Recently in Training Category

OK, it's not really a pyrotechnic display to celebrate the over-consumption of turkey and pumpkin pie. In fact, according to the caption on the pic, it's a C-17 Globemaster III performing evasive counter measures by launching flares during a Mobility Air Forces Exercise earlier this month in Nevada. It sure is purty though.

Credit: US Air Force/Senior Airman Brett Clashman

Featured for no other reason than it's a great photograph, here's a Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II from the US Air Force Weapons School at Nellis AFB, Nevada, dropping a Raytheon AGM-65 Maverick during a close-air support training mission over the Nevada Test and Training Range.

Credit: US Air Force

...An Airbus A380 needed intercepting over Austrian airspace. We imagine it would look something like this. It was a training exercise held on 22 August and two Austrian Eurofighters conducted a QRA training interception of the new Airbus, fresh from its naming ceremony at Vienna airport, on its flight through Austrian airspace. The Eurofighters, scrambling from their base in Zeltweg/Styria, intercepted and flew in formation with the A380.

Credit: Eurofighter

Credit: US Department of Defense

A pair of Russian air force Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker fighters escort a simulated hijacked airliner during the second day of flight operations for exercise Vigilant Eagle on 9 August, over the Pacific Ocean. The Russian fighters followed and monitored the aircraft while it was in Russian airspace, handing it over to US Boeing F-15 Eagle fighters from Elmendorf AFB, Alaska, when it entered US airspace. Vigilant Eagle is an annual joint anti-terrorism exercise between the Russian air force, the Federal Aviation Administration and the North American Aerospace Defense Command that trains personnel to respond to an air terrorism threat that crosses international boundaries.

The US Airways Airbus A320 Flight 1549 ditched into the Hudson River west of New York City after a departure from LaGuardia Airport in the afternoon of 15 January 2009.

The aircraft is currently on its way to being a permanent feature Carolinas Aviation Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Read John Croft's article....

 

 

The Italian air force's first two T-346A advanced jet trainers (below) were rolled out at Alenia Aermacchi's Venegono plant in December, ahead of their planned delivery to the service's Test Wing at Pratica di Mare air base by mid-April. Read more...

Combined with the advent of commercial suborbital flight ventures, spawned in part by Burt Rutan winning the $10 million Ansari X Prize in the fall of 2004 with two flights to suborbital space in a two-week period, ETC via Nastar in 2007 officially launched its space launch training programme with Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic as a client. Read more about the ETC via Nastar training and simulator...

This week Flightglobal publication Flight International in its cover article has a special report on civil flight simulators. Our writers experience NASA's mobile operations station, go Down Under to consider SimJet's range of trainers, visit an FAA-approved spaceflight centre in Philadelphia, "fly" an A330 and describes CAE's CIASTA simulation technology.

On the cover is CAE's photo of its latest 7000 series Airbus A330/A340 simulator. It is pictured at the company's main facility in Montreal.

Also featured in this issue are:

• Signal of Intent: Boeing takes in L-3 in bid for US Army contract with SIGINT version of King Air 350ER
  

• Safe for UAVs: Year-long study led by Thales points the way for unmanned aircraft to fly in civil airspace
  

• Capital Pains: Airlines are struggling to share success
  

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

This week's Image of the Week (featured on page 5 of Flight International), is taken by AirSpace user andychittock. His photo depicts a Typhoon F2 taken in Wales in the "mac loop", an area he says the RAF and USAF uses for low flying. Because the area is open to the public "you can sit on the sides of the mountains and photograph".