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 year’s election of Shimon Peres as Israel’s president could revitalize dormant plans for developing Jordan’s King Hussein International Airport at Aqaba as a regional hub to serve both countries. The airport sits at the north end of the Red Sea, across the Gulf of Aqaba from the Israeli resort city of Eilat.
A possible Arab-Israeli joint venture at the location, which is at the southern end of the 320-mile rift valley that marks the international border between the two countries, has been discussed as long ago as the signing of the 1994 peace treaty between Israel and Jordan. At that time Peres–who calls the location “Peace Valley”–was deputy prime minister and responsible for development of the Negev desert in southern Israel.
The two countries signed an agreement to proceed with the project in 1997, but it foundered three years later after the Palestinian intifada. Now, Peres has pointed out that while Israel has been planning a new airport at Eilat, a joint venture at Aqaba would save his country money while providing Jordan with landing rights and fees. For its part, in 2003 Jordan declared Aqaba an “open skies” airport and designated the region a special economic zone. Apart from Queen Alia International Airport, about 20 miles south of the Jordanian capital Amman, Aqaba is the country’s only other international airport.
An integrated development study of the area in the mid-1990s outlined projects that covered the environment, water, energy, transport and tourism that would benefit from investment in the airport. Ideas have included possible establishment of an Aqaba/Eilat free-trade zone aimed at creating “an economic hub for the northern peninsula of the Red Sea, Israel and Jordan,” according to the U.S. Department of State.
Peres has called for construction of a canal that would support development of a new port to replace existing under-used facilities at Aqaba and Eilat and would permit water to be funneled to the Dead Sea, which has suffered major evaporation. He also envisions a single railroad in place of existing parallel lines run by the two countries. Earlier this year, Israel declared the Peace Valley plan a “national project,” a designation that could increase its priority in government planning and procedures.

Peres presidency could kick-start joint Arab-Israeli airport plan

This year’s election of Shimon Peres as Israel’s president could revitalize dormant plans for developing Jordan’s King Hussein International Airport at Aqa

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