Debrief

Airport news

Brisbane Airport started pouring some 100,000 tonnes of specially designed aircraft-grade asphalt for its new runway in early July, marking the final stage of the project. The asphalt will be spread over the runway’s 2.5 metres of compacted sand and 600-millimetre layer of fine crushed rock over the next three months. The 3.3km runway and 12km of taxiways costing $1.3 billion, are on track to be operational by the middle of 2020.
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Melbourne Airport plans to roll out new check-in and baggage drop kiosks throughout its terminals as part of a contract extension with air travel technology provider SITA, announced in June. The hybrid check-in areas would offer airlines the flexibility of having a mix of self-service and assisted kiosks that can be configured depending on the time on the time of day and type of passenger travelling. The concept is similar to processes at Melbourne Airport’s international terminal, which also uses SITA technology.
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Still at Tullamarine, Melbourne Airport said on June 27 it was considering changing the orientation of a planned third runway from the current east-west to north-south. Melbourne Airport chief executive Lyell Strambi said that after a detailed review of the proposed east-west alignment – which has been on the drawing board since 2013 and was expected to be operational by 2023 – there was strong evidence that a north-south runway would provide a superior outcome in terms of availability, capacity, long-term investment profile and community impacts. Strambi said the third runway would be subject to further technical consultation with government, airlines and regulatory bodies through the second half of 2019.
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The federal government has approved the proposed Archerfield Airport runway extension, the airport announced on June 19. The works include lengthening the main runway, providing runway end safety areas and installing new LED runway lighting. The $17.5 million upgrade will also entail strengthening of the runway and adjoining taxiway, new LED taxiway lighting and other safety improvements, including Precision Approach Path Indicators (PAPI).
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Western Sydney Airport said on June 21 it has shortlisted five architectural teams for the design of its airport terminal. The teams – Architectus, Gensler, SAA and Surbana Jurong, Cox and Zaha Hadid, Design Inc & Foster + Partners, Hassell and Pascall Watson, Woods Bagot and RSHP –will design a plaza, a public transport interchange and the integrated international and domestic passenger terminal, with the winner to be selected before the end of 2019. One condition of their design process is involvement of university students with a link to western Sydney.
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Still on the proposed airport at Badgerys Creek, Western Sydney Airport said it had moved one million cubic metres of earth on the site since work began in September 2018. While the milestone was significant, the airport noted there were still 21 million cubic metres of earth still to move ahead of the airport opening its doors to passengers in 2026.

Airline news

Cathay Pacific has warned of “tremendous pressure” on yields amid strong competition and slowing demand for air travel in its monthly passenger and cargo traffic report for May. While the airline group reported passenger numbers across its two flying operations – Cathay Pacific and regional wing Cathay Dragon – rose 4.7 per cent to 2.96 million, it said there were worrying signs for the period ahead which had impacted yields, an industry term measuring average airfares per passenger per kilometre. “With declining travel demand in the market, especially to and from our long-haul destinations, overall yield has come under tremendous pressure,” Cathay Pacific commercial and cargo director Ronald Lam said.
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Japan Airlines took delivery of its first Airbus A350-900 on June 13 following an official handover ceremony at the manufacturer’s Henri Ziegler Delivery Centre in Toulouse. The A350-900 is the first aircraft Japan Airlines has ordered directly from Airbus. The inaugural commercial service with the A350-900 is scheduled for September 1 when the type will be used on the JL317 from Tokyo Haneda to Fukuoka.

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Air New Zealand chief executive Christopher Luxon has resigned and will leave the company in September after seven years at the helm, the airline announced on June 19. Air New Zealand chairman Tony Carter said the board had opened an international search for a new chief executive. Luxon’s departure means Air New Zealand will have a new chief executive and a new chairman following its annual shareholder meeting on September 25, given Carter was also stepping down as chairman at that time with Dame Therese Walsh his successor.
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The International Air Transport Association (IATA) Airlines Financial Monitor for May published on June 19 showed profitability in the world’s airline industry was down by nearly half in the first quarter of 2019 thanks to a weak performance by Europe. Net post-tax profit recorded by 59 airlines covered by IATA’s latest report totalled $US1.111 billion, down from $US2.658 billion in the first quarter of 2018. Meanwhile, earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) fell to 2.3 per cent of revenue, a sharp decline from the EBIT margin of 4.2 per cent in the prior corresponding period.
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Air Vanuatu returned to Melbourne after a near four-year absence on June 19 when it commenced a three times weekly flight to the Victorian capital from its Port Vila hub with Boeing 737-800 equipment. Melbourne joins Brisbane and Sydney in the airline’s Australian network. Qantas codeshares on all Air Vanuatu flights between Australia and Vanuatu.
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Still on new services, low-cost carrier (LCC) Thai AirAsia X started four times weekly nonstop flights to Brisbane, with the inaugural service, operated by 377-seat two-class Airbus A330-300s, touching down in the Queensland capital on June 26. The LCC is the first of the AirAsia X group of carriers to fly to Brisbane, with Malaysia AirAsia X having served Gold Coast Airport from Kuala Lumpur since 2007. AirAsia X Group chief executive Nadda Buranasiri said Australia was a key market for the long-haul LCC group.
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The Netherlands has charged four men with shooting down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in July 2014. The country’s public prosecution service said on June 19 it had issued international arrest warrants for three Russian nationals and one from the Ukraine in relation to the incident where 298 people were killed. The trial, which is likely to be conducted without the four men present given the constitutions of the Russian Federation and Ukraine prohibited extraditions, was due to start on March 9 2020 before the District Court of The Hague.
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Star Alliance chief executive Jeffrey Goh says the airline group is harnessing the power of digital technology to give passengers a seamless travel experience when flying on its member carriers. “As we look into our next decade it is about making that customer journey better, that is our slogan,” Goh told reporters during a recent visit to Sydney. “It is about handing the control of the experience in the hands of the customer and doing this through digital technology.”
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Malaysia Airlines and Singapore Airlines announced on June 27 they had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to “significantly step up co-operative ties” and consider a wide-ranging strategic partnership that built on an existing codeshare agreement that covered flights between Malaysia and Singapore. Areas of cooperation being considered included expanding codesharing beyond Singapore-Malaysia routes, frequent flyer enhancements, cargo and maintenance, repair and overhaul services. The MOU also covered Singapore Airlines’ subsidiaries SilkAir and Scoot, as well as Malaysia Airlines’ sister carrier FireFly. The two airlines have a shared history as they were established after the governments of Malaysia and Singapore decided to shut down Malaysia-Singapore Airlines in 1972 in favour of setting up their own national carriers. (See Asia Watch, page 83).
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LATAM has published flight schedules for nonstop Sydney-Santiago, Chile flights. The new nonstop service, which was first announced in April 2019, will start on October 27 2019 and operate three times a week with Boeing 787-9 equipment. The flights have been timed as an overnight from Santiago departing on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, arriving in Sydney in the early morning the next day. The return flights take off from Sydney in the morning on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays, arriving in Santiago in the morning the same day.
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Still on LATAM, the start of its nonstop flights to Sydney from its Santiago hub will also coincide with a reduction of the current Sydney-Auckland-Santiago service from daily to four times weekly. LATAM’s other Australian route is a nonstop Melbourne-Santiago flight which began in October 2017.
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Fiji Airways said it was ending nonstop flights between Adelaide and Nadi just over two years after starting flights to the South Australian capital. The airline said on July 2 the decision to withdraw from Adelaide followed a review of its network and fleet. The last flight was scheduled to operate on Saturday, July 20.

OEM NEWS

Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation announced on June 13 it has renamed its Mitsubishi Regional Jet (MRJ) program the SpaceJet. The name change meant the MRJ90, designed to seat between 76-92 passengers, was now known as the SpaceJet M90, while the smaller MRJ70 was been “retired” in favour of the SpaceJet M100 designed to seat between 65 and 88 seats and be compliant with United States scope clauses. Finally, it said a 100-seat regional jet was under study.

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In related news, Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation’s majority shareholder Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) said on June 25 it would pay US$550 million to purchase the Canadair Regional Jet Program (CRJ) from Canada-headquartered Bombardier. The deal covers the maintenance, support, refurbishment, marketing, and sales activities for the CRJ Series aircraft, including the related services and support network located in Montréal, Québec, and Toronto, Ontario, and its service centres located in Bridgeport, West Virginia, and Tucson, Arizona, as well as the type certificates. “This transaction represents one of the most important steps in our strategic journey to build a strong, global aviation capability. It augments these efforts by securing a world-class and complementary set of aviation-related functions including maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO), engineering and customer support,” Mitsubishi Heavy Industries chief executive Seiji Izumisawa said in a statement.
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Siemens agreed to sell its eAircraft electric and hybrid-electric aviation propulsion business to Rolls-Royce, it was announced on June 18. Siemens said the deal was part of the company’s efforts to “sharpen its portfolio’s focus”. Rolls-Royce said eAircraft would increase its scale and additional expertise in hybrid power and propulsion systems.
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Boeing has lifted its outlook for commercial aircraft deliveries over the next two decades. The 2019-2038 Boeing Market Outlook (BMO), released on June 17, forecast demand for 44,040 new aircraft deliveries in the next 20 years, an increase from 42,730 in the prior year’s report. Also, the BMO suggested the global commercial aircraft fleet, ranging from sub-90-seater regional jets all the way up to the largest twinjets and freighters, would exceed 50,000 by 2038. The BMO’s estimate of 50,660 aircraft by 2038 is a rise from last year’s 20-year forecast of 48,540 aircraft.
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More than 400 pilots have joined a class-action lawsuit against Boeing seeking compensation for financial and other losses following the global grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX fleet after two fatal accidents in Indonesia and Ethiopia. The pilots are colleagues of Pilot X, a Canadian citizen at a major international airline who sued Boeing at the end of May for “present and future losses brought about by the psychological impacts of the crashes”. Brisbane-based air and space law firm, International Aerospace Law & Policy Group and Chicago based PMJ PLLC, who act for Pilot X (who has chosen to remain anonymous to safeguard against any “reprisal from Boeing or its customers”), said in a statement on June 21 that not only had the 400 pilots joined the action, but further claims would be filed in the period ahead. The statement of claim alleged Boeing “engaged in an unprecedented cover-up of the known design flaws of the MAX, which predictably resulted in the crashes of two MAX aircraft and subsequent grounding of all MAX aircraft worldwide”.
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Embraer’s 2019-2038 market outlook published on June 18 forecast airlines would require 10,550 new aircraft with up to 150 seats over the next 20 years. The outlook was broadly in line with the manufacturer’s 2018 forecast. Asia Pacific was forecast to take the biggest market share in this segment with 2,990 deliveries, representing 28 per cent of the total.
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A Boeing 777-9X test aircraft has moved under its own power for the first time ahead of anticipated flight tests expected to commence later in 2019. The 777-9X aircraft was put through a series of low-speed taxi tests at Boeing’s Everett facility, the company said in a post on its social media channels on June 21. There was an expectation Boeing had been targeting a June first flight for the 777-9X, the first of two models in the 777-X family of aircraft before an anomaly was discovered in the GE Aviation GE9X engine’s compressor during tests.
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The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on June 27 it has found an issue with Boeing’s software fix for the grounded 737 MAX. The FAA statement said it was continuing to evaluate Boeing’s software update to address an anti-stall feature on the 737 MAX that has been implicated in two fatal air crashes. “On the most recent issue, the FAA’s process is designed to discover and highlight potential risks. The FAA recently found a potential risk that Boeing must mitigate,” the FAA statement said.
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Frenchman Roger Béteille (below), the driving force behind Airbus’s first commercial aircraft the A300B, died on June 14 2019. He was 97. Béteille was appointed chief engineer for the A300, which was formally launched in 1969, when working at Sud-Aviation. He then worked on a smaller model that would eventually be known as the A300B.

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Dassault Aviation has extended its global maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) footprint with the acquisition of two facilities in Switzerland from RUAG Group. The deal announced on July 2 covered RUAG’s MRO facilities at Geneva Cointrin and Lugano Agno airports, which were both certified maintenance organisations in accordance with European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) Part 145. RUAG also has fixed base operations (FBO) at both sites.
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Bombardier has launched a new six-seat variant of its Learjet 75 business jet. Called the Learjet 75 Liberty, the aircraft was expected to enter service in 2020, the company said in a statement on July 2. The aircraft would be manufactured at Learjet’s facility in Wichita, Kansas, where the original eight-seat Learjet 75 is currently built.
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Gulfstream said on June 30 its G600 business jet has earned both its type and production certificates from the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), clearing the way for deliveries to customers to commenced as scheduled later in 2019.

Industry news

Airservices Australia said on June 16 it would reduce charges to its aviation customers for the first time following sweeping cost-cutting measures and a staff restructuring program that resulted in $170 million of savings. The government-owned air navigation service provider and aviation firefighting operator said it would drop charges by two per cent on July 1 as it sought to minimise operational costs for the airline industry and light aircraft operators. “We are passing on these savings to the aviation sector while not compromising operational safety and continuing to improve service delivery and invest in new technology to help the industry grow,” Airservices Australia chief executive Jason Harfield said in a statement.
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The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has criticised Airways New Zealand for hiking air navigation service charges over the next three years at the same time as they are being cut in Australia. Airways NZ said in its recent “Pricing for the 2019-2022 period” report it planned to raise charges by 21.4 per cent over the next three years. IATA regional vice president for the Asia-Pacific Conrad Clifford said in a statement on June 19: “At a time when airlines are facing a deteriorating business environment with rising fuel prices and a substantial weakening of world trade, every cost-saving opportunity matters. It is disappointing the considerable airline feedback provided during this pricing consultation process has been ignored, and airlines will see a cost increase in air navigation service (ANS) charges from July.”
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The long-time external public relations consultant for Airbus in Australia Ted Porter (below) has retired. Porter’s relationship with Airbus stretches back more than four decades. Airbus said in a statement on June 17 Porter had “played an integral role in the Airbus story in the Pacific region and his contribution is recognised by all who have worked with him”. Airbus has appointed Melissa Thomson as its communications manager for the Pacific.

Defence news

Australia and the United States have signed a cross-servicing arrangement for the repair and maintenance of C-17A Globemaster transport aircraft, Defence said on June 21. The Aircraft Repair and Maintenance Service Implementing Arrangement (ARMS-IA) would permit C-17A technicians from the United States Air Force (USAF) and Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) to conduct cross-servicing maintenance activities on each other’s aircraft when co-deployed or if on exercise together. “By making it easier to help one another, this arrangement provides flexibility and mission assuredness for USAF and RAAF C-17A missions,” Air Commander Australia AVM Steve Roberton said in a statement.
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The Australian subsidiary of Austrian company Schiebel has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with aviation and engineering firm Air Affairs Australia (AAA) covering remotely piloted aerial systems (RPAS). The MOU between Schiebel Pacific Ltd (SPL) and Air Affairs included an agreement to collaborate on the compilation and submission of Request For Tender (RFT) responses for Remotely Piloted Aerial System (RPAS) opportunities in Australia and the Pacific region, as well as the subsequent close cooperation in contract delivery, support and services. “Building on our current contracts, we see enormous potential in Australia for Schiebel and our unrivalled CAMCOPTER S-100 RPAS due to several significant upcoming programmes and working with established Australian companies will be key to success,” Schiebel Group chairman Hans Georg Schiebel said in a statement on June 25.
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Boeing Australia Component Repairs (BACR) said in early July it had received accreditation to conduct overhaul work on the rotor blades of CH-47 Chinooks. The capability of performing the work, which previously had to be shipped offshore, will allow a much quicker turnaround time and greater efficiency and flexibility for the Australian Army’s fleet of 10 CH-47F Chinooks. The work adds to Boeing Defence Australia’s existing CH-47 Integrated Support Services Contract (ISSC) which delivers training, engineering and maintenance support to the Australian Army.

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Boeing Defence Australia and Airbus Australia Pacific have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to extend the two companies’ arrangement on the sustainment of the Royal Australian Air Force’s (RAAF) fleet of 12 P-8A Poseidon aircraft beyond the initial transition into service. The initial through-life support (TLS) arrangement with Boeing and Airbus was signed in 2015 and was due to expire in October 2020, so this MoU positions the two companies for a possible extension to that arrangement beyond that timeframe once the capability has bedded down.
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Air Marshal Mel Hupfeld officially took command of the RAAF from outgoing CAF, AIRMSHL Gavin “Leo” Davies at a change of command parade held at the Australian Defence Force (ADF) headquarters at Russell Hill in Canberra on July 3. The ceremony featured flypasts from an EA-18G Growler, F-35A Lightning II, P-8A Poseidon, Falcon 7X, and a brace of PC-21s, all types which entered service during AIRMSHAL Davies’ four-year tenure as CAF. Air Marshal Hupfeld’s appointment was first announced in March 2019.