August 2009 Archives

Just a quick note for all you Flightglobal shopaholics who have been frustrated by our hitherto xenophobic attitudes towards e-commerce.

The Flightglobal Shop now features a multi currency option allowing shoppers to choose between Pounds Sterling, Euros and US Dollars.

Hopefully that should make the shopping experience slightly more usable for our international audience, although whether we'll ever manage to cater for the 220+ different nationalities that visit Flightglobal remains to be seen! If nothing else it would make the drop down option a tad long.

A reminder that the Flightglobal Shop currently stocks a variety of Directories, Reports, DVDs and merchandise, but we're adding more and more products every week.

Flight International issue 25 - 31 August

See pictures of an airship in development as Sanswire-TAO completes testing of its STS-111's propulsion system at 9,000ft (2,750m) with a goal of operating at 15,000ft.

A DEW Line blog post has a video showing a KC-130 probe-and-drogue refueling the second F-35B short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) prototype named BF-2.

Join in the discussion about Qatar's C-17. One user is interested to know "what type of humanitarian aid this aircraft will be assisting in" bearing in mind it has  a "discrete camouflage [Qatar Airways] livery for tactical landings.... Ferrari or Harrods container drop into Doha?"

See a great image of a Hawker Sea Hurricane as it performs an aerial display at Old Warden and the Shuttleworth Collection, an aerodrome in Bedfordshire, UK.

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

If you're one of the growing Twitter fans and users, then you may already be following some of the Flightglobal Twitter accounts or individual journalists.

In addition to those, we've set up some sector-specific Twitter accounts for people interested in receiving more focussed updates via Twitter (or Twitter-related apps such as TweetDeck).

They're listed here:

FG_Defence
Latest news from the Defence channel on Flightglobal

FG_Aircraft
Latest Aircraft news from Flightglobal

FG_AirTransport
Latest Air Transport news from Flightglobal

FG_Airlines
Latest Airline news from Flightglobal

FG_Safety
Latest Safety news from Flightglobal

FG_UAVs
Latest UAV news from Flightglobal

FG_Helicopters
Latest helicopter news from Flightglobal

FG_BizAndGA
Latest business and general aviation news from Flightglobal

FG_Spaceflight
Latest spaceflight news from Flightglobal

FG_Maintenance
Latest maintenance news from Flightglobal

FG_AirlineBiz
Latest Airline Business news from Flightglobal

A bit of information regarding the site outage that affected Flightglobal on Friday - Saturday last week.

An incident hit our central systems around 3.40pm GMT on Friday and took much of Reed Business Information's IT infrastructure down (RBI is the publishing house for Flightglobal). Even our email was down and we were forced to resort to Tweeting messages regarding the problems in order to communicate with the Flightglobal community.

The Infrastructure team worked through Friday night into Saturday morning to get everything back up, and the site returned to normal at around 10am GMT on Saturday. Which is pretty good going considering how many websites, networks and systems they had to get back up and running.

We do have redundancy in the system designed to keep the main parts of the site up during an incident such as this but such was the severity of the problems that those rerouting processes themselves were affected.

You can see the impact the outage had on Flightglobal from the traffic graph below (hourly page views), with traffic virtually drying up instantly, and not coming back properly till Saturday morning.

The good news is that this is about as bad a scenario as you can image for a website publisher, but we recovered pretty rapidly and have learnt many lessons from what up until now had been a theoretical situation.

Flight International issue 18 - 24 August 2009

There's a couple of interesting videos about the 100th anniversary of AV Roe's triplane which first flew at Walthamstowe Marshes. Meet Eric Verdon Roe, AV's grandson who talks about the man himself, his inspiration and how he cycled around his garden on the handlebars.

The DEW Line and As the Croft Flies blog writers attended last week's Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) show in Washington so watch out for news from the event.

Mary Kirby posted a piece on her Runway Girl blog about recent reports that airlines were thinking of charging passengers for standing room only. Aircraft manufacturers are not keen. Boeing says: "We are not contemplating standing-only accommodations on Boeing jetliners, nor do we have any plans to do so."

The Airline Business blog has an amusing entry that highlights an error on Easyjet's site showing it flies from Basel and out across the Atlantic.

Due to unprecedented demand, the deadline to nominate for the Flightglobal Achievement awards has been extended until 19 August 2009.

Nominate now ...

The all-new Flightglobal Achievement Awards are your chance to nominate and vote for the best aviator, the best innovator and the best leader in the industry today.

The awards also recognise the stars of the future, with a special award for the Engineering Student of the Year, sponsored by Boeing.

We want you to nominate the people and teams that you feel deserve recognition.

Then we'll invite all Flightglobal visitors to vote on the shortlist chosen by Flightglobal editors and distinguished independent judges.

The winners will be announced at a ceremony at the Dubai air show in November, with flightglobal.com, Flight International and Flight Daily News there to cover the event as it happens.

We are delighted to welcome four prestigious sponsors for these awards. Along with Boeing, these are AJ Walter Aviation, Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies and Bombardier Aerospace.

So from hero pilots to brilliant entrepreneurs, from pioneers of new technology to outstanding leaders of men and women, this is your chance to tell us who most deserves the praise of the aviation world. Prepare to give them your recognition.

Nominate now ...

Sponsored by:

AJ Walter Aviation

Boeing

Bombardier

Flight International issue 4 - 10 August

EAA Airventure 2009 at Oshkosh is dominating the headlines with debut appearances from the Airbus A380 and Virgin Galactic's White Knight II.

Watch videos of both aircraft, plus interviews with key figures such as Airbus CEO Tom Enders and Sir Richard Branson. There is also an exclusive video interior tour of the space tourism mothership.

An extensive image gallery of Oshkosh highlights is available on AirSpace, and check the Oshkosh landing page for all the latest news and multimedia. 

Elsewhere Stephen Trimble writes about the Lockheed's B-roll for F-35C roll-out ceremony and includes a video on The DEW Line.

The DEW Line also features a picture story about Russian pilots flying a SU-35 with no canopy for a movie stunt, with one pilot ejecting mid-flight while the other continues to fly the aircraft.

And time is running out to enter the Flightglobal Achievement Awards. Nominate your choice of the brightest and best people in aviation today in three exciting categories - the Leader, the Aviator and the Innovator of the year.

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

Time is running out for you to nominate your heroes for the Flightglobal Achievement Awards!

Nominations close on 7th August - this Friday - so you have just three days left to enter!

Nominate now ...

The all-new Flightglobal Achievement Awards are your chance to nominate and vote for the best aviator, the best innovator and the best leader in the industry today.

The awards also recognise the stars of the future, with a special award for the Engineering Student of the Year, sponsored by Boeing.

We want you to nominate the people and teams that you feel deserve recognition.

Then we'll invite all Flightglobal visitors to vote on the shortlist chosen by Flightglobal editors and distinguished independent judges.

The winners will be announced at a ceremony at the Dubai air show in November, with flightglobal.com, Flight International and Flight Daily News there to cover the event as it happens.

We are delighted to welcome four prestigious sponsors for these awards. Along with Boeing, these are AJ Walter Aviation, Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies and Bombardier Aerospace.

So from hero pilots to brilliant entrepreneurs, from pioneers of new technology to outstanding leaders of men and women, this is your chance to tell us who most deserves the praise of the aviation world. Prepare to give them your recognition.

Nominate now ...

Sponsored by:

AJ Walter Aviation

Boeing

Bombardier