Boeing, Embraer roll out new jetliners

The MAX 9 is the second version of the new, more fuel-efficient versions of the 737 to roll off the production line and is designed to carry up to 220 passengers with a range of 3,515 nautical miles (5837kms).

The rollout comes as the smaller MAX 8 is due to enter service in the second quarter of this year with the MAX 9 to follow next year.

Boeing said the second aircraft would begin system checks, fueling and engine runs on the flight line before entering flight tests in the coming weeks.

"The 737 MAX team continues to do a fantastic job getting us to these important milestones right on schedule," Keith Leverkuhn, vice president and general manager of the 737 MAX program, Boeing Commercial Airplanes said in a statement. "Our primary focus is delivering an aircraft that has the legendary reliability our 737 customers depend on, plus the optimized flexibility and range capability they desire."

The extended range of the MAX’s mean they can be operated on trans-Atlantic flights, opening up new possibilities for airlines.

Norwegian Airlines, which has bought 108 MAX 8s, will start flying the 186-seat aircraft from Ireland to new US destinations, including Providence, Rhode Island, and Stewart International Airport, about 100 kilometres north of New York City, this year.

But Boeing is being beaten in terms of sales at the bigger end of the single-aisle market by Airbus’s A321 neo, which can fly 3699 nautical miles (6850kms) with sharklets, seats up to 236 passengers and will be used by Norwegian to open up new routes between major European cities and the US in 2019.

Analysts estimates sales of the A321 neo are at least three times those of the 787-9 MAX.

Enter the MAX 10X.

Boeing Commercial Airplanes marketing president Randy Tinseth confirmed on his blog this week that Boeing was actively engaged with airlines about the 737 MAX 10X and had already extended business offers to some customers.

He said the aircraft, which would use the CFM LEAP-IB engines also used by the MAX 9, would be the most profitable single-aisle aircraft the industry had ever seen.

“Compared to the A321neo, the MAX 10X would offer the same capacity, lower costs (5 percent lower per seat and 5 percent lower per trip) and more range,’’ he said.

“This would be a relatively minor development program. The MAX 10X would follow the MAX 200 and MAX 7, with entry into service in the 2020 time frame.”

Also rolling out Tuesday was Embraer's E195-E2 regional airliner, expected to enter service in the first half of 2019.

The E195-E2 has three additional rows of seats compared to current E195s and can carry 120 passengers a two -class configuration or up to 146 in a single class.

The Brazilian manufacturer says It can fly 450 nautical miles (833km) further than its predecessor on trips of up to 2,450 nautical miles 4537km).

“The E195-E2 has the potential to significantly change the fleet profile of airlines around the world,’’ said Embraer Commercial Aviation chief executive John Slattery. “With a 20 per cent lower cost per trip and a cost per seat similar to larger aircraft, the E195-E2 becomes the ideal aircraft for regional business growth as well as low-cost business plans and complementing existing mainline fleets.”

The E2 program has 275 firm orders with 415 options and purchase rights.

Embraer will use two aircraft for the certification program, one for aerodynamic and performance tests and the other to validate maintenance tasks and the interior.

Plane makers face new environmental standards.

Steve Creedy

New aircraft designs introduced from 2020 will be subject to the world’s first global design certification standard aimed at lowering greenhouse gas emissions after the system was formally adopted this week by the UN-backed International Civil Aviation Organisation.

ICAO endorsed the new aircraft CO2 emission standards at a meeting of its 36- member council. The standard will apply to new aircraft from 2020 and also to deliveries of aircraft already in production from 2023.

Manufacturers of in-production aircraft failing to meet the standard by 2028 will be forced to cease manufacturing the planes unless their designs are modified.

This is the first time a global industry sector has adopted a design standard and is part of wider moves by the aviation industry to reduce greenhouse emissions and become carbon neutral by 2020 and halve them relative to 2005 levels by 2050.

It has been estimated that the new rules will cut greenhouse emissions by about 650 million tonnes between 2020 and 2040.

The wider agenda includes a decision last year to adopt a global carbon offset scheme, the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA).

The world’s first global industry pollution agreement will start as a voluntary scheme from 2021 to 2026 but will then become mandatory across the aviation industry.

Airlines will have to buy carbon credits to offset growth in emissions, a move that is expected to account for less than 2 per cent of revenues but has raised concerns in some states about costs.

ICAO Council president Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu said the latest development confirmed the sector’s “leadership and concrete actions toward ensuring a sustainable and environmentally responsible future for global civil aviation’’.

“International civil aviation has once again taken pioneering action to address the impact of aviation CO2 emissions on the global climate, making air transport the first industry sector globally to adopt a CO2 emissions design certification standard,’’ he said.

The new standards will be part of a new volume to Annex 16 of the Chicago Convention, the global agreement covering aviation, and become applicable from January 1, 2018.

Where a type certificate is submitted after January 1, 2020, the new standard will apply to jets with a maximum take-off weight (MTOW) greater than 5700 kg. However, it will not apply until the start of 2023 to new jets with seating for 19 passengers or less and an MTOW of up to 60,000 kg.

It will also apply to all new type certificates submitted after January 1, 2020 for propeller-driven aircraft with an MTOW of greater than 8618 kg,

New Zealand beefs up air traffic control

Steve Creedy

New Zealand’s air traffic controller will spend $NZ58m replacing current systems to help it cope with a projected 50 per cent growth in air traffic over the next decade.

Airways New Zealand will replace two existing systems with the Leidos Skyline X system over the next four years.

The existing air traffic management platforms, installed between 2000 and 2003 are ending their useful lives and will be replaced by the new technology in domestic airspace in 2020 and the following year in oceanic airspace. The new system will have an expected lifespan of about 15 years.

New Zealand has seen a surge in air traffic in the last two years and increased competition to the popular tourism destination has put pressure on airline profitability.

Airways NZ has promised to deliver $NZ84m in efficiencies by 2028 and the new system will help achieve that objective.

Chief operating officer Pauline Lamb said the new system would allow to implement a new operating model as well as take advantage of advanced tools such as such as medium and long term conflict alerting, time-based separation and arrival and departure management.

It would also help optimise staff deployment, she said.

“We will be working collaboratively with Leidos to develop this system in a partnership model that will deliver long term savings to our customers,’’ Lamb said in a statement. “By 2020 the new platform will allow airspace sectors to be operated from two new air traffic control centres in Auckland and Christchurch, in addition to 19 control towers nationwide.’’

Software development teams from Airways and Leidos will collaborate on the project with the air traffic manager purchasing the hardware and installing and testing the system.

Leidos Civil Group president Angie Heise said technology enhancements in the new system included the introduction of world-class flow management capabilities “ as well as an integrated approach that enables a vision for a single system to support tower, terminal, en-route and oceanic control operations."

Jetstar, Virgin Australia fined for misleading consumers

Steve Creedy

Jetstar has been hit with a $545,000 penalty and Virgin Australia with a $200,000 fine for misleading consumers with “drip pricing”.

The practice involves advertising a headline price at the start of an online booking process and then incrementally disclosing additional fees and charges which may be unavoidable to consumers.

It has been an issue in a number of jurisdictions as well as in industries such accommodation and car sales.

Australia's Federal Court ordered Jetstar to pay the fine for false or misleading representations about specific advertised airfares on its website in 2013 and its mobile site in 2014.

Virgin was found to have made false or misleading representations about specific advertised airfares on its mobile site in 2014.

The judge said the penalty against Jetstar was designed to discourage similar behaviour by others.

“The ACCC was concerned that Jetstar and Virgin’s ‘drip pricing’ conduct drew consumers into an online purchase process with a headline price but failed to provide adequate disclosure of additional fees and charges that are likely to apply,” Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Rod Sims said in a statement.

“As a result of the ACCC’s enforcement and compliance actions, businesses across several industries, including ticketing and accommodation, have now improved their online booking practices to provide adequate disclosure of additional fees and charges that are likely to apply.”

Sims said the ACCC was turning its attention to consumer guarantees issues in the airline industry as part of its compliance and enforcement priorities for this year.

MH370: University pinpoints location

Geoffrey Thomas

The University of Western Australia, which predicted the landfall of debris from MH370 well over two years ago, has identified a precise location of where it believes the Boeing 777 crashed on March 8, 2014.

On the eve of the third anniversary of the plane's disappearance with 239 aboard, UWA’s Professor Charitha Pattiaratchi, said that its reverse drift modelling put the location of MH370 “at Longitude 96.5 E Latitude 32.5 S with a 40km radius.”

This UWA location is at the northern end of a new area of 25,000sq km identified late last year by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau as the most likely impact point for MH370.

READ: MH370 search must resume

That new area was arrived at through an independent analysis of the satellite data and the drift analysis from the CSIRO and is close to what is called the 7th arc and bounded by latitudes 33°S to 36°S.

The ATSB and its partners have spent over two years searching an area of 120,000sq km in the Southern Indian Ocean which was based on the hourly satellite communication with the Boeing 777 whereas the new areas of interest overlay reverse drift modelling from the debris finds on the 7th arc.

“Of the 22 pieces of debris found the location of 18 were predicted by the UWA model,” said Mr Pattiaratchi.

Despite the new analysis from the Canberra meeting, released in ATSB’s First Principles report in December, Federal Transport Minister Darren Chester, on behalf of the Chinese and Malaysian governments killed off the search.

Mr Chester said the new area identified was not specific enough, which provoked ridicule from around the globe.

The parties involved in the ATSB-led search for MH370 include the British and US crash investigation agencies, Rolls Royce, Boeing, Thales of France, Inmarsat of the UK and the CSIRO.

The ATSB said in December that “the participants of the First Principles Review were in agreement on the need to search an additional area representing approximately 25,000 sq km.”

It added that “based on the analysis to date, completion of this area would exhaust all prospective areas for the presence of MH370.”

Also exhausted is debris hunter Blaine Gibson, who announced last week that he had given up his one-man crusade to find MH370.

Mr Gibson has found over 20 pieces of suspected debris but has received death threats and been accused of planting debris.

Recently Mr Gibson said he was disgusted at the attitude of the Malaysian government in calling off the search and its reluctance to pickup debris he had found.

“ It’s comical, and it’s tragic,” Mr Gibson said.

The relatives of the victims of MH370 have announced a crowd funding campaign to raise US$15 million to continue the search.

MH370: With new data search must resume

Geoffrey Thomas

There is no question that the handling by the Malaysian government and its aviation authorities into the loss of MH370 has been sub-optimal.

The first weeks were best described as a shambles with first confusion then contradiction which left relatives of those aboard certain that there was a cover-up.

Certainly the loss of MH370 on March 8, 2014 is unprecedented in modern times but the Malaysian Government’s performance over this tragedy has been a muddled disaster and that has only fuelled the conspiracy theorists, who have had a field day.

Almost every utterance — mostly via social media — from the host of Malaysian officials and military was a PR disaster.

That view is supported by noted aviation commentator and former senior air safety investigator with the US National Transportation Safety Board, Gregory Feith, who told The West Australian last month that the public’s confidence in the search had suffered badly.

However, Australia’s performance in the leading the search for the missing Boeing has won praise from Mr Feith.

“The Malaysian were out of their depth with MH370 and were lucky Australia took over, said Mr Feith.

The revelation from UWA of an almost exact location using reverse drift modelling from the debris, combined with the CSRIO ocean current analysis published late last year gives the governments of Australia, Malaysia and China the “specific spot” they say they are looking for.

Last year when Australia's Federal Transport Minister Darren Chaster called off the search he blamed the Australian Transport Safety Bureau saying he was following its advice.

In fact, the ATSB and its international partner’s strong recommendation was to search the new area identified as the final resting place.

MH370 will be found just as many ships such as the Bismark, HMS Hood, HMAS Sydney and the Titanic were found – it is in our DNA.

Competition watchdog highlights airport profit margins

Steve Creedy

Australians back international border closures.

AUSTRALIA’S four biggest airports continue to make massive profit margins of up to 73 per cent on parking and have increased the amount they charge airlines to handle passengers by a collective $A1.57 billion over the past decade, the nation’s competition watchdog has found.

All four airports were rated as “good’’ in the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s 2015-16 Airport monitoring report, marking an improvement for Sydney and Melbourne airports on their ratings in last year’s report as “satisfactory”.

Perth Airport was singled out for a second year of notable improvement but the report showed none of the airports has ever achieved the highest rating of “excellent” and that satisfaction had stayed roughly in the same band.

The ACCC’s annual report is based on airline and passenger surveys as well as objective measures. It was introduced after privatisation as part of a light-handed regulatory regime over the monopoly operators of Australia's four gateway airports.

Although aeronautical profit margins had fallen at three of the four airports, they still ranged from 46.7 per cent at Sydney Airport to 33.5 per cent in Perth. Brisbane came in at 44.9 percent and Melbourne at 38.2 per cent.

The report found airports were recovering substantially more aeronautical revenue per passenger than a decade ago as they moved to offset increased costs per passenger and grow profit margins.

“The ACCC estimates that over the past decade, these airports have collected $A1.57 billion more in revenue from airlines than they would otherwise have collected if average prices were held constant in real terms,” ACCC chairman Rod Sims said. “Despite these much higher revenues per passenger, ratings of service quality are not materially different from those seen a decade ago.”

On the parking front, Sydney Airport continued to make the biggest profit margin of 73.1 cents in the dollar followed by Brisbane (66.1 per cent) Melbourne (59 per cent) and Perth (55.6 per cent).

However, the ACCC found that more consumers were taking advantage of online discounts, particularly for long-term parking, that could be half that of drive-up pricing.

The commission also argued the benefits of an independent operator of Sydney’s proposed second airport at Badgerys Creek.

Sydney Airport has first refusal on the project but there has been increasing speculation it will not take up the option and the government will seek alternative investors or build the airport itself.

“A second international airport competing with Sydney Airport will yield significant benefits to both consumers and airlines,” Mr Sims said.

“On the other hand, a common owner of the two airports would have an incentive to restrict investment and delay the new airport in order to maximise returns from its existing assets.

“If Sydney Airport does not build and operate the new airport, the Government can build the airport and sell the assets once it is already established.”

Welcoming this year’s rating improvement, Sydney Airport chief executive Kerrie Mather said the airport had invested $A3.4 billion in airport improvements since 2002 and planned to invest a further $A1.3 billion in the next five years.

“This investment is delivering improved quality of service ratings during a time of unprecedented passenger growth and we look forward to building on this momentum in the future,’’ she said.

Plans for privately-funded MH370 search

Steve Creedy

The families of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 are hoping to set up a fund to finance a continued search for the Boeing 777.

The move comes after the governments of Australia, Malaysia and China called off the official search in January, despite calls for it to continue.

The search, led by Australian safety investigators, had combed a 120,000 sq. km initial search area in the southern Indian Ocean without finding the plane. A group of international experts had recommended sweeping an additional 25,000 sq. kms identified using new ocean drift modelling but the governments refused to heed the advice.

Other experts subsequently joined the call for the search to continue but without success.

The decision means the disappearance of the plane and its 239 passengers and crew while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, remains this century’s biggest aviation mystery.

Jiang Hui, whose mother was on the plane, told CNN on Saturday that relatives were working to create an international fund made up of donations from parties involved in the flight such as governments, plane-maker Boeing and Malaysia Airlines.

"The fund will be invested and the annual investment returns or interests will be used for the search of MH370," Jiang said. "Once the plane is found, the original donation will be returned to the donors, without interest."

There have been a plethora of theories about the fate of MH370 which include a deliberate move by the captain to destroy the plane as well as a possible fire and problems with sensitive electronics.

While there is general agreement there was human input early in the flight there have been disagreements about whether anybody was at the controls prior to it plunging into the sea.

International experts analysing information from satellite handshakes and debris from the plane believe it was uncontrolled when the engines flamed out.

Australia sees above average international passenger growth.

Steve Creedy

Almost 38 million passengers flew in and out of Australia in 2016 as traffic growth eclipsed historical and global averages.

Government statistics show that international scheduled passenger traffic for the year hit 37.6 million, up 7.9 per cent on the previous year.

That compared to global air passenger growth in 2016 of 6.3 per cent.

Sixty international airlines, including five dedicated freight airlines, were offering scheduled services to and from Australia in December, when passenger traffic was 6.7 per cent ahead of the same month a year ago.

But the December growth failed to keep pace with a 7.8 per cent growth in seats for the month to see seat utilisation fall slightly to 82.8 per cent.

How the bigger pie was carved up also saw some minor changes.

The December figures also saw seven of the top 10 airlines with a smaller share of passengers carried than in the same a month a year ago. The exceptions were China Southern and Etihad, which each grew from 3.1 per cent to 3.2 per cent, and AirAsiaX, which moved from 3.9 percent to 4.2 per cent.

The Qantas Group’s market share fell below 25 per cent, to 24.7 per cent, and the share of passenger traffic held by Australian designated carriers fell to 30.5 per cent, compared to 31.5 per cent the previous year.

Also down slightly was the share held by low-cost carriers, from 17.9 to 17.5 per cent.