Recently in Environment Category

 

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

 

Here's an AOM DC-10 being scrapped in France at Chateauroux, who took the photo. This week in our publication Flight International we're looking at how airlines can better manage scrapyard waste.

A scene uncommon at airports but frequent at scrapyards--a DC-10 nose upright--is on the cover of this week's Flight International magazine for our feature article: aviation under pressure to reduce landfill waste from scrapped airliners. The DC-10 is seen as Chateauroux Air Centre in France and photographed by the scrapyard.

Also featured this week are:

Southwest Airlines plans to officially start using wide-scale required navigation performance on 11 January on its 737 fleet (a -700 variant is seen below).

RNP allows aircraft to fly more direct and precise paths to cut flight time and fuel consumption. It also enables the use of localiser performance with vertical guidance procedures that require fewer ground-based instrument landing aids, which gives increased access to airports, particularly in low-visibility conditions.

Chief operating officer Mike Van de Ven told investors: "If we can save literally three minutes of flight, we will have, depending on the price of fuel, $25 million, $30 million, $40 million worth of fuel-burn benefits." Read more...

See before & after photos of a Southwest 737 RNP-equipped cockpit here.

German aerospace technology centre DLR showed off a range of advanced projects - but none so "blue sky" as the Antares DLR-H2 motor glider, with its world-first capability to take off using only the power from its hydrogen fuel cell. Continue reading...

Fresh from its deployment to investigate Eyjafjallajökull's atmospheric impact, a Dassault Falcon 20E "ash hunter" aircraft belonging to German aerospace centre DLR is on display at the show - with "100 years of the ILA" emblazoned on its nose.

Amid aviation's volcanic crisis the aircraft was deployed to measure ash concentrations at altitudes of between 6,550ft (2,000m) and 39,350ft. Continue reading...

Airbus parent EADS is to make an environmental breakthrough at ILA by flying an aircraft powered by a biofuel composed purely of algae.

The daily flights will be conducted using a Diamond DA42 New Generation light twin powered by Austro Engine AE300s.

As a result of algae's higher energy content, fuel burn will be 1.5 litres per hour (0.4USgal/h) lower than if conventional Jet-A1 fuel were used, says EADS, adding: "Only relatively minor modifications and adjustments had to be made to the aircraft's engines." Continue reading...

In May 2005 the European Union began funding its €26 million ($35.2 million) Environmentally Friendly High Speed Aircraft, or HISAC, project that had the same ultimate goal - to discover how to create a business jet that could halve transatlantic flight times and be environmentally friendly.

After five years of work, the final HISAC report found that the Sukhoi Civil Aircraft-led Russian team had produced a design that met the environmental objectives. For HISAC three teams evolved classes of concepts that examined different aspects of the technical challenges facing a supersonic business jet. Team C was led by Sukhoi, working with the Central Aerohydrodynamics Institute and Central Institute of Aviation Motors (CIAM), and the others were Dassault's team A and Alenia Aeronautica's B. Continue reading...

Here's the general layout of the low sonic-boom HISAC:

You may have seen photos of that most unpronounceable volcano or airport departure boards listing nothing but CANCELLED, but here's an interesting look at another side of the ash spewing over Europe.

AirSpace user flame captured this photo of Ryanair 737-800s with their engines wrapped up to protect them from being exposed to ash. Some airlines fear the ash has potential to damage the engines in the long-term.

Click here for a larger version of the photo

• Here are photos of the effects of ash on a Finnish Air Force F-18 engine.

• For the latest on how the ash is affecting aviation, check out our special Ash Cloud section. Also be sure to follow the Flightglobal team on Twitter for regular updates.
  

• For a historical perspective, in 1982 volcanic ash brought down a British Airways B747-200 flying from Kuala Lumpur to Australia's Perth. You can read about the incident, including our original 1982 coverage, here.
  

This week Flightglobal publication Flight International reviews biofuels. They could be the answer to aviation's carbon concerns, but will governments help with their development?

(For insight to this week's cover decision, read an entry about it on Flight International editor Murdo Morrison's new blog.)

Also featured are:
Middle East MRO: Region's players are extending their radius

Geared Gamble: With its civil engines market share in freefall, why Pratt & Whitney must bet the farm on GTF

It's Deal Time: Private equity money is still scarce but there's life in the aerospace acquisitions market

Elsewhere in the issue:

Our David Learmount argues that last year's big climate change summit was not all hot air and no firm action.

There are news stories on a study into the contribution of pilot handling errors to airliner accidents, on the resurrection of the US presidential helicopter programme, progress on the 787 flight test schedule, and much more.

You can subscribe to Flight International here or here for the digital version.