The Week in Brief 13 October 2011

Boeing's Australian main man, Ian Thomas, has confirmed that a B787 will be in Australia mid-November, specifically the 16th which is Qantas' 91st anniversary. Qantas is, of course, a signifciant purchaser of the 787. The two-day visit by the Dreamliner is expected to include Sydney and Melbourne.

Virgin Australia has been voted 'Most Admired Australia/New Zealand' in the Business-to-business category of the International Customer Service Professionals for the second consecutive year. The awards criteria for the category included innovation, commitment, engagement and consistency.

Jetstar has named Ms Miyuki Suzuki as CEO of the Qantas joint venture airline, Jetstar Japan. Suzuki, who has held senior roles with several multinational companies in Asia, will take up the role in December.

IATA's Tony Tyler has expressed the organisation's disappointment in the opinion of the Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union which has failed to support the air transport industry’s challenge to Europe’s plan to include international aviation in its emissions trading scheme from next year. A final decision is expected later this year.

The Chicago Tribune has reported that Boeing is promoting the use of iPad-based navigatin and terminal charts as another alternative to the paper route. Boeing's Sherry Carbary, VP for Flight Services, said that, "Everybody's looking at it. Nobody's yet pulled the trigger, they're trying to understand the value, trying to close their business cases". United Continental has purchased 11,000 iPads with the clear intent of putting them on flight decks.

Despite new technologies and data available on runway accidents, the number of runway excursions has remained stable since at least 1995. Flight Safety Foundation numbers reveal that, of the 1508 aviation accidents between 1995 and 2009, 442, or nearly a third, were runway excursions; while only 10 were runway incursions. The FSF says that such accidents are wrongly perceived by most people as a pilot problem. "They're not," an FSF spokeman said. "They involve aircrews, airline management, air traffic control and regulators - they all play a role."

It's Europe's turn to be focused on the malicious use of lasers to attempt to blind pilots. Right now it's not a crime in many European countries, but the continental ATC entity Eurcontrol is now urging the EU to criminalise the practive consistently across the Union. There were more than 4250 incidents in Europe last year and the number is growing each year.