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

Gulf carrier Qatar Airways yesterday signed an order for five Boeing 777F cargo aircraft and took options on a further five. It also confirmed orders for 22 others previously from unidentified buyers–fourteen 777-300ERs, six -200LRs and two 777F cargo variants. 
The first 777-300ER, already flying in Qatar Airways colors, will be delivered shortly with a second before year’s end in time for Doha-Washington, D.C. services from January 1. The airline also was confirmed as the previously unidentified customer for 30 Boeing 787s.
Qatar Airways has chosen the General Electric GE90-115B for its five new Boeing 777Fs and GENx engines for the previously ordered Boeing 787s. Combined with engines for earlier 777s, the GE90 business totals $1.2 billion. The GENx deal is worth some $800 million.
Like United Arab Emirates national carrier Etihad Airways, Qatar Airways appears to be trying to emulate Dubai-based Emirates Airline in its drive for growth, although the former two operators are not so obviously providing support for a national strategy of investment in travel, tourism and business. Qatar chief executive Akbar al-Baker said its Doha base stood at a huge crossroads and that the airline’s success was a measure of local economic growth and its value as a hub. He said the airline wanted to grow by being the most efficient and providing the best product. 
Al-Baker said the airline was interested in obtaining new single-aisle equipment to augment the existing fleet, which will be 92-aircraft strong once all outstanding orders are fulfilled, and provide higher frequency. He said it would be good for Boeing if the U.S. manufacturer produced a composite-airframe narrowbody. However he did not restrict his consideration to Airbus and Boeing current or future products: “There are others, in the 80- to 100-seat category.”
Boeing Commercial Airplanes chief executive Scott Carson said his company would compete aggressively when it had an aircraft to fit the requirement. “We are working with Qatar Airways and others very hard to define [such an aircraft] and bring it to market,” he said.

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