Tag Archives: Airbus

The first A320 aircraft assembled outside Europe in the Airbus Final Assembly Line China (FALC) successfully completed its first flight today. The aircraft took off from Tianjin International Airport at 10:42 and landed at 14:56. The four hour and fourteen minute test flight was jointly captained by Harry Nelson, Vice President Production Flight Tests and by Experimental Test Pilot Philippe …

Late last month, SWISS took delivery of the first of its nine new Airbus A330-300 aircraft featuring the all new First Class. The aircraft registration HB-JHA is named “Schwyz” after the Canton in Switzerland, has a three class configuration; 183 seats in Economy, 45 in Business Class and 8 in First Class. I hope you enjoy the video of the …

Airbus has confirmed it is further cutting down production rates for its A380 superjumbo from 18 to 14 for this year in response to specific customer requests for deferrals during the on-going economic crisis. According to the new plan, Airbus expects to deliver 14 double-decker aircraft in 2009 and more than 20 aircraft in 2010 Airbus had already revised its …

Finnair who are withdrawing their Mumbai services for the summer, has decided to resume its Mumbai operations from October with it’s newly inducted Airbus A330-300 fleet. Kari Stolbow, director for the Indian subcontinent has indicated to IANS the carrier will re-start Mumbai services from October 18, 2009. For the first week, Finnair will operate the older Boeing MD-11, after which …

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) released it’s preliminary report along with detailed images and simulations in the tail strike incident of the Emirates Airlines A340-500 A6-ERG at Melbourne on March 20, 2009. The jet with 257 passengers, 14 cabin crew and 4 flight crew on-board narrowly avoided disaster as its pilots struggled to take off from the end of …

It has been an delivery filled last few days for Dubai based Emirates Airlines. On April 24, Emirates took delivery of it’s fifth Airbus A380 superjumbo. MSN0017 flew to Dubai as A6-EDE. On April 30, Emirates took delivery of it’s 75th Boeing 777, a Boeing 777-300ER. N5017V flew to Dubai as A6-ECQ. Emirates is set to soon overtake Singapore Airlines …

Going against the current flow of deferred deliveries or outright cancellations, the state-owned National Aviation Company of India Limited (NACIL) better known as Air India will induct 30 aircraft in the current fiscal year ending March 2010, and another 45 by March 2012, as part of its fleet expansion plans. Compare this with the large scale deferrals and cancellations by …

A Kingfisher Airlines Airbus A320-232 VT-KFT performing flight IT 432 from Kolkata to Bangalore via Hyderabad veered and skidded off the runway at Bengaluru International Airport (BIA) due to rain and high winds. There were 138 passengers including crew on board at the time of the incident, which happened at 21:35 hrs (16:05Z) yesterday. An airline source informed PTI “The …

March continued the gloomy news for the domestic airline industry in India, with a decline. For the month of March 2009 domestic passenger count stood at 3.15 million down from 3.32 million in February and 3.31 million in January. Despite Kingfisher airlines continuing to be the largest domestic airline in India with almost 27% market share in March and 27.27% …

A group of friends including my dear friend, Photoyogi, went plane spotting at the Bengaluru International Airport recently. Yogi captured this amazing shot of a Kingfisher Airlines A321-200 registration VT-KFY on short finals to runway 09 right through a granite outcrop. Kingfisher on the rocks, get high without a drink. Enjoy the picture, and please remember the copyright rests with …

2008 was the year reality struck home in the Indian airline industry. One whiff of the downturn exposed the lack of robust business planning, and abundance of financial vulnerability of Indian carriers, leaving all of them battered and bruised, some more than others. We saw mass-scale defaulting on payments by carriers in India to everyone from airports to aircraft manufacturers. …

Firstly, many thanks to all the Bangalore Aviation readers who participated in last week’s trivia question – Which is the longest scheduled commercial airline flight ? For the purpose of definition I placed four criteria for an ultra long-haul non-stop flight: Operated by a commercial airliner with a definite schedule No intermediate stop-over point within its scheduled duration More than …

Two deliveries of “first” of aircraft model occurred on March 27th. Airbus delivered the first A330-300 to Finnair, out of an order for eight. Powered by General Electric CF6-80E1 engines, the new aircraft is in a two class configuration 42 Business, 229 Economy for a total seating for 271 passengers. On the same day, Boeing delivered the first 777 Freighter …

June 1, 2009 – The AF447 Rio to Paris story is here. Originally posted – 16:00GMT 21:30 local March 18 Something is in the air at the Bengaluru International Airport. For the second time in less than a week, an Airbus A330 is getting grounded at the airport with a technical fault. Following the five day grounding of a Dragonair …

An Emirates Airlines Airbus A340-500, Emirates Airlines Airbus A340-500, registration A6-ERG performing flight EK407 from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, with 225 people on board, damaged and decommissioned the main runway at Melbourne airport while taking-off. The aircraft ran off the runway 16 (length 3657 meters / 12,000 feet) around 22:30 local (12:30GMT) March 20, during its …

Emirates recently announced that it will commence services to Toronto and Bangkok with its Airbus A380 superjumbo from June 1st. In order to do this Emirates will have to reposition two of its A380s from the current double-daily New York route. Emirates representatives have confirmed this re-positioning. One aircraft will be deployed on the three times a week Dubai Toronto …

Armenia flag carrier Armavia took delivery of its first new A319 yesterday. The aircraft was handed over to Armavia’s President, Mikhail Bagdasarov, at a ceremony held at the Airbus factory in Hamburg, Germany. Operated under a lease agreement with ILFC, the new A319 will increase the airline’s Airbus fleet to five aircraft from the current four, two A319s and two …

I had gone to Bengaluru International Airport for a meeting, and took my camera along. Got some great shots of Kingfisher Airlines and Jet Airways at the field. Hope you enjoy. Visit my photo album on Flickr. VT-VJK (the first KFA A330), performing flight IT2 coming in from London Heathrow. Sorry about the heat haze. The flight comes in the …

During my visit to the Bengaluru International Airport on March 14th, I observed a Dragonair Airbus A330 B-HWH parked on the apron at 08:00 Obviously something was wrong. Normally the Dragonair flight is scheduled to arrive at 01:40 and leave by 02:40. Found out today that the Dragonair aircraft had an engine problem on the outbound flight back to Hong …

Some updates on the production progress of the Airbus A380 superjumbo, courtesy of the A380 production forum. MSN027 (F-WWSY) the fifth for Qantas (VH-OQE Lawrence Hargrave) came out of the Final Assembly Line (FAL) hangers and made its taxi tests. MSN029 (F-WWSA) the sixth for Qantas (VH-OQF Charles Kingsford Smith) has been outside since it came out of the FAL …