The first A350 XWB for Japan Airlines (JAL) has rolled out of the Airbus paint shop in Toulouse, France. The A350-900 is the first ever Airbus aircraft to be produced directly for JAL and features a special A350 XWB red logo on the fuselage.
The aircraft will now proceed to ground and flight tests, before delivery to JAL in early summer.
In total JAL has ordered 31 A350 XWB aircraft, comprising 18 A350-900s and 13 A350-1000s. The A350-900 will initially be operated on major domestic routes, with a three-class configuration seating 369 passengers.
The A350 XWB is the world’s most modern and eco-efficient aircraft family shaping the future of air travel. It is the long-range leader in the large widebody market (300 to 400+ seats). The A350 XWB offers by design unrivalled operational flexibility and efficiency for all market segments up to ultra-long haul (15,000 km).
The A350 XWB features the latest aerodynamic design, carbon fibre fuselage and wings, plus new fuel-efficient Rolls-Royce engines. Together, these latest technologies translate into unrivalled levels of operational efficiency, with a 25% reduction in fuel burn and emissions. The A350 XWB’s Airspace by Airbus cabin is the quietest of any twin-aisle and offers passengers and crews the most modern in-flight products for the most comfortable flying experience.
At the end of March 2019, the A350 XWB Family had received 890 firm
orders from 50 customers worldwide, making it one of the most successful
widebody aircraft ever.
A brand new ground transportation centre has opened at Nashville International Airport. The new complex is part of the Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority’s BNA Vision Project, a $1.2 billion expansion and renovation plan geared towards meeting the regions population growth and record-breaking passenger numbers.
The new facility came in under budget, and features a six-level, 2,200-space garage equipped with parking guidance and sensors that will direct drivers to open parking spots.
A covered walkway connects the parking garage to the terminal, and airport information displays are located at all five passenger elevators on the first level.
The first level of the garage has dedicated hubs for buses, limos, ride-sharing services, shuttles, and taxis.
JE Dunn Construction was the general contractor for the project, which includes car locating kiosks, electric-vehicle charging stations, and a fee-free tire-inflation unit.
FILE
PHOTO: The Airbus logo is pictured at Airbus headquarters in Blagnac
near Toulouse, France, March 20, 2019. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau
PARIS (Reuters) – Airbus shares rose on Tuesday after the European planemaker won a deal worth tens of billions of dollars to sell 300 aircraft to China.
Airbus was up 2.7 percent by 1208 GMT, with the stock having risen nearly 40 percent so far in 2019.
French
officials said the deal was worth some 30 billion euros (25.6 billion
pounds) at catalogue prices. Planemakers usually grant significant
discounts.
The
Chinese order was announced late on Monday, coinciding with a visit to
Europe by Chinese President Xi Jinping and matching a China record held
by U.S. rival Boeing.
Investment bank Citigroup kept its “buy” rating on Airbus.
“We
do not have details of the delivery schedule of this order, but China
has been taking about 20-25 percent of Airbus production per year and
given the A320 family is sold out at announced production rates out to
2024/25, we believe this increases the probability of Airbus moving to a
production rate of 70 per month,” wrote Citigroup.
That positive view was echoed by Morgan Stanley, which kept an “overweight” rating on Airbus shares.
“Clearly
finalisation of this order is a positive for Airbus, and continues to
underpin strong order book coverage and rising production rates in
narrowbody,” Morgan Stanley said.
The
larger-than-expected order, which matches an order for 300 Boeing
planes when U.S. Donald Trump visited Beijing in 2017, follows a
year-long vacuum of purchases in which China failed to place significant
orders amid global trade tensions.
It
also comes as the grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX has left uncertainty
over Boeing’s immediate hopes for a major jet order as the result of any
warming of U.S.-China trade ties.
(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Leigh Thomas and Jane Merriman)
WASHINGTON
(Reuters) – The United States on Wednesday grounded Boeing Co’s 737 MAX
jets, citing new satellite data and evidence from the scene of Sunday’s
crash of an Ethiopian Airlines plane that killed 157 people, the second
disaster involving the 737 in less than five months.
It
was the second time the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has halted
flights of a Boeing plane in six years. It had grounded the 787
Dreamliner in 2013 because of problems with smoking batteries.
Shares
of the world’s biggest plane maker, which were up earlier in the
session, fell 2 percent to $370.48. The shares have fallen about 13
percent since Sunday’s crash, losing about $32 billion of market value.
Shares of Southwest Airlines Co, which has the largest fleet of 737 MAX aircraft, fell 0.4 percent.
“The
agency made this decision as a result of the data gathering process and
new evidence collected at the site and analyzed today,” the FAA said in
a statement, shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump announced the
planes would be grounded.
“This evidence, together with newly refined satellite data available to FAA this morning, led to this decision.”
The grounding will remain in effect as the FAA investigates.
Boeing, which maintained that its planes were safe to fly, said it supported the move to temporarily ground 737 MAX flights.
The
United States joins Europe, China and other countries in grounding
Boeing’s newest plane since the Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed soon
after taking off from Addis Ababa.
The
still-unexplained crash followed another involving a Boeing 737 MAX in
Indonesia five months ago that killed 189 people. Although there is no
proof of any link, the twin disasters have spooked passengers.
The grounding was welcomed by air workers in the United States.
“He
(Trump) did the right thing by grounding this fleet, both for air
travelers and aviation workers,” John Samuelsen, international president
of the Transport Workers Union of America, which represent aviation
workers and flight attendants, told Reuters shortly after the
announcement.
“Our
members are excited, and are no longer concerned about stepping into a
workplace which could lead to the end of their lives, potentially.”
NEW SATELLITE DATA
Canada
also grounded 737 MAX jets on Wednesday, saying satellite data
suggested similarities to the previous crash involving the same plane
model in October.
U.S.-based
aircraft-tracking firm Aireon provided the satellite data to the FAA,
Transport Canada and several other authorities, company spokeswoman
Jessie Hillenbrand said.
Aireon’s
space-based system can monitor data from aircraft equipped with
Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) transponders. The
data is considered less detailed than that in black boxes, which look at
systems running inside the plane.
Earlier
on Wednesday, Germany’s federal agency responsible for investigating
air accidents said it would not analyze the black box from the Ethiopian
Airlines plane, casting uncertainty over the process of finding out
what may have caused the disaster. The U.S. FAA said the black boxes
were headed to France later on Wednesday.
Ethiopian
Airlines spokesman Asrat Begashaw said it was still unclear what
happened on Sunday, but its pilot had reported control issues as opposed
to external factors such as birds.
“The pilot reported flight control problems and requested to turn back. In fact he was allowed to turn back,” he said.
(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington, Kumerra Gemechu in Gora-Bokka, Ethiopia, David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Additional reporting by Duncan Miriri and Aaron Maasho in Addis Ababa; Doina Chiacu in Washington, Omar Mohammed and Maggie Fick in Nairobi; Tim Hepher in Paris; Jamie Freed in Singapore; Terje Solsvik in Oslo; Aditi Shah in Mumbai; Sanjana Shivdas in Bengaluru; Aleksandar Vasovic in Belgrade; Julie Gordon in Ottawa; Angela Moon in New York; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne, Frances Kerry and Bill; Rigby; Editing by Gareth Jones, Nick Zieminski and Grant McCool)
* Norwegian cancels some flights after grounding MAX 8 aircraft
* Airline says it maintains outstanding order for more planes
* Ethiopian crash was second involving MAX 8 since October
* Boeing has expressed confidence in safety of its plane
* Analyst sees limited short-term impact for Norwegian (Adds statement on Dublin-New York replacement aircraft)
OSLO, March 13 (Reuters) – Norwegian Air said on Wednesday it will seek compensation from plane maker Boeing for costs and lost revenue after grounding its fleet of 737 MAX 8 aircraft in the wake of the Ethiopian Airlines crash.
“We expect Boeing to take this bill,” Norwegian said in an emailed statement.
The
Oslo-based airline has 18 ‘MAX’ passenger jets in its 163-aircraft
fleet. European regulators on Tuesday grounded the aircraft following
Sunday’s crash of a similar plane in Ethiopia, which killed 157 people
and was the second crash involving that type of plane since October.
Boeing
Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg said on Monday that he was confident
in the safety of the 737 MAX in an email to employees, which was seen by
Reuters.
Industry sources, however, said the planemaker faces big claims after the crash.
Norwegian
has bet heavily on the ‘MAX’ to become its aircraft of choice for
short- and medium-range flights in coming years as the low-cost carrier
seeks to boost its fuel efficiency and cut the cost of flying.
“What
happens next is in the hands of European aviation authorities. But we
hope and expect that our MAXes will be airborne soon,” Norwegian Air’s
founder and Chief Executive Bjoern Kjos said in a video recording
released on social media.
“Many
have asked questions about how this affects our financial situation.
It’s quite obvious that we will not take the cost related to the new
aircraft that we have to park temporarily. We will send this bill to
those who produce this aircraft,” he added.
Idle
planes will add to pressures on the airline, which is making losses
amid intense competition at a time when several smaller European
competitors have gone out of business.
The
carrier has raised 3 billion Norwegian crowns ($348 million) from
shareholders in recent months and said it would cut costs as it tries to
regain profitability this year.
“If
this situation gets solved within the next fortnight, this will not be
very serious for Norwegian,” said analyst Preben Rasch-Olsen at
brokerage Carnegie, adding that seasonally low demand in March likely
leaves spare capacity.
“The little extra costs they are incurring, they can probably get that covered by Boeing,” Rasch-Olsen said.
“But
if this situation continues into the Easter holidays, or May and June,
then it is a problem. They (will) need to get in new planes. And then
comes the costs.”
Europeans
tend to book their summer holidays in May, so the grounding may not yet
affect bookings for the peak season for the airline industry, the
analyst said.
Meanwhile,
Norwegian was maintaining its order for more aircraft of the same type
from Boeing, spokesman Lasse Sandaker-Nielsen said.
Norwegian
is expected to take delivery of dozens more of the ‘MAX’ in coming
years, raising the overall number to more than 70 by year-end 2021,
according to recent company announcements.
Shares in the airline have now dropped 6.8 percent this week as investors worried about the impact of the Ethiopian crash.
They fell by 4.8 percent in early trade on Wednesday but later recovered to trade up 2.7 percent by 1246 GMT.
Norwegian
cancelled some flights on Tuesday, and on Wednesday it cancelled at
least three dozen departures, its website showed, most of which were due
to fly from airports in Oslo, Stockholm and other Nordic cities.
The airline was booking passengers on to other flights and using other types of planes from its fleet to help fill the gaps.
In
a separate statement, Norwegian said it would deploy one of its larger
Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft to operate its daily route from Dublin to
Stewart airport north of New York City, replacing the grounded MAX.
($1 = 8.6093 Norwegian crowns)
(By Terje Solsvik and Gwladys Fouche. Additional reporting by Lefteris Karagiannopoulos; Editing by Susan Fenton and Louise Heavens)
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s aviation regulator said on Monday it had ordered Chinese airlines to suspend their Boeing Co 737 MAX aircraft operations by 6 p.m. (5.00 a.m. ET) following a deadly crash of one of the planes in Ethiopia.
An Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX 8 bound for Nairobi crashed minutes after take-off on Sunday, killing all 157 people on board.
It was the second crash of the 737 MAX, the latest version of Boeing’s workhorse narrowbody jet that first entered service in 2017.
In October, a 737 MAX 8 operated by Indonesian budget carrier Lion Air crashed 13 minutes after take-off from Jakarta on a domestic flight, killing all 189 passengers and crew on board.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said in a statement it would notify airlines as to when they could resume flying the jets after contacting Boeing and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to ensure flight safety.
“Given that two accidents both involved newly delivered Boeing 737-8 planes and happened during take-off phase, they have some degree of similarity,” the CAAC said, adding that the order was in line with its principle of zero-tolerance on safety harzards. The 737 MAX 8 is sometimes referred to as the 737-8.
The cause of the Indonesian crash is still being investigated. A preliminary report issued in November, before the cockpit voice recorder was recovered, focused on airline maintenance and training and the response of a Boeing anti-stall system to a recently replaced sensor but did not give a reason for the crash.
Chinese airlines have 96 737 MAX jets in service, the state company regulator said on Weibo.
Caijing, a Chinese state-run news outlet that covers finance and economics, said many flights scheduled to use 737 MAX planes would instead use the 737-800 models.
A Boeing spokesman declined to comment.
A U.S. official told Reuters the United States was unsure of what information China was acting on.
The U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, said there were no plans to follow suit given the 737 MAX had a stellar safety record in the United States and there was a lack of information about the cause of the Ethiopian crash.
Western industry sources say China has been at pains in recent years to assert its independence as a safety regulator as it negotiates mutual safety standard recognition with regulators in the United States and Europe.
In 2017, it signed a mutual recognition deal with the FAA, but industry sources say it has struggled to gain approval from the FAA that would allow it to sell its C919 airliner to Western airlines.
SAFETY STANDARDS
According to flight tracking website FlightRadar24 there were no Boeing 737 MAX 8 planes flying over China as of 0043 GMT on Monday.
Most of Air China Ltd’s 737 MAX fleet of 15 jets landed on Sunday evening, with the exception of two that landed on Monday morning from international destinations, according to data on FlightRadar24.
It did not list any upcoming scheduled flights for the planes, nor did China Southern Airlines Co, which also has its fleet on the ground.
China Eastern Airlines Corp Ltd four 737 MAX jets landed on Sunday evening and no further flights were scheduled until Tuesday, FlightRadar24 data showed.
Cayman Airways has grounded both of its new 737 MAX 8 jets until more information was received, the Cayman Islands airline said in a statement on its website.
Fiji Airways said it had followed a comprehensive induction process for its new Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft and it had full confidence in the airworthiness of its fleet.
“We continue to ensure that our maintenance and training program for pilots and engineers meets the highest safety standards,” the airline said.
Singapore Airlines Ltd, whose regional arm SilkAir operates the 737 MAX, said it was monitoring the situation closely, but its planes continued to operate as scheduled.
Indonesia said it would continue to monitor its airlines operating the 737 MAX, which include Lion Air and Garuda Indonesia but it did not mention any plan to ground the planes.
(Reporting by Josh Horwitz and John Ruwitch; additional reporting by Brenda Goh in Shanghai, Stella Qiu in Beijing, David Shepardson in Washington, Tom Westbrook in Sydney, Jamie Freed in Singapore; Edward Davies in Jakarta and Tim Hepher in Paris; Editing by Richard Pullin, Robert Birsel)
São Paulo, Brazil, February 6th, 2019 – Embraer Defense & Security and its partner Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) were awarded a contract to deliver 12 A-29 Super Tucano light attack aircraft to the Nigerian Air Force.
“SNC is proud to work with our partner, Embraer Defense & Security, to build A-29s in support of the Nigerian Air Force in addressing their on-going training and security needs,” said Taco Gilbert, Senior Vice President of ISR, Aviation and Security (IAS) at SNC. “The combat-proven A-29 is designed and built for the mission in Nigeria. It’s the most reliable and cost-effective solution for basic and advanced flight and combat training, close air support operations, ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance), counterinsurgency and irregular warfare scenarios.”
“The A-29 Super Tucano has become the global reference for light attack and advanced training with a proven track record in several combat zones around the world”, said Jackson Schneider, President and CEO of Embraer Defense & Security. “Embraer welcomes Nigeria as the latest member of this true international coalition that is helping bring peace to the world.” The A-29 is conducting combat missions on a daily basis in theaters around the world. It has more than 46,000 combat hours and more than 360,000 total flight hours. With the Nigeria order, the A-29 is the choice of 14 air forces worldwide.
In addition to its combat record, the A-29’s robust landing gear and enhanced clearance enable take-off and landing in even the most austere field conditions. The aircraft also offers exceptional dependability and accuracy in weapons delivery, making it highly effective in the light attack role.
The contract for the Nigerian Air Force includes ground training devices, mission planning systems, mission debrief systems, spares, ground support equipment, alternate mission equipment, contiguous U.S. interim contractor support, outside of continental U.S. (OCONUS) contractor logistic support and field service representatives for OCONUS support.
The aircraft will be produced in Jacksonville, Florida, and modified in Centennial, Colorado. The aircraft are expected to be delivered to Nigeria in line with the contract timelines, as part of a larger more comprehensive training and support package.
(Reuters) – FedEx Corp said on Wednesday it would hire about 55,000 workers and increase hours for some existing employees for the holiday shopping season as the U.S. package delivery company prepares to cater to the expected jump in shipments due to online shopping boom.
The company said it would also expand its U.S. ground-shipping operations to six and seven days per week for the busiest shopping season of the year.
FedEx said the six-day ground-shipping operations would be extended throughout its U.S. network all-year round.
“The rise in demand for e-commerce goes beyond peak. It’s a year-round phenomenon…,” said Raj Subramaniam, chief marketing and communications officer.
(Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)
