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

Discussions with potential industrial partners and suppliers on the NG Aircraft Fokker “next-generation” regional jet program have reached “an advanced stage” and the project is “close to starting the development phase,” say officials. Continuing efforts to revive the 1980s’ Fokker 100 as the 110-passenger <a href="?q=node/24192">NG Aircraft Fokker 100NG</a> (F-100NG) received a boost from a European Commission (EC) decision “not to raise objections” to a repayable EU19.7 million ($26.6 million) advance offered by the Netherlands government. “This is an important step forward,” said NG Aircraft managing director Maarten van Eeghen after the EC concluded that the “positive effects outweigh any potential distortion of competition.” 
The Dutch Civil Aircraft Development Credit will contribute to the $120 million, Phase 1 investment needed to upgrade the prototype F100 airframe as a proof-of-concept demonstrator with new engines and avionics, extra fuel and winglets. Over the past several months, a project team that includes Dutch aircraft development and systems engineering company ADSE, Atkins, Fokker Services, the Dutch National Aerospace Laboratory and Sergem completed the preliminary design review of the F-100NG. 
NG Aircraft, which has succeeded the <a href="?q=node/15093">Rekkof Aircraft venture</a>, claims “substantial interest” among several airlines that have received presentations. Use of the Fokker 100’s “unique lightweight structure” as the basic platform plus the engineering changes will result in “lasting superior economic and environmental performance,” according to NG Aircraft. “Fuel consumption and CO2 emission will be 18-percent lower [than that of] its direct competitor. The noise pressure will be 70-percent lower.” NG Aircraft also plans longer and shorter F-100NG variants to carry 130 and 85 occupants, respectively.

EC Happy with Dutch Loan for Re-launched Fokker 100 

Discussions with potential industrial partners and suppliers on the NG Aircraft Fokker “next-generation” regional jet program have reached “an advanced sta

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