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 week’s interim report by France’s Bureau d’Enquetes et d’Analyses (BEA) on the November 27 crash of an XL Airways-operated A320 off the coast of France recommends that the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) detail in operations regulations the types of non-revenue flights operators may perform and require precise description of such flights in aircraft operations manuals. Meanwhile, the BEA recommends that all such flights “be subject to an authorization, or a declaration by the operator.” All seven occupants died in the crash of the A320 in question, which performed a planned go-around after approaching Perpignan airport and shortly afterward “during...flight at low speed, the crew lost control [and] crashed into the sea,” said the BEA. Owned by Air New Zealand and leased to XL Airways Germany, the A320 had just undergone repainting and minor maintenance in preparation for return to service with ANZ.
The lease specified in-flight checks via mutually agreed procedures based on Airbus customer-acceptance practice. EU-OPS regulations do not cover such operations and the BEA has found no suggested procedures for such non-revenue or “acceptance” flights. “No documents detail constraints to be imposed or the [pilot] skills required,” said the agency. Operators must define the [test flight] program and operational conditions “without necessarily having evaluated the specific risks.” 
Separately, Air New Zealand has gone public with complaints about the BEA’s release of the interim report to the media before it had chance to analyze its contents. “Certainly I believe that Air New Zealand and its experts should be allowed to contribute their insights and knowledge into the BEA investigation, a fact I will be raising again with the BEA and New Zealand Transport Accident Investigation Commission [TAIC] as well as New Zealand Transport Minister Steven Joyce later this morning [Feburary 26],” said Air New Zealand CEO Rob Fyfe. “It disappoints me the BEA chose to release their report to media, under embargo, half a day before the report was made available to Air New Zealand and the families who lost their loved ones.”
However, an ICAO official told AIN that Annex 13 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation does not require the BEA to include Air New Zealand as a party to the investigation because XL Airways Germany, not ANZ, technically was operating the flight. 
Nevertheless, the BEA has since appointed a pilot expert investigator from the New Zealand Air Line Pilots Association (NZALPA) to join the investigation team. “This gives us greater confidence in the accident investigation process under way,” said the NZALPA, which earlier complained that the interim report raised “a number of technical issues” that it failed to adequately explain.

French Accident Investigators Find Hole in EU Regs, Raise Ire of Air New Zealand

This week’s interim report by France’s Bureau d’Enquetes et d’Analyses (BEA) on the November 27 crash of an XL Airways-operated A320 off the coast of Franc

2024 Corporate Aviation Leadership Summit

AIN Products

SUBSCRIPTIONS

RESOURCES

ABOUT AIN