Marc Joel Atrero

Detractors may yet be proved wrong There are no arguments that budget flying is now part and parcel of Asia’s airline arena. Some 50 low-cost carriers (LCCs), a few of them now larger in terms of fleet and network than their veteran full-service counterparts, says it all. But the jury, according to many analysts, remains

Not yet, but if it comes are we ready? For as long as I can remember, the pilot shortage has been coming. And yet, it is still to arrive. Decade after decade the forecasts are made and the flying schools seize upon the headlines to promote their wares. In the airlines, pilots become starry-eyed about

It’s not really goodbye Much is being made of the impending closure of the longest nonstop scheduled flights in the world – Singapore Airlines’ services from its hub at Changi Airport to Newark and Los Angeles. Served for nearly a decade by a five-strong fleet of Airbus A340‑500s making the 17-19 hour flights, the realities

Has Qantas’s love affair with the 787 just begun? Over 60 years ago Eastern Airline’s president Eddie Rickenbacker commented to Donald Douglas Snr when buying a fleet of Douglas DC‑8s that he wasn’t buying an airplane he was buying integrity. Rickenbacker had asked Douglas if he could reduce the noise on the jet engines. Douglas

RAAF key to withdrawal of Australian forces from Afghanistan After 13 years of war in Afghanistan, the task of withdrawing Australian and Coalition combat forces out of the theatre and transitioning towards the international follow-on Operation Resolute Support post-2014 is a mammoth one, and one in which the RAAF is front and centre. The Air

787-9 takes to the air Newest member of the 787 family starts flight testing Boeing’s first 787-9 took off from Everett on September 17 for a five-hour test flight, during which the aircraft reached an altitude of 20,400ft and a speed of 250kt. Air New Zealand, as the first customer for the 787-9, with 10