Business Aviation

Another global accolade to SriLankan Engineering

SriLankan Airlines has become one of the few organisations in the world to have carried out an important mandatory modification for engines on the Airbus A340, one of the world's most widely used aircraft.

SriLankan Engineering, the aircraft engineering arm of SriLankan Airlines, is now carrying out modifications on the CFM-56 engines of SriLankan's own fleet of A340s in its aircraft engineering facilities at Bandaranaike International Airport.

Base Maintenance Manager, A M Ariyasena said: "SriLankan Airlines is one of only seven aircraft maintenance organisations in the world to have performed this modification, which is a considerable achievement that our national carrier and our country can be proud of.

The other institutions are in Europe, Canada and Hong Kong. We are also achieving a significant cost saving for the airline, and conserving foreign exchange by carrying out the work in Sri Lanka."

The modifications are mandatory requirements by the engine's manufacturer, which must be completed on every CFM-56 engine in use in all airlines by the end of 2008.

It comprises a set of upgrades to strengthen the structural integrity of the engine's exhaust section, known as the C-duct or the Thrust Reverser. This is vital in reversing the direction of thrust to bring an aircraft to a halt on landing. Most other airlines using A340 aircraft are going through the costly and laborious process of removing their engine thrust reversers and shipping them to Europe for the modifications.

The project to modify the CFM-56 engine thrust reversers had commenced in 2004 with SriLankan sending some reversers to France. But with the recent upgrading of SriLankan Engineering's own capabilities and infrastructure, the airline decided to carry out work on the remaining engine thrust reversers in-house starting in February 2008.

The CFM-56 is the only engine which powers the A340-200 and A340-300 series of aircraft, which are the most popular in the A340 family.

Slightly different versions of the CFM-56 are used in Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 Next Generation aircraft.

SriLankan Engineering last year completed a similar project to upgrade the Rolls Royce Trent engine thrust reversers used on its A330 fleet, with the work being carried out in-house at BIA.

SriLankan Engineering has notched up an impressive list of accomplishments in recent years.

Airbus Industrie last month announced that it was honouring SriLankan with the global award for Operational Excellence among all small airlines that operate the 4-engined A340 aircraft. Airbus, one of the world's two largest manufacturers of commercial aircraft, had earlier presented Sri Lanka's National Carrier with the same award for another type of aircraft - the twin-engined A330.

A few months later, the airline's school for pilots, aircraft engineers and technicians, SriLankan Technical Training, became of the few companies in Asia to receive the EASA 147 certification, to provide training in Aircraft Maintenance to foreign and local students.

SriLankan has a wealth of experience with Airbus aircraft, having an all-Airbus fleet of A320, A330, and A340 aircraft. In 1994 it became the first carrier in Asia to operate the wide-bodied long-haul A340-300 aircraft, of which it now has five. The aircraft are used for flights to London, Paris, Frankfurt, Hong Kong and Tokyo, among other destinations.

SriLankan Engineering is actively marketing its aircraft maintenance capabilities to other airlines, especially in South Asia and the Middle East, which are fast-growing regions in global aviation with a number of new airlines, and rapid expansion of several existing carriers.

SriLankan Engineering has in recent times completed '4C5Y' major maintenance checks on three Airbus A330 aircraft of customer airlines, and a 'C-check' on an A320 aircraft of another.

Kozhikode prepares for Emirates

Age-old trade ties between Dubai and Kozhikode - a port city in the Southern Indian state of Kerala that welcomed its first Middle Eastern traders as early as the seventh century - are set to accelerate with the launch of Emirates Airline's six-flights-a-week service, effective 1st July.

Kozhikode is Emirates' third gateway in Kerala after Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram and its 10th in India.

To promote its product and to brief the travel trade on the wide range of services offered, Emirates hosted a road show in Kozhikode recently. A high-level Emirates delegation led by Senior Vice President Commercial Operations, West Asia and Indian Ocean Salem Obaidalla and comprising Vice President India and Nepal Orhan Abbas, senior executives from the airline's home base in Dubai and its Indian headquarters in Mumbai addressed a gathering of over 600 agents from Kozhikode and its surrounding districts.

Salem noted: "We are gearing up for the launch of our services to Kozhikode in the summer of this year.

In the past few months we have stepped up our recruitment efforts, and will soon start training our newly-appointed staff to serve the city's travellers. In Kozhikode we will establish a town office, an airport office and a separate cargo office to manage the city's passenger and cargo requirements."

"An estimated two million Keralites work and live in the Gulf region. Emirates has a robust presence in the Middle East, serving the region with 163 weekly flights to 12 gateways via its Dubai hub. The start of services to Kozhikode will enable Emirates to serve Kerala with an additional gateway and at the same time enhance connectivity between the state and the Middle East," he added.

Lufthansa launches Boarding via Mobile Phone

Passengers flying Lufthansa from Hamburg to Munich or Frankfurt can now use the airline's new mobile boarding pass service. With this innovative service, passengers who have an Internet-enabled phone can be sent an electronic boarding pass by email or SMS link.

The mobile boarding pass contains the relevant flight data, such as the name of the traveller, flight number and departure time, plus a 2-D barcode. Passengers traveling with hand luggage only can then proceed straight to the security checkpoint and to the gate, where a scanner will read the barcode on their mobile boarding pass.

This means they can then board the aircraft without a printed-paper document. To take advantage of this new service, passengers simply have to select the option "Mobile Boarding Pass" after checking in online via the mobile.lufthansa.com portal. Once they have entered and confirmed their email address on the next screen, an electronic document will be sent to them immediately.

Global traffic continues to slow

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) announced global scheduled international traffic data for March. Compared to the same month in the previous year, passenger demand increased 5.8 per cent with load factors at 77.7 per cent. Freight traffic grew 3.2 per cent.

March passenger growth is positively skewed by the Easter holiday period which was in April of the previous year. Adjusting for this distortion, real traffic growth in March was 4 per cent. The slowdown in the demand growth continues the sharp downward trend which began in December 2007 as the impact of the US credit crunch began to be felt in the airline industry. International passenger load factors were equally skewed.

When adjusted to take into account artificially high utilisation over the Easter period, the March load factor was 76.1 per cent. While still high, this is 1.7 percentage points lower than the 77.8 per cent recorded for the same month in 2007.

This fall indicated that the slowing of demand occurred faster than airlines could cut capacity.

International freight growth of 3.2 per cent remains sluggish and well below the 4.3 per cent growth recorded in 2007. "Traffic only tells a part of the story. Astronomical oil prices are hitting hard. And the buffer of an expanding economy has disappeared. The fortunes of the industry have taken a major turn for the worse," said IATA's Director General and CEO, Giovanni Bisignani.

Regional differences in passenger traffic growth are significant: As North American carriers shift traffic from low-yielding domestic markets, their international traffic grew by 6.3 per cent in March. The impact of high valued Euro saw U.S. carriers capitalise on the North Atlantic with a 10 per cent growth in traffic while European carriers' operations in the same area contracted by 2 per cent.

Overall European carrier passenger traffic grew by 3.7 per cent.

The slowdown in Asia-Pacific carrier traffic to 4.3 per cent is significant in that the region's booming economies were expected to immunise them from the US slowdown.