Category Archives: News

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How to upgrade to a private jet for $300

Category:News

 

Getting bumped up to first class is good. But upgrading to a private jet is even better.
Delta Private Jets, a subsidiary of the airline, will soon offer some travelers the chance to upgrade their commercial ticket to fly on a private jet that would otherwise be traveling empty.

Private jets often travel empty when they have to drop passengers in one city and then pick up the next paying customer in another city.

“Say we had 50 flights today, those flights would generate 30 to 31 empty legs throughout the country,” said David Sneed, chief operating officer at Delta Private Jets. “We don’t make any money on those legs.”

Until now.

Elite-status passengers headed to the same city as an empty private jet can now upgrade. But it will cost them: around $300-$800. And as demand increases, Sneed said so could prices.

Still that’s a pretty good deal. At Delta Private Jets, the hourly rate for a midsize jet can start at $6,700.

Here’s how it could work: You’re scheduled to fly from Atlanta to New York City at the same time an empty private jet is also headed to the Big Apple. You’ll get an e-mail at least 24 hours ahead of travel time offering an upgrade for a fee. You have until 6:00 the evening before the departure to accept. Once a flier accepts the upgrade, anyone holding a ticket that was bought by the same person can also be upgraded. So if you are flying solo, you’ll be enjoying your own private jet.

The upgrade includes transportation from the terminal to the private aviation area at the airport and on-board catering.

Flying private also means skipping airport security lines.

Only already-ticketed Delta (DAL) fliers are eligible to upgrade, and there’s a hierarchy. Fliers with Delta Private Jet Cards, which start at $100,000, get priority. The hierarchy then moves down the four tiers of Delta’s Medallion program for frequent fliers.

To achieve Silver, the lowest level Medallion status, travelers must fly 25,000 miles or take 30 flight legs this year, and also spend $3,000 at Delta. “My sense is we won’t see a lot of Silver Medallions get the opportunity to upgrade,” said Sneed.

The program hasn’t launched yet, but Sneed said it could go live as early as this week.

It’s a win-win for Delta: It will expose more people to the luxury of flying private while offsetting the cost of the empty legs, and the airliner can resell the now-upgraded passenger’s commercial ticket.

Delta Private Jets has 66 aircrafts in its fleet in various sizes and ranges, and will fly in and out of 52 cities under this new program, but there are plans to expand, said Sneed.

Source :CNN


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Meet the youngest female commander of a Boeing 777

Category:News

Becoming a pilot is far from easy, but challenging gender stereotypes and becoming a female aviator is even harder.
This didn’t stop Indian pilot Anny Divya from trailblazing her way to the top. Thirty-year-old Divya is now the youngest female commander of a Boeing 777 aircraft in the world.
Divya holds the high position with Air India — the culmination of a childhood dream of flying the skies.

“I always wanted to become a pilot, from my childhood,” Divya tells CNN Travel. “I didn’t have anybody around who knew about piloting at that time. I had no guidance […] I just wanted to fly.”
Divya was fueled by her passion and determined to succeed. She looked for people who might point her in the right direction. Eventually she was sent an advertisement for flying school by a friend and she applied at the age of 17.
“I got selected,” she recalls — but this marked the beginning of a steep learning curve.
Many of Divya’s new coursemates had flying experience — or family who worked in the aviation industry.
For Divya, it was all brand new.
“I had no clue about any aircraft, technology, nothing,” she says. “I’d never had any flying background or anybody to guide me, the whole subject was very new to me.”

Determination to succeed
On top of this, Divya found there were cultural differences to overcome.
She hails from Vijayawada, a small city in the southeastern part of India. Arriving in Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India, was a shock.
“I had issues with the language and cultural changes, even the way I would dress was different because I came from a smaller city,” Divya says. “The others were from good cities and had gone to good schools and colleges […] I had language barriers, I had cultural barriers.”
It was tough, Divya recalls, but she had a strong work ethic and was committed to succeeding.
“We all have some success stories and failures — but we have to focus on what we need and to keep learning,” she says. “I wanted to become a pilot, that’s what I wanted to do. So even though I was not doing OK initially, I was very determined to just do it.”

Flying high
Divya enjoys every aspect of her high-flying profession.
“I love each part of the job, traveling and wearing the uniform,” she says. “We take off from different airports […] flying into new airports everyday. It’s never monotonous, it’s very adventurous.”
The airwoman is already planning the next step on her upward trajectory.
“Right now I want to fly new aircrafts, with more advanced technology,” she says. “I also want to get into teaching, I want to become a trainer.”
Divya is overjoyed that her story might inspire others to follow in her footsteps.

 

Source : CNN


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How real is the hypersonic aircraft revolution?

Category:News

(CNN) — We live in an era of fast technological change: self-driving cars, drones, artificial intelligence.
Yet the tube-shaped subsonic airliners we keep flying on wouldn’t look out of place in the 1960s.
Take, for example, the Boeing 737.
A 50-year-old design that remains one of the workhorses of the airline industry.
And going strong: Its latest iteration, the Boeing 737 MAX is expected to enter service next year.
To be fair, although from the outside it may look structurally similar to its earlier versions, decades of cumulative improvements have made the airliner of today a vastly more sophisticated, efficient and reliable machine.
Aircraft-making is an extremely capital-intensive activity and, given the financial and technical risks that launching an entirely new model entails, it’s understandable that the industry prefers to keep milking proven concepts.
But how long before the current generation of airliners reaches its limits?
From electric propulsion to hypersonics, from NASA to private entrepreneurs, the quest for new, truly groundbreaking, aircraft concepts is on.
And it has the potential to forever change our idea of air travel.
High-voltage innovation
Airbus, for example, has unveiled its future aircraft concept.
This isn’t exactly a new aircraft program, but a depiction of what would be possible if all of the futuristic technologies envisaged by Airbus could be combined to create the ideal airliner.
Across the Atlantic, Boeing is also working, together with NASA, on a number of futurist aircraft concepts within the framework of the New Aviation Horizons initiative.
The SUGAR program (that stands for Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research) has come up with some truly innovative aerodynamic and propulsion solutions.
These include an aircraft with eye-catching truss-braced wings and an hybrid gas-electric propulsion system fed by liquefied natural gas.
The search for new modes of propulsion is particularly important, as aviation remains one of the few major industries where replacing fossil fuels remains an unresolved challenge.

Biofuels may offer a stopgap solution, as they can be adapted to fit current engine technology and supply infrastructure.
But it’s electrically powered flight that’s captured the attention of a handful of visionaries.
It’s a technology still in its infancy, but one that benefits from the enthusiasm and resourcefulness of entrepreneurs, not unlike the mavericks of the early days of aviation.
By competing with each other to break the next record, they contribute to the advancement of the aeronautical science.
In 2015, as the long-winged Solar Impulse tried to circumnavigate the globe on solar power, teams were vying to be the first to cross the English Channel on an electric-powered aircraft.

French scientist and former yachtsman Raphael Dinelli is also preparing a solo crossing of the Atlantic later this year on a hybrid biofuel-electric light aircraft called Eraole.
His plane derives part of its energy from solar power. If successful, a derivative of Eraole might soon be serially produced for the private aviation market.
Beyond the boom
Electric and hybrid aircraft will make flying greener, but what about speed?
Significantly increasing the speed of current jetliners means, inevitably, breaking the sound barrier, which presents a whole set of challenges, not all of them technological.
Supersonic flight isn’t exactly new: The Concorde linked both sides of the Atlantic for more than three decades until economic and political issues led to its retirement in 2003.
The sleek Franco-British airliner remained an aeronautical curiosity, an experiment without continuity or replacement.
NASA has been particularly active in developing a new generation of more efficient, quieter supersonic airliners to revive commercial supersonic air travel as a viable proposition.
It’s worked on such concepts with Boeing through the New Aviation Horizons initiative, and recently teamed up with Lockheed to research Quiet Supersonic Technology (QueSST).
The key is to find a way to smother the sonic boom that’s produced whenever an aircraft breaks the sound barrier.
Concorde, for example, was only allowed to make full use of its supersonic capabilities when flying over the ocean, thus significantly limiting the number of markets it could serve.
A lower sonic boom may allow a future supersonic airliner to fly routes over land, vastly increasing potential markets.
Speed will still come at a cost, though. This why any supersonic comeback is likely to start with those that are most able to pay for it.
The Aerion Corporation, a Nevada-based private aircraft manufacturer, and Airbus have already started work on a supersonic private jet, the Aerion AS2.
Expected to enter service early in the next decade, it’ll be able to carry up to 12 passengers at speeds of Mach 1.6.
Hypersonic hype
Once you’ve broken through the sound barrier, why not double down?
Although still closer to sci-fi than the tangible realities of today’s aviation industry, several research organizations, from Europe to Japan, are making inroads into hypersonic flight.
We’re talking about aircraft capable of Mach 5 to 8, five to eight times faster than sound.
Realistically these revolutionary concept aircraft — with names like Lapcat and the Hikari — are several decades away, but they’re starting to appear like a very feasible possibility.
One of the most ambitious concepts in the field of hypersonics is the SpaceLiner, being developed at the German Aerospace Center (DLR).
The SpaceLiner applies space technology to commercial aviation in order to achieve speeds of up to Mach 25, enough to travel from London to Australia in under 90 minutes.
In achieving this amazing speed, the SpaceLiner takes its passengers to the edge of space.
In fact, it’s a two-stage concept, reminiscent of the, now retired, space-shuttle.
A booster takes a civilian-carrying stage to a height of roughly 80 kilometers, where the passenger vehicle detaches itself to carry up to 50 passengers to the other side of the globe.
In line with stringent safety requirements, the passenger cabin can also double as a rescue capsule.
Both the booster and the capsule are fully reusable, an essential requirement to keep costs under control.
That’s a principle well understood also by SpaceX and the emerging private space industry, that has also focused on developing reusable space vehicles.
Dr. Olga Trivailo, a researcher at the German Space Center, DLR, says the SpaceLiner is also an environmentally friendly concept, using a rocket propellant mix of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen that produces only water vapour upon combustion.
Thus, hydrogen has potential as a non-fossil fuel alternative, although first, a way would need to be found to manage the associated higher costs compared with kerosene, predominantly due to new infrastructure requirements.
Dr. Martin Sippel, head of the Space Launcher Systems Analysis department at DLR’s Institute of Space Systems in Bremen, says it would be reasonable to expect wider use and implementation of hydrogen propellants in the next 35 to 50 years.
The bionic cabin
While it’s difficult to anticipate which one of these different approaches to the aircraft of the future will prevail, one thing seems sure: The air travel experience will be transformed.
Ergonomic and lighting improvements such as those found today on the newest airliners are just a foretaste of what lies ahead.
Even if Airbus’ vision of a “bionic smart cabin” made of natural, smart materials that adapt to the needs of each passenger is only partly realized, the scope for improvement is massive.
Paradoxically, though, and because of aerodynamic requirements, the supersonic and hypersonic aircraft of the future may well be windowless.
The need to make up for the lack of windows, plus the seating solutions that it opens up, is likely to spur a new wave of innovation that’ll further redefine the in-flight experience.
The aircraft of the future will certainly take us to our destination in a faster, greener and more comfortable way.
Source : CNN

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What passenger planes might look like in 2068

Category:News,Uncategorized

(CNN) — If time travelers from 1968 found themselves in an airport today, there might be plenty of changes that surprise them. But the planes would look reassuringly familiar.
While there have been vast improvements in materials, engines and avionics — helping 2017 become the safest year in aviation history — commercial aircraft remain structurally similar to those of the 1960s.
In fact, the Boeing 737, one of the best-selling airliners ever in its many successive versions, flew for the first time in 1967.
But what might air travel look like 50 years from now?

CityAirbus: A futuristic concept that Airbus is working on is CityAirbus, with a maiden flight scheduled for 2018. Just like Vahana, it’s self-piloted and will be able to take off and land vertically, making it ideally suited for urban use.

Attempts and failures
Over the years, there have been some attempts to change the aircraft design paradigm.
The 1970s promised a future of supersonic travel that never really took hold, apart from the limited flights of the Concorde and its Soviet equivalent, the Tu-144.
And, the idea of a blended wing airliner, resembling the stealth Northrop B-2 bomber, has sometimes been touted — but without much success so far.
A combination of technical and financial reasons has led the aviation industry to discard these rather outlandish propositions and focus on the more canonical designs that are the norm today.
Will the next 50 years continue along the slow, steady path of the last half-century? Or will we once again see the rapid technological disruption that characterized aviation in the years between the end of World War I and the Apollo moon landings?
Don’t be fooled by the apparent lack of spectacular breakthroughs. Some big changes are in the offing.

The airliner of 2068 is already in the making — and electric propulsion is set to play a major role.
Most short-haul flying is likely to go electric within the next few decades and this will transform the way we think of air travel.
Smaller electric motors will enable distributed propulsion, like the one found in NASA’s X-57 prototype. Lower noise levels and operational costs will make it possible for electrical-powered aircraft to fly much closer to where people live and work.
In fact, several of today’s most advanced electrical aircraft projects aim to not only replace ground transportation between cities — as with the nine-to-12 passenger Zunum and Eviation concepts aim to do — but within them.
Flying taxis will become a reality very soon, but it remains to be seen whether the futuristic-looking Vahana and CityAirbus concepts are really the face of things to come.
In any case, door-to-door flying is not the exclusive preserve of electrical aircraft.
Although not a new concept, the use of tilt-rotors — meaning aircraft can transition from vertical lift to fixed-wing configuration — has so far been confined pretty much to the US military.
However, Italian helicopter manufacturer Leonardo is now readying the commercial launch of a civilian model, the AW609, that if successful, could potentially transform executive and regional aviation.

Automation
Global air traffic has been increasing steadily for decades and now that there are all these new uses for aircraft, the question is: Who’s going to fly them?
“It is estimated that the global commercial aviation industry will need some 600,000 pilots in the next 20 years,” says Pascal Traverse, general manager for the Autonomy Thrust at Airbus.
Compare that to the approximately 200,000 pilots currently in service. This is one of the reasons automation will become more important,” he adds.
Suddenly, the idea of a pilotless airliner doesn’t sound so far-fetched.
Bjorn Fehrm, an independent industry aviation expert at Leeham News, refers to one- and half-pilot airplanes, a term some industry executives already use to refer to the latest generation of aircraft.
“Take this concept a bit further and, in a few years, with enough automation built in, you may really need just a ‘safety pilot’ to be there, in case something unexpected happens,” he explains.
A fully pilotless airliner isn’t envisaged in the foreseeable future.
“One of the main challenges is modeling the unknown unknowns. When the unexpected happens, a human pilot should be able to react or to draw analogies with similar situations and resolve it, but it is not so easy to teach a machine to take into account all that many variables,” says Traverse.

Redesigning the passenger experience

Airliner automation may not itself translate into changes in aircraft design.
However, some experts see in the combinations of all these new technologies an opportunity to redesign the passenger experience from scratch.
“The emergence of electrical aircraft will lead to new fuselage designs that can accommodate passenger needs much better,” says Victor Carlioz, founder with Matthew Cleary of ACLA Studio, a California-based design studio specializing in airline cabin design.
Could it be time for the tailless “flying wing” to make a comeback?
“One of the issues of the flying wing was actually the passenger experience,” explains Fehrm. “People would be seated in an amphitheater-style cabin, many abreast, and no windows.
In this set-up, people at the edges could eventually have felt dizzy every time the aircraft turned. As dizziness depends on your visual references, you may be able to solve this by projecting images into the cabin and changing the points of reference.”
Even if you are able to replicate the window-gazing experience, Carlioz still sees a strong case for keeping windows on aircraft. “Some futuristic concepts show windowless aircraft and, while there may be some structural benefits from getting rid of the windows, there is also another line of thought that says the opposite: having some point of communication with the outside improves the passenger experience”.
It’s not a coincidence that Boeing’s Dreamliner, its most modern clean sheet design, features large windows and that Airbus devised a cabin with transparent walls in the vision of the future it presented at the 2011 Paris Air Show.
The appeal of large windows has been taken one step further by Embraer in one of its executive jet designs. The Kyoto cabin, designed for its Lineage 1000E aircraft, features large panoramic windows running along most of the lateral walls of the cabin.
There is one area where it seems that commercial aviation has gone backwards instead of forward.
Back in the day, it was possible to fly supersonic across the Atlantic, but nowadays even those with the deepest pockets have to content themselves with subsonic speeds.
Some start-ups are working to fix this.
Boom Supersonic, a startup that has Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator and Japan Airlines among its investors, is developing a commercial aircraft that will be expected to fly at speeds of Mach 2.2 with lower costs than the Concorde.
The Aerion AS2 is another civilian supersonic aircraft project, this one aimed at the executive market. Although it’s still under development, it already boasts a $2.4 billion order from fractional jet operator Flexjet for 20 of its AS2 planes, capable of flying at Mach 1.5.
But even those speeds pale next to the hypersonic speeds envisaged by some ambitious research programs.
The Spaceliner, a project led by DLR, the German Aerospace Research Institute, would travel at the edge of space in order to fly 25 times faster than the speed of sound. This way you would be able to travel from, let’s say London to Australia, in about 90 minutes.
“Very often in aerospace the challenge is not technological, but financial or operational,” says Rolf Henke, executive board member for aeronautics research at DLR, the German Aerospace Research Institute.
“Blended wings have already been talked about in the 1920s and hypersonic flight since the 1930s, but you need someone willing to take the risks and invest huge amounts of money.”
Source : CNN

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SpaceX to launch demo satellites for its high-speed internet project

Category:News

Elon Musk’s SpaceX wants to deliver high-speed internet to the world using thousands of small satellites — and this week that plan is moving closer to reality.

The company is slated to launch a rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 6:17 a.m. local time on Wednesday. On board will be two experimental satellites that will test out the technology SpaceX plans to use for its internet service, according to public filings.

SpaceX has the blessing of the Federal Communications Commission to send up the test satellites. And last week, FCC chairman Ajit Pai gave SpaceX’s internet ambitions a nudge by urging the FCC to approve SpaceX’s broader internet proposal.

SpaceX’s plan is to “deliver broadband services directly to [people] anywhere in the United States or around the world” at speeds similar to some of the quickest ground-based internet connections.

Billions of people around the globe still lack internet access, so companies have been racing to find a better way to beam internet down from the sky.

They include OneWeb, a startup that’s attracted backing from the likes of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, Coca-Cola and Qualcomm. And that startup already has approval from the FCC to send internet satellites into orbit.

FCC chairman Pai, who was appointed by President Trump, said last week that if SpaceX gets approval for its satellite project, it’ll be a first for an American-based company in the internet-in-space race.

Some of SpaceX’s internal financial documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal last year show the company has high expectations for this satellite network.

“SpaceX projected the satellite-internet business would have over 40 million subscribers and bring in more than $30 billion in revenue by 2025,” the Journal reported.

On Wednesday, SpaceX’s test satellites won’t be the only thing aboard the rocket.

The primary mission is to deliver a satellite, called PAZ, for the Spanish government.

According to European firm Airbus, which was the primary contractor for PAZ, the satellite will serve “many different applications,” including defense and security.

It’ll stay in orbit for about five and a half years, making full loops around Earth 15 times per day. It’ll be able to capture images of our home planet — day or night and no matter what the weather looks like — using radar technology.

Earlier this month, SpaceX captured the public’s attention with the launch of its massive new rocket. Called Falcon Heavy, it became the most powerful operational rocket in the world.

There are plans to fly a communications satellite and a payload for the U.S. Air Force on board a Falcon Heavy later this year. But Wednesday’s launch will use a Falcon 9, the rocket SpaceX has flown since 2010.

Source : CNN


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Air-Taxi Startup Joby Aviation Raises $100 Million

Category:News

Joby's future is now linked to venture capital from Toyota, JetBlue and Intel.  Joby/Uber

Joby’s future is now linked to venture capital from Toyota, JetBlue and Intel.

Joby/Uber

 

 

Joby’s website says, “More than a billion people on planet Earth spend more than an hour a day in traffic. Transportation emissions are one of the largest sources of pollution.” Thanks to the $100 million Joby just raised from a variety of investors, including the venture capital arms of JetBlue, Toyota and Intel, the startup might be well on its way to creating the safe, affordable and sustainable air taxi the company’s engineers have been dreaming of for a decade.

When added to earlier funding rounds, Joby now has approximately $130 million on hand to lead the development of the new air taxi.

With a dozen and a half other electric or hybrid vehicles now planned for the future, Joby’s strategy has been different over the near decade of the company’s existence by traditionally keeping plans for its vehicles out of the public eye.

Joby does report its electric vehicle is “absolutely all new,” however, and that in addition to zero emissions the aircraft will be ultra-quiet and just fast enough to convince people not to drive.

Source: FLYING


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Norwegian: airline boss ‘not at all satisfied with the 2017 results

Category:News

Brexit and strong competition blamed for ‘challenging time

Low-cost airline Norwegian made a net loss of 300m kroner (£27.4m) in 2017, particularly hit by a sluggish performance during the last three months of the year. The carrier said: “The airline industry is undergoing a challenging time as a consequence of Brexit and strong competition.”

Between October and December, the airline lost 918m kroner, representing over £10 for every passenger carried in the fourth quarter.

Bjorn Kjos, Norwegian’s chief executive, said: “We are not at all satisfied with the 2017 results.

“However, the year was also characterised by global expansion driven by new routes, high load factors and continued fleet renewal.

“Our major global expansion reaches its peak in the second half of 2018, when 32 of our 42 Dreamliners on order will have been put into service.”

Norwegian was founded 25 years ago, with a single route from Bergen to Trondheim. It has grown from a tiny regional operation to become Scandinavia’s largest airline and the third-biggest budget carrier in Europe, carrying 33 million passengers during 2017.

It has an expanding base at Gatwick, where the maiden Norwegian flight from Buenos Aires arrived in the early hours of Thursday morning. It uses a Boeing 787 Dreamliner jet.

Norwegian is opening an Argentinian subsidiary to fly domestic and regional services, with connections from the Gatwick service.

Services from the Sussex airport to Chicago and Denver begin next month.

Yesterday Norwegian outlined hopes for further expansion to Asia and the Americas. But British Airways has been aggressively targeting Norwegian, setting up routes from Gatwick to Oakland in California and Fort Lauderdale in Florida, in direct competition with the budget airline.

Writing ahead of the results, analyst Bjorn Fehrm of Leeham News and Comment said: “A fast expansion costs money. This is fine if done by a company with a solid balance sheet and enough cash reserves. Norwegian has neither.”

The airline itself said: “Norwegian is far better positioned for 2018, with stronger bookings, a growing network of intercontinental routes complementing our vast European network and not least, a better staffing situation.”

But Norwegian concedes: “Future demand is dependent on sustained consumer and business confidence in the company’s key markets.

Source: INDEPENDENT


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Bae Systems Regional Aircraft wins fleet support services contract from Braathens Regional Airlines

Category:News

BAE Systems Regional Aircraft has secured a three-year Fleet Support Services contract from leading Swedish carrier Braathens Regional Airlines (BRA) covering a total of 12 Avro RJs operated by the airline.

The scope of the contract includes a renewal of the long-standing JetSpares customised rotable spares rate-per-flying-hour support agreement, for which BRA is the longest standing customer, having been enrolled on this service since 1996. The new agreement covers 640 parts per aircraft over the 12 aircraft fleet (10 RJ100s and two RJ85s) and is for a minimum of 38,000 fleet flying hours across the three year period.

Also signed is an agreement for rate-per-flying-hour coverage for the Honeywell GTCP36-150M Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) that is fitted to eight Avro RJ100s in the BRA fleet.

Working with an established overhaul supplier, Regional Aircraft provides BRA with a guaranteed service level on the APUs for a fixed monthly cost over the three-year period.

BRA has also extended its long-term Tech 21 agreement with BAE Systems. Tech 21 is a priority technical support service which nominates a dedicated engineer to handle and to ensure timely responses to technical issues.

Source:Aviation News


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EasyJet confirms acquisition of Air Berlin assets

Category:News

The budget airline will take control of Air Berlin’s operations at the capital’s Tegel Airport

EasyJet has confirmed the acquisition of part of bankrupt German carrier Air Berlin in a deal worth €40m (£35.2m).

The transaction will see the budget airline taking control of Air Berlin’s operations at the capital’s Tegel Airport, with easyJet leasing 25 of its aircraft.

The agreement also includes easyJet taking over landing slots and offering employment to the defunct carrier’s flying crew.

EasyJet chief executive Johan Lundgren said: “This move is consistent with easyJet’s strategy of purposeful investment in strong number one positions in Europe’s leading airports.

“As a result of our acquisition, easyJet will operate the leading short haul network at Tegel connecting passengers to and from destinations across Germany and the rest of Europe.

“This is in addition to easyJet’s existing base at Berlin Schonefeld and means that easyJet will be the leading airline to and from Berlin.”

It comes after the European Commission last week gave the all-clear for easyJet to carry out the deal.

EU authorities said it would not impact airline competition across the bloc where it faces rival carriers including Lufthansa and Ryanair.

Source: INDEPENDENT 


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Boeing Debuts First 737 MAX 7

Category:News

Boeing has celebrated the debut of the first 737 MAX 7 at the company’s Renton, Wash. factory.

The MAX 7 is the third and newest member of Boeing’s 737 MAX family to come down the assembly line. The jet is designed for up to 172 passengers and a maximum range of 3,850 nautical miles, which is the longest range of the MAX airplane family.

Technology improvements allow the MAX 7 to fly 1,000 nautical miles farther and carry more passengers than its predecessor, the 737-700, while having 18 percent lower fuel costs per seat.

“For our airline customers serving airports at high altitudes or remote locations, the MAX 7 is the ideal complement to their fleet. We look forward to demonstrating the incredible flexibility and range of this airplane,” said Keith Leverkuhn, vice president and general manager of the 737 MAX program, Boeing Commercial Airplanes. “This is the third 737 MAX family member our team has successfully introduced in just three years. That’s a phenomenal accomplishment and a testament to the dedication of the entire 737 team.”

The first MAX 7 will now undergo system checks, fueling and engine runs on the flight line in Renton. The airplane, the first of two MAX 7 flight test airplanes, will begin its flight testing program in the coming weeks.

The 737 MAX 7 is scheduled to enter service in 2019, following delivery to launch customer Southwest Airlines.

Source: Airline Economics