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

Fast-growing Indian carrier SpiceJet is increasing fleet capacity by more than 2,000 seats with the planned $700 million conversion of options held on 10 Boeing 737-800s, of which five will be taken as 215-passenger -900ERs. The aircraft, which will be delivered over two years beginning October next year, will bring SpiceJet’s fleet to at least 15 aircraft. In addition, the low-cost operator has taken options on a further 10.

SpiceJet currently is flying five 737s leased until at least 2008 and has just received from Boeing the first of four aircraft to be delivered this year, said board director Ajay Singh. In 2007, the airline will add six previously ordered -800s from the factory and the first two optioned 737-900ERs, plus two or three aircraft leased from elsewhere. The newly optioned aircraft will be delivered after current deliveries are completed in 2009.

Singh said that SpiceJet has enjoyed 85-percent-plus passenger load factors in every month since operations began in May last year. He claimed passenger growth had been equivalent to 30 percent a year.

SpiceJet officials say they could be early lease customers for the newly announced Dubai Aerospace Enterprise, which includes aviation finance among its planned activities, given that both companies have partly common ownership through stakes in each held by Arab private equity fund Istithmar.

Boeing sells ten 737s to SpiceJet

Fast-growing Indian carrier SpiceJet is increasing fleet capacity by more than 2,000 seats with the planned $700 million conversion of options held on 10 B

2024 Corporate Aviation Leadership Summit

Singapore Air Show 2006

AIN Products

SUBSCRIPTIONS

RESOURCES

ABOUT AIN