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More debris from an Air France jet that came down in the Atlantic has been spotted, but investigators are pessimistic about finding the black boxes that could explain the tragedy. The vast area over which the new debris was found has led some experts to suggest the plane exploded before it hit the water. According to a report in French newspaper Le Monde, the "wide dispersion of wreckage discovered suggests that the Airbus (A330-200) exploded at high altitude". The experts, who were not named, said the plane most likely broke up after a "massive depressurisation" in the cabin. If this...

The Air France disaster should be watched very closely as there are numerous political implications in the aircraft industry. The Australian is reporting investigators may be looking at the Airbus Air Data Inertial Reference Unit (ADIRU) System that sent a Qantas A330 on a wild ride over Western Australia last year. The Qantas incident last October, and another in December last year also involving an Airbus 330 near Western Australia, involved a problem with a unit called an air data inertial reference unit, which prompted flight control computers to twice pitch down the nose of one of the jets. Fast...

French aviation officials have said they may never find the flight data recorders of an Air France jet that went missing over the Atlantic. The officials promised a thorough investigation but said the circumstances were very difficult. Flight AF 447 was heading from Rio to Paris with 228 people on board on Monday when it was lost over the ocean. Debris has been spotted 650km (400 miles) off Brazil's coast and navy vessels are converging on the area. Brazilian and French officials said there was no doubt the debris was from the missing plane. A Brazilian air force plane found...

Conclusions Overall what we know for sure is weather was a factor and the flight definitely crossed through a thunderstorm complex. There is a definite correlation of weather with the crash. However the analysis indicates that the weather is not anything particularly exceptional in terms of instability or storm structure. It's my opinion that tropical storm complexes identical to this one have probably been crossed hundreds of times over the years by other flights without serious incident. Still, in the main MCS alone, the A330 would have been flying through significant turbulence and thunderstorm activity for about 75 miles (125...

BRASILIA, Brazil – Brazil's Air Force says it has found airplane seats and other debris floating in the Atlantic Ocean along the path that a missing Air France jet was flying. Air Force spokesman Jorge Amaral says the seats were spotted by search planes early Tuesday morning but that authorities cannot immediately confirm they were from the plane.

A commercial pilot has said he saw a "fire" on the Atlantic Ocean close to the route of a missing Air France plane. The pilot, for TAMAirlines, said he spotted what appeared to be orange marks in the ocean near to where the jet went missing. More follows...

June 1, 2009 No hope for 228 passengers and crew feared dead in Air France catastrophe Philippe Naughton and Charles Bremner in Paris All 228 people on board an Air France jet are feared to have been killed after the packed aircraft went missing over the Atlantic Ocean. The flight from Brazil was probably brought down by a lightning strike after hitting a fierce storm, the airline said today, as it faced up to the worst disaster in its history. Flight AF447, which had 228 people on board, took off from Rio de Janeiro at 7.03pm local time yesterday bound...

Sarkozy buys a bigger plane to match other world leaders Adam Sage | April 21, 2009 THE ignominy is evidently too much to bear. When he flies to international summits President Sarkozy is confronted by a number of private jets that dwarf his French Airbus A319. There is, of course, Barack Obama's Air Force One but even the Spanish and German leaders arrive in bigger aircraft. Next month work will begin on a project to give Mr Sarkozy wings in keeping with his ambitions when French engineers take possession of an aircraft that will be turned into an ultra-modern presidential...

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.

Weapons of choice Sandeep Unnithan March 27, 2009 Delhi: Russia’s near-monopoly over the Indian arms market seems to be coming to an end, thanks to the armed forces policy of placing a premium on performance and not cost. Soon after Boeing’s $1.8-billion contract for eight P-8I Poseidon long-range naval maritime patrol aircraft—costlier than rival Airbus—the IAF is set to acquire six Airbus tankers. Senior Defence Ministry officials confirmed that a 1-billion euro contract for six Airbus A-330 multi-role tanker-transports is close to being finalised. This despite the makers of the Russian IL-78 tanker, six of which the IAF has in...

FRANKFURT, March 29 (Reuters) - European airplane maker Airbus (EAD.PA) may not be able to complete the A400M military transport plane programme, Airbus's chief executive told a German magazine. "Under the current conditions we cannot build the plane," Enders told Spiegel Online in an interview on Sunday, adding it would be better to mak

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. In a 46-slide presentation, the aviation experts painstakingly listed what they viewed as the giant jet's serious growing pains. To illustrate their points, they included snapshots of singed power cables, partially torn-off sections of paneling and defective parts of thrust nozzles in the engines as evidence of what they described as a shoddy work ethic at Airbus and its suppliers. The confidential manufacturer's information...

A New Zealand Airbus jet plunged into the Mediterranean killing all aboard after its crew put it into risky test manoeuvres at low altitude, French accident investigators have reported. The 53-page report by the Bureau for Accident Investigation (BEA) painted a chilling picture of the pilots fighting to save the high-tech airliner as it almost stopped mid-air, bucked and rolled after they decided to test its performance at dangerously low altitude. The German captain voiced his reluctance to undertake the manoeuvre but did so on the request of an Air New Zealand pilot who was taking delivery of the plane...

BEIJING: The first Airbus plane assembled in China will make its test flight one month before schedule in May, a government official in Tianjin, the city where the assembly plant has come up, has announced. This is the first time that Airbus is being put together outside Europe where the company has two plants in Germany and France. An additional 12 Airbus of the A320 family will be produced by the end of this year, the official said. The test flight will take place at a new runway, which is coming up in the Tianjin airport for the purpose of...

Two days before US Airways Flight 1549 crashed into the Hudson River, passengers on the same route and same aircraft say they heard a series of loud bangs and the flight crew told them they could have to make an emergency landing, CNN has learned. Steve Jeffrey of Charlotte, North Carolina, told CNN he was flying in first class Tuesday when, about 20 minutes into the flight, "it sounded like the wing was just snapping off." "The red lights started going on. A little pandemonium was going on," Jeffrey recalled. He said the incident occurred over Newark, New Jersey, soon...

Planes can float, but the US Airways Airbus A-320 that crashed into the Hudson River Thursday had a better chance than most. That's because it was equipped with a special device unique to Airbus planes that increased the likelihood it would stay on top of the water. The device, called a "ditching switch," effectively seals the plane by closing valves and ventilation ports, a spokesman for the airline said.

The U.S. Air Force is looking to replace the president's air force fleet -- possibly with an Airbus, FlightGlobal.com reports. The USAF has reportedly posted a request for information seeking market sources who can provide three "widebody" aircraft to replace the Boeing VC-25 Air Force One. The Airbus 380 has been named as a possible alternative, according to FlightGlobal.com. A 2007 analysis of aircraft options found that it would be more cost-effective to replace the VC-25 rather than attempt to modernize it.

Weary Emirates Airbus A380 pilots are complaining that they cannot sleep in their crew-rest area in the aft main cabin because the aircraft is too quiet. The pilots say that the lack of engine noise in the A380's cabin compared with other long-haul airliners means they are constantly disturbed by sounds created by passengers, such as crying babies, flushing vacuum toilets and call bells. Passengers also mistake the rest area for a lavatory, and pull the door handle. The Dubai-based carrier has asked Airbus for a solution that does not involve substantially adding weight, which rules out insulating the walls...

TOULOUSE, France (Reuters) – An Air New Zealand Airbus A320 on a test flight crashed into the Mediterranean sea off France's southwest coast on Thursday, killing at least two people with a further five still missing, authorities said. France's BEA civil aviation safety authority said the crash took place at 4:46 p.m. (1546 GMT) when the aircraft was approaching the airport at Perpignan, a city in southwestern France after a flight that had lasted about an hour. A witness told French radio said he saw the Airbus dive abruptly and plunge into the sea. "I could see it was an...

PARIS – An Airbus A320 passenger plane crashed off the coast of southern France during a training flight Thursday, killing at least one of seven people on board, French authorities said. The plane plunged into the Mediterranean sea 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) east of the French city of Perpignan, near the border with Spain, at around 4:30 p.m. local time (1530 GMT), according to a communications officer at the headquarters of the government representative in the region.

A passenger's laptop computer is being considered as a possible cause of the Qantas incident off Western Australia on Tuesday. The Airbus A330-300 was flying from Singapore to Perth when it suddenly plunged thousands of feet, leaving more than 50 people injured. The plane was forced to make an emergency landing at an air force base near Exmouth in WA. A computer malfunction involving the auto-pilot system is being blamed for the incident. 'There certainly was a period of time where the aircraft performed on its own accord as it pitched over nose forward,' said Julian Walsh from the Transport...

The venture, in the port city of Tianjin south east of Beijing, is working on its first A-320 aircraft, due for delivery to Sichuan Airlines in the middle of next year. The company intends to increase production to four aircraft a month by 2011, a significant proportion of the sales it expects to make in China and around 10pc of total production. But the plant’s launch, delayed until after the Olympics, comes at a bad time, with airline growth stalling even in China as the industry is hit by international economic turmoil. The world’s biggest aircraft leasing company, ILFC, is...

The Pentagon has cancelled a defence contract that would have secured 11,000 British jobs following fierce political lobbying by American companies. Airbus, the European aircraft manufacturer, won a contract to supply the United States Air Force with refuelling tankers earlier this year. The wings for all 179 planes would have been built in the UK in a deal worth over £4 billion to the British economy. Defence analysts said that the Pentagon seemed to be succumbing to political pressure to protect American jobs. Boeing, the giant US-based aerospace company, lost the contract to Airbus and is believed to have spent...

Why Block the Boeing Tanker? by Jed Babbin Posted 08/22/2008 For all the Pentagon’s protestations -- and harsh words from the Government Accountability Office and Congress -- the promise of a real competition between Boeing and Northrop-Grumman/EADS for a new generation air refueling tanker is apparently being broken. The Pentagon, based on its public announcements and all other reports, is apparently in the process of rewriting the terms of the competition to eliminate any chance of buying the tanker the warfighters need. On June 18, the Government Accountability Office shot down the Air Force decision to award the contract to...

Elements of Boeing's proposed upgrade package for transforming the C-17A into a more suitable theatre transport could be added piecemeal rather than in a single, $2 billion development package, a company executive says. That detail could be a key factor for the "C-17B" concept to gain joint US Air Force and US Army approval, and, thus, to preserve the life of the production line far into the next decade. Boeing has identified eight major upgrades required to make the C-17B a true tactical airlifter. The package includes higher thrust engines and double-slotted flaps for "extreme" short-field landings adding a centre...

The debate over whether America’s Boeing or Europe’s Airbus should be given the contract to build America’s next generation of mid-air refueling tankers has focused on several important topics, including the embarrassing flaws a recent General Accountability Office report found in the Air Force procurement process, the reshuffling of Pentagon jobs in its wake, and the suitability of both aircraft for the mission, chronicled in an excellent series in HUMAN EVENTS. All of these are important topics, but Americans should also step back and ask some basic questions before outsourcing key defense systems to foreign firms. Specifically, we need to...

Safety Group Urges Airbus Fixes LOS ANGELES -- U.S. aviation safety watchdogs, concerned about severe electrical problems that have blacked out cockpit displays on dozens of Airbus jetliners over the years, urged regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to mandate aircraft fixes and enhanced pilot training to alleviate such hazards. Recommendations released by the National Transportation Safety Board Wednesday cite 49 incidents over the years in which electrical problems caused various cockpit displays on widely-used Airbus A319 and A320 to suddenly stop functioning and temporarily go blank during flight. According to the board, seven of those incidents resulted in...

PARIS (AFP) - The former German head of aircraft manufacturer Airbus, Gustav Humbert, was detained for questioning by France's financial crime unit Monday in connection with alleged insider trading at Airbus parent EADS, a source close to the matter said. The French financial market regulator, AMF, in April alleged in a report that Humbert sold 160,000 EADS shares in November 2005, earning 1.685 million euros (2.7 million dollars). He is suspected of having benefited from privileged information on EADS' financial prospects as well as delays to the Airbus A380 superjumbo project, which were announced in June 2006 and caused the...

SEVILLE, Spain (Reuters) - Europe unveiled the A400M military aircraft on Thursday, giving the public a first glimpse of a powerful turboprop plane which will give seven NATO customers urgently needed strategic airlift capacity. The plane was developed by a unit of aerospace firm EADS at a cost of 20 billion euros (15.6 billion pounds), making it Europe's biggest military cooperation project, but has been dogged by problems in producing the West's most powerful turboprop engines. The first plane assembled was rolled out of a purpose-built hangar in southern Spain into blinding sunlight at a lavish ceremony attended by King...

To Darleen Druyun, wherever you are now... your name may soon no longer be tied to the most egregious procurement process in the history of the US Air Force's incredibly protracted bid for a new aerial tanker. It seems the latest attempt may just have surpassed your 2003 scandal. According to the unedited Government Accountability Office report on the USAF's recent KC-X bid, released this week, the Air Force took its level of bungling to new heights in awarding an initial $40 billion contract to a partnership comprised of EADS and Northrop Grumman. Overall, the GAO said, the Air Force...

WASHINGTON: John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is fending off charges that he pushed the U.S. Air Force into a faulty $35 billion deal for midair refueling planes. Democrats weighed in after the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, found last week that the air force had made "significant errors that could have affected the outcome of what was a close competition" between Boeing and a combination of Northrop Grumman and European Aerospace & Defense Systems, or EADS, which was awarded the contract. The Democratic National Committee accused McCain of "mimicking" EADS, the corporate parent of Airbus,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. auditors urged the Air Force Wednesday to rerun its marathon, $35 billion competition for refueling aircraft, upholding a protest by losing bidder Boeing Co (BA.N). The Government Accountability Office found the Air Force made "a number of significant errors that could have affected the outcome of what was a close competition between" Boeing and Northrop Grumman Corp (NOC.N). "We therefore sustained Boeing's protest," Michael Golden, head of the a GAO bid protest unit, said in a statement. Northrop was teamed with EADS, parent of rival passenger-jet maker Airbus. EADS (EAD.PA) had no immediate comment. --snip-- The...

WICHITA, Kan. — Almost a year ago in Everett, Boeing's 787 Dreamliner No. 1 rolled out with an impressive exterior but completely empty inside. At the sprawling Spirit AeroSystems plant here Thursday, the cockpit door inside the 42-foot-long front section of Dreamliner No. 4 opened to reveal a finished flight deck. Though it's only the front of the plane, it seemed almost ready for takeoff.

Sarkozy plan for new presidential plane takes wing Wed Jun 11, 2008 1:27pm EDT PARIS, June 11 (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy will have his own version of the U.S. president's Air Force One plane in an upgrade to the presidential fleet of aircraft announced in Paris on Wednesday. The Airbus A330 model chosen for Sarkozy's use costs $175 million when sold to airlines and has twice the range of the ageing short-haul A319 planes and business jets now in use. Sarkozy has been studying the purchase of a long-range private plane for months to eliminate the need for...

The aging planes of United, American, and Delta guzzle more gas and make the U.S. carriers more vulnerable to soaring oil prices—and to their global competitors For a look at one of the biggest headaches facing U.S. airlines, head out to Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport any day and watch the big jets taking off for the U.S. There goes United Airlines to Chicago, American Airlines to Boston, Delta Air Lines to Atlanta, and Air France to New York's John F. Kennedy airport. What's the big deal? Many of the U.S. carriers' planes are Boeing 767s, a model that dates...

Noël Forgeard, once the most powerful man in Europe's aerospace industry, suffered a stinging humiliation yesterday as he was detained by police in connection with the insider trading allegations that have rocked EADS, the aerospace and defence giant. Mr Forgeard was summoned for questioning by the Paris police's financial division, where he was told that he would be placed in custody over claims that he used privileged information to earn millions of euros from his stock options in 2006. The move increased fears that EADS's current executives could receive similar treatment. Mr Forgeard, 61, could be put under formal...

Airbus is asking European governments to contribute up to $18.2 billion in development costs for the A350, which threatens to reignite a debate about the level of state support for the company and for The Boeing Co. Airbus approached European nations for aid, and ministers have agreed "in principle" to the idea, Peter Hintze, Germany's deputy economy minister, told reporters Tuesday at the Berlin Air Show. His comments were echoed by Dominique Bussereau, junior minister for transport in France.

Loren Thompson, the well-regarded defense analyst with the Lexington Institute think tank, has taken heat from Boeing backers over his reports about the Air Force tanker decision. But in his latest report, Thompson echoes many of Boeing's concerns about the decision.

Airbus SAS , the world’s largest commercial aircraft maker, is valued at ``less than zero’’ after this year’s 31 percent drop in the shares of parent European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co., according to Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. analyst Joe Campbell ``The market is viewing Airbus as a liability, rather than an asset,’’ said Campbell, 62, who is based in New York and has ranked among the top five aerospace analysts for six consecutive years in an Institutional Investor magazine poll. EADS , based in Paris and Munich, on May 13 reported an additional three-month delay in deliveries of the...

BEIJING (AP) -- China has established a homegrown company to make passenger jumbo jets, state media reported Sunday -- a step forward in the country's quest to become less dependent on Boeing and Airbus.

The überstrong euro, on top of a failed plan to sell factories, means the planemaker may have to take brutal measures that will slash European jobs. No, it's not a plane that needs redesigning -- it's the European company's increasingly desperate plan to regain its cost competitiveness against Boeing. On May 7, Airbus' parent European Aeronautics Defense & Space confirmed it had halted negotiations to sell two of the planemaker's French factories to Latécoère, a French aerospace equipment supplier. Its plan to sell three German factories to other buyers also has fallen apart. Disposing of the factories was a key...

Pardon the vanity, but I have a question that I can not seem to determine the answer to. Did the Air Force, in choosing the Airbus A330 as the new refuelling tanker platform, violate the "Buy American Act" originally signed into law in 1933?

Airbus has filed a patent application for a new commercial trijet, reviving interest in a powerplant configuration abandoned by airliner manufacturers for two decades, The patent application, published by the US Patent and Trademark Office on 27 March, shows a new trijet design featuring a distinctive, noise-shielding tail structure. But Airbus's North American division has downplayed the design's relevance to the airframer's future plans: "Airbus is regularly filing patent applications and this is normal business for a company that is a leader in innovation and technology," the company says. "That's not to say this is 'the' design we're looking at...

Labor unions across the country are delivering thousands of worker petitions to Capitol Hill this week, urging lawmakers to stop funding the new Air Force refueling tanker program and start investigating it. ... The machinists union, the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers and the AFL-CIO are targeting more than the obvious supporters in the Kansas and Washington state congressional delegations. The union will follow its petition drive with one-on-one meetings with lawmakers, zeroing in on Arizona, Ohio, Illinois, Florida and Pennsylvania. ... The unions will roll out a range of arguments, from apple-pie-style pitches that show the economic...

Now Offering Customers GREAT Deals On 767-500 'Miserliner' "Enough!" That was the word from The Boeing Company on Tuesday, as the American planemaker shocked the aviation community with its decision to discontinue further development on the delay-plagued, composite-bodied 787 Dreamliner. In his speech to Boeing line workers at its widebody production plant and assembled media, Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Scott Carson said the confluence of a number of difficulties on the 787 -- ranging from fastener shortages, systems integration issues, and supplier woes -- pushed Boeing in the direction of scrapping the 787 program, but it wasn't the final determining...

The largest customer for Boeing's 787 is predicting another six-month slip in deliveries and has for the first time raised the specter that the new passenger jet's troubles extend beyond production delays to design problems. International Lease Finance Corp. (ILFC) Chairman Steven Udvar-Hazy told a JPMorgan investor conference that structural design changes have to be made to the 787's center wing box, a move that would require retrofits of the first two flight-test airplanes that are being produced. Calling the state of the program "not pretty," Udvar-Hazy said he doesn't see the 787 making its first flight until this fall...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Boeing Co's (BA.N: Quote, Profile, Research) program manager for tanker aircraft voiced great confidence on Tuesday about winning back a $35 billion aerial-refueling deal from a team that includes European archrival Airbus. Mark McGraw, a company vice president, said he was "as confident as I can be" that congressional auditors would find fault with the U.S. Air Force's February 29 choice of the rival team of Northrop Grumman Corp (NOC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Airbus parent EADS (EAD.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) to build 179 planes.

Boeing Co. is hanging its effort to win back a massive $40 billion aerial-tanker contract on a handful of small criteria changes made by the U.S. government. Those small but crucial changes shifted the competition in favor of rivals Northrop Grumman Corp. and European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co., the company asserted in its formal protest filing last week. A summary of its protest, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, says the Air Force shifted its stance on a request for data that significantly threw off cost estimates. The Air Force also tweaked the amount of space the planes would...

Democrats for Boeing The truth about the tanker deal. by Christian Lowe 03/24/2008, Volume 013, Issue 27 It was one of those insider deals that give the defense industry a bad name, conjuring up images of smoke-filled negotiations between the brass and corporate fat cats in plush leather chairs. By the time it was over, two fat cats were in jail, a top Pentagon official had been forced to resign, a corporate CEO had lost his job, and the reputation of an iconic company that had served American troops for decades had suffered irreparable damage. Then it turned out it...

Bernard Kouchner, the foreign minister of France and a longtime humanitarian, diplomatic and political activist on the international scene, says that whoever succeeds President George W. Bush may restore something of the United States' battered image and standing overseas, but that "the magic is over." In a wide-ranging conversation with Roger Cohen of the International Herald Tribune at the launch of a Forum for New Diplomacy in Paris, Kouchner on Tuesday also held out the hope of talking with Hamas, the Palestinian faction that rules the Gaza Strip but has been ostracized by the West and by its Palestinian rival,...