January 2009 Archives

We've just implemented something called Zibb Infusion on to Flightglobal articles.

Zibb is the RBI-owned B2B search engine that we work closely with, and Infusion is a service that looks for pre-defined keywords within the text of an article and inserts links automatically as and when it finds them.

At this point we've opted to define a bunch of keywords mainly around aircraft types, company names and people. And the links will point to our dynamic landing pages on those subjects.

As it's early days we've only infused a few live articles so we can do some QA testing.

Here's one that is live, and - aside from some teething issues - you can see the links with dotted underlines are the automatically infused ones:

EADS waves off bid for Air Force One replacement

These links also appear at the bottom of the article for reference.

The advantage to the user is that our lovely dynamic landing pages will be much more accessible throughout the site.

Feedback welcome ...

Flight International issue 27th January - 2nd February

This week you'll find a video of a Tipsy Nipper light aircraft performing a spin that went wrong with great footage from the camera mounted in the cockpit.

See also, a video of the airborne deployment of a MAV. Under a US Air Force contract, a team lead by System Dynamics developed an autonomous munition-deployed micro air vehicle (MAV) for bomb damage indication applications.

Contained within a modified MK20 bomb it is released from a Saab Draken and 35s after release a parachute-equipped dispenser housing the MAV is ejected from the MK20. The parachute decelerates the dispenser to release the camera equipped MAV. The MAV autonomously stabilises and enters a holding pattern to acquire a GPS signal.

VivaAerobus, which has links with Ryanair, has unleashed a charity calendar.

Flight International's deputy editor recently visited the de Havilland Aircraft Heritage Centre in Hertfordhsire, UK, and uploaded some images including a Comet and the Mosquito prototype.

FlightBlogger posted a photograph showing the ditching button on an A320 following the ditching of a US Airways A320 into the Hudson River, New York. In his post, FlightBlogger Jon Ostrower explains that "the ultimate purpose of the system is to seal the aircraft to prevent water from undermining the buoyancy of the aircraft to keep it afloat in the event that the airframe remains intact after impacting the water." But the question is - did the crew press it or not? 

The flight from Chicago to Washington DC, was widely covered right up until he reached the cabin door, though National Geographic took over filming to witness President-Elect Obama's first official trip to Washington aboard an Air Force C-32 (Boeing 757) aircraft on January 4th and our FlightBlogger posted the footage onto his blog.

Week on the Web is also available as an audio podcast ...

One of our whizz kids in the marketing department has knocked up a smart little bit of java which allows users to create their own landing pages in a flash!

(What are our dynamic landing pages?)

You can generate your own page by entering your keyword of choice in the box on the right and clicking on the Create your page button.

If you like the results you can then add the page to your favourites and visit it any time for the latest content on that subject.

Check out our Aircraft Profiles pages for the full list of landing pages ...

Flight International 20 - 26 January

Big news last week was Airbus unveiling the "definitive" A350 XWB design in Toulouse.

Flight International's deputy editor Max Kingsley-Jones took some good images of a model of the aircraft at the press event and you can find them in the A350 gallery on AirSpace.

Read David Learmount's blog Learmount for his view on the UK Government's green light for London Heathrow's third runway.

He says that "these solutions to Heathrow's dire capacity problems are [not] quite so assured in the long run" and asks: "What does that feel like to an airline like United (to pick just one carrier at random) which has paid as much as £30 million for an additional take-off/landing slot there?"

In blog The DEW Line, Stephen Trimble writes: "Northrop Grumman wanted to commemorate the B-2's 20th anniversary with something special and flashy.

So they commissioned the Orange County Choppers to design and produce the "B-2 Stealth Bike". He's uploaded a couple of interesting images of the beast which are worth a look.

Blink and you'd miss it, so watch out for a design of an MV-22 aircraft in American Airline colours towards the end of a video about tiltorotors by Bell Helicopter.

Have crunched the numbers from Flight Aware to plot the height/distance of the aircraft. It's a bit vague but gives an idea of when the problem occurred and how he brought it down.

My esteemed colleague David Learmount tells me that the climb shape is intially steep as the pilot looks to gain altitude asap, it then drops off slightly to reduce noise, and then slows again as he tries to get more forward velocity at the costs of climb. Somewhere between this point and the next the problem occurs and he begins to descend.

About halfway through the descent there's a slight climb again and David feels this is probably because the pilot has at that point decided where he wants to ditch but has too much speed so he climbs to lose velocity before descending again into the Hudson.

Check out the nostalgic ad campaign to celebrate 25 years of Virgin Atlantic on AirSpace and see the air stewardesses in their red uniforms turn heads in the terminal building.

See a video news report about a never-seen-before manoeuvre with a K-Max light-lift multi-purpose helicopter holding a wrecking ball to demolish a 130ft chimney from a college campus in Louisville, Kentucky.

FlightBlogger reader Liz Matzelle captured on video Boeing 787 'Dreamliner One' being rolled out of the factory. This latest footage shows the progress that Boeing is making with its delayed twinjet, which is scheduled to make its first flight around the end of April.

In case you missed out on our top ten series during the festive season take a look at our top ten news stories, videos, images and the quirkiest stories from last year, including the frog found in the aircraft window. Where did it come from? How did it get in there? More importantly, how did it get out?

The Italian air force moved a step closer to the delayed introduction to service of its new KC-767A tanker/transports, with Boeing having demonstrated the type's ability to receive fuel from another aircraft.

See a picture of this flight-test milestone as Italy's second of four KC-767s received more than 4,540kg (10,000lb) of fuel from its first example.

Happy New Year to one and all from the team at Flightglobal.

2008 was a terrific year for this website. We saw ferocious traffic growth equalled only by the wealth of new functionality launched successful throughout the year.

Unsurprisingly, the pinnacle of the year centred around the Farnborough Air Show and Flight's 100 Greatest Celebrations. A staggering quarter of a million website pages were being viewed everyday during the air show, now doubt from site users enjoying our unrivalled show coverage and the 21 separate new online initiatives that we unveiled in time for the show.

2009 promises to be no less productive and industrious. Among other things we plan to move the technology "back end" of the website over to a new whizz-bang system which will allow us to accelerate the development of Flightglobal's content and structure.

We plan to develop chunkier B2B modules for information-hungry users, allowing users to access the level of information that's right for them.

But we'll also continue our unmatched coverage of key industry events to a degree hitherto unseen. Look out for Flightglobal @ Paris - that's all I'll say.

And finally, Flight began publishing 100 years ago this month, so it's fitting that we continue to put effort into developing our unique 100-year Archive. The feedback regarding our Archive so far has been fantastic and we plan to continue digging and highlighting content as we find it as well as enriching the user experience and search functions.

Thank you for all your warm words and constructive feedback throughout last year - keep it coming.

And Flightglobal's New Year resolution? As always - to remain serious about aviation.

All the best,

Michael