December 2008 Archives

Happy holidays, Merry Christmas etc ... whatever your background or culture I hope you've got today off work and are enjoying yourself.

However if you've found yourself in front of the computer for one reason or another don't despair - we've knocked up a few gems to keep you entertained.

2008 has been a busy year for the aviation industry. Oil prices, safety incidents, biofuels breakthroughs, new aircraft, delayed programmes, company closures and historic restorations - you name it, it seems to have happen this year.

Luckily Flightglobal's been there to document the whole damn lot.

So you'll see that today we have the first in our Year in Review series up on the site. The first story documents the Top Ten Most Read Stories of 2008.

And in the next few days we'll also publish the top videos, images, quirkies, blogs and first flights.

In addition, if you're still hungry for more 2008 retrospective, the majority of our bloggers have written their own reviews concentrating on their own specialisms, so why not check those out as well?

For the second year running, AirSpace (our user forums and galleries) has offered you the chance to get your favourite image on to the front cover of the end-of-year special issue of Flight International.

The Competition really kicked into another gear this year with nearly 1,500 images submitted in the six categories. In addition the quality of the entries was second to none and caused the judging process to drag out over several days!

Congratulations go to Begemont and was this spectacular shot of a Russian Air Force Su-27 releasing flares at MAKS 2007

And here's the front cover:

The other category winners were:

Menace - Fighters in Flight
Winner - runlikehell
F-22 Raptor at 2008 Oceana air show in Virginia

History - Birds from Bygone Eras
Winner - Photomotion
Ray Hanna memorial flight at Biggin Hill air show 2006

Precision - Aerial Display Teams
Winner - fleeting_images
UK Royal Navy Lynx Black Cats at RIAT

Majesty - Airliners in Action
Winner - bwiadca
Boeing MD-11 climbing to Alaskan storm from Anchorage 2008

Voyage - General Aviation in Dramatic Locations
Winner - allegra66
Rega A109KT during mountain landing in Switzerland

Response - Inspiring Business Jets
Winner - Global Ranger
Bombardier Challenger 300 (G-KALS) on approach to London Luton 2008

On Wednesday Reed Business Information (RBI), the publishing company of this lovely website and its associated magazines Flight International and Airline Business, held its annual corporate Achievement Awards to celebrate success and excellence demonstrated by its various markets, products and people throughout 2008.

The urban myth is that the RBI Achievement Awards once received the award for the Best Corporate Awards at the Corporate Awards Awards.

Anyway I'm proud as punch to say that we walked away with two gongs: Best Blogger - FlightBlogger (aka Jon Ostrower) and Community Site of 2008 - Flightglobal.com ("community site" is what RBI calls its free access magazine-style websites).

The competition for accolades among our publishing house is fairly stiff given that we were up against strong brands and sites like newscientist.com, computerweekly.com and Hairdressers Journal, so it made the night all the sweeter to receive two of the most important online awards.

And its nice to receive the recognition given how much we've achieved and progressed during the course of this year.

Here are a couple snaps from the night:

Jon Ostrower accepts his awards (on the big screen)

Team Flightglobal on the big screen

The winning crew

Left to right: Stuart Clarke (Community Editor), Jon Ostrower (FlightBlogger and Content Editor - Americas), Michael Targett (Editor), Barbara Cockburn (Content Editor - Europe), Andrew Costerton (Webmaster)

Flight International issue - 16th Dec 2008

See a fantastic NASA image we used as Image of the Day one day last week showing the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, a modified Boeing 747, with space shuttle Endeavour on its back as it took off from Edwards Air Force Base in California to fly it back home to NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

AirSpace has a cracking photo database of user uploaded images including one from APG Photography of a balloon flight drifting over Welsh countryside on a crisp winter's morning.

Get involved in the AirSpace discussion about the merits or otherwise of the Plane Stupid protesters. Did they have a case to bring Stansted to a standstill recently for the sake of climate change?

Users on AirSpace are talking about their highlights of the year. One user marvelled at having seen and heard the Avro Vulcan XH558 fly at Farnborough.

A report into last year's Toulouse A340-600 crash was published last week concluded that a violation of test procedures led to the accident. One AirSpace said: "Surely someone must have thought about killing the power before they hit the wall." Another user responded: "Just goes to show you that common sense and logic doesn't always come to the forefront in critical situations, very little time was available to make those decisions." FlightBlogger posted images on his blog last year that clearly demonstrate the extent of the damage.

Week on the Web is also available as a podcast.

We've got this cool new toy on Flightglobal, cunningly titled the Interactive Business Jet Guide.

It's a quick way to find out Biz Jet specs and compare them to the rest of the market.

You can sort aircraft by such factors as price, cabin measurements, seating configuration and landing and take-off weights, and when you have picked out your business jet, simply click on the diagram to get a detailed description and spotter's guide, and for more information on that aircraft (news, images, discussion etc ...) you can click thru to a dynamic landing page.

As with all new toys there are a few tweaks to iron out. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that the A380 VIP is lacking a couple of 00s off the price - we'll be fixing this asap. However if you spot anything else that looks a bit odd then drop me an email ...