Air India, Jet flights escape disaster at Mumbai airport

An aviation disaster was averted at Mumbai airport Sunday when two aircraft got clearance to take off simultaneously from two runways but the pilots stopped the planes in the nick of time, an airport official said.

The incident occurred at 7.27 a.m. when Air India’s Mumbai-Delhi and Jet Airways’ Mumbai-Kolkata flight were scheduled for departure.

While the Air India aircraft with 119 passengers was awaiting take-off on the main runway 927, the Jet plane with 120 passengers awaited at the cross-runway 1427, the official said.

After clearance from the Air Traffic Control (ATS), both aircraft started moving and came almost opposite each other before their pilots aborted the take off.

This is the second major instance of a near-collision at Mumbai airport in the past four months.

On Feb 9, a near-collision between a helicopter in the president’s air entourage and an Air India flight was averted.

Mumbai airport, among the busiest in the world, has two runways running across each other (in X formation). While the main runway is used round-the-clock, the cross-runway (1427) is used for six hours daily.

There is generally a few minutes gap between every take off. The runways are alternatively used for take-off and landing.

The ATC is now actively considering a proposal to use the cross-runway round-the-clock to ease air congestion over Mumbai.

American latest to try 757s on international routes

American Airlines has become the latest U.S. airline to begin flying Boeing 757 jets on international routes. AA yesterday unveiled a reconfigured version of its 757 that it says it will deploy on certain trans-Atlantic and Latin American routes. AA says it is reconfiguring 18 of its 124 757s for international service. AA’s 757’s “revamped interiors — which include new seats and updated in-flight entertainment systems — are expected to be completed by the end of the year. The 757 Business Class cabin, with a 2-2 seating configuration, features 16 lie-flat seats with drop-down armrests. The coach cabin has 166 seats in a 3-3 configuration.”

The first flight on one of those 757s took place yesterday, flying between New York JFK and Brussels.  AA will also fly the 757s between Miami and Salvador, Brazil, with continuing service to Recife.

AA “also has revamped 47 Boeing 777 airplanes to improve passenger comfort on flights performing on U.S. routes to the United Kingdom, Japan, China, India and Latin America.”Continuing upgrades of AA’s 767-200s are expected to be finished by mid-year.

BA removes first class service on long haul flights

International jet-setters are likely to be distressed by the news that British Airways will be doing away with its first-class service, as the recession has taken a major bite out of demand for premium air travel. 

For decades, flying first class on BA, was the only way that many business moguls and glitterati would think of travelling. 

The carrier has already removed first class accommodation from long-haul aircraft, and is currently reviewing the seating configuration for new planes. 

In the post-millennium boom, well-to-do passengers spent lavishly for access to the airline’s designer cabins, Michelin-class dining, the world’s finest wines and free pyjamas and slippers. When the credit crunch hit last year, however, the demand among air travellers for in-flight opulence took a nosedive. 

Willie Walsh, the BA chief executive, confirmed that luxuries were being stripped. He said: “The long-haul aircraft that we take delivery of this year will not have any first class cabins in them,” adding: “Longer term we will review the configuration of all new aircraft.” 

British Airways needs to find ways to cut costs. Demand for both first and business class has fallen sharply, and it has just reported a 401 million pound ($638 million) loss even though it is still adding routes. British Airways also revealed that its new service from London Heathrow to Las Vegas, to be launched later this year, and which will cater to “high rollers”, will not offer a first-class cabin.

Existing flights will keep their first-class seating at the moment because company officials state that the cost of tearing out the section and replacing it with business class or coach seating would be too expensive. This could have a good effect on the more proletarian passengers–because with more empty seats in the posh section, there would be a greater chance of getting upgraded. The potential bonanza may not last long, however, because BA might follow the lead of other carriers like KLM and Delta and scrap first class on transatlantic routes altogether.

Jet Airways to put freeze on new fleet addition

Jet Airways, the country’s second largest private carrier by market share, has decided to put a freeze on the addition of new fleet, apart from postponing future aircraft deliveries for two years. This is on the back of overcapacity for most airlines with a large number of aircraft lying unused. 

Jet Airways, which operates over 370 flights daily, operates a fleet of 86 aircraft that includes Boeing, Airbus and ATR. Out of these, 38 are owned by Jet with the other 48 being leased. The Jet-JetLite combine has a total fleet of 110 aircraft. 

Jet Airways chief executive officer Wolfgang Prock-Schauer confirmed the development to ET saying, “There will be no addition of fleet with the operating remaining the same in the current financial year. We will expand our fleet once operation stabilise.” 

Jet Airways had Rs 1,330 crore cash at the end of March 31, 2009 with a debt equity ratio 5:1. The debt on the books stands at $3.1 billion. The Naresh Goyal-promoted airline has reduced capacity by a fifth in the domestic market and is expected to reduce further. “We are evaluating the situation as the industry still has excess capacity of 20%,” Prock-Schauer said. 

In April, Jet’s domestic traffic was down 38% to 5.52 lakh passengers from 8.39 lakh a year earlier. It has cut back on flights through route rationalisation and has already wet-leased nine surplus aircraft. For the last quarter, it earned revenues of $34 million from leasing out its fleet. On airfares, Prock-Schauer said fares will be competitive in the coming weeks and as long as overcapacity remained, yields in the domestic segment will continue to remain under pressure. 

Jet and Kingfisher came together last October and formed an operational alliance to reduce capacity. “The alliance is still in progress and we cannot comment at this juncture,” Prock-Schauer said in a conference call with analysts. When queried on allowing foreign airlines to pick up equity in domestic companies, he said there was no need to change the rule. 

In a bid to contain losses, Jet has significantly cut down its fleet size and reduced flights on the domestic network. Loss incurred by domestic airline industry was about Rs 10,000 crore in 2008-09.

London Luton linked with India

London Luton Airport has been connected to South Africa, Asia and India thanks to a new route with EL AL to Tel Aviv. 

The launch of the service with the Israeli airline to Tel Aviv means that passengers can now use the service to take onward flights to other destinations such as Beijing, Johannesburg, Hong Kong, Bangkok and Mumbai. 

Flights between the Israeli city and Luton Airport will begin this weekend and are set to run six times a week. 

Glyn Jones, managing director of Luton Airport, said the launch was “very exciting” because it offered the possibility of onward connecting flights. 

“London Luton continues to offer more choice with new routes and more flight departures,” he added. 

More than ten million passengers use the airport each year and it employs 500 staff. 

The news of this new flight route comes after Wizz Air celebrated its fifth birthday at Luton Airport last week. 

Passengers were in for a treat when they were greeted with cupcakes at the check-in and were entertained by Heart FM.

New low-cost airline JetAmerica targets smaller markets

A new low-cost airline will begin serving mid-sized U.S. cities that it thinks larger carriers have left behind.

Clearwater, Fla.-based JetAmerica said 34 nonstop passenger flights a week will start July 13 at Toledo, Ohio; South Bend, Ind.; Melbourne, Fla.; Newark, N.J.; Minneapolis and Lansing, Mich. Twenty-eight flights start or end at Newark Liberty International Airport. The carrier will add six more flights — from Toledo to Minneapolis — starting Aug. 14.

JetAmerica is targeting small and midsize cities like Lansing, which has seen the number of daily flights at its Capital Region International Airport fall from 35 to 12 the past five years. The decline is part of a national trend that has seen airfares increase at those airports as daily flights have decreased.

Robert Selig, head of the Capital Region Airport Authority, said JetAmerica will give Lansing business travelers direct access to New York City and carry leisure travelers to central Florida.

“We don’t have access to either one right now,” Selig said. “So, this is going to fill a major void in our schedule.”

Filling that void won’t be cheap.

The Lansing, South Bend, Melbourne and Toledo airports are subsidizing JetAmerica with $1.4 million in grants in its first year, along with about $867,000 in waived airport fees and $1.1 million in marketing and advertising assistance.

South Bend, Toledo and Melbourne received their grants from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Small Community Air Service Development Program, which has awarded $104 million to 223 recipients since 2002 in an effort to restore lost service and bring air fares down.

Newark and Minneapolis, each of which serve more than 20 million passengers a year, are not offering assistance to JetAmerica.

John Weikle, chief executive of JetAmerica, said the subsidies will help insulate the new carrier from spikes in jet fuel prices. Higher fuel prices have contributed to the failures of at least four major airlines since 9/11. Smaller carriers have also been hurt.

Surging fuel prices helped bankrupt ultra-discounter Skybus Inc. last year. Weikle founded that Columbus, Ohio-based airline known for its $10 fares. The bankruptcy cost 450 employees their jobs.

JetAmerica’s pricing scheme will share some Skybus characteristics.

Prices will start at $9 a seat and top out at $199. The $9 price will apply to the first nine to 19 seats on each plane. Passengers will pay $15 to check a bag. Food, drinks and in-flight TV will also come at a cost.

The carrier is starting out with one leased Boeing 737-800, expects to add a second in the first month, and have as many as four by July of next year. Weikle’s business plans calls for an additional 189-seat jet to be leased every four months.

Each Boeing 737-800 can fly to four cities a day, Weikle said.

Weikle estimated JetAmerica’s revenue at more than $50 million in the first year and about $150 million in the second. He compares his business model to that of Wal-Mart Inc., which started out by serving cities of less than 50,000 people because competitors were not interested in them.

JetAmerica plans to serve Melbourne, Fla., with at least six flights a week. Richard Ennis, executive director of Melbourne International Airport, said JetAmerica’s planes and nonstop routes persuaded him to support the carrier. Melbourne, a coastal community about 70 miles southeast of Orlando, recorded a 45 percent decline in passenger traffic at its airport from 2000 to 2008.

Ennis said carriers with larger jets like the Boeing 737-800 charge less per seat, which is an advantage enjoyed by Orlando International Airport and Orlando Sanford International Airport.

“It’s the only way I can beat them out,” Ennis said of the neighboring airports.

Major robbery and heist at Mumbai airport, 1 injured

In a daring heist, three robbers decamped with about 100 kilograms of gold and silver from the Indian Airlines cargo terminal at Mumbai’s domestic airport on Monday. The robbers, it seems, had prior information about the cargo.

 Confirming the development, Manish Kalghati, General Manager, Corporate Communications & PR of GVK Infrastructure, said: “Yes, the theft took place around 11 am at the Indian Airlines cargo section.” Kalghati, however, refused to provide confirmation on the quantity of gold and silver stolen.

 Sources said the robbers assaulted one of the guards who tried to raise an alarm. What has surprised many is the manner in which the robbers entered the heavily guarded airport and carried out the heist. The domestic airport has been undergoing major renovation work. Meanwhile, a meeting has been called by the Indian Airlines and Air India officials to probe into the security breach.

Emirates Earnings Fall 72 Percent.

Emirates, headquartered in Dubai U.A.E, said that their profit fell 72 percent for their last fiscal period due to the drop in demand for air travel and the heavy expenditure of high oil prices. Despite the heavy hit, the carrier remained profitable; their 21st consecutive year, thanks to increased sales due to high capacity.

Emirates posted a profit of 1.49 billion dirhams ($406 million) for the year ended March 31, 2009. The number is shy of their record profit of 5.3 billion dirhams a year earlier.  Note that these figures include the entire Emirates Group as a whole, which include profit for the airline itself, as well as their cargo services, tour operations, etc.

Emirates has grown rapidly in the past few years. Their fleet is relatively new – 64 months average. Their fleet size, at the end of March 31, 2009, was listed at 127 aircraft. The airline currently has 5 Airbus A380s in service, and they’re awaiting 53 more of the super-jumbos.

Despite the profits, the carrier did announced unpaid leave for thousands of flight crew to cut costs. Like many airlines, even the fastest growing carriers still struggle in the weakened economy.

Jet Airways gets access to fly to Sharjah from India

India’s second-ranked airline by passengers carried, Jet Airways (India) Ltd, has been permitted by the aviation ministry to expand services to West Asia, connecting four Indian cities with Sharjah, raising concern among smaller rivals planning to fly to the region that their large peers are hogging limited, bilaterally negotiated rights. 

Jet entered the West Asia market in January last year on expiry of a rule that allowed only the national carrier—National Aviation Co. of India Ltd, or Nacil, that runs the Air India services—to fly to this region. With some six million Indians estimated to be working in the region, with about a quarter of them in the United Arab Emirates, Jet Airways expanded quickly into these lucrative routes as part of its first phase of international expansion that included connections to the US and Europe. 
Of the 18 cities it connects internationally now, six are in this region, including Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Doha, Kuwait and Muscat. It plans to add three more cities—Riyadh, Jeddah and Sharjah—to its West Asia network. 
Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, Jet Airway’s bigger rival by share of passengers carried, which flies to London, Dhaka and Colombo, does not operate flights to West Asia yet. 
A Jet Airways spokeswoman confirmed to Mint that her airline had received permission for flights to Sharjah but declined further detail. 
Outbound: Jet Airways chairman Naresh Goyal. Six of the airline’s current international destinations are in West Asia. Ramesh Pathania / Mint 
The permissions for Jet Airways from the outgoing government cover daily services to Sharjah from Kochi, Kozhikode (formerly Calicut), Thiruvananthapuram and Mumbai, according to a senior government official who wanted to remain anonymous. 
The airline earlier this year started flying the Chennai-Dubai and Mumbai-Kuwait routes even as it cut down on domestic routes. 
“The introduction of these new flights will serve to further strengthen our Gulf network, better enabling us to offer passengers seamless connectivity and a world-class product on the Indo-Gulf sector,” Wolfgang Prock-Schauer, chief executive officer, Jet Airways, said in an April statement while announcing the launch of Mumbai-Riyadh and Mumbai-Jeddah services. 
The ongoing expansion by large carriers to West Asia is likely to make it difficult for smaller carriers such as SpiceJet Ltd, which too is in the process of selecting routes to fly international next year when it completes flying the stipulated minimum of five years on domestic routes for eligibility to fly overseas. 
On routes in countries in West Asia or those such as China, the civil aviation ministry grants rights to carriers based on agreed bilateral rights with each of those countries, and several West Asian routes have already used up the maximum number of flights. 
SpiceJet may have to keep in mind the bilateral capacity while selecting the routes it chooses to fly, said Samyukth Sridharan, its chief commercial officer. “It is too early. We are still doing our study and will finalize (routes) by mid-July,” he said of the international operations from next year. “Obviously we will have to keep that (bilaterals) in mind.” 

An aviation expert said the ministry should check if the permission given to Jet Airways to fly on any overseas routes governed by bilateral agreements are utilized or not. “If not, other carriers should get an equitable share,” said Kapil Kaul, India CEO for the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, an aviation consultancy. 
The permission given to Jet Airways comes at a time when the airline has been told by West Asian carriers to which it had leased four long-haul Boeing Co.-made 777 planes to that the aircraft will be returned by the end of this year. A Jet Airways executive, who asked not to be identified, said it was in talks with two SouthEast Asian airlines and one West Asian carrier to lease out these aircraft for six more months after December. 
The once profitable Jet Airways has seen its losses mount over the past three years, and analysts expect it to post a loss of Rs150-250 crore for the last quarter of fiscal 2009. 
If the airline is unable to clinch the new leases, this executive said, it could result in changes in its international operations or parking the planes on ground.

Jet Airways to connect Mangalore – Mumbai – Riyadh from Jun 14

At a time when the efforts to directly connect the city with Saudi Arabian destinations like Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam are still on, Jet Airways, India’s premier private airline, has decided to connect Mangalore – Mumbai – Riyadh from Jun 14, 2009 on wards. 

There will be a daily flight. The connecting Jet flight will take off from Mangalore at 3.15 pm and arrive at Mumbai airport at 4.20 pm. The Mumbai – Riyad flight will take off at 7.30 pm and arrive at Riyadh at 9.05 pm Saudi Time. 

The return flight from Riyadh will take off at 10.05 pm every day and arrive at Mumbai at 4.30 am. The connecting flight from Mumbai to Mangalore will be at 9.20 am, which is set to reach Mangalore at 10.30am. 

Speaking to Daijiworld, Jet Airways official from Mumbai said that the airline is awaiting the final nod from the Central Aviation Authority, but added that they have already recieved booking instructions. As such, no hurdles are expected in the smooth operation of the proposed flights.

Calif. military jet crashes; pilot killed, 1 hurt

A military jet crashed during a training mission over the Mojave Desert, killing the pilot and injuring another crewman who ejected, the Air Force said Friday.

Capt. Mark P. Graziano, 30, was pronounced dead at the scene after his T-38A jet went down at about 1:15 p.m. Thursday near California City, about nine miles north of Edwards Air Force Base.

Maj. Lee V. Jones, a senior navigator, ejected from the twin-engine plane. He was listed in stable condition at a Bakersfield hospital, a statement from the base said.

Both men were assigned to the Test Pilot School at the base. Graziano was training to be a test pilot and Jones was training to become a test navigator.

“We are shocked and saddened by this sudden loss and our hearts and prayers go out to Mark’s family and loved ones,” Col. Terry M. Luallen, commandant of the school, said in the statement.

The crash is under investigation by a board of officers. The base did not disclose any other details.

It was the second crash of an aircraft from Edwards in less than two months. On March 25, a test pilot died when an Air Force F-22A Raptor crashed about 35 miles north of the base.

The T-38 Talon is a twin-engine, high-altitude, supersonic jet trainer used primarily for pilot training.

Test pilots and flight test engineers are trained in T-38s at Edwards, while Air Force Materiel Command uses the jet to test experimental equipment such as electrical and weapon systems. NASA uses T-38s as trainers for astronauts.

Air France to increase Havana flights in Winter 09

Air France has announced its expansion of flights to the city of Havana in Cuba.

As per GDS timetable display on 20MAY09, AIRFRANCE is to increase Paris CDG – Havana service from 7 to 9 weekly from 25OCT09. Boeing 777-300ER is to continuing operating this route in Winter 09/10 as well

AF476 CDG1100 – 1505HAV 744 57
AF474 CDG1330 – 1735HAV 77W x246
AF474 CDG1330 – 1735HAV 744 246

AF477 HAV1725 – 0810+1CDG 744 57
AF479 HAV2020 – 1105+1CDG 77W x246
AF479 HAV2020 – 1105+1CDG 744 246

Indonesian plane crashes, at least 93 dead

An Indonesian military plane carrying more than 100 people crashed into a row of houses and burst into flames, killing at least 93, the latest in a string of accidents plaguing the air force’s beleaguered fleet.

Local television flashed footage of fire engulfing the mangled wreckage of the aging C-130 Hercules. Black smoke billowed in the air, as soldiers carried the injured on stretchers to waiting ambulances.

Military spokesman Sagom Tamboen said the plane was transporting troops and their families, including at least 10 children, when it tumbled from the sky near an air force base in East Java province. It slammed into several houses in Geplak village, killing three on the ground, and then skidded into a rice field.

It was not clear what caused the crash.

But air force spokesman Bambang Sulistyo said the plane was nearly 30 years old and several witnesses described seeing its right wing fall off while it was still in the air.

“I heard at least two big explosions and saw flashes of fire inside the plane,” said Lamidi, a 41-year-old peasant who was working in his rice field. “The wing snapped off and fell to the ground.”

The plane’s charred tail and several chunks of its wing and body were scattered across the paddy.

Tamboen said the plane was carrying 109 passengers and crew when it went down 325 miles (520 kilometers) east of the capital, Jakarta. The death toll climbed to 93, he said. At least 15 people survived, Sulistyo said, many with bad burns.

The country’s air force has long complained of being underfunded and handicapped by a recently lifted U.S. ban on weapons sales. It has suffered a series of accidents, including a Fokker 27 plane that crashed into an airport hangar last month, killing all 24 onboard.

The C-130s are considered the backbone of the transport wing. The air force has operated the giant planes since the early 1960s, when it received a batch of 10 from the United States in exchange for the release of a CIA bomber pilot shot down in 1958 while supporting an anti-government mutiny.

About 40 more were inducted into the air force inventory over the next 20 years. Many were secondhand and provided by Washington before the Clinton administration introduced sanctions on military deliveries over bloodshed in East Timor in 1999.

The air force complained that many of the planes quickly became unserviceable because of the lack of spare parts. Though the embargo was lifted by the Bush administration, the air worthiness of many is still in question.

Tamboen promised a full investigation of all military aircraft.

There have also been a series of commercial airline crashes in recent years, killing more than 120 people. The EU responded by banning all Indonesian carriers from flying to Europe.

2 small planes collide over ocean off Southern California coast

Two small planes collided Monday off the coast of Southern California, and crews were searching the debris fields for survivors, Federal Aviation Administration officials said.

Coast Guard Lt. j.g. Stephanie Young said two debris fields — one with a plane’s nose wheel — were spotted five miles south of the Long Beach breakwater. FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said a pilot reported seeing the collision about 5:45 p.m and asked the Coast Guard to begin searching.

One of the planes was a Cessna 172 and departed from Long Beach, Gregor said. No information was available about the other one. It was not clear how many people were aboard either plane.

The Coast Guard dispatched a rescue boat, a patrol boat and an HH-65C Dolphin helicopter to the site.

Malaysian airline crew quarantined over swine flu

Malaysia (AP) Budget airline AirAsia has quarantined five crew members who were on a domestic flight that carried Malaysia’s second confirmed swine flu victim, a report said Sunday. The crew of flight AK5358, which flew from Kuala Lumpur to the northern city of Penang on Wednesday, was taken off duty Saturday, The Star newspaper’s Internet edition reported, quoting an AirAsia spokesman.

The flight was taken by Malaysia’s second confirmed swine flu case, a 21-year-old female student who had arrived in Kuala Lumpur on a Malaysian Airlines flight earlier Wednesday from Newark in the United States. She was hospitalized after reaching Penang.

Malaysia’s first confirmed victim is a 21-year-old friend of the woman, who also was on the Malaysian Airlines flight. He has been hospitalized in Kuala Lumpur.

The Star quoted Health Ministry Deputy Director-General Ramlee Rahmat as saying that both were in stable condition. He said all 101 passengers on the AirAsia flight would be put under home quarantine.

Of the 119 passengers on the Malaysian Airlines flight, 95 have been located and put under home quarantine along with 15 crew members, Ramlee was quoted as saying. The 95 80 Malaysians and 15 foreigners all are healthy, he said.

The ministry is still trying to locate one remaining Malaysian and 23 foreigners, he said. The World Health Organization has confirmed at least 8,480 human cases of swine flu in nearly 40 countries, mostly in the U.S. and Mexico, including 72 deaths.

Jet Airways enhances connectivity into Europe

Jet Airways, India’s premier international airline, has expanded its code-share agreement with Brussels Airlines to add the European cities of Marseille, Toulouse, Geneva and Vienna to its existing international network. Additionally current services on the Brussels-Lyon sector have been enhanced from three to six flights weekly.
With this agreement, Jet Airways will further enhance connectivity between India and Europe by offering travellers convenient and seamless connections between Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai in India, and twelve European code-share destinations, including Birmingham, Barcelona, Lyon, Madrid, Berlin, Paris Charles De Gaulle, Manchester, Hamburg, Marseille Toulouse, Geneva and Vienna via Jet Airways’ European hub in Brussels. Jet Airways also offers European travellers unmatched pan-India connectivity with a 45-destination strong domestic network.
Jet Airways flies daily to Brussels from the three Indian cities of Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai. In addition, the airline also offers daily, direct services to London from Mumbai and Delhi.
According to Mr. Wolfgang Prock-Schauer, CEO, Jet Airways, “Besides widening Jet Airways’ presence in the European market, the code-share agreement with Brussels Airlines has enabled both airlines to leverage each other’s network strengths and service quality to significantly boost air travel on the Indo-European sector.”

Paramount Airways in expansion, to hire 1,000

Chennai-based Paramount Airways is set to hire over 1,000 people in phases over the next 15 months, even as big rivals prune staff and fleet size to cope with the effects of the economic downturn.
The personnel to be hired include cabin crew, technicians, pilots and ground staff as part of the airline’s fleet expansion plan. The airline, which now has 800 staff, plans to induct 15 new 80-seater Embraer planes into its fleet by the end of 2010.
The airline current has five Embraers and the new ones will come in under leases that will save on upfront investment.
“We are in the process of hiring and will employ 60 to 80 people per aircraft,” said 31-year-old M Thiagarajan, managing director, Paramount Airways, who is a pilot by training.
The staff addition works out to between 900 and 1200 people for 15 aircraft to be inducted in 18 months from now. The airline recently enhanced its route network to western and eastern India. It is planning to operate multiple flights to north India in the next quarter, Thiagarajan said.

787 will probably have first flight by end-June 2009

Boeing is sticking to its assertion that its long-delayed 787 will take its first flight before the end of the second quarter. That news is attracting Bronx cheers from some quarters of the blogosphere, which after two years of delays is taking anything the company has to say about the new jet’s delivery schedule with a huge grain of salt. 

But recent reports from Seattle-area journalists and aerospace industry publications certainly indicate that the Dreamliner is about to take flight. 

What catches my eye is this: the first 787 went back to the paint hangar at Boeing’s Everett factory for touch-ups earlier this month. It emerged over the weekend, and now that the plane is ready, any day now Boeing should start a series of ground tests of some basic functions. (For instance, if you flip the switch do the lights come on? If you pull back on the yoke in the cockpit, do the flaps respond? ) After that, Boeing will tow the plane over to its flight line, next door to Paine Field, where it will do more intensive tests, including firing up the engines for the first time. 

This ground-based testing is the final phase of the manufacturing process. One report says that Boeing’s planning to take two months to work through all of it. That suggests, then, that a first flight could take place sometime toward the end of May or early June, if all goes perfectly. And if there are glitches, Boeing will have all of June to get them fixed, making it seem reasonable to me that the first jet will fly before the first of July. 

In other good news for the 787 program, IcelandAir said today that it’s still committed to plans to buy four Dreamliners from Boeing, despite the airline industry slump and all of Iceland’s financial problems. Boeing has sold nearly 900 of the new planes, but has seen 32 of those orders canceled this year. 

And speaking of Boeing orders, Turkish Airlines said today in a regulatory filing that it plans to buy five 777-300 jets in 2010-11. This would be a new order that Boeing hasn’t listed on its books. 

On the other hand, FedEx is threatening to back out of a deal for 15 777s if Congress approves changes in labor law that would make it easier for FedEx employees to form local unions.

Kingfisher to start BLR – DXB

Kingfisher has announced that it will begin its Bangalore-Dubai flights starting June 25 with an Airbus A 320. This flights was originally planned to start in March 2009, but has been delayed due to poor economic conditions.

“The conditions have improved now. It is a good time to connect Dubai and Bangalore with the summer travel season starting,” said Vinay Nambiar, Kingfisher’s area manager for the UAE, Qatar and Oman.

Kingfisher also plans to start flights to Abu Dhabi and a couple of other destinations in the Gulf region, he said.

The daily Dubai services will be operated using an A320 aircraft. Flights from Bangalore will depart at 6.30pm and land in Dubai at 8.55pm local time. The return flight will leave Dubai at 11.30pm and reach Bangalore at 4.45am.

Jet Airways Launches two routes to Saudi Arabia

Jet Airways has revealed that two new flights from Mumbai to Riyadh and Jeddah will be launched effective June 14, 2009. Both flights will be a daily flight and will be operated by Boeing 737-800 with winglets. The flight timings are as follows

9W 524 Dep BOM 1930 – Arr RUH 2105
9W 523 Dep RUH 2205 – Arr BOM 0430+1 

9W 522 Dep BOM 1900 – Arr JED 2130
9W 521 Dep JED 2230 – Arr BOM 0610+1