Continental Airlines is exceeding its targets for improving performance laid out in a plan to make 1995 its first profitable year in a decade, but a dispute with its pilots threatens to scuttle that progress. The airline's president and chief executive, Gordon R. Bethune, told stockholders at their annual meeting in Houston last week that Continental has exceeded revenue and expense targets every month since its performance plan was launched in January.

Canadian Airlines International is taking a calculated risk this summer, with preliminary support from labor after a disappointing C$108.6-million ($78.2 million) first-quarter loss. The Calgary-based carrier has launched an aggressive summer schedule, boosting capacity by 15%. Key unions have agreed to productivity improvements under an interim agreement that allows Canadian to operate additional frequencies this summer at virtually no increase in labor costs.

The A300-600ST, the world's widest cargo aircraft, is completing its flight test program and is scheduled to obtain certification in September.

THE UNITED KINGDOM'S Civil Aviation Administration plans to use a 20 channel GPS/Glonass receiver in tests of satellite navigation performance. The CAA's Institute of Satellite Navigation at the University of Leeds, England, which developed the receiver, is cooperating with British Airways to observe GPS performance on one of its Boeing 747-400s. In recent tests, Leeds simultaneously received 11 GPS and nine Glonass satellites and obtained a common fix.

Regional airlines are emerging from a winter of turmoil caused by fatal accidents in the U.S. and major market changes.

JUST WHEN GENERAL AVIATION LOBBYISTS were confident that plans for an air traffic control (ATC) corporation were in eclipse on Capitol Hill, Senate Budget Committee chairman Pete Domenici (R.-N.M.) is reviving them.

The flight crew's failure to recognize wind shear and initiate a prompt escape maneuver caused a USAir Douglas DC-9-31 to crash at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport in July, 1994, according to the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.

How big a problem is fuel contamination? Not very big, but then neither is the amount of contamination it takes to ruin your whole day, your career or even your life.