Dec 03 2012
Air Astana continues its plans to phase out its fleet of Fokker 50 turboprops, with the last two aircraft scheduled to be removed from the airline’s fleet in January 2013. The six aircraft will be replaced by Embraer 190s by the middle of 2013 on a one for one basis.
During eight years of service with Air Astana, the Fokker 50 fleet completed 50,000 domestic flights, flew 90,000 hours and carried 1.5 million passengers.
Nov 30 2012
Bombardier announced that it is continuing the design process for a high density version of the CSeries aircraft in spite of a rejection by Air Asia who was seen as a potential launch customer of the aircraft.
Other potential CSeries buyers continue to discuss the 160-seat variant of the CS300 according to Bombardier, making it still a viable future goal for the program. Bombardier expects the CS100 to enter service in June 2014, a delay of six months from the original schedule announced in November 2012. The base CS300 variant is expected to follow the CS100 into service in the second half of 2015.
Nov 25 2012
This is one in a series of articles on Winglets which track the histories of Canadair Regional Jets.
Canadair Regional Jet RJ100ER MSN 7011
N912CA in service with Comair in Delivery Colour Scheme
(Photo From Mr. CRJ Collection)
Aircraft History
C-FMKZ, 7011, was the eleventh Canadair Regional Jet built and was the first CRJ delivered to Comair. It began its service life with Comair on April 28th, 1993 and was configured as a RJ100ER aircraft. 7011 spent the majority of its service with with Comair and was seen in all liveries that Comair operated its fleet under as part of the Delta Connection.
7011 was retired from service with Comair on October 20th, 2010 and was stored at Calgary by the Avmax Group under the temporary registration of C-GKTX. The aircraft was then sold to Fly540 Airlines of Tanzania on May 21st, 2011, repainted into that airline’s colour scheme and ferried to Tanzania to begin operations as 5H-YAH.
As of October 2012, 7011 still operates for Fly540 on daily services.
Canadair Regional Jet RJ100ER MSN 7011
N912CA in service with Comair in 1997 Colour Scheme
(Photo by: Pierre Lacombe)
Canadair Regional Jet RJ100ER MSN 7011
N912CA in service with Comair in 2000 Colour Scheme
(Photo by: Josh Gales)
Canadair Regional Jet RJ100ER MSN 7011
5H-YAH in service with Fly540 Tanzania
(Photo by: pfielduk @Flicker.com)
Nov 23 2012
COMAC announced that the company will delay delivery of the first ARJ21 for “one or two years” because of “inexperience in certification in terms of methods and infrastructure.”
This delay will mean the first delivery of an ARJ21 will not occur until the 2015-2016 timeframe. First delivery of the ARJ21 was originally set for 2007 but has been continually pushed back due to various program issues over time.
COMAC has announced 252 orders for the ARJ21, most of which are for domestic Chinese airlines as well as from GECAS. The continuous ARJ21 delivery delays will likely have a negative impact on COMAC’s C919 program although the company denies this as a possibility.