Friday, February 3, 2017

Qantas Opens Maintenance Facility at Los Angeles Airport


Qantas debuted its new engineering facility at Los Angeles International Airport on Friday, which is designed to accommodate the Airbus A380 aircraft.

The $30-million hangar—one of the largest in North America—has two aircraft parking pads, a spare parts facility, “mega doors” made of translucent material to let light in, sky lights in the roof, electric vehicle charging stations, and aircraft access docking.

Qantas, an airline based in Australia, is going to use the facility to do maintenance checks on its A380 and Boeing 747 aircraft during ground time in Los Angeles.

“We can have up to four aircraft on the ground at LAX at once and some are here for around 14 hours, so it makes sense to have a facility where we can make good use of that time by doing scheduled maintenance,” Qantas Group CEO Alan Joyce said in a statement. “Australia will always be where we do the majority of our maintenance, and we’ve invested heavily in our onshore facilities in recent years, but LAX is our next biggest transit point so we’re pleased to now have a facility that reflects that.”

Qantas plans to use the facility to maintain its new B787-9 Dreamliner as well, when it enters service in late 2017, according to the airline.
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Thursday, February 2, 2017

Apple shatters records with blockbuster Q1 2017 earnings


Apple sold more iPhone units than ever before last quarter, a spasm of sales that finally returned the company to growth, as revealed today in Cupertino’s first earnings report of 2017.

With total revenues of $78.4 billion bringing in a profit of $17.9 billion, Apple CEO Tim Cook said he is “thrilled” with the results. Wall Street is happy, too: AAPL shares are trading up significantly in after-hours trading.

“We’re thrilled to report that our holiday quarter results generated Apple’s highest quarterly revenue ever, and broke multiple records along the way. We sold more iPhones than ever before and set all-time revenue records for iPhone, Services, Mac and Apple Watch,” said Cook in a press release. “Revenue from Services grew strongly over last year, led by record customer activity on the App Store, and we are very excited about the products in our pipeline.”

Apple growth is back
Looking at the numbers, it’s not hard to see why Cook is so stoked after four straight quarters of declines. Apple only expected to sell between 76 million and 78 million iPhones in the quarter, but it managed to move 78.3 million.

That’s a significant jump over the 74.8 million iPhones sold in Q1 2016 and the 74.5 million sold in Q1 2015. Revenue was expected to be below $78 billion, too, so Apple just scored a yuuuuge beat for the Street.

Other products also did fairly well. The Mac line sold 5.4 million units, thanks to the new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar that was the most pre-ordered MacBook ever.

The iPad lineup sold 13.1 million units, down 19 percent from the year-ago quarter. Apple’s earnings per share came in at $3.36, which was also above Wall Street’s expectations. During the quarter, Apple set all-time revenue records for iPhone, Services, Mac and Apple Watch.

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