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.
American continued to dial down its capacity in May, recording a relatively sharp 4% decline for the month. Combined with a 2.9% traffic decline, American's load factor rose by one point to 81.7%. Domestic and international capacity were both cut by about the same amount -- 4% -- while international traffic was down 3.7% compared with the domestic traffic decline of 2.5%. Domestic load factor rose 1.2 points to 84.2%, and international loads were up by 0.3 points to 77.2%. For the year through May, traffic declined 2.1% on a 3% capacity cut.
NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker yesterday told lawmakers that FAA is not responding adequately to six NTSB recommendations from its "most wanted" list. Of the six NTSB items, five are classified as red for "unacceptable response," while the sixth is coded yellow to show that FAA's response is acceptable but the agency is moving too slowly.
British Airways saw its May traffic figures dip by 2.1%, with the airline attributing the decline to the strong performance in the same month last year. May passenger capacity dropped 0.1%, resulting in load factor falling 1.5 percentage points to 73.3%. Both premium and non-premium traffic fell by the same amount. BA warned it is unlikely to see growth in premium traffic for the first half of the year.
