The carrier is adding routes internationally and inter-island

The problem with five-year plans is that they come around only once every five years. That can be a long time in commercial aviation. As available production slots for reengined Airbus and Boeing narrowbodies move rapidly to the right, China is under pressure to set aside its usual stately planning process and hurriedly sign a round of big airliner orders.

Operators and OEMs are lining up against the FAA over a proposed Boeing 757 airworthiness directive (AD) that they see as an unsubstantiated shift in the agency's view on the likelihood of fuel tank explosions on older freighters—a change that could have broader rulemaking ramifications.

There are not many secret technologies or materials in the jet engine business. All the major engine makers are working with exotic materials in the search for weight savings, emissions reductions, coatings that extend life cycles and technologies that allow faster production of complex parts. The question is always when new technology and/or materials are ready to move from the laboratory into production.

After dueling foreign policy speeches before the Veterans of Foreign Wars last week, the U.S. presidential candidates unleashed their surrogates on Washington, where a discussion at the Brookings Institution underscored both candidates' inability to answer questions on defense spending.

After years of little presidential attention during the last administration, aerospace and defense industry executives are now more in the loop with top Pentagon officials—but they don't feel any better. In the latest in a series of get-togethers, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and several CEOs and trade organization leaders sat down last week to discuss the so-called sequestration budget cuts that are set to take effect in January. But from reports of the meeting, neither side walked away with answers or reasons to feel less anxious.

Politics—not policy or technology—is proving to be the biggest obstacle to developing alternative-fuel programs for the military that could prove to be successful commercial energy alternatives, says Phyllis Cuttino, director of the Pew Project on National Security, Energy and Climate. The Pentagon is employing and deploying ships and aircraft using sound technology for alternative energy, particularly biofuels, Cuttino says.

The pressure for fuel-efficient jets has soaked up nearly all of Boeing's production slots for the next 12-18 months