JetPhotos.Net Aviation News

An Aeroflot-Nord flight from Moscow has crashed in the city of Perm, Russia while conducting its approach to land, and media reports indicate that all 82 passengers and 6 crew members aboard were killed.

Boeing 737-505 VP-BKO (cn 25792) crashed in an unpopulated area of the city at 3:40 a.m. Sunday, Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova said. There was no indication of a terrorist attack, she said. Video footage showed a very large brush fire burning at the scene of the accident.

Photo: Aeroflot-Nord 737-500 VP-BKO was the aircraft involved in the accident. (Photo Copyright Aktug Ates)

XL Airways, one of the UK’s largest charter airlines, has collapsed. XL Leisure Group declared bankruptcy early today having failed to secure a rescue package amid deep financial difficulties. In a statement on its website, the group said it had been hit by rising fuel costs and the credit crunch. The firm is Britain’s third biggest tour operator and flies to 50 destinations, mainly in the Mediterranean and Caribbean. It flew 2.3 million British families abroad last year, and an estimated 85,000 holiday makers have been left stranded as a result of the collapse.

Photo: An XL Airways flight departs from Corfu, Greece on August 25. (Photo Copyright: Tis Meyer)

Memorials were held around the world today to remember the tragic events of September 11, 2001. At 8:46am seven years ago today, a hijacked American Airlines flight 11, operated by a Boeing 767-200, crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City, beginning the deadliest day in the history of aviation. Before the morning was over, three more commercial airliners would be brought down; another into the World Trade Center’s south tower, one into the Pentagon complex in Washington, D.C., and a United Boeing 757 in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

JetPhotos.Net pauses to remember the 2,973 people who lost their lives on September 11, 2001, a day that changed our industry, our hobby, and our world forever.

Photo: A hijacked United Airlines Boeing 767 is shown just before crashing into the World Trade Center’s south tower on September 11, 2001. (File)

[Editor’s Note: We have chosen to post this graphic image as a stark reminder of what occurred seven years ago today.]

Despite the big drop in fuel prices over the last two months, domestic capacity reductions American Airlines has been making are permanent, Chief Financial Officer Tom Horton said. American, like other carriers, has announced U.S. capacity reductions due to the high price of fuel, which soared to more than $147 a barrel on July 11. American, a unit of Fort Worth-based AMR Corp., said it would cut domestic capacity by as much as 12 percent after the busy summer travel season.

But since its July high, the price of oil has retreated. Light, sweet crude for October delivery settled at $103.26 on Tuesday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the lowest settlement price since April 1. Even so, Horton said firmly in an interview with The Associated Press that the capacity cuts are for good.

“The airplanes that we’re grounding are older generation planes,” Horton said. “They burn 35 percent more fuel per seat than the new generation planes. So, when you ground those planes, it would be very difficult to bring them back, not just in operations cost but also in maintenance infrastructure. So, I would characterize those as permanent capacity reductions.”

Continental Airlines (Houston) is abandoning its long-standing base at Gatwick airport in order to concentrate its London operations at Heathrow. Continental is the US carrier that has taken most advantage of the opening of Heathrow to full competition from all US and European airlines since the end of March, when the “open skies” treaty between the US and European Union came into force liberalizing transatlantic aviation. It set a record for Heathrow slot prices in 2007 when it paid $209m for four pairs of take-off and landing slots to start twice-daily services from Houston and New York Newark.

Spanish carrier Futura International Airways (Palma de Mallorca) will reportedly suspend passenger operations at midnight Spanish time tonight. There is no official word as to the cause of the shutdown. The airline was established in 1989 and serves 28 destinations in Spain as well as over 100 international European cities, operating services under its own brand as well as under contract for numerous other airlines.

Photo: A Futura 737-400 is seen at Los Rodeos Airport on the Spanish island of Tenerife (Photo Copyright Gabe Basco)

A jetBlue Airways (New York) flight from Boston to Fort Lauderdale was diverted Saturday when a fight broke out after someone was smoking in the bathroom, federal officials said. One passenger aboard JetBlue Flight 455 was taken into custody at Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina after the plane landed about 5:45 p.m. Eyewitnesses said the scuffle was between two brothers, one of whom was angry that his brother had smoked on a plane. The plane continued on to Fort Lauderdale about two hours later.

Boeing Co’s 27,000-strong machinists’ union walked off the job on Saturday after the plane maker failed to improve its contract offer following two days of emergency talks. The walkout means there will be no further production of Boeing’s 737, 747, 767 and 777 planes, and that its already delayed 787 Dreamliner will fall even further behind schedule. No further talks are scheduled. Both sides said they were waiting for the other to make the first move. Boeing spokesman Tim Healy said the company was open to hearing from the IAM. “If this company wants to talk, they have my number, they can reach me on the picket line,” Wroblewski said in a message to union members.

Continuing the dismantling of what was once the carrier’s largest hub, US Airways (Phoenix) announced Friday that it will end all of its 24 weekly nonstop flights to Orlando, Fort Lauderdale and Tampa, Florida on January 1, 2009. The airport, which boasted over 600 daily US Airways flights to 140+ nonstop destinations in its early-2000s heyday, will see its daily flights reduced to 58 with the latest cuts.

A Federal Aviation Administration audit of U.S. airlines found that they had complied with airworthiness directions 98 percent of the time, the FAA said Friday. The audit was prompted by several embarrassing revelations for the FAA, including the March revelation that Southwest Airlines Co. had continued to fly airplanes that should have been grounded until the aircrafts’ outer skin had been inspected for cracking. The FAA said that in the 2 percent of cases where airlines were found not in compliance with the ADs, the issues were resolved before the aircraft returned to the skies. In the inspections that ended June 30, FAA inspectors performed 3,236 audits and questioned the airlines’ compliance in 88 instances, the FAA said.

U.S. regulators will issue an emergency directive by the end of the week ordering changes to the way pilots fly Boeing 777s, in light of Thursday’s announcement that British investigators believe ice buildup in jet fuel lines probably caused the crash landing of a British Airways jet in January. The directive will apply only to 777s fitted with Rolls Royce engines, as the FAA’s investigation “has not revealed the same vulnerability to ice buildup in the fuel lines” of Boeing 777s with different engines, according to spokesman Alison Duquette.

The British investigators said water – normally present in aircraft fuel – probably froze in the fuel lines and caused the British Airways jet to lose power and make an emergency landing just inside the Heathrow Airport boundary on January 17. More than a dozen people suffered injuries, including one listed as serious.

Photo: G-YMMM is seen shortly after crash-landing at London Heathrow Airport on January 17, 2008 (Photo Copyright Allan Huse)

Boeing Company’s largest labor union said its members had rejected the plane maker’s contract offer and voted to strike, but the union agreed to postpone a walkout for 48 hours to allow more time for negotiations. The International Association of Machinists leadership announced the extension, which means Boeing employees will stay on the job until Friday, after saying that 87 percent of its members voted to start a strike at midnight on Wednesday. If a deal for a new three-year contract is not reached by Friday, nearly 27,000 Boeing workers will start a strike that would cost the company about $100 million in revenue per day as customers’ planes sit idle on production lines.

Continuing its cutbacks planned for this fall, American Airlines (Dallas/Ft. Worth) has sent notices to 469 employees at five U.S. airports warning that they could lose their jobs around Nov. 1. Hardest hit would be the workforce at American’s second-biggest hub, Chicago O’Hare International Airport, where 353 employees received the layoff notices. The company has also notified 53 airport employees in Los Angeles, 28 in San Francisco, 27 in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and eight in Columbus, Ohio.

United Airlines (Chicago) has scrubbed a plan to replace complimentary hot meals with buy-on-board cold sandwiches and snacks on flights from North America to Europe. In a letter e-mailed to customers, United thanked fliers for their “direct, candid feedback,” adding: “we heard you and have decided not to move forward with the test of offering customers buy-on-board options in United Economy on certain trans-Atlantic flights.” United is going ahead with plans to replace hot meals in domestic business class with cold buy-on-board options.

An ex-Conviasa Boeing 737-200 registered as YV102T (cn 21545) has crashed near Toacaso, Ecuador. The aircraft had been stored at Caracas for some time and was being ferried to a new owner in Latacunga at the time of the accident, which occurred in mountainous terrain. All 3 crew members aboard were killed.

Photo: The sister ship (YV101T) to the aircraft involved in the accident is seen on the ground at Caracas. (Photo copyright Roberto Leiro)

One-Two-Go Airlines, one of Thailand’s three main budget carriers, will cease operations temporarily, starting on Tuesday, to allow time for a financial restructuring. The decision for a 56-day grounding followed mounting cost pressures spurred by ballooning oil prices, fierce competition from rival airlines, and falling domestic passenger demand. The airline started flying in December, 2003.

A Sun Air (Khartoum) Boeing 737 hijacked on Tuesday shortly after takeoff from the country’s war-torn Darfur region landed in Kufra, in southern Libya, the executive manager of the airline said. He said there were 95 passengers on board the aircraft, not 87 as two other airline staff earlier told AFP.

Citing high fuel costs and a weakening economy, Southwest Airlines (Dallas) will cut 196 flights from its new schedule which goes into effect on January 11. That is nearly 6 percent of the airline’s daily schedule of close to 3,400 flights. Chairman and CEO Gary Kelly said in June that the Dallas-based low-cost carrier hoped to grow modestly in 2009. But he tempered that outlook by saying the expansion plans could be scrapped if oil prices remain high or the economy weakens.

An airline trade group is asking the Federal Aviation Administration to delay its planned Sept. 3 auction of slots at the Newark airport. The auction next week would be the first of several the FAA has said it wants to conduct. It has said that selling the slots to land and take off at LaGuardia, Kennedy and Newark should reduce congestion. The protest filed earlier this month with the FAA’s Office of Dispute Resolution Acquisition argues that FAA needs Congressional authority for the slot auctions.

Photo: The evening “rush hour” at New York’s JFK Airport is in full swing as over 60 aircraft await takeoff (Photo Copyright Tom Alfano)

An Itek Air (Bishkek) Boeing 737-200 (registration EX-009, cn 22088) has crashed shortly after takeoff from Kyrgyzstan’s capitol city of Bishkek. The pilots reported a mechanical problem shortly after departure on a flight to Iran, and were attempting to return to the airport when the plane crashed several miles short of the runway in a field. 68 of the 90 passengers and crew are confirmed dead.

Photo: Itek Air 737-200 EX-009 was the aircraft involved in today’s accident (photo Copyright Oleg Revin)