The World of Aviation

Airservices Australia is opening air traffic control towers in the Western Australian northwest centres of Broome and Karratha this week to cope with the significant growth in aircraft movements to the two key regional airports. From November 18 Airservices controllers will start providing ATC services from Karratha’s existing but refurbished air traffic control tower (it

Jetstar will become the first airline to operate direct flights between Hobart and the Gold Coast when it commences a daily A320 service between the two cities on December 22. The new flights will provide 126,000 seats a year between the Tasmanian capital and Jetstar’s growing Gold Coast hub. Earlier in December Jetstar is due

Airbus CEO Tomas Enders has bailed out of the troubled A400M, literally! Enders, a champion skydiver, was one of 10 parachutists along with A400M program manager, Bruno Delannoy, who jumped out of the third A400M development aircraft near Seville in Spain as part of the aircraft’s development program. “It was an enormous pleasure for me

Perth based Quickstep Holdings has announced its successfully achieved a key milestone in its production preparations for the JSF program in mid October, passing the ‘Toll Gate’ review set by JSF partner company Northrop Grumman. The Toll Gate measured Quickstep’s manufacturing readiness for Group 1 composite parts at its Coogee facility in WA, and was

The Star Alliance group of airlines has accepted Colombia’s Avianca-TACA and Panama’s Copa Airlines as new members of the alliance. The two airlines will join Brazil’s TAM as Latin American members of the alliance, and will commence their implementation processes before becoming fully fledged members in early 2012.

The first Sikorsky S-70i Black Hawk built by Poland’s PZL Mielec made its first flight on November 15. Based on the UH-60M Black Hawk, the S-70i is a customisable version designed for the international market and, apart from the first aircraft which was built at Sikorsky’s Hartford facility and first flew in July, all subsequent