February 2012 Archives

Today we've made some changes to the flightglobal.com home page and introduced a few additional page types, all designed to help visitors to flightglobal.com more easily access news and blog content.

Many of you have helpfully supplied feedback on the new-look flightglobal since we redesigned last year.

As a result we've been busy re-platforming some critical areas of the site in order to facilitate making rapid changes to layout and content.

The homepage is one of these areas and the initial improvements include:

• A new full-width News Control exposing a whole bunch more news stories than were previously showcased. As well as the big sectors (aerospace, airlines, military, biz av), there are quick links to other news sector, the most read stories on flightglobal and the latest blog posts.
  
• We've taken the opportunity to move the large "skyscape" image and social media links down to the bottom of the page. Although we really liked this as a dramatic design feature, many of you felt that this space could be better used or had thought it was an advert (which it wasn't!).
  
• The Careers Control now features training courses, and quick search boxes for both jobs and training courses.
  
• We've reintroduced the Question of the Week poll back onto the homepage, which many of you have been asking for.
  
• We've also created a series of news listing and rss pages, in light of the feedback saying that some visitors to the site preferred viewing stories in list format rather than the browse-focused news channel pages.
  

There are a bunch of other tweaks and changes, and we'll continue to introduce them as we focus on tidying up and simplifying the rest of the page with a view to making it a little less blocky and busy.

So thanks for all the feedback and for persevering while we build in enhancements to the new site. Keep it coming.

On the 25th anniversary of the first Airbus A320 flight, FlightBlogger argued that the narrowbody type's single biggest contribution to commercial aerospace is its digital fly-by-wire flight control system. On the Asian Skies blog, Greg Waldron posted test-flight footage of China's Sunward Tech Star-Lite SVU200 vertical take-off and landing unmanned air vehicle (UAV). Ariel View's Arie Egozi profiled Sky Sapience's tethered hovering platform for small vehicles, the HoverMast (above), which will be displayed at the AUVSI international conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, on March 20-22. On The DEW Line, Stephen Trimble used "the Goldilocks method" to analyse a mystery UAV snapped in flight over Uzbekistan: "Predator/Gray Eagle/Reaper is too big, yet the UAV still seems too small to be a Hermes 900. China's Pterodactyl/Wing Loong, however, seems just right."

The awards, now in their fourth year, celebrate and acknowledge individuals, teams and innovations at work in the aviation and aerospace industries. If you would like to reward those aviation professionals or teams that really stand out, this is your opportunity to cast your vote!

Go to our nominations page now and tell us who you think deserves to be rewarded in the following categories:

Leader of the Year: Awarded to the aviation or aerospace industry executive who has displayed exemplary business vision and inspirational leadership throughout the year, whether by steering a challenging project to fruition or by bringing together an exceptional team.

Aviator of the Year: This award will be presented to the individual or team that has done the most to advance the cause of safety and operational best practice in the field of aviation over the previous 12 months. Nominations may be for individuals, flight crews or support teams.

Innovator of the Year: This award recognises people, teams or companies that have demonstrated new technologies, products or even ways of doing business that have been developed or have come to market in the past year.

Lifetime Achievement Award: The person who has made an outstanding contribution to the industry or to the development of aviation.

In last year's awards, which culminated in a ceremony at the 2011 Dubai Airshow, Emirates president Tim Clark, BEA AF447 investigation team, Sikorsky's X2 pilot Kevin Bredenbeck and airline pioneer Burt Rutan were named the respective Leader, Innovator, Aviator and Lifetime Achievement award-winners.

The deadline for nominations to recognise the great and good in aviation is 30 March 2012. A shortlist of finalists will result from this round of voting, and you will then have the chance to cast your vote again to decide the winners.

Making your choice could not be easier. Simply fill in the nomination form, explaining the reasons behind your choice in no more than 300 words. Please include any relevant web links.

Nominate your favourites in aviation now!

Once again, the Boeing Company, in association with Flightglobal, is proud to sponsor the Engineering Student of the Year Award, which recognises the outstanding talent of tomorrow - both at graduate and undergraduate levels.

For the first time, as well as the overall award, a special prize will be presented to the best undergraduate submission, giving global recognition to those working on their first degree. Students may nominate themselves or be nominated by their professors.

View the criteria and enter here.

Delays forced temporary renaming of FlightBlogger's Movie Monday series, but Movie Tuesday was worth the wait with its dramatic videos of aircraft on approach to landing.

One was shot from the flightdeck of an Airbus A320 descending to Bhutan's Paro airport, "widely believed to be the most difficult approach in the world" as the runway, at 7,300ft, is surrounded by 18,000ft peaks.

FlightBlogger also posted his photos of Lufthansa's first Boeing 747-8 flying in Everett.

Our Image of the Day blog carried a Lockheed Martin shot (above) of the 11th C-5B aircraft inducted to the C-5M Super Galaxy production line, and on Asian Skies Greg Waldron noted Boeing's dig at the Lockheed Martin F-35 in the title of a Singapore briefing on "the balanced and evolutionary approach to fighter design versus the challenges of fielding a 'revolutionary' design affordably and on schedule

Today we've upgraded our popular Blogs page with a tidier and up-to-date design.

The new page leads with the latest blog post from the portfolio of Flightglobal blogs.

We've also featured the weekly editorial "comment" from Flight International magazine (also know as the opinion leader column).

This is hosted on Murdo Morrison's Flight International Editor's Blog and is also published in the front of the magazine each week, and offers the "Flight International take" on topical industry matters.

The rest of the page includes all the popular blog-type links and lists, such as the full blog portfolio (from FlightBlogger to the Green Wing), all the latest posts, comments, tweets, social media links, and the top user blogs from contributors on the AirSpace forums.

The winners of the 2011 Aviation Web Awards (aka the Webbies) have been announced today. Congratulations to all the winners and shortlisted entries.

Being passionate about the aviation industry and about digital innovation, it's rewarding to see the wave of new ideas and design improvements continuing, with a heightened focus on usability and customer focus.

A good example of this is the winner of the Website of the Year category - ChangeYourFlight.

This site facilitates the exchange of non-refundable airline tickets for passengers who are unable to travel for one reason or another.

I suspect 5 years ago this site would have been more like a message board (think craigslist) or a standard classified advertising site.

Today - with the emphasis being on usability in design - the site is delivered in a slick, high-usable format that has real potential if they can gain traction with enough of the airlines.

 

You can read the full review of the winners here...

Webbies winners:

WEBSITE OF THE YEAR
Winner: ChangeYourFlight
Runners up:

• Design Your Own Boeing 787 Dreamliner
• Airliners.net

BEST MOBILE APP
Winner: Smart BRIEF CABIN
Runners up:

• PC-12 Digital Airplane Flight Manual
• Upcast Jetbook

BEST ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN
Winner: AIRBUS LOVE A380, "love at first flight" campaign
Runners up:

• Bombardier's 25th anniversary
• Avios

BEST BLOG
Winner: Aspire Aviation
Runners up:

• David Parker Brown's Airline Reporter
• Latedeparture.com

BEST USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Winner: Scandinavian Airlines
Runners up:

• Boeing - Design your own Dreamliner
• Estonia Air