Week in brief 240610

Reports from Kuala Lumpur suggest that Malaysia Airlines is threatening to cancel its order for six A380s because of continued delays. When asked about the possibility of cancellation, CEO Azmil Zahruddin stopped short of a denial: "The airline has plans to dispose of some aircraft before the arrival of the A380s and it is frustrating to plan with the delays by Airbus". Apparently the airline has already received US$30 million from the European manufacturer in compensation.

Wellington Airport has weighed in to the debate about upside and downside to the proposed Air NZ/Virgin Blue alliance across the Tasman, with airport management lodging a submission with the ACCC "outlining its concerns about the potential impacts on competition and the Wellington economy". The submission says that "historically, reduced competition on Wellington's Tasman routes has led to airlines reducing capacity and increasing the lowest available fares". The airport has also expressed concern that New Zealand's own regulatory approach "is not set up to properly assess the alliance application against the impact of a loss of competition".

The European Commission and the US FAA have agreed to cooperate on civil aviation research and development, after a meeting in Madrid recently. The aim is to pursue a common objective to develop and deploy greener and more efficient air transport systems through a legally binding cooperation framework. Under the agreement, the two parties will address a range of issues including safety, security, environment, performance, alternative fuels, aircraft design, unmanned aircraft systems, sub-orbital planes, satellite-based communications and related air traffic management. The EU and the US are already working on the development of other annexes, particuarly in the areas of aviation safety – such as the risk from volcanic ash clouds – and the use of alternative fuels in aviation.

The Guardian reports that UK Ministry of Defence aircraft were involved in 832 near misses with other aircraft, including passenger jets, between 2004 and 2009. And while most of those incidents were only technical breaches, there was apparently serious potential for a crash on 67 occasions. While in 222 instances safety was compromised. Among the near misses were 14 incidents a month on average over the five-year period involving military aircraft encroaching on the airspace of passenger jets, gliders and light aircraft. Clearly the sky is a big place.

The Saudi Gazette reports (very respectfully) that a 29-year-old electronics engineer with an Australian passport got a bit upset when his laptop and wallet disappeared from the security screening belt at the domestic terminal of King Khaled International Airport in Saudi Arabia last week. In the time it took him to pass through the metal detector arch his hand luggage had vanished. Apparently it's not the first time something of value has evaporated during the security process at that airport. Perhaps what's more amazing is that that sort of thing doesn't happen more often around the globe.