Australian Aviation

Gulfstream Aerospace has announced that it has rolled out the 300th G550 aircraft at its Savannah, Georgia manufacturing facility, eight years after the first G550 entered service. “This is a fantastic achievement,” said Pres Henne, Gulfstream senior vice president, programs, engineering and test.  “We have delivered 300 G550s, nearly 200 GVs and we’re still going

Australia’s current Defence White Paper identifies a requirement for some 100 advanced strike-fighters. Yet in a recently published article on national security threats and the structure of the Australian Defence Force (Security Challenges, Winter 2010), former Chief of Army Peter Leahy speculated that a fleet of “about 50” would be sufficient to meet future contingencies.

Philippine Airlines (PAL) has announced that it will cut its Brisbane flights and reduce its frequencies to Melbourne, although it still regards Australia as a key market. PAL will end its services to Brisbane on October 31, and at the same time will reduce its frequency to Melbourne from five to three times weekly. Its

Singapore Airlines saw an easing in its passenger numbers during September compared to the same time last year, driven by lower loads on its Australia and New Zealand services. The total number of passengers carried by SIA over the month came in at 1.347 million, down 1.1 per cent compared to September 2009. Despite that,

Virgin Blue has chosen Rockwell Collins to provide its suite of avionics for its recent order of up to 100 Boeing 737s. Virgin Blue has selected a suite of Rockwell products for the aircraft, including the SAT-2200 satellite communications system, TTR-2100 air traffic monitoring and warning system, WRT-2100 multiscan threat detection system and GLU-925 multimode

This writer’s recent visit to Eglin AFB in Florida to see the new F-35 Integrated Training Centre (ITC) there (see article from p44 this issue), really highlighted how important it will be for the ADF to get its future fixed wing pilot training projects right. The planned ‘paperless’ training system currently being finalised at the