general

The last commercial passenger flight took off from Istanbul's Ataturk airport on Saturday and convoys of trucks ferried thousands of tonnes of equipment across the city to a giant new airport which Turkey plans to make the biggest in the world. The mammoth transfer between the two hubs, described by Turkish authorities as unprecedented in scale and speed, was already largely complete a little more than 24 hours after it began before dawn on Friday. The new Istanbul Airport, costing some $8b and one of several mega-projects championed by President Tayyip Erdogan, will initially be able to handle 90m passengers a year, close to the world's largest existing airport capacity. Authorities plan to expand that capacity to expand to 200m. Overnight hundreds of trucks carried equipment such as aircraft-towing vehicles and security sensors from Ataturk, on the shores of the Sea of Marmara, 20 miles (30 km) north to the new airport by the Black Sea. By early Saturday more than 90% of the move was complete, Turkish Airlines executive Yahya Ustun said. Overnight the final commercial passenger flight from Ataturk took off for Singapore, a departure which Transport Minister Mehmet Turhan described as historic. "I am glad to send you off as the last commercial passengers of Ataturk Airport," he said moments before the plane took off at 2.44 am (2344 GMT). "Upon your return, you will land in Istanbul Airport, a monument of victory, the world's biggest airport."<br/>

Singapore and Malaysia reached an agreement to end their months-long airspace dispute, the transport ministers of the neighboring countries said in a joint statement Saturday. Under the deal, Singapore will halt instrument landing system procedures at its Seletar Airport, while Malaysia will open up a restricted area near the countries’ border. “Singapore will withdraw the Instrument Landing System procedures for Seletar Airport and Malaysia will indefinitely suspend its permanent Restricted Area over Pasir Gudang,” the statement of Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke and Singapore’s Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan said. This will allow Malaysia Airlines’ subsidiary Firefly to start operations at Seletar Airport this month, the statement said. Media reports said the airline postponed its plans to fly out of Seletar Airport last year due to the dispute. In December, Malaysia said it wanted to take back control of airspace managed by the city-state since 1974, as Singapore’s new instrument landing system at its small Seletar airport involved a flight path over Malaysian airspace.<br/>

FAA acting administrator Dan Elwell last Thursday defended the qualifications of US FAA Aviation Safety Inspectors (ASI) involved with the Flight Standardization Board (FSB) for the Boeing 737 MAX 8, saying that “all of the flight inspectors who participated in the [FSB] certification activities were fully qualified.” His remarks, sent to US Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation chairman Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), came in response to an April 2 announcement that the committee is launching an investigation into the qualifications of the ASIs, citing whistleblower complaints alleging numerous FAA employees involved with the Aircraft Evaluation Group (AEG) for the Boeing 737 MAX had not received proper training and valid certifications. Elwell said the FAA’s Office of Audit and Evaluation had launched an investigation in November 2018 into whistleblower complaints from an ASI who alleged that safety inspectors with the AEG did not meet mandatory training requirements. He said the allegations were specific to the AEG, having nothing to do with inspectors working on the Flight Standardization Board (FSB) for the 737 MAX—although he did not address whether the probe had uncovered issues regarding the qualifications of FAA employees involved with the AEG who did not participate in the FSB.<br/>

Boeing said on Friday that it was slowing production of its 737 Max jet and establishing a new internal safety committee after two of the planes were involved in fatal crashes in five months. The company will reduce the rate at which it produces the 737 family of airplanes to 42 a month from 52, said Boeing’s CE, Dennis A. Muilenburg. In addition to the Max, Boeing produces the 737 NG and a military version of the plane. Boeing will also establish a committee on its board of directors to review how it develops and builds planes, Muilenburg said. The company is making the moves as it confronts an escalating crisis after the crashes of two 737 Max planes. The Max has been grounded, and Boeing paused deliveries of new planes, creating a backlog on its production lines in Renton, Wash. The company has been stockpiling finished planes in Renton and in nearby Seattle. Airlines around the world have thousands of outstanding orders for the Max jet, which represent billions of dollars for Boeing’s bottom line in the coming years. “Safety is our responsibility, and we own it,” Muilenburg said. “When the Max returns to the skies, we’ve promised our airline customers and their passengers and crews that it will be as safe as any airplane ever to fly.” In his statement, Muilenburg acknowledged that new anti-stall software played a role in the accidents. “We have the responsibility to eliminate this risk, and we know how to do it,” he said.<br/>

European airlines’ unwillingness to invest sufficiently in air traffic control has led to record flight delays that will get worse this summer, a senior industry figure has said. Jeff Poole, director-general of Canso, which represents global air traffic managers, said: “The airlines don’t like to hear this message — the lack of investment is largely due to the regulatory framework over recent years, where the emphasis has been on keeping costs down and not investing for the future.” The EC regulates how much air traffic controllers can charge airlines, which used to demand a focus on “costs, costs, costs”, said Poole, “but now the message from airlines is ‘capacity, capacity, capacity’.” He added that the entire industry needed to work together to solve ATC problems. Flight delays in Europe more than doubled last year to a total of 19.1m minutes last year as airlines and air traffic controllers failed to hit EU performance targets, according to figures from Eurocontrol, which co-ordinates national air traffic management agencies. The average delay per flight was 1.73 minutes in 2018 against EU performance targets of half a minute. Summer 2019 will be at least as bad as last year, Poole added, despite recent investment: “I’d like to be optimistic but I don’t believe I can be... It’s going to be a tough message this summer to say to people, ‘Yeah, we know it’s as bad as last year but look at all the tremendous work we’ve done.’”<br/>