The World of Aviation

The US Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) spent most of Thursday (Washington time) grilling Pentagon officials on the faltering JSF program as it hurtles towards a probable Nunn-McCurdy cost breach in April, which will likely result in all expenditure being frozen while the program is substantially restructured. Of key interest to SASC members was the

Boeing announced on March 11 that the 747-8 Freighter has achieved initial airworthiness, allowing test flights to operate with engineers on board, and clears the way for the second two test 747-8s to fly. “This is a critical milestone in our test and certification plan,” said Andy Hammer, test program manager for the 747-8. “With

Parliament has passed new laws which will strengthen screening arrangements for air cargo, in line with the Aviation White Paper released last year. Under the changes parcels and other freight will be security checked and certified earlier in the supply chain, before they are consolidated. This will replace the practice of aircraft operators conducting security

Qantas Freight has announced that it has joined freight quality management program Cargo 2000 as an associate member, which will see it move towards auditing and benchmarking of its efficiency. Qantas Freight head of commercial Theo Triantafillides said that joining Cargo 2000 would help to differentiate it and bring together many of the process improvements

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has finalised its 2008/09 annual airport service monitoring report, which ranked Brisbane Airport as the best performing in the country, while Sydney came in for major criticism. The report, which highlights a range of indicators including quality of service, prices, costs, profits and investment levels, ranked Brisbane with

Qantas has lodged an application with the International Air Services Commission (IASC) seeking an allocation for QantasLink to operate services from Cairns to Port Moresby from July 2010. The brief application notes that the airline seeks an allocation of 888 seats per week to operate 12 weekly services on the route using the 74-seat Bombardier