IATA says aviation safety remains high

Safety in global aviation remains high, the International Air Transport Association said on Tuesday, as it seeks to improve in-flight tracking after the disappearance of a Malaysian passenger jet in March.

There were 0.34 accidents per million flights in the first four months of 2014 compared with 0.32 over the preceding five years, IATA said at its annual general meeting in Doha, Qatar.

"The preliminary rate for the industry as a whole (including non-IATA airlines) is performing strongly," with 0.29 accidents per million flights in January-April against 0.48 in the previous five years, it said.

IATA groups 242 airlines representing 84 per cent of global air traffic.

Its statement noted that the industry recorded three accidents between January and April, including the mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

"Aviation stakeholders are united in their desire to ensure that we never face another situation where an aircraft simply disappears," said Kevin Hiatt, senior vice president at IATA's Safety and Flight Operations department.

MH370 disappeared on March 8 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard. An extensive search in the Indian Ocean has been unable to locate the plane.

An IATA taskforce on in-flight tracking, formed by the UN's aviation agency, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), is to present its findings in September.

"While states work through ICAO to develop and implement performance-based global standards, the industry is committed to moving forward with recommendations that airlines can implement now," said Hiatt.

He acknowledged, however, that airlines alone can decide if they want to implement such standards.

Meanwhile, the company specialising in air transport communications and information technology SITA announced in Doha plans to introduce a new aircraft tracking device.

"The solution, which is currently being evaluated by several airlines for testing, will utilise technology that is already installed in the aircraft to provide advanced tracking capabilities," a statement said.

It said the system known as "SITA AIRCOM Server Flight Tracker solution" will alert airline flight dispatchers "to unexpected aircraft movements" it said.

According to its designers, "the solution does not call for extensive additional cost or investment by the airlines" as it relies on a system that is already installed in many aircraft.

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Qatar Airways wants stake in India's IndiGo

Qatar Airways is interested in buying into India's budget airline IndiGo, the head of the fast-growing Gulf carrier said on Monday.

"We are very keen on investing in IndiGo if it's available," Qatar Airways chief executive Akbar Al Baker said, praising the airline as "the most successful Indian carrier".

IndiGo is "the most efficient Indian carrier and the most progressive Indian carrier... We love to be associated to that success," he told a press briefing on the sidelines of an aviation conference in the Qatari capital.

IndiGo is the only carrier not enduring losses in India, whose aviation sector faces rising fuel costs, a drop in passenger numbers, a slowing economy and a price war triggered by tough competition.

The carrier, which was established in 2006, serves 26 destinations across the subcontinent, and has routes to Nepal, Oman, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and Thailand.

It operates a fleet of 78 Airbus A320s.

Qatar Airways is the flag carrier of the energy-rich Gulf state.

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IATA expects airline profits to hit US$18b in 2014

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) said on Monday that it expects airline companies to record combined net profits of $18 billion this year.

Revenues were forecast to reach $746 billion, IATA director general Tony Tyler said in Doha, pointing out that net margins stood to average 2.4 per cent only.

"It sounds impressive. But the brutal economic reality is on revenues of $746 billion dollars we will earn an average net margin of just 2.4 per cent," he said.

This amounted to less than $6 per passenger, added Tyler, who was speaking at an IATA-organised annual conference of the airline industry in the Qatari capital.

"The good news is that airline profits are improving. The average return on invested capital today is 5.4 per cent -- up from 1.4 per cent in 2008," said Tyler.

"But we are still far from earning the 7-8 per cent cost of capital that investors would expect," he added.

He said there was still huge potential for development in the sector.

IATA said in March that some 240 carriers representing 84 per cent of global air traffic had revised down their profit forecast for 2014 to $18.7 billion from $19.7 billion.

Tyler said the industry was celebrating 100 years of aviation in which 3.3 billion passengers will have travelled and 52 million tonnes of cargo transported.

In total, some 50,000 destinations are linked through around 100,000 daily flights, while the industry generates more than 58 million job opportunities worldwide.

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SIA widens US coverage through expanded Asiana Airlines partnership

 Singapore Airlines (SIA) is providing access to Los Angeles, Seattle and Honolulu in the United States to its customers after announcing an expanded codeshare agreement with Asiana Airlines on Monday (June 2).

In a statement, the airline said it is now codesharing on Asiana-operated flights beyond Seoul's Incheon International Airport to the three US cities. Honululu is a new port of call, while SIA operates flights to Los Angeles and flies to Seattle through another partner airline, a company spokesperson told Channel NewsAsia.

Both parties have been codesharing since September 2005 on flights between Singapore and Seoul-Incheon.

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Air New Zealand orders 14 Airbus planes for US$1.5b

Air New Zealand said on Sunday that it has ordered 14 medium-range Airbus planes, valued at $1.5 billion according to list price.

The order by New Zealand's flag carrier includes three A321neo, 10 A320neo and one A320, said the airline's chief Christopher Luxon at a conference in the Qatari capital.

The neo units will be delivered between 2017 and 2019, while the classic A320 will be supplied early next year, he said on the sidelines of the general assembly of the International Air Transport Association.

The single-aisle aircraft are more fuel efficient than earlier models.

Luxon said that the carrier plans to have a fleet of medium-range airliners consisting exclusively of Airbus planes. Airbus's A320 family competes with Boeing's 737.

In November 2009, Air New Zealand placed an order for 14 A320 jets to replace its Boeing 737-300 planes.

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Week 61: PPL Flight School Week 30 - Completion

Monday
My day started late with my final sim session at 1530hrs. I was left with 3.5hrs and so I entered a very long route into my flight plan flying to many aerodromes and doing all the approaches which were mainly everything I've learnt - NDB, VOR, ILS. Turned on the autopilot during cruising while switching to manual flying during approaches. Even so, I got really bored and tired looking at the G1000 screen.

By the time everything was done, it was already nightfall when I left the school building. At last, I'm finished with all necessary trainings I have to do in Ballarat and the paper work can get started to prepare for my departure back to Singapore.

Lots of things to settle with all the clearance signatures I had to get from a number of key figures in the school, plus tallying all my hours to make sure I didn't fly less than required. Confirmation of my air tickets came on Thursday and I left Australia on Friday noon.

The month of May is the craziest month I had with 23.4hrs of flight and 21hrs of sim hours clocked. I'm glad this rush occured which allowed me to get home by end of the month. I was totally missing the food in Singapore as well as my family and friends. When I touched down in Changi Airport close to 2200hrs, I got greeted by the familiar humid and hot weather, something which I welcome.

It has been a long but fulfilling seven months in Down Under, experiencing Spring, Summer, Autumn and skirting Winter. I left Singapore with zero flight experience under my belt but I returned with 86hrs and armed with a PPL which I'm proud to have achieved. The experience of life abroad is something I'll treasure and remember for the rest of my life.

Now I'm back home, it's time to look forward to the next phase of training in the A320 simulator. It's going to take me another six months; I'm now done with 66% of the whole course and it feels I'm getting closer.

Farewell C172

One last wash before I kiss you goodbye

The morning I left Ballarat was pissing cold

Domestic side of the airport

Meal with a view

Fat bird

CX A333

The bird to bring me home

9V-SKE

Cooked dinner for family for the first time in 30weeks

Airlines meet in Doha under shadow of MH370 disappearance

The mystery of how Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 flew into oblivion, and the challenge of finding new ways to track aircraft, will hang over the annual conference of airlines that opens Sunday in Doha.

The loss of the Malaysia Airlines plane, with 239 people on board, was a shock to the airline industry, and clouds the event in Doha just as it also celebrates 100 years of commercial aviation.

Aircraft being produced today for the next expected boom in traffic are scarcely comparable to the biplanes which carried mail or seaplanes which later assured many long-distance routes before the age of electronic navigation.

The main purpose of this 70th annual meeting, organised by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), is to enable its 240 members accounting for 84.0 per cent of global air traffic to talk about business prospects for the sector.

But the three-day get-together will open under the shadow of the Boeing 777 airliner which took off from Kuala Lumpur on March 8 bound for Beijing, but flew into danger leaving behind a trail of despair for relatives of the passengers and crew, muddle over what had happened, and mystery over where it had gone.

Various theories emerged about how and why the plane may have veered widely off course, and searches switched direction accordingly, but no debris has been found in the southern Indian Ocean where the aircraft is now believed to have looped far off course.

The drama also revealed to astonished public opinion that in an age of sophisticated civil and military radar scanning and of GPS satellite location and monitoring systems, an airliner can fly into apparent blind spots, leaving little or no trace.

This has led to calls for all airliners to be equipped at modest cost with extra emitters.

When IATA held its last annual meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2013 one of the matters raised was poor air transport safety in Africa.

This year the conference will focus on how to improve the tracking of aircraft using various technologies to monitor their movements or to ensure the transmission of flight data. It is likely to encourage various international initiatives on this.

The International Civil Aviation Organization has just formed a working group which by September is to come up with ways of tracking aircraft.

At the European Aviation Safety Agency, executive director Patrick Ky said: "This meeting of IATA is particularly important in the context of the disappearance of Flight MH370."

He said: "We are mobilised to ensure that such a tragic event doesn't happen again."

At Air France, the director responsible for operations, Alain Bassil, said: "The disappearance of Flight MH370 is a landmark for airline companies as a whole ... The annual meeting of IATA is an opportunity to advance in the procedures for looking for an aircraft and providing emergency help in the event of an accident."

The French airline, the operator of an Airbus 330 airliner which plunged into the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, 2009, was slightly ahead on the issue, he said.

The company had extended the life of signals from the so-called black boxes of data carried on aircraft to 90 days to allow more time for investigators to locate a wreck.

It has also equipped its planes to automatically report their positions more frequently than most other airlines.

"Our airliners transmit their positions every ten minutes," he said, while the average at other airlines is 20 minutes.

"We have developed software so that the plane can report its position automatically, every minute, if it veers from its flight path or otherwise behaves in a way which does not correspond to that part of the flight path, such as a premature descent to a back-up airport."

IATA will also make its forecasts for profits by the sector this year.

In March, it adjusted its outlook down to US$18.7 billion (13.7 billion euros) from US$19.7 billion forecast previously, because of a rise in the price of fuel.

The place chosen for the meeting, in the Middle East where air traffic is booming, is also symbolic. This week a new airport was opened in Doha.

Last year, traffic in the region showed the biggest increase anywhere, expanding by 11.4 per cent compared with an average figure of 5.2 per cent.

In just over a decade, airlines in the Middle East have increased their share of world traffic from 4.0 per cent to 9.0 per cent. And traffic in the region is expected to grow at an average rate of 7.1 per cent a year in the next 20 years compared with 4.7 per cent for the sector globally.

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