May 2010 Archives

Last week the Flightglobal team went to Hamburg to cover the Aircraft Interiors show. Mary Kirby, aka RunwayGirl tweeted and blogged her way around the exhibition sharing information about who's doing what in the world of IFE and connectivity including 3D movies for passengers. "Filmmakers have learned the art of 3D. It's all about depth of field.

Passengers will demand that same feeling." There are some great images from the show including mock-ups of various interiors including a bar area in a Kingfisher Airlines aircraft.

Read a post on the Asian Skies blog about Japan's new fighter competition, the FX programme, that aims to procure 40-50 fighters to replace Japan's ageing McDonnell Douglas F-4s.

The volcanic ash cloud from Iceland looks set to sporadically dominate the UK's headlines and airspace over the coming year, so it's worth keeping an eye on David Learmount's blog for current thinking.

His most recent post on the subject explains that Europe's ash cloud is uniquely inconvenient because it affects the busiest air traffic region in the world, and there are differences in the way national aviation authorities are interpreting the internationally agreed guidelines which adds to confusion.

Images from the Duxford Spring Show have been uploaded to AirSpace. User gate64's gallery houses some impressive shots from the event including this one of retro aircraft flying in formation.

See images of the Afriqiyah Airways Airbus A330-200 that had accumulated just 1,600 flight hours before the accident in Tripoli.

AirSpace users were quick of the mark to upload images from around the web showing the wreckage and began discussing the developments to the story as it unfolded.

RunwayGirl posted an article about the first iPad IFE system to be formally launched at the Hamburg Interiors show this week. And says "an unidentified international carrier" would be using it on flights from July.

RunwayGirl says: "The system leverages the power, flexibility and quality of the Apple iPad, the most advanced consumer device ever produced".

View an animation of the Turkish Airlines Boeing 737-800 that crashed on approach to Amsterdam.

It shows the aircraft's autothrottle reduced the thrust to idle early in the approach, after receiving incorrect altitude information from a faulty left-hand radio altimeter, causing the jet to lose airspeed.

There's a superb black and white image on AirSpace of the Eurofighter Typhoon taken by user andychittock.

The Flightglobal team decamped to Geneva's Palexpo to report on EBACE for the iFDN, Flight Evening News and the summing up in the show report in this issue.

The team worked tirelessly to bring you news, blog posts from FlightBlogger, Learmount and As the Cro(ft) Flies, images, and videos of interviews with the movers and shakers of the business aviation community.

You can find all this throughout the pages of the interactive magazine and our dedicated EBACE 2010 page. And see what was being said on twitter by following the show's hashtag.

Eurocopter joined forces with automotive and design powerhouse Mercedes Benz to launch an interior for its entrepreneurial EC145 customers who work hard and play hard.

And then there's the Design Q and BAE Systems partnership that unveiled striking interior concepts including one where the cargo door opens to reveal an air deck described as the "ultimate living space".