The difference between Australia and America in relation to the public administration of air safety is that in this country the media doesn’t give a sh*t, and has neither resources nor focus to follow and report a significant scandal in the process and conduct of the ATSB and CASA.

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.

In a media conference after the release of the Wilton ‘suitability’ study, Infrastructure and Transport Minister Anthony Albanese  made some observations about mine subsidence that may bury any chance of a Wilton Airport being built.

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.’

There is no escaping the disastrous and deliberate stuff ups in the 2nd Sydney Airport saga that will be made worse today if you read any of the Sydney newspapers.

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.

The earlier Plane Talking story about the NTSB ordering ‘urgent’ 787 battery scans turns out to have been a misleading statement and an abuse of process by the US safety investigator.

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. 

You know an airline is hurting when it starts a food fight, since turning on the quality catering like Qantas is in business class on the Perth transcontinentals at the end of the month is a lot cheaper than having a fare fight with the Virgin Menace.

Virgin Australia made its three part restructing complete in Perth today with the announcement of Virgin Australia Regional as the rebranding of Skywest, which it has taken over.