Boeing has just announced a bombshell; that the first flight of the 787 Dreamliner will be postponed due to a need to reinforce an area within the side-of-body section of the aircraft. The delay appears to be quite long. Boeing announced First flight and first delivery will be rescheduled following the final determination of the…
Airbus today delivered the first A320 aircraft assembled at its Final Assembly Line China (FALC) in Tianjin. At a grand ceremony, the aircraft was handed over by Airbus President and CEO, Tom Enders, to the Chairman of Dragon Aviation Leasing, Li Hai. The aircraft will be leased to and operated by Sichuan Airlines. The FALC…
The flamboyant Sir Richard Branson promoted Virgin Atlantic Airways, is celebrating its 25th birthday today, with it’s typical panache and style by recreating the very first flight to New York that departed on June 22, 1984. Sir Richard Branson, President of Virgin Atlantic, was joined onboard by frequent travelers, travel trade VIPs and a host…
The intruding Volga Dnepr Antonov Anotnov AN124 finally departed Mumbai late on Saturday evening at 22:39 (17:09Z). The aircraft apparently has been “wet leased” i.e. aircraft and crew, by the US military for supply flights between the US base at Deigo Garcia in the southern Indian ocean and Kandahar in Afghanistan. The aircraft has made…
A Volga Dnepr Antonov AN-124 super transporter has been forced to land at Mumbai airport after it violated Indian airspace under highly suspicious circumstances. As per news reports, the plane was spotted on radar entering Indian airspace around 21:50 local (16:20Z). With no record of the flight and Mumbai having some of the busiest airspace…
John Leahy is a happy man; may not be as happy as in 2007, but surely the orders received for the Airbus A320 and A350 families at this year’s Paris air show, must give him a cautious sense of optimism. Airbus SAS is expected to walk away from Le Bourget with about orders for 110…
Buoyed by the summer holiday season and the continuing rise in the Indian economy, domestic passenger traffic rose by almost 20% to 3.93 million in May from 3.315 million passengers in April. There was no significant change in the market shares of the various airlines, but the low cost carriers IndiGo, SpiceJet, Go Air and…
Continuing the story on the forty year old rivalry between Airbus and Boeing from yesterday, we pick up the rivalry from the mid 1980s till date. Following the success of the A320, Airbus next introduced the four engined A340 and twin-engine A330 mid-sized aircraft in 1987. While the A340 was designed to compete in the…
Qatar Airways today signed a firm contract for 24 Airbus A320 Family aircraft. The agreement includes twenty A320s, as well as the firming up of four A321 aircraft announced at the Farnborough Air Show in July 2008. The Doha-based carrier currently operates 19 A320 Family aircraft, and is the Middle East’s largest customer of this…
Forty years ago as the 1969 Paris Air Show unfolded, the world was abuzz over the Boeing 747 and the BAC-Aerospatiale Concorde both whom had just made their first flights just a few months before. At the same time, European aerospace companies were finalising a consortium to wrest back dominance of the United States in…
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