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

To ensure their continued survival in the face of reduced income per passenger, regional operators sometimes seek solace in the arms of major carriers, which then might have to re-learn the realities of the regional game. For Portuguese flag carrier TAP Portugal, consideration of short-haul equipment and service costs has become a new experience as the major prepares to complete its acquisition of regional operator Portugalia Airlines.
TAP president and CEO Fernando Pinto recalled the history of European regional airlines as one of high-yield origin-and-destination services, performed with mixed turboprop and jet fleets under independent commercial structures and reservations systems. Today, increased competition has diluted airline yields and prompted leading regional operators to seek niche opportunities and partnerships with larger operators, providing them with access to larger financial bases and distribution systems and to higher-capacity equipment, such as 100-seat aircraft.
In such circumstances, regional operators have had to learn to coordinate schedules and provide capacity to their major partners, considerations that can constrain aircraft use and therefore affect costs, said Pinto. Hopefully, the advantages of commonality and shared access to capital, spares, maintenance, training services and ground equipment mitigate those factors.
Pinto said that Portugalia’s network has proved “a perfect complement” to TAP, with duplication of only six city pairs. 
The resulting route and fleet synergies at TAP’s hubs at Lisbon and Oporto would yield a total value of U38 million (about $50 million), Pinto concluded.

TAP Portugal re-learns the regional game

To ensure their continued survival in the face of reduced income per passenger, regional operators sometimes seek solace in the arms of major carriers, whi

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