Airlink is to maintain services on four routes from which franchise partner South African Airways is withdrawing at the end of the month. The business rescue practitioners appointed to lead cash-strapped SAA – after it was placed in formal restructuring in early December – announced on 6 February that the Star Alliance carrier would drop a string of flights as part of a wide-ranging streamlining of its network. That included all its domestic flights except Johannesburg-Cape Town, regional flights from Johannesburg to Abidjan, Entebbe, Luanda and Ndola, and intercontinental services to Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Munich and Sao Paulo. But private South African carrier Airlink – which has a franchise agreement in place with SAA – says it will continue to operate the domestic route linking Johannesburg to Port Elizabeth, as well as services to Ugandan city Entebbe, Ndola in Zambia and the Angolan capital Luanda, after SAA stops doing so . "We want to reassure travellers that as far as Airlink is concerned, it is business as usual. Our schedule and operations are unaffected by SAA's latest network cuts," states Airlink chief executive Rodger Foster. Airlink had in January reached an amended agreement with SAA to replace their franchise agreement with a new commercial arrangement. Under the revised deal, Airlink will continue to operate flights under the SA8 code until switching to its own 4Z flight code from 11 June 2020. At the time, Airlink said that while SAA remained "an important strategic pillar in Airlink's strategy", the new arrangement gives Airlink "the freedom to extend its commercial reach, develop more routes and frequencies on an independent basis and extend or establish additional agreements with other leading international airlines".

Source: Cirium

US FAA chief Steve Dickson has defended the administration’s decision to wait for empirical evidence to order the grounding of the Boeing 737 Max, rather than follow other authorities’ precautionary approach. The FAA grounded the type on 13 March, three days after the loss of an Ethiopian Airlines aircraft – the second fatal Max accident – having held out against a wave of suspensions by other regulators, including the European Union Aviation Safety Agency. US regulators had originally insisted that there was no basis on which to order a grounding of the Max, despite concerns over similarities between the Ethiopian accident and that involving a Lion Air jet five months earlier. Speaking during a briefing in London on 6 February, Dickson acknowledged that regulatory alignment would have been preferable. But he also defended the FAA’s decision to wait for data to establish a common thread, the behaviour of the Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System, between the two Max accidents. “If you ground an airplane arbitrarily – if you’re making any kind of safety decision arbitrarily – you really don’t know when you’ve got to a point where the situation has been improved,” he says. “These two accidents had different factors associated with them – two airlines, two groups of pilots – so they weren’t the same scenario. “They did have a common thread of MCAS. But having the data from which to make those decisions certainly focuses your effort.” Dickson says has a “big focus” on data at the FAA and believes the industry needs to “raise the bar” and ensure interested parties have the “same kind of availability of data”. “I don’t know on what basis EASA made their [grounding] decision,” he says. But he believes that the FAA and Canadian regulators took data-based decisions. “I do know the agency was looking to identify a common thread, and it took getting the data to be able to make that decision. It was not available for a couple of days,” says Dickson, adding that reinforcement of data provision around the world would contribute to moving from “forensic” to “pro-active” analysis

Source: Cirium.

US FAA administrator Steve Dickson expects changes being considered in the wake of the Boeing 737 Max crisis could impact future “grandfathered” certification of derivative aircraft such as the 777X, which recently began flight-testing.
Major aircraft derivatives like the new 777X family – which features key changes such as a new carbonfibre wing with folding tips, new-generation engines, systems and flightdeck and larger cabin windows – can use “grandfather rights” to be certificated as amendments to an existing type certificate, even if the original approval dates back decades. The 737 Max was approved as a derivative of the FAA’s original 1967 certification of the 737-100. The 777-9, which is the first variant of the 777X family, made its first flight on 25 January. Boeing aims to certificate the 777X as derivative of the original 777-200, which was approved in April 1995. The FAA’s “changed product rule” requires applicants to apply for a new type certificate for a “changed product” if it decides that “the change in design, power, thrust, or weight is so extensive that a substantially complete investigation of compliance with the applicable regulations is required”. Speaking at the Aviation Club of the UK today, Dickson explained that the FAA is re-examining the changed product rule as well as taking input from the findings of the technical advisory board (TAB) set up in the wake of the Max grounding. The TAB is an independent panel which the FAA has asked to review its work regarding the 737 Max return-to-service effort. “In terms of 777X and what certification [of derivative aircraft] will look like going forward beyond that – those are related but different subjects,” said Dickson. "We will take some of the processes that we’re using now with the 737 Max, such as the technical advisory board, with the 777X [certification].” Dickson says that the changed product rule is also to be scrutinised. “Moving forward, one of the recommendations is to go back and work with all the authorities on the changed product rule, which has been harmonised globally,” he says. “That’s something that we will certainly undertake with the other states of design around the world to make that determination of what that process looks like.” Dickson adds that there are too many variables currently to be specific on how it might affect individual aircraft such as the 777X. “I don’t think it’s something you can put a number on. It depends on the architecture of the aircraft: for example, if it’s more software-based and less hardware-based then that may create some changes in how that is approached in the future.”

Source: Cirium