JetPhotos.Net Aviation News

FedEx MD-11F N526FE (cn 48600) has crashed while landing at Tokyo’s Narita International Airport. Television video footage shows FedEx flight 80 from Guangzhou, China bouncing on the runway several times before rolling over and exploding into a ball of flames. The airport was reportedly experiencing high winds at the time of the accident. Japanese media reports that both crew members died in the accident.

Photo 1: A screen capture from Japanese television shows the accident as it occurred.

Photo 2: FedEx MD-11F N526FE, the aircraft involved in today’s accident, lands at Manchester Airport in April, 2008. (Photo Copyright Stewart Andrew)

The first version of the Boeing 787 needs to slim down, says the chief of International Lease Finance Corp., the airplane’s biggest customer. “Rest assured that the first batch of 787s will be overweight,” ILFC chief Steven Udvar-Hazy said Tuesday at a conference in Scottsdale, Ariz., according to Air Transport Intelligence. “In the long run, this will be an excellent aircraft,” Udvar-Hazy said. “But I pity the airlines that get the first ones. Obviously those aircraft will not be the same standard as those 787s later on.” Last year, Udvar-Hazy said that weight gains by the 787 would limit its range. Boeing subsequently acknowledged that it had cut its range forecast for the first Dreamliners.

The next time you get on a plane in the U.S., you may have to go through a security check more than once. According to USA Today, the TSA plans to do more random security checks on people while they’re waiting to get on the plane. This is in addition to the normal security checkpoint when you take off your shoes and empty your pockets. Airports did this right after 9/11 then phased it out in 2003. It’s coming back because the TSA is worried that airport staff, who are not routinely screened, could sneak weapons to passengers into the secure area of the airport.

Some small Australian airports could be forced to shut down for 30 minutes a day to allow air traffic controllers meal breaks under new workplace laws. The Airways Corporation says three airports with single-staff control towers might have to close between scheduled passenger flights as a last resort to meet changes made last year to the Employment Relations Act. The changes take effect on April 1 and require workplaces to provide two 10-minute breaks and one half-hour meal break during each eight-hour shift. If airports were closed briefly, it would be between scheduled passenger flights.

With economic conditions still deteriorating, the bottom for the decline in premium travel numbers is not yet in sight, according to the IATA’s Premium Travel Monitor. IATA reports that the number of passengers traveling on first or business class tickets fell by 16.7 percent in January, another substantial fall from December levels which were 13.3 percent down for the year. IATA says fares are also now falling sharply, as well as passenger numbers. By December, average premium fares were down 6 percent, having risen strongly earlier in 2008 when fuel costs were surging higher.

Pilots for Ryanair, the UK’s largest discount carrier, have agreed to a 12 month pay freeze after the airline threatened them with a 10% pay cut. After a round of intensive negotiations at the airline’s 31 pilot bases across Europe, pilots voted in favor of a freeze with productivity increases as the preferred alternative to a salary cut. As a result, Ryanair said the average pilot pay will remain unchanged over the next year.

The Netherlands’ Maastricht Aachen airport was closed today after a Cargolux Boeing 747 skidded off a taxiway after landing. The plane’s nose wheel got stuck in the mud, but there was no damage and neither of the two-man crew was injured, according to a spokesman for the Luxembourg-based freight company.

In the face of considerable resistance and a threatened lawsuit from the airlines, the FAA has backed down on imposing new crew rest requirements for long-haul flights until a formal rule making process can be conducted. The FAA had drafted new requirements based on a voluntary plan adopted in 2006 by Delta after negotiations with its pilots. The change was intended to address new longer-range airliners, which have rendered decades-old rules about minimum crew rest requirements obsolete. But the airlines pushed back – acknowledging there is scientific evidence the longer flights require changes to manage fatigue, but asserting the FAA needed to go through the formal process to gather the best available data on which to base a new rule set. The National Transportation Safety Board has been after the FAA for years to impose tougher, wide-ranging fatigue-prevention rules.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) says passengers cannot be sure that new safety procedures already adopted by airlines flying Boeing 777s with Rolls-Royce engines will work to protect against ice-related engine failures.

In January 2008, all 152 people on board a British Airways 777 survived after the aircraft lost power in both engines during its final approach to London Heathrow airport. Another 777 with Rolls-Royce engines, operated by Delta Air Lines, lost engine power in almost exactly the same way last November – again after ice blocked the fuel supply.

The board said: “Current operational mitigations, which require power reductions, may not prevent additional occurrences at critical flight altitudes. Until the current fuel/oil heat exchangers are replaced by heat exchangers more tolerant to ice accretion, additional failures to achieve commanded thrust could occur and could result in a serious accident and, possibly, injuries and deaths. With two of these events occurring within a year, we believe that there is a high probability of something similar happening again.” It said that “the only acceptable solution to this safety vulnerability” was to redesign the flawed component in the engine.”

Photo: The wreckage of the crashed British Airways 777 is seen in this January, 2008 photo (Photo Copyright Allan Huse)

Emirates Airline, the largest buyer of the Airbus A380 superjumbo, has detailed 46 pages of complaints with its initial aircraft, according to a German news magazine Der Spiegel. Emirates has 58 of the huge jets on order but has experienced technical and reliability issues on the four aircraft already in its fleet. Der Spiegel said the two companies held a “crisis meeting” to discuss Emirates’ concerns, though the airline says it has a “good relationship” with Airbus and the meeting was “routine.”

More than 2,300 jet aircraft are now parked as a result of the global economic slowdown affecting the aviation industry. Of those, 1,167 aircraft were grounded last year, making 2008 the worst hit for cutbacks since 2001. According to data from Ascend, a leading provider of information and consultancy to the global aerospace industry, more than 11 percent of the global aircraft fleet of 20,293 is now in storage.

Photo: Stored airliners are seen at the Marana Air Park in Arizona (Photo Copyright Botterman Bram)

Global airlines face a stormy economic climate, with German carrier Lufthansa warning of a tough 2009 on Wednesday after Cathay Pacific and Delta posted heavy losses for last year. Lufthansa said its 2008 net profit fell 64 percent to 599 million euros (760 million dollars) and that it expected a further drop this year. The drop reflected the fact that record 2007 results were boosted by one-off items but Lufthansa warned the 2009 figure would also “be clearly below the previous year’s result.”

The forecast came after two other major airlines, Cathay Pacific, one of Asia’s top carriers, and Delta of the United States, posted heavy losses for 2008, with the former also forecasting “an extremely challenging year in 2009.” Cathay Pacific said it lost more than one billion dollars last year, its first annual loss in a decade and a huge drop from the previous year’s profit of almost 900 million dollars. US carrier Delta lost a whopping 8.9 billion dollars, said it would cut another 10 percent from international capacity and suggested more jobs might disappear as well.

The International Air Transport Association (AITA) has reported that January traffic showed a deepening slump in demand, with a drop of 5.6 percent from the same month a year earlier, the fifth consecutive decline.

After attempts to reduce its number of flight attendants through voluntary methods mostly failed, American Airlines announced Wednesday that it will furlough 323 flight attendants on April 1. The furloughed employees will be offered voluntary travel separation that will allow them to continue using travel benefits for 5-10 years.

Mexicana, Mexico’s second largest airline, said Monday it signed an agreement with Boeing to lease 25 airplanes for its low-cost subsidiary. The multi-year contract is part of Mexicana’s fleet renovation program, and the Boeing 717s will replace the Fokker F-100 aircraft that MexicanaClick currently operates. The subsidiary, MexicanaClick, is expected to begin receiving the planes this month from Boeing’s financing and leasing arm, the companies said in a press release. 16 of the planes were previously used by Midwest Airlines, which returned the aircraft to Boeing when the airline restructured last year. Terms of the lease weren’t disclosed.

As Boeing presses towards a first flight in the second quarter, airline customers have begun to raise questions publicly about the 787s performance. Early production aircraft are expected to be delivered overweight, prompting significant concern among airline customers. Boeing now advertises the range of the 787-8 as 14,150-15,170km, a reduction of roughly 560km from the 14,800-15,700km first touted.

Meanwhile, although it continues to talk with Boeing about the 787, Delta Air Lines has given the strongest signal yet that it will not take some or all of the 18 Dreamliners it has on order. The planes were ordered by Northwest, which is now part of Delta, and Delta has said it likely will want more of the bigger 777s from Boeing instead.

A Soviet-era jet caught fire and crashed into Lake Victoria Monday after taking off from Uganda’s main airport, killing 11 people, including three top Burundi army officers, officials said. The burning Ilyushin 76 plunged into the nearby lake as it left for the Somali capital Mogadishu at dawn. Although Masiko said no bodies had yet been recovered, the country’s Civil Aviation Authority spokesman Ignia Igundura said: “All people on board are feared dead.” Two boats were struck by the careering plane, injuring four fishermen, the minister said. The aircraft was operated by a firm known as Aerolift, according to Uganda’s Civil Aviation Authority.

Southwest Airlines will pay a fine of $7.5 million for flying planes that had missed crucial safety checks – $2.5 million less than government regulators initially ordered last year. The agreement announced by the Federal Aviation Administration also gives the Dallas airline nearly two years to pay the fine in three installments of $2.5 million each. The airline was fined for flying 46 airplanes on 59,791 flights without performing mandatory inspections for fuselage cracks. The planes carried an estimated 145,000 passengers.

A struggling regional airport that closed last month won’t reopen for years, if not decades, unless the airlines industry can recover from the current recession, according to a new report by the Los Angeles airport authority. Palmdale airport, located about 60 miles north of Los Angeles, was shuttered in February after United Airlines canceled its four daily flights to San Francisco. During 18 months of operations, the carrier’s planes were less than a third full, well below the hoped level of 50%, officials said. United was the eighth airline to have flown into Palmdale since the early 1970s, when the Los Angeles airport department began buying vacant land for an intercontinental jet port that was never built. Four factors were cited for the airport’s problems. Among them — long drives for travelers, a limited flight schedule and the economic downturn.

Estimated airline losses in the fourth quarter were $4 billion, significantly higher than first expected and leading to a total 2008 loss of $8 billion, according to a Monday report from the International Air Transport Association. Just two weeks ago, the trade group forecast a $5 loss for the full year. “Unlike earlier in the year, airlines are now losing money at the operating level,” IATA said in a statement. Airlines also parked 73 older aircraft in the recent quarter as they cut capacity to meet falling demand. “Load factors have been falling sharply since September, as airlines have found demand falling away faster than they have been able to cut capacity,” the group said. “In January average load factors were 2.8% points below the level of the previous year.”

Airbus denied a report that says the company didn’t expect to sell 150 jets to China this year due to the dampening expansion plans of Chinese airlines, sources reported. Airbus told sources that the company is still in steady talks with Chinese firms and the report was untrue. China agreed to buy 110 A320s and 40 A330s under a deal signed on November 2007 during the French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s state visit to China. China’s aviation sector watchdog last year said it encouraged domestic airlines to cancel or delay aircraft delivery this year as the sector is facing more challenges amid the global financial crisis.