My post The world’s most delayed and most punctual airports, seems to have ignited a media frenzy within India. Times of India carried snippets from the article Sunday 11th January, which became a national story, and was picked up later that morning by the TV networks. A lot of Bangalore Aviation readers have been asking me questions relating to the …

Lufthansa has opened its new design, super lounge for its premium passengers, in Terminal 1 at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport. The new lounge is spread across 3 levels and has a total area of 1,500 square meters (about 16,000 square feet). The highlight of the new lounge is the First Class area for HON Circle members and First …

In its Summer 2009 time-table, effective March 29, Singapore Airlines will revert back to servicing Bangalore Singapore with the Boeing 777-300, an upgrade from the existing Boeing 777-200. The slowdown in the global economy caused significant impact in the Information Technology sector, which constitutes a bulk of Bangalore’s international traffic. In response Singapore Airlines had downgraded services from a daily …

An era came to its end as Australian carrier Qantas retired its last Boeing 747-300. The fleet of six, which entered service between 1984 and 1987, clocked more than 524,000 flying hours. Along with the retirement of the fleet, comes another retirement — flight engineers. Modern airliners with their “glass cockpits” have eliminated the flight engineers’ station. Qantas will no …

David Learmount at FlightGlobal has done an excellent analysis of the Global airline accidents. In the last ten years, 2008 is the second lowest, after 2004, in terms of fatalities. Simple figures paint the picture: in 2003 there were 27 fatal airline accidents causing 702 deaths, and in 2008 there were 34 fatal accidents and 583 deaths. In the interim …

2008 was a torrid year for domestic airlines in India, as recently released figures by the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) show. Domestic passenger traffic for the year 2008 fell 5% from 42.58 million to 40.77 million (Fig. 1), driven by the increase in fuel costs, and the massive hikes in air fares, which are yet to fully retreat, and …

Singapore Airlines will introduce the the Airbus A380 super-jumbo, on its Singapore-Paris route from June 1, 2009 . Using the A380 in precisely the manner Airbus intended, i.e. lower frequency with a ultra-large aircraft, Singapore Airlines will cut down the frequency from the current 10 a week Boeing 777-300ER flights to a daily Airbus A380 flight. Paris will be Singapore …

Effective June 1, 2009, Delta Air Lines will change the aircraft and flight number on its Amsterdam to Mumbai service. The current NW34/NW33 service operated by an Airbus A330-200 will be replaced by NW792/NW791 operated by a Boeing 767-300.

JetLite Boeing 737-300A JetLite Boeing 737-800 performing flight S2-361 from Kolkata to Guwahati, India, returned to Kolkata airport, after the crew declared an emergency after the left hand engine caught fire shortly after take-off at 0629 local 0059 GMT, January 17, 2009. The crew shut the engine down, activated fire extinguisher, and stopped the fire. The plane landed 0648 local. …

The Sunday Times of India has published an article detailing the slamming of the Ministry of Civil Aviation by the Standing Parliamentary Committee on Transport and Tourism. Minister for Civil Aviation, Mr. Praful Patel, frequently flies in to Bangalore HAL airport, on board an aircraft owned by Delhi and Hyderabad airport promoters GMR. HAL airport closure violated In a damning …

A video of the US Airways A320 crash on the Hudson river, New York, from the Coast Guard camera. The plane hits the water around 2 minutes in to the video. I reproduce the report from Aviation Herald, which I find to be on the best in terms of facts. A US Airways Airbus A320-200, registration N106US performing flight US-1549 …

We all curse the express companies for wrong deliveries, but this story near my home-town in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, sure had me in stitches. Happy new year!!!!! UPS delivers, but not always to the right address, a Denton man discovered Monday when he found a lot of green inside a package dropped on his porch by the men in …

Airbus yesterday, commenced construction of the A350 XWB (eXtra Wide Body) Final Assembly Line (FAL), completing the second key milestone towards delivering the aircraft in 2013 to launch customer Qatar Airways. Last month Airbus froze the design for the jetliner’s first family member – the A350-900, allowed Airbus teams to begin component-level work, and preparing for the production of tooling …

Passengers departing from Bengaluru International Airport can enjoy wireless internet access. Inside the terminal, using your GSM cell phone, send an SMS “WIFI BIAL” to 56677 and you will receive the wi-fi password on your cellphone. The speed is quite decent. Alternately in the departure hall, fire up your laptop, switch on your wi-fi, open your browser and follow the …

Aviation Herald is reporting that Transport Canada, the Canadian Ministry acting as Aviation Authority, have issued Airworthiness Directive (AD) CF-2008-33R1 on Jan 9th 2009, which addresses the issue of frequent flaps problems encountered on Canadair Regionaljets CRJ-100 and CRJ-200. The airworthiness directive was adopted by the European Aviation Safety Agency EASA on January 13th 2009. The directive states: “An excessive …

Singapore Airlines is reducing operations from Singapore to Mumbai and New Delhi, while Dragonair is cutting back on its Hong Kong Bangalore route. Singapore – MumbaiSQ422/SQ423, service is reduced from a daily to five a week (Daily except Tuesday and Thrursday) from February 9, 2009. Service operates with a Boeing 777-200. Overall frequency to Mumbai reduced to 12 weekly from …

A mere 16 months after launching services with the Airbus A380 superjumbo, Singapore Airlines is expecting to fly its one millionth A380 customer in February 2009. Singapore Airlines was the first airline in the world to fly the Airbus A380 super-jumbo, the world’s largest passenger aircraft, when it began commercial services between Singapore and Sydney in October 2007. The Airline …

Jet Airways procured ten ultra-luxuriously appointed Boeing 777-300ERs for its ambitious international expansion. It even won awards for its international first class, featuring private suites. Now those plans are in tatters, and Jet has abandoned its international ambitions, at least for the foreseeable future. Recently TravelBizMonitor reported Jet Airways, has dropped its expansion plan, especially plans of expanding overseas informed …

A Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) Boeing 777-300ER, registration AP-BID, performing as flight PK785, from Islamabad (ISB), Pakistan to London Heathrow (LHR), United Kingdom, with 435 passengers on board, had to return back to Islamabad airport, when the captain suffered a cardiac arrest one hour in to the flight, as per reports from Aviation Herald. The landing was safely performed two …