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

This year’s ERA Airline of the Year gold award went to two-time runner-up Eastern Airways. While noting the carrier’s “dynamic approach to industry lobbying,” judges lauded the UK regional’s ability to survive powerful competition through “courage, creativity and persistence,” as well as marketing and operational and technical commitment. The nine-year-old airline’s 32-strong fleet of BAe Jetstream 32s and 41s and Saab 2000s serves 26 routes among 17 domestic UK points (plus Brussels) with 800 flights per week, according to chairman Bryan Huxford. 
This year’s silver award went to Aegean Airlines of Greece for its “constant growth of turnover, earnings before interest and tax, and profit and [its] strong and active promotional strategy, efforts on environmental and security strategy and active participation in ERA and governmental lobbying activities.”
Bronze award winner Blue 1 of Finland has added larger aircraft as it expands services. Three McDonnell Douglas MD-90s recently joined a pair of BAe Avro RJ100s and seven RJ85s, and two more aircraft of as yet unspecified type are planned. The MD-90s serve points such as Athens, Barcelona, Nice, Rome and Zurich. Blue 1’s five Saab 2000 turboprops fly with Swedish operators Air Express and City Airline under leases arranged by Skyways Aviation.
Irish regional Aer Arran received ERA’s Palme d’Or award for sustained excellence despite strong and focused challenges from “Europe’s most powerful and ruthless low-fare airline [Ryanair].” Its five ATR 42 and nine ATR 72 turboprops cover 600 services per week on 39 routes linking points in France, Ireland and the UK. It plans to acquire 10 more ATR 72s by 2009. 
CEO Padraig O’Ceidigh’s strategy hinges on “growing very fast to obtain necessary critical mass so high costs can be spread as far as possible.” Aer Arran has combined low fares with high passenger load factors and has built markets through service frequency. It expects to carry 1.2 million passengers this year, four times the number it served four years ago.

ERA honors airline triumvirates

This year’s ERA Airline of the Year gold award went to two-time runner-up Eastern Airways.

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