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

Qatar Airways is planning to use its new Airbus Corporate Jetliner (ACJ) to replace a pair of Falcon 900s used by the government and ruling family. It will also be operated on European summer-season VIP scheduled service to destinations such as London; Geneva; and Nice, France; as well as for charter or wet-lease operations in the winter.
With a load of 38 passengers, the aircraft has a range of 4,000 nm–sufficient to reach Europe, Africa and as far east as Singapore from Doha, Qatar–using its two auxiliary tanks. Senior government officials accustomed to flying short distances in the Falcon 900s are being encouraged to make use of Qatar Airways’ premium-class scheduled services.
An option held on a second aircraft may be converted to an order once the first ACJ has been proven in service, according to officials. In addition to the new ACJ, the Qatari ruling family is understood to have use of Airbus A310, A320, A340, and Boeing 747SP VIP aircraft. A door in the ACJ divides the fuselage into two discrete cabins: a forward area with two sets of club-four seating and four individual seats, as well as larger rear accommodation containing two more club-fours and eight pairs of seats ahead of a crew area. The facing club seats can be converted into seven-foot flat beds, with other seats reclining to 55 deg.
To satisfy typical Middle East requirements, there is a generous provision for baggage in the forward and aft sections. In-flight entertainment is available through a mix of monitors and seatback or armrest-mounted screens.
In a medical-evacuation configuration, the ACJ can be fitted with an FAA-approved Serai Evasan air medical unit. The seat-rail-mounted equipment, which comprises a self-contained stretcher with a 1,700-gal (gaseous) oxygen supply, can be fitted in about an hour at the rear of the cabin in place of two crew seats and associated stowage space.

VIP Airbus ACJs on tap for Qatar ruling family

Qatar Airways is planning to use its new Airbus Corporate Jetliner (ACJ) to replace a pair of Falcon 900s used by the government and ruling family.

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