April 2010 Archives

Runway Girl says in a post that Airbus is making great strides on its A350 XWB catalogue and suggests checking out C&D Zodiac's design for the lavs. "This certifiable "laviator" - a person who takes photos inside aircraft lavs - is particularly jazzed about the pics", she says.

The A380 celebrated its 5th birthday since its first flight.

 

We collated all our content, so why not revisit articles Flight International wrote including one about Airbus and Boeing pursuing different strategies to meet air travel demand and whether Airbus can produce an A380 freighter. See, also, a video of the giant making its first flight.

The Flightglobal team are all over EBACE in Geneva bringing you content for Flightglobal, the interactive magazine and next week's Flight International show report. Take a look and click on the interactive magazine's pages to explore images, graphics and videos and don't forget to check out all the news, video, blogs, Twitter updates from the show on the site.

Download our cutaway poster of Boeing's P-8 Poseidon with an adjoining technical description. It is the first detailed look under the skin at the aircraft's various modifications to the ubiquitous 737 Next Generation design.

See an animation illustrating the revival of air traffic across Europe following the closure of airspace during the Icelandic volcanic ash crisis. Transport mapping specialist ITO has compiled the sequence of images, with the aid of real-time flight-monitoring site Flightradar24 which draws data from a network of amateur tracking stations.

See Flightglobal's coverage of the volcanic ash cloud from a major volcanic eruption in Iceland that caused travel chaos around the world.

Our dedicated Icelandic ash cloud page kept users up to date with news from our own journalists and from around the web using realtime multimedia publishing platform CoverItLive which spewed out plumes of information from Twitter about the grounding of aircraft, live satellite images from NASA and ESA and the Met Office tracking the travelling ash cloud over European airspace.

Watch David Learmount's video explaining consequences and the impact of this unique event, and what the aviation world needs to do to be prepared for the next similar occurrence, as Icelandic authorities warn Europe that more volcanic eruptions are forecast over the next 20 years.

Have a look at images the Finnish air force released of its Boeing F-18 Hornets which show the effects of volcanic dust ingestion from inside the engines.

The jets were involved in a training exercise just hours before the imposition of airspace restrictions due to the ash cloud spreading.

And Flight covered the dangers to aircraft engines 28 years ago. Read an archive feature about Capt Eric Moody gliding to safety his British Airways Boeing 747 into Jakarta, Indonesia.

 

 

The Ash Cloud business has thrown up many unusual angles over the last 5 days or so.

Obviously we've thrown a large amount of editorial resource at covering the biggest single airspace shut down in aviation history.

Truth be told this could turn out to be a hammer blow for many parts of the industry, but as a media company there have been some positives to take away.

Our coverage has not only supplied our professional audience with vital information, but also has penetrated the wider sphere of interest. One of our stories (Finnish F-18's engines damage by ash) has been read over 300,000 times and counting.

And, for example, it's not every day that one of our stories gets a mention on BBC Radio 4's daily religious programme - Thought for the Day ...

As Safety and Ops Editor David Learmount said: "Once you're on Thought for the Day, you've reached the top - there's no where else to go. We might a well all go home now as it doesn't get any better than that."

Read David Learmount's blog explaining the circumstances of the crash of the presidential flight in a Polish air force Tupolev Tu154M.

He says that "as more information emerges it becomes increasingly difficult to understand the justification for its planning and execution in the marginal weather that prevailed". He concludes his post welcoming input from industry professionals.

Asian Skies blog suggests the Indonesian DGCA must act on its airline safety and maintenance standards once again, following the Merpati crash.

"What is worrying is that despite several accidents over the last year, and nothing seems to have been done to force the airline to conduct an overview of its safety and maintenance standards".

The DGCA, says the blog post, could bring down the good work that some of the other carriers in the country have done over the last year.

Flightglobal's MRO Pro has launched with a video explaining that Pro orange logo offers premium services, from paid-for latest industry news and special reports to images and data.

AirSpace user Flyer1 recently uploaded a picture of a Boeing Flying Fortress taken at last year's Shoreham Airshow.

 

 

It's been a while since I've done a who's who post and there are a few new faces doing cool things on the site so here's a run down.

Stuart Clarke - Deputy Editor

Stuart was formerly our Community Editor, looking after AirSpace (in the guise of admin - Maverick), and coordinating our blogging and social media efforts.

In recent times Stuart has taken on the role of Deputy Editor, and in addition to overseeing the community aspects of the site, is now looking after the day-to-day editorial agenda on Flightglobal.

So if you've got something juicy for us (or in the extremely unlikely event of spotting an error on the site), let Stu know ...

Twitter: Follow Stu ...

Henk Ombelet - Head of Product Development

Henk joins the Flightglobal team to spearhead our continuing drive for pioneering new innovation and technologies on the site.

Henk has been working on Flightglobal's sister sites Air Transport Intelligence and Commercial Aviation Online for some time now, and he will be largely involved in the on-going integration of those sites into the Flightglobal platform as core premium content (aka Flightglobal Pro).

Henk's also heavily involved in the development of our mobile proposition - namely a series of iPhone apps / upgrades planned for this year.

If you've got any ideas for new site functionality (or bugs / irritations), then let Henk know ...

Twitter: Follow Henk ...

Will Horton - Social Media Correspondent

Will joined the FG staff following a great summer internship at our Washington DC office, where he showed us all how to get more down with the kids.

Among other things, Will's the talent behind our Flightglobal Facebook pages (including the 787, 747-8 and A350XWB fan pages), the fantastic Image of the Day Blog, Wings Down Under Blog and a lot of our Twitter activity.

If you've got any good images, or suggestions of cool / quirky stuff for Flightglobal to feature, then let Will know ...

Twitter: Follow Will ...

The Apple iPad was launched over the Easter weekend and we at Flightglobal have been discussing how we could use it.

Simply type in Flightglobal.com and browse as normal to see how the site would look on the new Apple iPad.

 

And read Mary Kirby's RunwayGirl blog about renting the devices to passengers on flights without traditional IFE installed.

She recommends reading a post by SimplyFlying's Shisham Nigam who doesn't think the iPad will replace or kill IFE, but could be a strong complement, with a number of airlines just going iPad-only.

One hundred years ago this week Flight reported on a de Havilland aircraft crash. Have a look at the article showing pictures of the wreckage of a Havilland I "denoting the inadequacy, as regards strength, of this 850-lb machine". And see some general arrangement diagrams of flyer silhouettes from a show at Olympia.

FlightBlogger broke news that Gulfstream is developing "clean sheet successors to its G450 and G550 large-cabin business jets, incorporating concepts and systems designed for its flagship G650." Although Gulfstream declined to comment, saying the company "does not comment on new programs or rumors of new programs until it is ready to announce a program publicly."