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Thursday, February 14th, 2019
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Boeing and Safran have jointly announced the name of their 50-50 joint venture to design, build and service Auxiliary Power Units (APUs): Initium Aerospace.
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From its Latin roots, initium means 'the beginning' or 'to start.' This is what an APU is and does when it provides the power to start the main aircraft engines and systems on the ground and, if necessary, in flight. Initium Aerospace starts with Boeing's customer and airplane knowledge and Safran's experience designing and producing complex propulsion systems.
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The creation of Initium Aerospace follows the regulatory and antitrust approvals the joint venture received last November, after an agreement was reached in June.
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The initial team consists of employees from the two parent companies and is led by Etienne Boisseau, CEO of Initium Aerospace. Initial work is being done in San Diego, California, where they are focused on the next-generation APU design as well as collaborating with teams across Boeing and Safran on engineering and production.
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Singapore Airlines’ (SIA) regional wing, SilkAir, has selected Thompson Aero Seating for the upgrade of Business Class seats on its Boeing 737 MAX 8 fleet. The upgrades are a part of a significant investment programme that will eventually see SilkAir merged into SIA.
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The upgrades will commence in May 2020 and will feature new lie-flat Business Class seats in a forward-facing staggered layout – in line with SIA’s regional Business Class offering on its Airbus A350-900 medium-haul and Boeing 787-10 fleets.
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SilkAir currently has five 737 MAX 8s in its fleet with another 32 on order. The new seats will be
retrofitted onto aircraft already in the fleet, and installed at the time of arrival in Singapore for aircraft not yet delivered.
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Plans for the upgrades were announced in May 2018, as part of a move to more closely align SilkAir’s products and services with those of SIA in preparation for its merger into SIA. The merger will eventually encompass a full re-branding of SilkAir as SIA, with repainting of aircraft and adoption of SIA’s service delivery.
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The upgrade programme will also see the installation of new seat-back in-flight entertainment systems in both Business Class and Economy Class. An announcement on the supplier for these systems will be made soon.
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Etihad Airways will introduce the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner on its daily service from Abu Dhabi to Chengdu, effective July 1, 2019, replacing the Airbus A330-200 currently operating the route. Also from July 1, the airlines’ daily service from Abu Dhabi to Shanghai will be upgraded from the 787-9 to the larger 787-10 Dreamliner.
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Once the changes take effect, the airline will fly all 28 weekly services to China’s four main gateways – Beijing, Chengdu, Shanghai and Hong Kong – with the next generation Dreamliner aircraft.
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Toyota Industries Corporation and All Nippon Airways (ANA), are collaborating to test Japan's first autonomous towing tractors at Saga Airport.
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During this trial, which will be for two weeks at the end of March 2019, the tractors will run a distance of roughly 100 meters in the airport, which is the same distance between the baggage sorting areas and aircraft at Saga Airport. An airport employee will be seated in the autonomous towing truck during the tests and will have the ability to override the system at any time if deemed necessary.
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The towing tractors use 2D/3D LiDAR sensors to automatically detect objects in their path and allow the vehicles to automatically adjust course. This enables the tractor to move safely and accurately along its present route. A road pattern matching system and a GPS system are also housed in the tractor, allowing it to calculate its current location and guide itself.
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JetBlue Airways has reported its preliminary traffic results for January 2019. Traffic in January increased 7.9% from January 2018, on a capacity increase of 9.9% compared to the previous year.
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Load factor for January 2019 was 80.4%, a decrease of 1.5 points from January 2018.
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The International Air Transport Association (IATA) urged the United States government and industry to work together to ensure that aviation is able to accommodate an expected 62% rise in demand for air travel to, from and within the country over the next 20 years.
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Speaking at the International Aviation Club in Washington, D.C., Alexandre de Juniac, IATA’s Director General and CEO, noted that aviation already supports 6.5 million jobs in the United States and contributes over US$778 billion to GDP, including aviation-supported tourism. The social and economic benefits enabled by aviation will increase as the number of passenger journeys rises to 1.26 billion by 2037, from 780 million in 2017.
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De Juniac highlighted key factors necessary to ensure aviation is able to meet this increase and grow aviation’s benefits. These include maintaining a competitive environment that stimulates innovation, and adequate infrastructure to cope with new demand.
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He also urged the US to ratify the Montreal Protocol 2014 (MP14) to address loopholes in international agreements that make it difficult to bring the law to bear against unruly passengers. “No passenger or crew member should have to put up with verbal or physical threats, harassment, violence or assault. MP14 will close jurisdictional loopholes in the existing international treaty governing offenses on-board aircraft, ensuring that perpetrators will face justice regardless of where they are flying.” Sixteen countries have ratified MP14 of the twenty-two needed for it to come into force.
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Embraer and Air Astana, a flag carrier of Kazakhstan, have reached a multi-year agreement on a Flight Hour Pool Program to support the component needs for the airline’s new E2 fleet, Embraer’s second generation of the E-Jets family of commercial aircraft.
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The E2’s entry into service marks the beginning of Air Astana's fleet renewal. Currently the airline
operates a fleet of nine E190s aircraft, the first of which was delivered in 2011, when the airline joined Embraer Pool Program. Now, with the extension of the pool program for the new E190-E2s, Air Astana have extended their trust in our strong partnership.
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Air Astana took delivery of its first E190-E2 jet in December 2018 and flies the new aircraft on domestic and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) routes. The airline will receive four additional E190-E2s in 2019, with the last of the five aircraft, all of which are leased by AerCap, being delivered in the final quarter of 2019.
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The Pool Agreement for the airline’s E190-E2 fleet will cover unlimited access and full repair coverage for more than 325 components with almost a third of them exclusively placed at
airline’s main base to ensure high fleet availability.
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Avolon, the international aircraft leasing company, has announced results for the 2018 full year.
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Avolon's lease revenue for the year was US$2.6 billion; an increase of 10% year on year. The company generated US$2.2 billion of net cash of operating activities in 2018 and delivered US$717 million in profit for the year, an increase of 30%.
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Avolon has declared and paid shareholder dividend of US$490 million. At year end Avolon had US$16.6 billion future contracted rental cashflows and ended 2018 with US$5.7 billion of available liquidity in unrestricted cash, undrawn revolving credit facilities and undrawn secured and unsecured debt.
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Air Astana has declared net profit for 2018 of US$5.3 million, driven by higher revenues and higher jet fuel costs.
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Total airline revenue rose by 10% to US$840.8 million. Capacity as measured in ASKs rose by 5% and total passenger numbers by 3%, to 4.3 million. However, transit business via the airline’s Astana and Almaty hubs rose by 48%, and now represents close to 40% of total international traffic. Operating costs rose by 14%, driven mainly by an average jet fuel price increase of 27.5%.
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TAG Aviation (UK) has appointed Stuart Stevenson as Head of Compliance and Safety.
In this important role, Stevenson will head up a team comprising Compliance, Safety and Flight data specialists and hold overall responsibility for overseeing TAG's (UK) regulatory compliance, as well as ensuring the promotion and effective management of the Safety Management System, the safety policy and safety culture within TAG (UK).
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Before joining TAG Aviation in 2018 as Deputy Head of Compliance and Safety, Stevenson has garnered extensive aviation-based engineering experience working for British Airways.
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UPCOMING EVENTS
February 19 - 20, 2019 – Palma de Majorca, Spain
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February 20th, 2019 – 2:00pm – 3:00pm GMT – Online
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March 8, 2019 – Arizona, USA
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