As the titans of the $140b a year aircraft financing industry gathered in Dublin this week to celebrate an unprecedented boom, a few were casting a cold eye on mistakes of the past - and whether they could happen again. Ireland owes its dominance of global aircraft finance to the rise and spectacular collapse in 1992 of industry pioneer Guinness Peat Aviation (GPA), which demonstrated both the risks and returns possible from financing airplanes. The former GPA executives who now dominate the industry were debating which of the new players and investors that have flooded in the last five years might not have learned from those mistakes - and whether the industry had finally broken its cycle of spectacular booms and busts. The five-star venues that every year host the sector’s showcase conferences were heaving with hundreds of new investors - many from China - who have poured in to a once-obscure industry as global investors engage in a desperate search for returns. Throngs of financiers spilled into the street from the 200-year-old Shelbourne Hotel during the Airline Economics conference, whose delegate list has tripled to 3,000 in five years. “Sentiment is as positive as I have seen it,” Alec Burger the head of No. 2 lessor GECAS - formed from the hulk of GPA - told a packed second conference, Global Airfinance, where airline executives buoyed by surging air traffic eyed funds to expand their fleets. “This will be the fourth year of global airline profits above $30b and that is beyond unprecedented,” Flight Ascend chief economist Peter Morris said. Story has more details.<br/>
general
Japanese police have arrested a Chinese passenger after a brawl with staff at a Tokyo airport, the Chinese embassy in the Japanese capital said Friday. The embassy said the brawl erupted Wednesday at Narita International Airport after bad weather forced the cancellation of a budget airline’s flight to Shanghai, stranding 175 Chinese passengers. The carrier did not cover delay-related expenses so some of the passengers took the airline’s advice to book into a nearby hotel. But more than 100 others insisted on staying at the terminal because they did not want to pay extra for a hotel and food. Conflict broke out when airport staff tried to clear the facility, which by Japanese law must close at midnight. The embassy did not reveal details of the clash or the name of the airline, saying only that the passenger was still in custody on Friday afternoon and had access to a lawyer and translator. The embassy said the airline did not notify the passengers in Chinese about the airport’s nightly closure.<br/>
A consortium including ACS and its German builder Hochtief has been named as the recommended developer for a US$1.95b rail project at Los Angeles International Airport, Hochtief said Saturday. The public-private partnership (PPP) rail project includes planning, financing, construction, and 25-year operation of an automated above-ground transport system connecting parking lots, hire car points and metro light rail stations with the airline terminals at the second-biggest airport in the United States. The consortium comprises ACS Infrastructure Development, ACS's Dragados USA, HOCHTIEF PPP Solutions, Hochtief's Flatiron, Fluor, Balfour Beatty and Bombardier. ACS Infrastructure Development and HOCHTIEF PPP Solutions each have an 18% stake in the consortium. The project includes the delivery of 44 Bombardier trains. Construction is expected to be completed by early 2023, Hochtief said.<br/>
A domestic airport in Thailand’s northeast was closed Friday after an electrical short-circuit sparked a fire, the country’s airport authority said. Khon Kaen airport, an transport hub and a gateway to Thailand’s northeast, serves flights arriving from the capital Bangkok and the city of Chiang Mai in the north - a popular tourist destination. “How long the airport will be closed for is still being assessed,” said a public relations officer at the Department of Civil Aviation. Flights were being diverted to land at Udon Thani airport, the officer said. Authorities were still assessing whether flights can resume in the afternoon, she added. Four domestic airlines operate flights to Khon Kaen which sees up to 18 flights per day. The airlines include Nok Air, Thai AirAsia, Thai Lion Air, and Thai Smile.<br/>
Israeli airlines are being forced to cancel planned international flights because of a severe shortage of security personnel. Sun d’Or, the charter subsidiary of El Al Airlines, announced at the end of last week it was pulling flights to the Spanish island of Ibiza and the French island of Corsica slated for this summer after failing to get security approval. A third route is also being cut, although its destination is unknown. “We have been waiting months for approval to go ahead with flights to destinations planned by us for the summer of 2018,” CEO Michael Strassburger said in a letter to Moti Ilani, head of security for El Al, which is responsible for security at all Israeli airlines. “Unfortunately for a variety of reasons we haven’t received til today the approvals we asked for, which has created a problematic situation: At this late stage we can’t sell the seats we have to travel agents and fliers. Under the circumstances we are being forced at this stage to pull back from our plan to operate flights to Ibiza and Corsica.” Air travel in and out of Israel has surged since the 2013 Open Skies agreement with the EU. But an agreement between the government and the Histadrut labor federation to improve pay terms for Israelis working overseas collapsed after the Foreign Ministry said it didn’t have the money to pay for it. As a result, Ilani informed Israeli airlines they would likely have to cancel flights for lack of security personnel.<br/>
Oman Air, Bangkok Airways and Thai Smile shut down their Bangladesh operations last year as they found the route to be commercially unsustainable. The move has not only caused job losses of about 50 Bangladeshis but also revenue losses for the civil aviation authority and Bangladesh Biman that conducts the ground handling works at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, industry insiders said. Oman Air operated on Dhaka-Chittagong route for nearly a decade, but the Middle Eastern carrier suspended its operations from Chittagong in May last year and from Dhaka five months later. Bangkok Airways that spread its wings to Dhaka in 2011 suspended operations in November last year, and Thai Smile, the lower cost version of Thai Airways, in July, just after four months of operations. There are about 30 foreign airlines operating from Bangladesh. All the carriers are from Asia; no European or American airlines have operations here.<br/>
Bombardier’s marquee jet, slapped with crushing US tariffs last year, got a new lease on life when an American trade panel nixed the duties. The Friday ruling, a surprise defeat for Boeing, enables Bombardier to jump-start sales campaigns in the world’s largest aircraft market. A revival of orders would help debt-laden Bombardier, Canada’s largest aerospace company, add momentum to its comeback. CEO Alain Bellemare thrilled investors in October by forging a C Series partnership with Airbus. Now the two planemakers are poised to win new customers for the cutting-edge jetliner in Boeing’s backyard. “Other airlines in the US are probably going to take a closer look,” said Dan Fong, an analyst at Veritas Investment Research Corp. in Toronto. “If you get another US anchor, it will accelerate the sales momentum globally. The US is home to the most experienced aircraft operators in the world, and everyone will be keeping an eye on what happens there.” The US International Trade Commission ruled Friday that American industry isn’t being harmed by C Series sales. The unanimous vote blocked a Commerce Department decision last year to impose duties of almost 300% after a complaint by Boeing. The Chicago-based company said Bombardier sold the C Series in the US at less than fair value while benefiting from government subsidies.<br/>
The A350-1000 has begun a three-week demonstration tour to the Middle-East and Asia-Pacific region, following the completion of a flight test campaign that lasted less than one year and culminated in joint EASA and FAA type certification in November 2017. The A350-1000 tour comes ahead of the first customer delivery to Qatar Airways in the coming weeks. During the tour, Airbus said the A350-1000 flight test aircraft (MSN065) will visit 12 destinations and travel 30,000 nautical miles, with stops in Doha, Muscat, Hong Kong, Seoul, Taipei, Hanoi, Singapore, Bangkok, Sydney, Auckland, Tokyo and Manila. The aircraft will stop for several days in Singapore, where it will be on static display Feb 6-8 at the Singapore Air Show 2018.<br/>