Are airlines good at inventory demand planning? If you answered yes, why are operators ordering more parts on an aircraft-on-the-ground (AOG) basis? A number of people say the rising AOG orders are not correlated with problematic aircraft or engines that need new parts. In many cases, the need to receive parts via express delivery—in hours instead of several days or weeks—links to the fact that airlines generally hold less inventory, and suppliers can expedite deliveries.

Just two decades ago, on May 2, 1993, Hainan Airlines began operating from its tropical island home, Hainan, in the South China Sea. Within seven years, a holding company, HNA Group, had been set up above it. Affiliated airlines followed, along with businesses in corporate aviation, aircraft maintenance, airports, real estate, hotels, shipping, finance and much else.

Airbus will start building aircraft in the U.S. in Hamburg style

As the smallest member of the MAX family, Boeing anticipated the 737-7 would be a slow seller, so it placed it last behind the larger 737-8s and 737-9s that airlines appear to prefer when deliveries begin in 2017.

The future of the U.S. Export-Import Bank is again being threatened, just as the export credit agency (ECA) is registering record loan activity at the behest and benefit of the U.S. aircraft industry. If the confluence of events gains momentum, the bank could be forced to suspend or even end new loan-making, which could hurt Boeing, the bank's primary aircraft exporter, as it competes for foreign sales with Airbus—supported by three ECAs—and other state-affiliated manufacturers worldwide.

Low demand for A380 as A350 nears flight-testing

There is no shortage of candidates for feedstocks from which to make biofuels, from camelina to poplar and switchgrass to wood chips. But it is taking time to find ones that can be sustainably cultivated, harvested and transported in the quantities required to make commercial volumes of jet fuel.

What a difference a decade makes. In 2000, China's labor rates were a fraction of those for U.S. workers, the dollar was strong, oil prices were relatively low, and the promise of access to the Chinese market had manufacturers hopping to get into China.