An Emirates Airlines Airbus A340-500, Emirates Airlines Airbus A340-500, registration A6-ERG performing flight EK407 from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, with 225 people on board, damaged and decommissioned the main runway at Melbourne airport while taking-off.

The aircraft ran off the runway 16 (length 3657 meters / 12,000 feet) around 22:30 local (12:30GMT) March 20, during its take-off run, struck its tail on the runway, and hit the runway end lights and the localizer antenna past the end of the runway 16.

The airplane climbed out safely, and tried to dump fuel over the ocean at Port Philip Bay but was forced to return to Melbourne for an immediate emergency landing when smoke started to fill the cabin.

The airplane was fully fuelled for the long non-stop flight to Dubai, and the heavily loaded aircraft landed hard on Melbourne's runway 34. She was able to taxi to the apron after being inspected by airport's emergency services.

Severe abrasions occurred to the tail skin and several access panels have been ripped off during the tail strike at take-off. The hard landing, un-avoidable due to the full fuel weight, has reportedly caused damage to the landing gear.

Melbourne airport authorities have confirmed that ILS runway 16 will need repairs and will not be available until Monday, March 23rd.

For full technical details of the accident including NOTAMs and METARs please visit Aviation Herald. Hat tip to Simon Hradecky who runs a great site keeping track of all the aviation incidents around the world.

The entry of Air India in to the Star Alliance is delayed by at least one year to the first quarter of 2010.

Star Alliance founder, Lufthansa was a sponsor for Air India joining the Star Alliance. Since 2004, Air India has operated code-sharing flights with Lufthansa between Germany and India.

18 months ago, the Government of India decided to merge Air India and the erstwhile Indian (formerly Indian Airlines). The process of merger, which was to have been completed in 2008, has been severely delayed due to "integration" issues. Apparently there is major confusion at even the most basic levels between the staff of the two airlines, with no clarity on who is responsible for what. Where have we heard of this before?


While Star Alliance and Air India signed a non-disclosure agreement last year, the compliance is yet to be done. The IT systems are no where close to integration and Air India has not yet, even informed the Star Alliance, on which of the two systems it will finally be using. This is proving to the major sticking point for Air India's entry in to the global alliance.

Adding complexity to this issue are reports that mandarins at the Ministry of Civil Aviation of Air India owner, Government of India, are "upset" at reported talks between Jet Airways and the Star Alliance, whom they perceive as a threat to Air India.


Previously Jet Airways had an announced policy of remaining alliance neutral preferring to sign one-on-one bi-laterals instead. Delays by the US Federal Aviation Administration on Jet's code share deal with Star Alliance founder United Airlines have launched a diplomatic protest by the Indian government.

However, the extreme operating environment due to the on-going economic slowdown, the sheer size of India, and the desire of the Star Alliance to grow to 50 members especially regional airlines, may be tilting the scales in favour of Jet Airways joining the Star Alliance.

and I see not reason why can India not have two airlines participating in the alliance.

At the start of Aero India in early February, Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd., announced it would make delivery of the first five of the Advanced Light Helicopters sold to the Ecuadorian Air Force using the behemoth Antonov An-124-100.


On the night of March 18th the giant transporter came to the HAL airport to load up. I managed to catch her departure yesterday and hope you enjoy the picture. She is BIG!!! Even with a small Nikon 50mm f/1.8 lens she filled more than 60 per cent of the photo frame.


While at the airport I managed to also capture one of the four Indian Air Force owned Embraer ERJ135 derived Legacy 600 Executive Business Jet (IAF tail number K3601, actual registration VU-AVS) coming in to land. A fifth aircraft of this type is owned by the Border Security Force. These aircraft are used to transport VIP passengers. I wonder who came to Bangalore on it?

Also got buzzed by an Ilyushin IL 76 MD of the Indian Air Force. Called Gajraj (King of Elephants) by the Indian Air Force, (IAF tail number K2879, actual registration VU-FGH). The IL 76 MD is a strategic heavy lift transporter very aptly named; she is big and noisy.

Even with its large size, the IL 76 MD Gajraj was dwarfed by the Antonov An-124-100.

Sorry about the heat haze, even at 10:15 AM, it is peak summer at Bangalore.

To get a small appreciation of the An-124's abilities see this video about the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) trains which were transported from Bombardier's Germany facility to New Delhi by the giant transporter.

A huge hat tip to Airliners-India user Aseem for the video link.

Please note, these images are covered by a CC license who terms are at the bottom of this page.

The sixth and final Boeing 787 Dreamliner designated for flight test is now undergoing final assembly in Everett, Wash. The airplane, designated ZA006, will be powered with General Electric GEnx engines.

Boeing photo

Progress continues on the fleet. The first flight test airplane, ZA001, is getting its paint touched up this week before finishing factory testing. Power was brought onto the second airplane, ZA002, in late February and build verification tests are progressing well. Production work continues on ZA003, ZA004 and ZA005. In all, assemblies for 31 Dreamliners are currently in production throughout the supply chain.

Also observe the pre-painted doors in the aircraft. I wonder why? since the aircraft will in any case undergo a painting. Any answers ?

SpiceJet announced reduction of up to Rs. 600 per ticket on its already low fares, for all bookings made for 30 or more days in advance, across all its 119 flights in the new summer schedule.

The airline's Chief Commercial Officer Samyukth Sridharan claimed the fares will be comparable to IInd AC train fares. Clearly SpiceJet is targeting the summer family holiday passengers.

Did we not have an airline try this strategy before ? Ah.... yes, Air Deccan.

I hope you enjoy the pictures. The high resolution versions are on my Flickr site.

If you like this please share the link with your friends and networks via the links below.

Etihad Airways, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, is set to overhaul the schedule of its flights to India and provide increased long haul connectivity and better frequency. Etihad is also streamlining its services to key destinations in response to changing demands and will now operate all Indian flights as early-morning departures effective March 30, 2009.

Currently Etihad has flights to six destinations in India; Chennai, Kochi (Cochin), Kozhikode (Calicut), Mumbai, New Delhi and Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum).

With the new schedule, Etihad flights from Thiruvananthapuram will now additionally connect to long haul destinations like Canada and New York, Chennai to Milan, Frankfurt and Moscow, Kochi to New York, London, Europe and Jordan, Kozhikode to the Middle East including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar. Mumbai and New Delhi will connect better to key destinations in Europe and the Mediterranean region.

Air traffic controllers in France are set to strike on Thursday 19 March in a national day of strike action.

Consequently the French Civil Aviation Authority, Direction Générale de l’Aviation Civile (DGAC) is limiting the number flights handled for each airline during that day.

Air France has confirmed it will operate all of of its long-haul flights.

On its short and medium haul network, Air France will operate nearly all its flights at Paris-Charles de Gaulle and 70 per cent of its flights at Paris-Orly, but warns that some flights may have to be cancelled during the day, and other delays may occur.



Air France is re-assuring its passengers that it will ensure that all its passengers travel.

Air France ground and sales staff will do their utmost to inform passengers if a flight is cancelled and, if necessary, offer an alternative flight either on Air France, on KLM via Amsterdam or one of the SkyTeam partner airlines.

Passengers are requested to log on to www.airfrance.com for all the latest information in the flight status tab or contact their travel operator.

Passengers in France may also call Air France on 3654, or, send a text message on their cell phones to 6 3654 indicating their flight number (e.g. AF2062).

Air France flight schedules will be updated on March 19th at noon.

Passengers on other airlines should check with their respective airlines. It will be a tough day to fly in France.

Emirates recently announced that it will commence services to Toronto and Bangkok with its Airbus A380 superjumbo from June 1st.

In order to do this Emirates will have to reposition two of its A380s from the current double-daily New York route.

Emirates representatives have confirmed this re-positioning. One aircraft will be deployed on the three times a week Dubai Toronto service, and one will be used for one of the double daily Dubai Bangkok service.

One of the double-daily flights currently operated by the A380 will be replaced by a Boeing B777-300ER on the Dubai-New York JFK route.

While this re-positioning is occurring, all is not well between Airbus and Emirates. German paper Der Spiegel reports that the airline has slammed Airbus for "defects" on the plane, which has grounded the behemoth aircraft nine times costing the airline over 500 flying hours.

Emirates has presented Airbus with a damning list of defects in the new A380 super-jumbo jet. The airline, which has ordered 58 of the aircraft, warns of a possible "loss of confidence" in the giant plane.

While both the airline and manufacturer are putting on a front on congeniality in public, in private storms are brewing over perceived shoddy work ethic at Airbus and its suppliers, by Emirates.

In a presentation in February, Emirates showed Airbus a 46 page presentation with included photographs of defects including singed power cables, partially torn-off sections of panelling and defective parts of thrust nozzles in the engines.

The other two operators of the Airbus A380 are Singapore Airlines and Qantas. They seem to be taking a softer line with Airbus, but Emirates has a lot more at stake with a 58 plane order which represents over 25 per cent of the total order book Airbus has on the aircraft.

Read the full article here.

Armenia flag carrier Armavia took delivery of its first new A319 yesterday. The aircraft was handed over to Armavia’s President, Mikhail Bagdasarov, at a ceremony held at the Airbus factory in Hamburg, Germany. Operated under a lease agreement with ILFC, the new A319 will increase the airline’s Airbus fleet to five aircraft from the current four, two A319s and two A320s.

Armavia’s A319 features the all-new cabin that recently entered service on all members of the Airbus A320 family of aircraft. The new cabin increases passenger comfort in a brighter and more modern cabin environment. The aircraft is powered by CFM International's CFM56 engines, and is fitted with 134 passengers in a two-class cabin layout.

The airline plans to operate this aircraft on its international routes, such as to Moscow, Paris, Amsterdam, Saint Petersburg, Zurich, Berlin, Athens, Kiev, Odessa, Simferopol and Dubai.

I had gone to Bengaluru International Airport for a meeting, and took my camera along. Got some great shots of Kingfisher Airlines and Jet Airways at the field. Hope you enjoy. Visit my photo album on Flickr.

VT-VJK (the first KFA A330), performing flight IT2 coming in from London Heathrow. Sorry about the heat haze. The flight comes in the afternoon.


VT-VJN performing flight IT001 takes off for its ten hour trip to London.


Observe the lack of winglets on this Jet Airways Boeing 737-800 Next Generation


A nice northerly wind ensured all the planes showed me their belly while taking-off


One of Kingfisher's newer ATR72-500s (model AT72-212A)



I wonder who came or departed on this Cessna 525B Citation Jet 3?
Please do leave a comment, and spread the word.

SpiceJet today announced its new schedule for summer 2009, effective March 29, 2009. Four new flights have been added to take the number of flights to 119 daily.

In addition to the current Bangalore Ahmedabad (via Mumbai), a new direct flight connecting the two cities is added.

Ahmedabad also gets a very convenient evening flight departing 18.35 to Mumbai and onwards to Chennai. This additional connection to Chennai now allows a second option for travellers between Ahmedabad and Chennai.

Pune will now be connected to Kolkata via Delhi. Mumbai will be directly connected to Coimbatore by a daily return flight. Delhi now has a convenient morning departure to Pune at 08:40.

Samyukth Sridharan, Chief Commercial Officer said

“Our On Time Performance remains around 88% and with a Technical Dispatch Reliability of around 99.6%, we are the airline with the least cancellations. These factors go a way to encourage people to fly us for both business and leisure travel. Our market share has shown a continuous rise over the last few months. We believe more and more people will choose SpiceJet for its connectivity, timing and customer experience.”

More information is available at SpiceJet's website.

In my recent interview with SpiceJet CEO Sanjay Aggarwal, he highlighted some of the innovative cost cutting methods adopted at SpiceJet.

These methods have won SpiceJet the coveted Institute of Cost and Works Accountants of India (ICWAI) award for Excellence in Cost Management. It is the only airline to win this award.

A distinguished jury of eminent persons from industry, academia and administration selected the winners, and on the basis of better practices for resource management, efficient utilisation of capacity and working capital, quality augmentation programs and R&D efforts, and precise information on performance.

Nandan Mimani, Vice President Finance and Financial Controller of SpiceJet received the award from The Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India recently. SpiceJet was one out of three companies from the private sector who won this award.

Commenting on this Sanjay Aggarwal, Chief Executive Officer, SpiceJet Limited said,

“We are delighted with this award – it is a recognition of our collective efforts in the right direction. Cost consciousness has been an intrinsic part of our corporate culture – SpiceJet has one of the lowest operating costs in the industry. We are constantly evaluating how to manage our costs even better, while providing a better experience to our customers.”

I cannot but help compare the corporate culture of SpiceJet, which never loses focus on the passenger, with that of Ryanair, which will do anything to earn a buck or rather a Euro.

Kudos to the team at SpiceJet.

During my visit to the Bengaluru International Airport on March 14th, I observed a Dragonair Airbus A330 B-HWH parked on the apron at 08:00

Obviously something was wrong. Normally the Dragonair flight is scheduled to arrive at 01:40 and leave by 02:40.

Found out today that the Dragonair aircraft had an engine problem on the outbound flight back to Hong Kong early morning on Tuesday, March 10th. Passengers were dis-embarked and put on flights of other airlines. A Cathay Pacific Boeing 747 freighter flew a new engine and a team of engineers to Bangalore on the 13th, and the Dragonair A330 was finally fixed and flew out on the 14th afternoon, about 8 hours after the picture was taken, five days after she was grounded.

An audit team of the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is meeting the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in Delhi today. The team will check if India is following the international safety standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) under the FAA's International Aviation Safety Assessment (IASA) Program.

During its 2006 audits, ICAO had found several violations of 300 guidelines. Shortage of skilled manpower was the biggest problem, and neither the DGCA, nor its master, the Ministry of Civil Aviation have taken any substantive steps to correct the short-comings. The DGCA reportedly faces a shortfall of 700 adequately qualified staff, one of the pre-requisites to be assessed by the FAA team, and one the FAA has already wanted the DGCA about more than six months ago.

As per reports, in the 2006 ICAO audit, for technical personnel qualification and training, India scored only two out of ten, against a global average of four; for safety oversight functions, India scored four out of ten against the global average of six.

This is going to be a tough time for Naseem Zaidi, India's Director General of Civil Aviation. Failing this assessment will result in a downgrade of India from its Category 1 to a Category 2 status, which will place severe restrictions on Indian carriers operating to the United States; currently Air India and Jet Airways.

Lest India thinks that its special new found friendship with the United States will help, one should look at one of the United States' closest allies, Israel, who was recently downgraded to Category 2.

As per the FAA guidelines

While in Category 2 status, carriers from these countries will be permitted to continue operations at current levels under heightened FAA surveillance. Expansion or changes in services to the United States by such carriers are not permitted while in category 2, although new services will be permitted if operated using aircraft wet-leased from a duly authorized and properly supervised U.S. carrier or a foreign air carrier from a category 1 country that is authorized to serve the United States using its own aircraft.

Facing the imminent threat of the downgrade the DGCA is desperately trying to recruit more staff, and preparing a roadmap to separate the tasks of safety inspections and accident investigations from its regulatory functions. It has even finally come to its senses and mooted a proposal for the formation of an independent agency vested with the responsibility of accident investigations.

The question now remains whether (a) Will the mandarins at the Ministry of Civil Aviation, finally come to their senses and give up their powers? and (b) Is it too little, too late. Will the FAA give India more time and accept India's improvement roadmap plan?

I am very doubtful on both.

Read more about the FAA IASA program.

Some updates on the production progress of the Airbus A380 superjumbo, courtesy of the A380 production forum.

MSN027 (F-WWSY) the fifth for Qantas (VH-OQE Lawrence Hargrave) came out of the Final Assembly Line (FAL) hangers and made its taxi tests.


MSN029 (F-WWSA) the sixth for Qantas (VH-OQF Charles Kingsford Smith) has been outside since it came out of the FAL in mid February. While inside the FAL, MSN027 and MSN029 had their tails switched. MSN027's tail going on MSN029 and vice versa. During a hail storm last year there was damage to MSN027's tail. To keep the production schedule, the tails were switched and repairs carried out. You will observe the tail on MSN029 (originally MSN027 tail) has been marked in black in some areas.


MSN023 (F-WWST) sixth for Emirates A6-EDF has left the FAL and is now on the flight line. It will make its first engine and taxi runs in early to mid April and also expected to fly in April as well.


MSN017 for Emirates (A6-EDE) will be delivered on 24th April.

Photos 1, 3, 5 courtesy Flickr user A380spotter. Photo 2 courtesy Flickr user Christope Ramos. Photo 4 courtest PictAero user David Barrie. All copyrights rest with them.

Visit the Bangalore Aviation Flickr photo gallery.