December 2009 Archives

While most of us have been eating cold turkey every day for the last week, the aviation world did not stop.

Here at Flightglobal, we put together some lists including Flightglobal's list of the year's first flights, roll-outs and anniversaries, how we covered the air shows around the globe and of course the usual top tens from the stories, the pictures and the videos that had you clicking furiously to see what the big noise was about.

You've still got time to enter the Webbies 09 Flightglobal's Aviation Web Awards. You can nominate your own favourite sites, as well, in the eight aviation-related categories including two new categories celebrating community and enthusiast websites and effective use of social media. The closing date for entries and nominations is 10th January so get cracking.

See how Flight saw the world in its last issue of its first year. In the 18th December 1909 issue, a reader, Harold Kelk wrote to the editor questioning the origination of the word "aviation", saying: M. Jules Verne used [the word] in his book "The Clipper of the Clouds ".

"I think 'aviation' a much pleasanter word to use than 'volitation', and its exact meaning quite near enough to the mark to justify its use," he says.

There are some great images that were entered into this year's AirSpace's front cover competition, but it was the picture of the Raytheon Sentinel, the RAF's Airborne Stand-Off Radar equipped Bombardier Global Express - departing from RAF Waddington and snapped at an intriguing angle that surprised the Flightglobal judges.

AirSpace user Sunshine Band wins a cash prize and a framed Flight International cover.

Take a look at this other entry in the Sleek Jets category with a football painted on its nose.

During the Christmas holiday we've teed up some year-end stories for you to delight in, ranging from the top ten best images on AirSpace, the top ten best videos and stories through the year, anniversaries, roll-outs, cutaways and first flights, which will, of course, include the Boeing 787, for which we waited with baited breath for two and a half years.

AirSpace user Goose is excited about a home-made aircraft that actually works. See his post about a replica P-51D Mustang made by a retired dentist who used some of his implements to build it.

Stephen Trimble's The DEW Line blog has a great post showing an image of four F-22s flying over the UAE. He posted another image of China Military Aviation's new four-jet freighter and thinks it looks like a cross between a C-130 and the A400M. What do you think?

The big news of the week was the first flight of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner which successfully took to the skies, albeit two and a half years later than anticipated.

The jet lifted off the tarmac to the sounds of excited whoops and cheers from spectators. Jon Ostrower's FlightBlogger was in his element as resident 787 expert, tweeting and streaming video live at the scene at Paine Field, Everett.

An AirSpace blogger Andrew Sieber posted in interesting piece with images and text about the chase planes that would be trailing the 787.

If you'd also like to have your own blog hosted by AirSpace, where it will be read by an audience of over 5,000 users, email Flightglobal's Community Editor Stuart Clarke.    

On the Flightglobal archive, read the article "Flight in 1915" which is the result of asking people where they imagined the "position of flying in six years' time". M. Jules Bois volunteers a prediction for 100 years time suggesting that the "motor car will have gone completely out of fashion, but the bicycle, in a new form, will enable the rider to soar in mid-air".

See a bizarre an image of a puff of smoke which an AirSpace user has uploaded to AirSpace. Flyer1 seems disgruntled as he describes the image as a stealth Royal Air Force after the government has made their cuts. "Stealth technology by STINK Works....it has disappeared in a puff of smoke!"

Now that the AirSpace upgrade has had time to bed in and we've had a chance to tackle most of the inevitable teething problems (mainly to do with performance), it's probably worth doing a quick run through of the new features which were included.

(If you'd like more detail, Flightglobal's Community Editor Stuart Clarke provides a more in-depth look on his AirSpace blog ... )

Design

The most obvious change is the design, which we've deliberately moved back into style with the rest of Flightglobal. AirSpace is the final area of the site to get the "universal header" which allows users to navigate to any of the primary content areas of the site wherever they are.

We've also introduced a greater amount of white space and generally tried to smarten up the layout.

Groups

With Groups, users now have the ability to create and manage their own groups, similarly to Google or Yahoo groups. Groups can be around events, topics or activities, and each one has its own content, membership, and permissions that allow you to be as open or as closed as you wish to be.

Find out more here ...

Wikis

The new Wikis section of AirSpace allows members to create, manage and edit pages on any aviation topic, event or collection of things that they like.

Find out more here ...

Enhancements to Image Multi Uploader

This version of AirSpace allows you to bulk load up to 10 images at a time and for the first time, it allows you to follow the progress of the upload as it happens.

Find out more here ...

There are also lots of little enhancements that have come as part of the upgrade, but there are too many to mention so I'll let you discover them for yourselves.

Many thanks to all current AirSpace members for their patience, having had to put up with a couple of days of downtime and subsequent bugs and performance issues. We think we've turned the corner now and will hopefully rid ourselves of the remaining frustrations over the next few weeks.

Now - time to start thinking about the next upgrade ....

Flightglobal attended the Crew Management Conference held this year in London, to canvass opinions on video, from delegates about the current challenges the industry faces.

One speaker suggested that, worryingly, many pilots lack the basic knowledge of the principles of flying, while one student, with a PPL, spoke of his frustrations about the difficulty of entering the profession after he's awarded his degree.

Making plans for 2010? Why not plot your movements on a range of calendars available including the Ryanair Cabin Crew, Charity Beach Babe calendar in aid of Help for Heroes and you can now order your Flightglobal calendar which features 12 of the best images from users on AirSpace.

FlightBlogger reported that first flight countdown begins again for the Boeing 787. He says the internal schedule for first flight has been accelerated to 14 December, "reflecting the programme's rising confidence".

Previous reports had targeted 22 December for first flight. Read the complete FlightBlogger report.

Read Kieran Daly's blog post about how a rather large passenger was able to board an American Airlines flight having booked only one seat when he clearly needed two.

He says: "Sympathise with the guy or not, he's a major safety hazard in an evacuation, a gross inconvenience for the cabin crew, and I would suggest a totally unacceptable travelling companion for the guy next to him."

See a video of travellers at Heathrow's Terminal 5 getting romantic under the world's largest sprig of mistletoe. The ten foot by eight foot structure took three weeks to construct and weighs an impressive 43kg.

Must be something in the air, as we've got a few new bits and pieces to talk about on Flightglobal this week.

Yesterday we updated our Blogs page - which use to simply list all the Flightglobal bloggers on the payroll, plus the latest posts.

The new-look Blogs (and Social Media) page continues to feature all our expert Flightglobal blogs and posts, but in addition we've added a bunch of extra goodies for blog fans to enjoy.

We have a new tab for our excellent collection of AirSpace bloggers. This growing portfolio of bloggers from the community of AirSpace members covers various different subjects, angles and indeed continents.

If you'd like to start a blog on AirSpace and be featured on this tab then let our Community Editor Stuart Clarke (aka Maverick on AirSpace) know.

Then there's a tab for the latest comments added to the Flightglobal blogs.
Obviously blogs are a two-way medium and all comments (as long as they're not offensive) are welcome and discussed in the Flightglobal Offices. We currently average around 200+ comments a week on our blogs with most of them being of an extremely high quality.

Lastly, there's a tab for Twitter. This lists the Twitter handles of Flightglobal staffers, our sector-specific Twitter accounts, and also our current Twitter favs from the world of Aerospace and Aviation.