art Airbus A380 aircraft for the first time with the announcement that Emirates will operate flights EK434 and EK435 between Auckland, Brisbane and Dubai on the new aircraft from 2 October 2013.

Adding the Airbus A380-800 to one of Emirates’ two daily Brisbane services will see an increase in capacity of 132 seats for sale per flight and 1,848 week, reinforcing Emirates’ commitment to Queensland passengers. The double-daily service is currently operated by Boeing 777-300ER aircraft, offering 354 seats.

“On the back of growing passenger demand on the route as well as demand for the aircraft, we will become the first airline to bring the state-of-the-art A380 to Brisbane, offering Queenslanders the chance to experience this revolutionary aircraft and the best service in the sky first-hand,” said Salem Obaidalla, Emirates Senior Vice President Commercial Operations, Far East and Australasia.

“The Auckland-Brisbane-Dubai route is a popular choice among business and leisure travellers alike and the new Emirates A380 service will be instrumental in helping Emirates meet this growing passenger demand as well as deliver considerable economic benefits through inbound seats and travel connections”, he continued.

“Australia represents an important market for Emirates and ranks in the top three countries on Emirates’ global network. Central to this relationship is the ongoing support for tourism and trade provided by adding larger capacity aircraft between our two countries, and a fourth A380 for Australia will further complement our partnership with Qantas,” Mr Obaidalla concluded.

Together with Qantas, from October a total of six daily A380 services will operate to Dubai, offering a seamless A380 experience through Dubai International Airport’s Concourse A, the world’s first purpose built A380 terminal, to 21 A380 serviced destinations on the network including London Heathrow, Manchester, Paris and Rome.

This appears to be a version of an official Boeing graphic of a 737-7 and Mt Rainier

Although the Boeing 737 MAX series has been on sale for some time, giant US low fare carrier Southwest has become the first airline to place on order for the MAX 7, the smallest of the family.

The new engine technology MAX 7 corresponds in capacity, but with improved range and fuel economy, to the current NG series 737-700.

Southwest is already designated the launch customer for the  737 MAX program but became the first airline to order the 737 MAX 7, when it converted 30 existing orders for Next-Generation 737s to the forthcoming higher technology version and will take deliveries of these jets from 2019, some two years after the MAX 8 enters service with other but later buyers of the new Boeing family.

With the MAX 7 conversions and exercised options for 737-800s, Southwest’s unfilled orders consist of 180 737 MAX aircraft and 137 Next-Generation 737s. The 737 MAX now has orders for 1,315 aircraft.

The major buyer for the 737 MAX family in the Asia-Pacific is Lion Air of Indonesia, currently notorious for water landing 737s, and distantly followed by Singapore Airlines’ SilkAir subsidiary and Virgin Australia.

However Qantas is considered a potential MAX buyer as it already has a substantial fleet of current technology 737-800s with 59 in service this month.

The captain then attempted a ‘go around’ from an altitude of only 20 feet,  moments before the flight hit the water within wading distance of the sea wall at the end of the runway, seriously injuring four of the 108 people on board the jet.

The National Transportation Safety Committee in Jakarta recommended Lion Air “review the policy and procedures regarding the risk associated with changeover of control at critical altitudes or critical time”.

It added the fast-growing airline should also “ensure the pilots are properly trained” on this subject.

In a Reuters report Lion Air’s co-founder Rusdi Kirana said he would respect the outcome of the investigation, but voiced dismay at the interim recommendations which were directed solely at the airline.

“If our pilots make mistakes we are not scared to admit it, but we are not happy just blaming the pilots without proof,” he said.

“It is important not to give people the impression that we don’t have proper procedures. We take safety seriously, we are a profitable airline and we are not going to limit our budget on training and maintenance.”

The interim report, which is available in English, is a model of no nonsense clarity and factual detail. It points to the decision of another flight that experienced the sudden onset of the rainy conditions on approach to Denpasar to go around shortly after Lion Air’s on-time but not-at-airport water landing.

The Indonesian report shames the ATSB’s efforts in relation to the ditching of an air ambulance near Norfolk Island in 2009, in which it issued a report which failed to reference grave deficiencies in the safety standards of operator Pel-Air at the time, or question the failed oversight of CASA, and loaded all the blame onto its pilot.

This social media image captures the immediate aftermath of Lion Air’s arrival at Denpasar on 13 April.

Consider these extracts.

The first is a summary of performance in April.

Note the reference to loads being weaker due to a focus on higher yielding passengers.  Another way of saying this is that Virgin Australia is making more money from too few premium payers.

However further down the market update what was first identified as a factor in improving yields, the introduction of the Sabre system for managing reservations and leveraging customer data into a better experience for the passengers and a more profitable one for the airline has become an impost that cannot, most likely, be recovered in the remaining quarter of this financial year.

How digestible this contest between unexpected short term pain for longer term gain will be for Virgin Australia’s investors remains to be seen. The airlines that crowd the share registry in Virgin Australia Holdings, Singapore Airlines and Air New Zealand on just under 20% each, and Etihad on just over 8%,  would understand the dilemma perfectly, even if not comfortably, as would Richard Branson on 13%, but other investors might not be as patient.

The caution Virgin Australia is expressing in its guidance is no different to the commentary from within Qantas.

Things are getting tough at the top of the market, and the bargain chaser end of the spectrum is as fickle as ever.

In the process Qantas has moved the chair from under marketing director Lewis Pullen, by abolishing the position.

Pullen was responsible for the “repositioning of the brand under the new line of “You’re the reason we fly”, along with a new piece of music created by Silverchair’s Daniel Johns ” according to a laconic read-between-the-lines posting on Mumbrella.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Pullen’s repositioning out of the organisation and Wirth’s elevation raises the curtain on other changes to come at Qantas, with new board appointments and further development of the separation of the Qantas entity into domestic and international entities with their own CEOs expected to emerge much sooner than later.

Boeing supplied image of the ANA 787 being delivered today

After four months deliveries have resumed today at the congested Boeing 787 Dreamliner centre at Everett.

The first of the delayed 787-8s to go will be for All Nippon Airways, the launch customer for the type which is also widely reported today to be in discussions with Airbus to acquire some A350-1000s.

ANA will resume its 787 services on 1 June, making it one of the last of the operators to restore the jet to revenue service, with Ethiopian Airlines the first to get theirs back into the air earlier this month, and Air-India and Qatar Airways due to follow suit in the current 24-36 hours and United following next Monday US time.

Boeing said today that it will be able to deliver all of the 787s originally promised for this year before the uncertainties that arose after the type was grounded in mid January after heavy duty lithium-ion battery failures in a Japan Airlines and an ANA Dreamliner.

Qantas has not yet updated its guidance that its first of 14 Dreamliners for Jetstar may be delayed from its intended delivery in August.

For the Dreamliner program overall the return to flight of the 787-8s with super fire boxes installed to contain battery failures will bring the progress of the 787-9 program and the proposed 787-10 version back into focus.

The higher capacity longer range -9 version is of critical importance to Air New Zealand as its launch customer for delivery in the middle of next year if not slightly sooner,  and the -10 has been talked up for some time as an even higher capacity Dreamliner optimised for medium range routes.

The -9 Dreamliner is also under option by Qantas for delivery slots from 2016 subject to a return to profitability by its long haul operations.

This story about what are ‘capital heavy’ moves by Malaysia Airlines and the separate Malaysia based low fare higher capacity aircraft franchise AirAsia X suggest that if Qantas and Virgin can’t afford the price of entry into world’s greatest aviation coliseum they will find themselves playing Lions v Christians on the losing side.

Neither Australian flag carrier can afford to ignore what happens as the strong brands of Asian aviation find the funds needed to keep or win market share in a rapidly growing arena,  because Australia is part of their neighborhood, is a desirable place to do business and leisure, and they are already here and expanding their services, ready or not and aligned or not.

Both Australian carriers have incomplete coverage of the broader Asia market. Qantas has a low cost franchise in Jetstar but not a premium franchise meaning its full service operation has no control or equity participation in travel beyond its major hub destinations of Singapore and Hong Kong.

Virgin Australia has an alliance with its major equity holder, Singapore Airlines, which does give it both premium coverage (SQ and its SilkAir subsidiary) and low fare associations (through the broader Tiger operation and Singapore Airlines’ Scoot), but for all its strengths Singapore Airport is no contest for north Asia carriers that can fly non-stop between major centres in northern China and north Asia and Australia.

At the moment the choke point for Qantas ambitions for Jetstar expansion is Jetstar Hong Kong, which is taking much longer to get approval from the Hong Kong authorities for what is a joint venture between Qantas and China Eastern than anticipated.

An article in the Ming Pao daily for which there is no English version as yet, reports that Cathay Pacific has successfully used its influence in Hong Kong to keep the Qantas/China Eastern project in limbo because of objections to its claimed failure to comply with the ownership and place of principal business requirements of the Special Administrative Region’s Basic Law.

The Jetstar response to this reflects the intricate regulatory issues with getting Jetstar Hong Kong flying, including the erection of new administrative barriers to approval which were gazetted on 19 April.

In a written statement, Jetstar says:

* We are in constructive dialogue with the authorities as we continue to work through the regulatory process in Hong Kong and are confident of approval before the end of the year.
* The Transport and Housing Bureau has recently gazetted its revised Air Transport Licence Application guidelines, which we are in the process of reviewing and will submit our application in due course.
* While we don’t take anything for granted, we are confident that we will meet all requirements including Principal Place of Business.  Jetstar Hong Kong is a local entity with its headquarters overlooking Hong Kong International Airport. It is led by local management team and will employ the significant majority of its 600 future employees locally.
* Jetstar Hong Kong will open up travel opportunities for local residents and will deliver a significant boost to Hong Kong tourism and the local economy. The response we’ve had from the local tourism industry, for instance, has been really positive .

Underwing liquified gas pods feature in RMIT entry

A proposal to adapt liquified biomethane and LPG blends for use in airliners designed to achieve reduced reduced fossil carbon emissions has made an RMIT University team from Melbourne among five finalists in the running for this years Airbus Fly Your Ideas prize.

The other teams making the final are from Brazil, India, Italy and Malaysia.

Melbourne’s Team CLiMA go to France to present their ideas to a jury of Airbus and industry experts at Airbus’ headquarters in Toulouse on 12 June. The winning team will receive a prize of €30,000 and the runners up €15,000 at UNESCO  headquarters in Paris on 14June.

This is the second time in three biennial challenges that an Australian university has made the finals, with Queensland University winning the inaugural Fly Your Ideas 2009.

Team CLiMA successfully passed through the eliminating rounds to get to the final with their proposal for the development of aircraft fuelled by a blend of sustainably produced liquefied biomethane and liquefied natural gas (Bio-LNG). The team is composed of Australians Katherine Grigoriou and Mark Spiteri as well as South African Martin Burston, Canadian James Herringer and the Team Leader from Malta Luke Spiteri all studying Aerospace Engineering at RMIT.

This year’s challenge saw over 6,000 students from 82 countries become involved with the 618 teams submitting a proposal. The proposals had to cover one of six themes identified by Airbus as key challenges for a greener aviation industry.Charles Champion, Airbus’ Executive Vice President Engineering said “the entries were assessed by experienced Airbus engineers who were extremely impressed by the quality of work and innovation. These talented students from around the world represent the future of our industry and I am looking forward to welcoming them to Toulouse for the final round.”

Airbus has posted a set of photos of the A350-900 prototype in its full colours after emerging from the Toulouse paint shop.

The first flight of the jet is expected by the end of June, maybe sooner.

With a nominal three class configuration of 350 seats, the A350 is around 10% larger by seat numbers than a similarly configured Boeing 787-9, which is the first higher capacity version of the Dreamliner family, and is expected to fly according to some estimates by the end of August.