November 2010 Archives

It's almost time to say farewell to the General Dynamics F-111, which is affectionately nicknamed the Pig in Australia and the Aardvark in America. The Royal Australian Air Force formally retires the F-111C fleet on Thursday.

 

He recalls how he saw it perform the "dump and burn" trick at the Singapore Air Show in February and he invites you to share your memories, thoughts and comments of this aircraft on his blog The DEW Line. See also a video showing retro footage of the aircraft performing in the skies.  

See the pictures that illustrate the story about NASA moving its X-34s out of storage as it considers returning them to flight status after 10 years. Orbital Sciences Corp will determine whether the X-34s are still viable as technology demonstrators for reusable space vehicles.

There are more pictures of surplus UH-1s en route to the Philippines. Its air force will receive five used Bell UH-1 transport helicopters under a deal by the US Army Security Assistance Command (USASAC).

Dear site visitors and friends of Flightglobal,

We're currently experiencing severe technical issues with the Flightglobal.com domain, potentially caused by a sustained and large-scale attack on our web service.

Our experienced security and infrastructure teams have the situation under control and are dealing with the issues as they arise but for the time being visitors to the site may experience intermittent time outs and site downs.

As I'm sure you can appreciate this is an extraordinary event and difficult to predict, so please be patient while we work through the issues.

Kind regards, Michael
Editor - Flightglobal
 

Flightglobal walked away with two awards at last night's Digital Publishing Awards organised by the PPA and Data Publishers Association.

We won Digital Service of the Year for flightglobal.com and also the Flightglobal Pro sales team won the award for Paid Content Sales Team of the Year.

Gaining recognition in the wider world of our rapidly developing and successful online services is extremely gratifying.

This follows our success at the Association of Online Publisher Awards earlier this year where Flightglobal was named Business Website of the Year 2010.

It's great to gain this recognition from the media and publishing industries and it's a reflection of the fact that everyone here has worked extremely hard this year to keep moving our business forward and sustain such high levels of quality and professionalism.

Here's a few photos from the night:

Flightglobal's iPhone app has just had a major upgrade, and is now available for install via iTunes.

The application has been significantly redesigned and has a whole suite of new features:

1. Offline mode. The app will download all the latest articles, blogs and images so you can view them when there's no connectivity.
2. Articles contain full text content (as opposed to just a summary sentence) so there's no need to fire up the browser
   
3. There's a cool tiled image gallery with direct tap-thru to the full image. You can then swipe to browse through previous/next images
   
4. There are up and down arrows to allow you to page through previous/next articles
5. There's a new "home page" featuring key content (articles, blogs, images and video)
6. There's also a customisable MyFlightglobal page where you can choose which news feeds and blogs you want to read, and then store them onto a single page
7. There's a special news feed, which we'll turn on for major events, such as the Paris Air Show. 

We think it's pretty cool - a big improvement - and the best way for iPhone users around the world to stay up-to-date for all aviation and aerospace goings-on.
 

Last week Flightglobal jetted off to Zhuhai to bring you all the coverage from the air show in China where the Commercial Aircraft Corp of China (Comac) announced a launch order of up to 100 aircraft for its C919 narrowbody.

Comac also released the aircraft's specifications to seat 168 in an all-economy configuration or 156 in a mixed configuration and said it aims to conduct first flight in 2014, followed by entry into service in 2016.

Read FlightBlogger's post about Boeing "examining a host of incremental improvements to the 737", and see a gallery of superb images from the show including this one of a Gulfstream G450.

Don't forget to enter your great images into the Flight International front cover competition. The winning image will adorn the magazine's front cover on the end of year issue. The winner will also receive a framed copy and £100.

Over the last four years you've entered exceptional images for the competition and Flightglobal is looking forward to having even more aircraft images to choose from.

Airbus Military has completed the first paratroop drop tests involving its A400M "Grizzly". "Six freefall paratroopers made jumps from aircraft "Grizzly Three" in separate passes from 6,000ft [1,820m] at the Fonsorbes drop zone near Toulouse on 4 November," Airbus says. Two jumped from the A400M's rear cargo ramp, and four from the aircraft's left-hand paratroop door.

Ryanair launched its 2011 Ryanair Cabin Crew Charity Calendar which was shot in Fuerteventura.

The calendar costs €10 with proceeds going to German charity "Tafel" which provides food to people, many of them children and teenagers suffering poverty and malnutrition all over Germany.

See the images plus a video from the press conference and another video of the making of the calendar.

 

See Flightglobal and wider web content on the beleagured Rolls-Royce engines, in particular the Trent 900 currently under scrutiny following the uncontained failure on a Qantas A380 and get involved in the discussion thread about the latest catastrophe with the Boeing 787 which recently suffered cabin smoke in a test aircraft.

The Airline Business team went to Cannes for the World Air Forum to discuss key issues and challenges facing the airline industry such as profitability, open skies and emerging technologies.

You can watch the debate unfold by reading reports, blogs and tweets (#WAF10) from the conference, and watch video interviews from some of the key names at the event. Read a blog post where speaker Niki Lauder compares aviation with motor racing.

Royal Jordanian Airlines has finished the first cabin modernisation of its Airbus A340 fleet, a programme aimed at extending the type's service life until the carrier's Boeing 787s arrival. It replaces the 229 economy-class seats with those featuring an in-flight entertainment system from Zodiac Aerospace unit Sicma Aero Seat.

David Learmount flew on the very last British Airways Boeing 757 aircraft schedule in revenue service. In his blog post he observes that most of the passengers don't realise and when the crew tells them, a few get excited. Most say: "That's nice". They hadn't noticed that the aircraft had been painted in the retro livery that 757s either.