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.
FAA is taking a series of actions in response to an Inspector General report revealing the intentional misclassification of operational errors by ATC supervisors at the Dallas/Fort Worth approach control facility. According to the IG, management at the DFW TRACON routinely classified controller operational errors as pilot errors or non-events. Between November 2005 and July 2007, 62 incidents were cited as pilot deviation or non-events when in fact they should have been classified as 52 operational errors and 10 operational deviations.
U.S. legacy airlines are preparing to cull dozens of older mainline aircraft from their fleets this fall, as they foresee even tougher times after the peak summer travel season. Deep first-quarter losses reveal the industry’s shaky condition due to record fuel costs. This alone would be enough to force carriers to review their capacity plans, but another blow is expected in the fourth quarter when the economic downturn could start to seriously bite into travel demand.
Visiting Washington to lobby for their merger proposal, the CEOs of Delta and Northwest this week reiterated their views that their networks won’t contract due to the link-up and that having different aircraft types can be an advantage, rather than a problem.
