Steve's bored this week being back at work after the high of covering the Avalon International Airshow last week and Grant's pretty much the same. Fortunately there's some Down Under aviation news items to cover that can distract them.

• Speaking of Avalon, reports are out showing that crowd numbers were up this year and are set to exceed 180k on the public days alone. We also met up with a lady who knows Max and oh my, the stories!
• The first of Virgin Blue's A330s (VH-XFA), a former Emirates aircraft (A6-EAB), has arrived in Australia and it's all white, which isn't such a surprise given the likely name change for the airline.
• Qantas are putting their fuel surcharges up again as fuel prices had been climbing. They're also saying there's going to be more of them in the future.
• Air New Zealand are also putting their prices up for flights to/from Australia due to increasing fuel prices.