Aviation International News senior correspondent Ian Goold has been involved in aerospace since 1964 and in aviation media for more than 40 years. He enjoyed a 20-year career at Flight International magazine, where he was latterly air-transport editor before turning freelance in 1993. A winner of the European Regions Airline Association Hank McGonagle award for excellence in aerospace journalism and a Royal Aeronautical Society Aerospace Journalist of the Year global&nbsp;award, he has edited or contributed to aerospace and aviation magazines, special publications, and websites in Africa, Asia/Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America. Ian entered aerospace as an apprentice at the British Aircraft Corporation at Brooklands (Weybridge), where he worked on production and final assembly lines of the Vickers Super VC10, and BAC One-Eleven , and manufacture of Concorde major sub-assemblies. He subsequently graduated from the BAC Design Training School to work in the airframe structures drawing office (including design of international future projects, such as the Panavia Tornado multi-role combat aircraft) before joining Flight International in 1973. Apart from years of reading aircraft magazines and books, his first direct contact with aviation media had come during the early 1970s when he was involved at Brooklands with the Weybridge Man-powered Aircraft Group, which designed and built the tenth aircraft to fly under purely human power. As an aviation journalist, he has worked at more than&nbsp; 50 of the major biennial&nbsp;global and regional international aerospace industry shows at Le Bourget, Farnborough, Singapore, and Dubai (having missed attending only one "Farnborough" since 1960), plus innumerable NBAA, HAI, (U.S.) AOPA, and EBACE Conventions and ERA Assemblies. His favourite aircraft is the Hawker Hunter, of which – as a schoolboy – he heard hundreds make their first flights from Dunsfold, where also on September 24, 2013, he saw the penultimate landing of the VC10 (happily involving an example of which he had witnessed the maiden takeoff in 1970) a day before the last example made the design's final flight (unless, of course....).

Senior correspondent

Ian Goold

Qantas Airways’ August 23 cancellation of “firm commitments” covering 35 Boeing 787-9s previously slated for delivery beginning in 2014 demonstrates the need for an airframer to remain flexible in the face of changing industry demand. The sudden change, prompted by after-tax losses in the current financial year, also demonstrates the continued vulnerability of the airline sector to rising costs and uncertain demand.


The Australian flag carrier has restructured 787-9 deliveries under a five-year plan to rescue its loss-making international business. The airline has retained options and purchase rights for fifty 787-9s, with delivery advanced almost two years from 2018. “Effectively, this constitutes a delay of the first 787-9 delivery by two years, to 2016,” acknowledged Qantas Group chief executive Alan Joyce.


Although the cancellation arises from efforts to reduce capital expenditure, the move has provided ironic benefits. Qantas will now receive a $433 million refund from Boeing, according to its preliminary final report for Fiscal Year 2011/12, which ended on June 30, 2012. For its part, Boeing said: “We stand ready to serve Qantas with 787-9s to meet their long-haul fleet needs.”


Joyce said the 787-9 delivery changes are consistent with broader group strategy. “Qantas continues to practice disciplined capital management and, in the context of international business, this is a prudent decision.” Deliveries of fifteen 787-8s to Qantas low-cost carrier subsidiary Jetstar remain on schedule to begin “toward the second half of next calendar year,” according to Joyce. He said introduction of the 787-8 would permit the transfer of some Airbus A330s from Jetstar to Qantas domestic services, and the subsequent phased retirement of the 767-300 fleet before 2016. Meanwhile, 16 of Qantas’s twenty-two 767s used on domestic service will be upgraded, with the first to be completed this October.


The Qantas group fleet renewal plans are “now substantially complete,” with 114 aircraft delivered in the past four years, said Joyce. “We have 12 A380s in service, and reconfiguration of nine 747[-400]s will be complete by late this year.”


On August 23, Qantas reported an underlying profit before tax of A$95 million (about $100 million) for FY2011/12, which represents a statutory loss after tax of A$244 million ($255 million). Joyce said the result reflects 18-percent-higher fuel prices, costs attributed to an industrial dispute and business-transformation expenditure. “We have the right strategy to position us for sustainable [long term] growth, while enabling us to manage capital requirements,” concluded Joyce.

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