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

The European Regions Airline ­Association, which ­represents 70 intra-European airlines, has welcomed the “modest sign of ­gradual recovery” from the global ­recession. But the effect of airspace closures following the 
<link news link: sam146:>Icelandic volcanic eruption in April offset apparently strong underlying growth in European regional air travel in the year’s first half. If not for the related 10-percent drop in passenger numbers that month, the 2.9-percent increase recorded from January through June (over the first six months of 2009) would have settled closer to 6 percent. 
ERA operators offered no additional seats this year, so an 8.6-percent gain in traffic (revenue passenger-miles flown) indicates that average sector length has continued to increase and now approaches 450 miles. Passenger load factors also have grown, as capacity (available seat-miles) rose by 3.9 percent–less than half the increase in traffic.
The cancellation of many flights ­during April meant overall first-half landings declined by 4.3 percent and accrued ­flying time by 4.4 percent. The figures suggest that the longer sectors are being flown at slightly higher speed, although the regional-jet share of the fleet has remained essentially the same. After a reduction in the proportion of turbofan-equipped aircraft during 2007-08 (following increases in oil prices), the ERA fleet has remained stable, with about 45 percent of the fleet in mid-2010 comprising turboprop-powered machines.

ERA carriers showing signs of recovery

The European Regions Airline ­Association, which ­represents 70 intra-European airlines, has welcomed the “modest sign of ­gradual recovery” from the globa

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