April 2011 Archives

 

Check out the new heatmapped graphic on the Archive channel page and roll over each of the iconic front covers to see inside that issue. The front covers make an ideal present for aviation enthusiasts, so browse the gallery at the Flightglobal Image Store and buy one in a range of formats, from a print, a jigsaw puzzle, or a mug.

Also on the Flight Blog, watch a video of the pilots of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight rehearse for the Royal Wedding aerial salute.

Lockheed Martin can earn a $52.5 million extra pay-day this year on the F-35 program, according to a post on The DEW Line blog.

Author Stephen Trimble suggests this "may seem like chump-change compared to the roughly $11.4 billion in the Fiscal 2011 budget for F-35, but these days a defense contractor will gladly take anything it can get." 

He adds that the list also helps clarify what the F-35 joint program office thinks are some of the most important objectives for the struggling program to achieve in 2011.

Flightglobal prides itself on providing you with the tools to enhance your career, and so is pleased to announce the launch of a brand-new training site dedicated to providing you with the best courses from the world's leading training providers.


Flightglobal Training provides the latest aviation and aerospace training courses including Flight Training, Air Safety, Maintenance and Management.
 


Whether you're an aspiring engineer embarking on the first steps of your career or a pilot looking to make that next step, Flightglobal Training has the course for you.
 


Key features include:



• Search by discipline, including Flight Training, Air Safety, Academic, Maintenance and Management courses, and get an RSS feed of that search

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As well as this exciting new addition to Flightglobal, remember to check out Flightglobal jobs, which allows you to search for more than 1,500 live vacancies around the world.

 

 

See a Flight Blog post commemorating the 50th anniversary of first human spaceflight as Russian astronaut Yuri Gagarin orbited Earth in 108-minute flight on 12 April 1961.

 

See how Flight recorded the event and what our report Maurice Smith thought about him when they met. The British Council (@BritishCouncil) tweeted updates sent, in real time, 50 years after they were first recorded but at the time few details were divulged.

 

Learmount visited Brooklands Museum where he flew Concorde's simulator next to his copilot Mike Bannister, a former British Airway chief Concorde pilot.

 

For a price, members of the public can have the same experience. Learmount said: "Mike did all the checklist stuff, set up the speed bugs, told me about attitudes for the key moments, and off we went.

 

Still on the subject of supersonic aircraft, former Concorde pilot Chris Orlebar, author of the definitive book about that iconic Franco-British aeroplane "The Concorde Story", was also at Brooklands to launch the book's seventh edition which contains Orlebar's speculation about a successor.

 

Learmount says that Orlebar doesn't pretend to know for sure, "but years spent assembling information about this superspeed phenomenon may have provided him with as good a perspective as anybody alive can have of what's likely to come next."

 

As reported on the Asian Skies blog, ANA has launched a post-earthquake & tsunami special livery. The livery carries the phrase "Forward together as one Japan". There is now a red dot representing the sun; Japan is referred to as the land of the rising sun, and it is also featured on the wing.  

 

 

Korean Air has decided to put a duty free shop in its fleet of A380s.

Instead of seats for 13 passengers, it will install a fully functioning shop, selling alcohol and beauty products. Kerry Reals, Flightglobal's deputy news editor and Green Wing blog author questions whether this initiative cancels out all the hard work the industry is putting into reducing aircraft weight to save fuel.

See images of the Air France Airbus A330-200 that crashed into the south Atlantic in 2009 killing everyone onboard.

The pictures include snapshots of the engines, sections of the wing, fuselage and landing gear.

However, there is no immediate indication that the search has located the rear fuselage where the  flight recorders are installed behind the rear pressure bulkhead.

Our 'Guess the Airport' competition returns with new images of airports taken from Google maps. To take part, just post the airport name and IATA code in the comments below on the Flight Blog.

Six pilots from the Air France flying club planning to land in 100 aerodromes in only 24 hours as part of the Breitling 100/24 Cup challenge in June in a bid to promote general, light and business aviation and regional accessibility. See more information about the challenge on the Flight Blog.

This blog entry was written by Laura Ombelet, this week's Flightglobal intern. She attends St Bedes in Redhill, Surrey.