Blockchain entrepreneur to acquire regional airline

Surinam Airways seeks to return troubled B777

Australia ungrounds the B737 MAX

Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) ungrounded the B737 MAX on February 26, 2021, thereby becoming the first regulator in the Asia-Pacific region to do so.

"We have accepted the comprehensive return-to-service requirements specified by the FAA as State of Design for the 737 MAX and are confident that the aircraft are safe. Our airworthiness and engineering team has assessed there are no additional return to service requirements for operation in Australia," Acting CEO and Director of Aviation Safety Graeme Crawford said.

For the time being, CASA's decision remains moot since no Australian airline operates the type. Virgin Australia (VA, Brisbane Int'l) has firm orders for twenty-five B737-10s but does not plan to take deliveries of any of them before mid-2023.

CASA underlined that two foreign airlines, Singapore's SilkAir (which is gradually being merged into parent Singapore Airlines) and Fiji Airways used to operate B737-8s on routes to Australia. The former does not currently fly to Australia due to COVID-related border restrictions while the latter uses a mix of B737-800...

Singapore's SilkAir puts seven B737-800s up for sale

SilkAir (MI, Singapore Changi) has appointed Skytech-AIC to sell seven B737-800s that will not be transferred to parent Singapore Airlines (SQ, Singapore Changi) as a part of their merger.

The Boeing narrowbodies 9V-MGF (msn 44222), 9V-MGG (msn 44223), 9V-MGH (msn 44224), 9V-MGI (msn 44225), 9V-MGJ (msn 44226), 9V-MGP (msn 44232), and 9V-MGQ (msn 44233) will be available for redelivery from July 2021. The first three units were manufactured in 2014, the subsequent two in 2015, and the final two in 2016. All have been operated by the Singaporean carrier since new.

The ch-aviation fleets advanced module shows that SilkAir currently operates seventeen B737-800s, although only six are active as the airline's operations have been reduced to a minimum due to COVID-19 border restrictions.

Nine out of the seventeen B737-800s are due to be transferred to Singapore Airlines which plans to deploy them into revenue service on March 4, 2021. 9V-MGA (msn 44217) and 9V-MGD (msn 44220) have already been operating test flights around Singapore Changi under the...

Editorial Comment: The article updates with SilkAir's comment regarding the sale of the eighth B737-800. - 04.03.2021 - 08:47 UTC

Singapore Airlines converts B787-10 orders to B777-9s

Singapore Airlines Group has announced that it has converted orders for fourteen B787-10s into eleven B777-9s as a part of its new agreement with Boeing regarding future deliveries. The group also reached an agreement with Airbus.

The carrier did not provide a detailed year-by-year timeline but said that agreements with both manufacturers would see "the delivery stream spread out beyond the immediate five years".

Following the adjustments, Singapore Airlines currently has the following aircraft on firm order:

• thirty-one B777-9s (previously 20),
• fifteen A350-900s (no change),
• twenty B787s, including three B787-8s for Scoot, two B787-9s also for Scoot, and fifteen B787-10s for Singapore Airlines (previously 34 in total),
• thirty-one B737-8s originally ordered for SilkAir but due to join Singapore Airlines as a part of the merger of SilkAir (no change), and
• thirty-five A320neo Family narrowbodies for Scoot, including twenty-nine A320-200Ns and six A321-200NXes (no change).

The group said the revised timeline in total would allow it to defer SGD4...