Recently in Design and innovation Category

Swiss heavyweight Comlux has snubbed the industry's big brands to become launch customer for the VIP version of Sukhoi's Superjet 100 airliner - just four months after the variant was announced at the Paris air show.

The order for two Sukhoi Business Jets, plus two options, was unveiled today by SuperJet International, the joint venture between Alenia Aeronautica and the Russian manufacturer, which is responsible for marketing the jet outside the former Soviet Union and Asia.

• Continue reading... 
• More from NBAA 2011 in Las Vegas check out this page to see how Flightglobal is covering the show

Picture credit: Airbus 

Airbus is preparing to transport the first A350 upper wing-cover from Germany to the airframer's main wing facility in the UK.

It has loaded the upper cover, manufactured at its Stade plant, onto one of its A300-600ST freighters for transit to Broughton over the next few days. Continue reading...

 

Photo credit: Mario Fourmy/ABACAPRESS.COM

One of the biggest attractions of the Paris air show, the sun-powered Solar Impulse, has arrived in Le Bourget at its second attempt, after a 16h 5min flight from Brussels.

The prototype, which is powered by batteries charged by the sun, will be on display at the show, where - weather permitting - it will fly each morning from 20 June. Continue reading

 

This week Boeing's first 747-8 Intercontinental, unveiled in a surprise 'sunrise' livery that pays tribute to the first 747, City of Everett, is featured on the cover of Flightglobal publication Flight International. We look at how Boeing is for the first time in its history is tackling three simultaneous aircraft certifications. With much work to do, it's certainly sleepless in Seattle.

Dassault has completed a flight test using a new FLIR Systems infrared camera (photos below) designed to differentiate between laminar flows and the more typical turbulent flows on a wing.

Part of the "Smart Fixed Wing Aircraft" effort under the European Clean Sky research programme, the equipment and analyses are precursors to planned "smart laminar wing" flight tests in 2014 on specially modified Airbus A340-300 by Airbus, Dassault and other partners.

In the recent test at Dassault's flight test centre in Istres, France, the company modified the right horizontal stabilizer of a Falcon 7X with a black covering and mounted the IR camera, which senses minute changes in temperature in the flow, to look down on the surface from the top of the horizontal tail. Read more...

Swedish regional carrier Amapola is testing a new electronic flight-bag cockpit installation, based on the portable Apple iPad, for its Fokker 50 turboprop fleet.

Initial installation of the touchscreen iPad technology took place on the first aircraft in November, and the carrier has secured Swedish civil aviation authority clearance for the Class 2B fit. Read more...

Gulfstream says its test pilots and engineers invoked a "safe mode" control actuation system on a G650 prototype for more than 2h on 21 December, demonstrating the viability of the electrically powered backup technology. Continue reading....

Airbus has indicated a schedule slip for A350 development, no longer identifying the third quarter of 2011 as the date for commencing final assembly, instead stating only that it will begin before the end of the year. Continue reading...

Although the RTA-70 (regional transport aircraft-70) was originally envisaged as a 70- to 90-seat turboprop, the Indian government asked National Aerospace Laboratories to investigate the use of turbofans. NAL is studying the two options, and will report to the government in April 2011, after which a decision will be made. Read more...

Building on the record-breaking X2 demonstrator, Sikorsky has launched the S-97 Raider programme to fly and test a high-speed scout and attack helicopter.

The coaxial-rotor, compound helicopter, scheduled to complete first flight within 50 months, will carry weapons and troops like the Russian Mil Mi-24, but fly faster than 200kt (370km/h) in cruise, and 220kt in dash mode, Sikorsky says. Continue reading...