The Week in Brief 10 November 2011

Rex is the first airline to gain a CASA Part 42 maintenance approval. CASA boss John McCormick (pictured left) formalised the approval at Rex's Sydney office this week when he handed the documentation over to the airline's COO Chris Hine.

The Qantas grounding that saw 98,000 passengers disrupted and 108 aircraft immobilised is having a negative impact on an already struggling Australian tourism industry, according to an expert from The University of Queensland. The UQ School of Tourism's Associate Professor Brent Ritchie said the tourism industry was already in poor shape prior to the grounding. "The industry is losing market share to more cost-effective international destinations," Dr Ritchie said. "Barriers of distance, a high Australian dollar and competition from other more cost-effective tourist destinations are already impacting our tourism industry, any industrial action which risks access to destinations will only cause more harm."

Malaysia's Sun newspaper has reported this week that AirAsia's Tony Fernandes is set to start a new premium full-service carrier that will compete head-on with Qantas' Asia-based RedQ. Likely to be called Caterham Jet, sources said the new regional airline has yet to be granted an operating licence by the government, but has secured several Bombardier CRJs which have been sent for retrofitting. "Plans are for the proposed airline to operate out of Subang and commence operations in May next year. Some of the proposed routes include Bangkok, Jakarta and Singapore," a source is reported as saying.

Brisbane Airport Corporation has reported a net profit before tax, unrealised gains and shareholder distributions, of A$148 million, up from $142 million last year, defining what it says is "the company’s stability during a year that has seen world and local turmoil significantly impact travel and tourism numbers". International passengers were up 3.6 per cent on FY10 while domestic passengers of were up six per cent.

Virgin Australia has started selling business class seats on most of its domestic routes for travel from 12 January. This is an extension of the launch of J-class sales on the Brisbane-Sydney-Melbourne services last week. The timing is good, with Qantas still a bit on the nose with many business travellers.

Travel Daily reports this week that Jetstar is likely to put its first B787 on the Auckland-Singapore route when it arrives in 2013. The story apparently emanated from the Tourism NZ CEO's office.

And speaking of the 787, press reports from Japan say that the world’s first operating Dreamliner, in service with Japan’s ANA, ran into its first technical hiccup last Sunday when the landing gear failed to deploy. The aircraft’s pilots manually lowered the gear, after which the airplane landed safely in Okayama. The airline said the problem was sourced to a hydraulic valve which has since been repaired, 

A worldwide survey of how small to medium-sized financial and business services companies and their clients handle IT security puts Asia Pacific at the bottom of the list behind Europe, Middle East and Africa and the Americas, a conference in Sydney was told late last week. Financial firms in EMEA pay more attention to implementing IT security procedures for themselves and their clients than their counterparts in the Americas or Asia Pacific regions, the survey of some 600 companies has found.

Boeing's 737 MAX program now has a 68-inch fan diameter for the optimized engine design which the US manufacturer says will provide the lowest fuel burn and operating costs in the single-aisle market. Boeing so far has more than 600 order commitments for the MAX from eight airlines. Firm configuration for the airplane is scheduled for 2013. 

Bloomberg reports that a US Senate Armed Services Committee has found counterfeit parts installed on at least seven military aircraft, including the C130J Hercules and the P-8A Poeidon. "Suspect electronic parts from China were installed on military systems and subsystems that were manufactured by Raytheon Co, L-3 Communications and Boeing," the report said.