Articles by Ben Sandilands

  A stock market disclosure that AirAsia X is bringing forward its Australia expansion plans poses a much sharper attack on the Jetstar franchise in Asia than a mere doubling of capacity to Sydney and Melbourne sooner than originally expected.

  Somewhere on the lower slopes of the Blue Mountains tonight a party of 21 are resting up after day one of a re-enactment of the first documented European crossing of the ranges 200 years ago.

No doubt by complete coincidence, Emirates has this morning emailed its FFP members with a reminder of double daily A380s each way each day between Sydney-Dubai from 2 June.

  Emirates has posted its annual result to 31 March containing growth figures which its critics have damned as unsustainable for a quarter of a century.

If Tony Abbott was delivering Anthony Albanese’s study into the suitability of Wilton as a site for a 2nd Sydney Airport which was released today he would have described it as ‘dead, buried and cremated.’

  In an interview in Gulf News, Emirates president Tim Clark pushes back the timing of the  777-X to late 2020-2021, which is something of a jolt to those already suitably jolted only months ago by his insistence that Boeing had to have the airliner ready for his airline by late 2017.

  The first Airbus A350 has not only broken cover in Toulouse, but the Wall Street Journal has broken its paywall in a grand gesture to aviation watchers worldwide by placing a story and collection of sharp clear photos on the internet for free here.

CSeries airliner ‘escapes’ from its hangar on way to first flight.

Update This post was based on what has now been admitted by the NTSB to have been a misleading docket. A new post dealing with the NTSB’s dishonest abuse of language and process has been posted here.

  Richard Branson’s appearance at the Virgin Australia Regional Airlines event in Perth yesterday saw the media all but totally ignore two very important messages from the only individual to have made somewhere north of $600 million from aviation in Australia.