The Northrop Grumman bomber was selected from a collection of defence innovations, including the THOR-ER ramjet missile, Sierra Nevada Corporation and Saab Gripen E fighter jet, as part of the 66th Annual Laureate Awards, hosted by Aviation Week Network at the National Building Museum in Washington DC on 14 March.
Flights commenced on Monday 25 March, with flight TL361 taking off from Perth at 8:30am and landing in Alice Springs at 12:30pm local time before returning to Perth that afternoon. The service, which uses Airnorth’s Embraer E170LR aircraft, will operate on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
The senior management reshuffle also includes the immediate resignation of Stan Deal, CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, to be replaced by Boeing chief operating officer Stephanie Pope. It comes amid ongoing turmoil for Boeing over the safety record of its 737 MAX family.
The service, announced last year, began on Tuesday and operates three times per week using Jetstar’s A320-200 fleet. It is one of only two regular passenger transport flights serving Busselton Margaret River, the other being a Jetstar service to Melbourne.
The defence prime said on Tuesday that construction is now underway on a 9,000-square-metre hub it hopes will be operational within three years.
It comes a year after Qantas’ pilot union accused the airline of a failure of fleet planning by not having enough new international aircraft, and with Boeing and Airbus experiencing delivery delays.