Adrian is Auckland bureau chief for Aviation Week, based in New Zealand. He covers commercial aviation in the Asia-Pacific region.
Adrian was previously based in Aviation Week’s Washington office for nine years, writing for a range of the group’s publications and covering many aspects of the commercial aviation industry. He has won Australasian and international awards for his aviation writing.
Prior to joining Aviation Week in 2002, Adrian covered aviation industry and policy issues for two other publishing companies in Washington. He has also worked for newspapers in Texas and New Zealand, covering a wide range of topics. Adrian graduated from Auckland University with a degree in history and English in 1992.
A team led by Raytheon has won a contract to improve an important NASA tool for researching new ATM concepts to be used in the NextGen modernization program. Under the $29.1 million contract, the Raytheon team will “develop enhancements to the systemwide modeling and simulation capability” of NASA’s airspace concepts evaluation system (ACES).
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board last week revealed it is investigating two Airbus A330 incidents, involving TAM and Northwest Airlines, in which there may have been errors in airspeed and altitude indications.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office is recommending measures to improve safety for small cargo carriers, which account for the majority of accidents in the air cargo industry. GAO said FAA should boost its safety data gathering for all part 135 cargo operations “to gain a better understanding of air cargo accident rates and better target safety initiatives.” One way to do this would be by requiring such carriers to report operational data the same way larger, Part 121 carriers do.
