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

Australia’s Qantas Airways today kicked off scheduled service with its new Airbus A380 between Los Angeles and Melbourne, Australia. The first Qantas flight from Melbourne to the U.S. on the jumboliner landed on Runway 25L at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) at about 7:30 a.m. 

Qantas will fly one daily roundtrip between the city pair in an operation that it estimates will generate $623 million per year in “economic activity,” including “more than 3,000 local jobs and $156 million in wages.” It expects that within four years, LAX will serve more A380 flights than any other airport in North America. 

The inaugural A380 flight taxied to LAX’s Tom Bradley International Terminal for passenger disembarkation before being repositioned for an arrival ceremony at the Flight Path Learning Center at the LAX Imperial Terminal, where a Boeing 707, the first passenger jet from the U.S. manufacturer, was parked alongside in the airline’s original livery. A ceremony to commemorate the first flight included a speech by actor/pilot John Travolta, who also serves as a Qantas ambassador. This first Qantas A380 service to the U.S. will be complemented by flights from Sydney to Los Angeles beginning on Friday, before the airline inaugurates A380 operations to Singapore and London. 

Qantas has ordered 20 Rolls-Royce Trent 900-powered A380s, which will be configured for 450 passengers. The airplane has 14 first-class seats, 72 business-class seats, 32 “premium economy“ seats and 332 economy-class seats. Now the second-largest customer after Dubai’s Emirates Airline, Qantas was the first to conclude contract signing for the A380 in November 2000 with an initial order for 12 aircraft–its first from the European manufacturer. Including low-cost subsidiary Jetstar, the Qantas group now has ordered 110 aircraft directly from Airbus.

Qantas Inaugurates Los Angeles A380 Service

Australia’s Qantas Airways today kicked off scheduled service with its new Airbus A380 between Los Angeles and Melbourne, Australia.

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