February 2013

It wasn’t the New Year’s Eve 2012 memorythat the passengers and flight crew wanted. Spirit Airlines Flight 403 had just landed at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida. While taxiing to the gate the Airbus A320 clipped the tail of a US Airways A320 parked in a remote part of the runway. The collision caused a gash in the tail cone section of the US Airways aircraft. The Spirit aircraft suffered no damage, but the incident caused consternation at Spirit Airlines, which said it was not advised by air traffic control of the presence of the other aircraft....More

In early September 2010, a United Parcel Service (UPS) Boeing 747-400 freighter crashed 50 minutes after takeoff from Dubai International after attempting to return to the airport following its pilots reporting “smoke in the cockpit” owing to a main deck fire....More

When the European Commission (EC) agreed last year temporarily to suspend its emission trading scheme (ETS) carbon tax for flights to and from the European Union, the move was universally welcomed....More

The most significant traffic growth, according to IATA calculations, will be in Asia where traffic, including China, is expected to increase by about 50% from 2012 to 2020. Other hot-spot growth areas are South America and the Middle East—both forecast to see traffic increases of 40% each—and Africa, where 11% traffic increases are expected by 2020. So even if, as also expected, the traffic numbers for North America and Europe continue at their current flat levels, the high traffic growths of other regions will pile on top of an existing global baseline....More