Archive

Keith Nuthall
AIRPORTS Council International (ACI) Europe has accused European Union Member States of dragging their feet over the implementation of the EU’s airport security plan, involving the implementation of recommendations outlined in ECAC (European Civil Aviation Conference) Document 30. ACI Europe Director General Philippe Hamon called on governments to release money to pay for the reforms.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA
THE INDIAN government is considering the appointment of technical consultants to draw up detailed specifications for the management of India’s four metropolitan airports, namely New Delhi, Bombay (Mumbai), Madras (Chennai) and Calcutta (Kolkata), which is to be leased to private companies.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Union’s Galileo global positioning project is being further delayed, this time because Member States are competing to inject more money into the satellite system, to lay claim to greater shares of resulting contracts. Until a recent deal over costs, national governments had been arguing about how to control Galileo’s budget.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission is investigating whether the French government has oversubsidised its aviation sector since last year’s September 11 attacks. Brussels had approved grants of Euro 54.9 million to cover additional costs created by the disaster’s four-day disruption to air traffic, but says France also spent the money on costs arising after flights were resumed.…

BY MARK ROWE
JAPAN’S transport ministry is considering giving priority to orders made by computers rather than air traffic controllers. The move follows a near-miss between two Japan Airlines passenger planes last year which was caused in part by a pilot’s decision to follow an air traffic controller’s order instead of the computerised Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank has drawn up plans to lend up to Euro 62 million to the City of Leipzig, in Germany, funding preparatory ground-works for an industrial park, which would include a new car manufacturing plant. The factory would be completed by 2004 in the north of the city on old farmland, renamed Industriepark Leipzig Nord.…

BY JONATHAN THOMSON
FIVE YEARS since it was first proposed, the End-of-Life (ELV) Vehicle Directive has just about made it to the statute books of a handful of EU member states. A directive both controversial and complex, it was maybe surprising, if a little disappointing, that the deadline of April 21, 2002 for transposition went by without a single EU country passing legislation.…

BY JONATHAN THOMSON, in Newcastle, England
FORD UK is backtracking on an earlier promise to fit digital radios to all its cars by 2004.

When contacted by just-auto.com, a spokeswoman for the company denied reports that the company had ever made a commitment to fit digital radios.…

BY JONATHAN THOMSON
The European Parliament has accepted last year’s voluntary agreement between the European Commission and the European Automobile Manufacturers Association on pedestrian safety, so long as Brussels proposes a Framework Directive underpinning the deal with legal commitments.

The move is seen as a compromise between MEP’s opposing a detailed Directive laying down specific rules on car design and those in the European Parliament that do not trust carmakers to introduce measures to protecting pedestrians.…

Keith Nuthall
A EUROPEAN Union research project is about to be launched, which will create a new sophisticated model for reducing tyre noise. This ‘microscopic road traffic noise-modelling project,’ (ROTRANOMO), will consider the type of vehicle, tyre-road interaction, traffic management, driver behaviour, environmental planning and vehicle structure changes to develop a more effective noise calculation model.…