Flight International Editor's Blog

Straight & Level 21 May

2013-05-23T15:25:54Z

What a drag: Sir Richard Branson in AirAsia garb serves a meal to airline owner Tony Fernandes. The Virgin boss lost a bet over whose Formula 1 team would have the best season

The Spitfire that did the splits
Sometimes the painstaking air crash inquiry process is mercifully short, as in the case of the Supermarine Spitfire which suddenly collapsed on to the ground while taxiing at East Midlands airport in January.
"The pilot stated that he had intended to retract the flaps," says the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch, "but inadvertently selected the undercarriage to 'up'."
Case closed, and no injuries except perhaps to the pilot's pride. At least Ian McShane
and Edward Fox weren't sitting on the side suggesting: "You
can teach monkeys to fly better than that."

Electric dreams
Reinhard Lernbeiss writes from Vienna to remind us that this October will mark the 40th anniversary of the first flight of a manned electric airplane.
As recorded in Flight International at the time, Heino Brditschka flew his MB-E1 for 9min 5sec from Linz in Austria, winning a place in the record books.
The topic of electric flight, says Dr Lernbeiss, "couldn't be more interesting today".

Artless?
Hard to think of worse possible taste? This poster of Air France flight 4590 seconds after take-off from Paris Charles de Gaulle on 25 July 2000 is currently for sale on e-Bay.

Owner-flyer
Serge Dassault is a not only patriarch of an eponymous aircraft company, he is also a loyal customer. Dassault, the firm, delivered the first production Falcon 7X to its boss in mid-2007.
Six years is a lifetime in the fickle private jet trade, and the time has come for Dassault, the person, to seek a replacement.
On 7 May, the No 4 Falcon 7X carried Dassault from Paris to the company's completion centre in Little Rock, Arkansas, says Jean Rosanvallon, president of Dassault Falcon Jet. Dassault lingered for about 4h, long enough to formally receive the No 194 7X. That evening, he flew home in his acquisition, leaving No. 4 behind. Such an event raises an uncomfortable question: What kind of special treatment does the company's current leader and son of the founder receive on an aircraft assembly line?
Rosanvallon replies quickly: "I would lie if I would not tell you that we make sure he receives a good plane, but I'm also politically correct to say that every customer gets the same treatment."
Rosanvallon, ever the salesman, also says he now has for sale a moderately-used Falcon 7X that, he insists, has well-maintained upholstery, a traditional floor plan and a very exclusive pedigree.

Week on the web 21 May

2013-05-23T15:18:35Z

Are single-pilot superjumbos the way of the future? Whether having the co-pilot on the ground rather than in the cockpit is inevitable remains to be seen, but as Learmount discovered this week, what is technically doable may just become commercially feasible. Readers of our eyes on Israel, Ariel View, will be amused to learn that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu likes to travel in comfort. For the five-hour trip to London for Margaret Thatcher's funeral, the Israeli government paid El Al 500,000 shekels - some $140,000 - to install a cabin with double bed in one of its widebodies. And, our head of web Michael Targett wrapped up his transatlantic voyage with a final run to Le Bourget aboard FLIR's camera-equipped PC-12NG (pictured); travelogue on The Editor's Blog.

Valuing employees

2013-05-23T15:13:37Z

This first appeared as a Comment in the 21 May issue of Flight International

Even with normal employment contracts, airline pilots have a different relationship with their employer than, say, office or factory workers.
The latter report to the same place each day and might actually meet and talk to their management. Pilots, however, interact with their airline increasingly through a laptop or tablet for all the information they need: personal roster, company and chief pilot's diktats, and aeronautical information for the flight they are about to crew. At base they leave their cars in the operations block car park and breeze through "ops" for the sole purpose of meeting up with the other pilot and the cabin crew. Then it's out to the aeroplane, and off they go for a multi-sector day, or a week in hotels.
That's already an arm's-length relationship. But if, as the airline, you require your pilots to be self-employed and to look after duty expenses and tax affairs, the relationship is more than distant - it's out of sight.
Does that matter? Where the company shows no loyalty to its workers it cannot expect any in return, so the only human resources tool, since pecuniary rewards only come from high hours, is the disciplinary stick.
Does that matter? The system has been working at Ryanair, is increasingly being adopted by Norwegian Air Shuttle and is an idea that may spread. The danger is that if the model goes wrong it would affect safety, but the industry will not find that out until too late.

The lonely pilot

2013-05-23T15:07:47Z

This first appeared as a Comment in the 21 May issue of Flight International

The press release about a big new European research programme did not spell it out as the objective, but it is as clear as daylight that the objective is a single-pilot flightdeck.
Called ACROSS (advanced cockpit for the reduction of stress and workload), a visit to the programme's website provides a glimpse into the early stages of a project that pushes the boundaries of computing hardware, software and communications. "ACROSS will result in the design of a generic Multi-Processor Systems-on-a-Chip (MPSoC) and a first implementation in an FPGA [field programmable gate array]," it says. Read on and you enter the realms of artificial intelligence.
This multidisciplinary programme involves 26 European manufacturers, research agencies and universities, plus Boeing and Jeppesen, and is part of another European project, the Artemis Joint Undertaking.
So the programme is real, albeit in its early stages. But where do single-pilot flightdecks enter the equation? Partner company TriaGnoSys explains: "ACROSS will work toward solutions allowing reduced-crew operations in a limited number of well-defined conditions, such as long-haul flights or a crew member becoming incapacitated.... Finally, ACROSS will identify the remaining open issues for the implementation of potential single-pilot operations."
Although there are few airline accidents now, they usually happen because the pilots have made a misjudgement or failed to cope with a situation they should have been able to manage. The resulting judgement that the pilots are the problem is actually a distorted perspective - rather like blaming the goalkeeper for all the the goals scored against his team.
It is pointless to argue against research enabling the single-pilot flightdeck. But the industry has to be very sure that the new systems can completely replace the functions of a second pilot. The second pilot monitors the other pilot's actions and the results of his/her input, and intervenes if the results are not as intended; co-operates with the other pilot, especially when the workload is high; and takes over if the other pilot is incapacitated or has to leave the flightdeck.
But equally important, pilots - whether one or two - are supposed to be the system's goalkeeper, taking over when the defences have failed. ACROSS has to persuade the industry the technology can take over and not fail itself. Meanwhile the human factors and skills issues for the solo pilot remain a whole other area.

That was EBACE

2013-05-22T14:11:44Z

EBACE still has a day to go, but our work at Europe's business aviation show is almost done. The Flightglobal team has been here since Saturday and in that time we've produced, or are about to finish producing:

Three issues of Flight Evening News, the only air show daily with "today's news today" and distributed to visitors at 4pm on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday;
Three issues of our interactive daily, available on our landing page flightglobal.com/ebace or, for the first time, downloadable from the Flight International app for free. You can see it here adobe.ly/1a4m6DH
A landing page - flightglobal.com/ebace - which is our portal to all our multimedia content, including news, features, images, video and tweets.

It has not been a vintage EBACE - I think it will be some time before we see the sort of hyper activity and speculative orders that we got used to in the middle years of the decade - but there has certainly been plenty of news, including an all-new jet from Pilatus, a Challenger 300 variant from Bombardier and first appearances by several aircraft including the Embraer Legacy 500, which landed after its first transatlantic flight from Brazil.

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That was EBACE

2013-05-22T13:13:27Z

Three issues of Flight Evening News, the only air show daily with "today's news today" and distributed to visitors at 4pm on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday;
Three issues of our interactive daily, available on our landing page flightglobal.com/ebace or, for the first time, downloadable from the Flight International app for free. You can see it here adobe.ly/1a4m6DH
A landing page - flightglobal.com/ebace - which is our portal to all our multimedia content, including news, features, images, video and tweets.

http://

Wildcat unleashed

2013-05-22T12:34:57Z

Our helicopter test pilot Peter Gray is the first civilian to have flown the AW159 Wildcat, the latest member of AgustaWestland's 35-year-old Lynx family. You can see what he thought of the multirole machine in our exclusive flight test in the 21 May issue of Flight International. Meanwhile, defence editor looks at export prospects for the type.

David Learmount investigates the many complications arising for the tax authorities as a result of an increasingly international airline industry and a pilot community working across national boundaries. One trend is for low-cost airlines to hire flightcrew from leasing companies, allowing pilots to base themselves in low-tax states and the airlines to keep down salaries.

In news: Northrop Grumman's X-47B becomes the first autonomous aircraft to launch from a carrier, Emirates chief urges Boeing to "take total control" of the supply chain for its proposed 777X, and Cessna looks at oursourcing production beyond China.

Straight & Level 14 May

2013-05-13T14:32:32Z

Dambusters still bouncing at 70
The technology was far from perfect and the 617 Sqn mission failed to significantly damage the German war machine or shorten the war, but the Dambusters have remained part of military folklore since.
To commemorate the 70th anniversary of Sir Barnes Wallis's bouncing bomb raids of May 1943, the UK's Brooklands Museum is holding a series of events, culminating in a day of celebrations on 17 May, including a chance to meet veterans of RAF Bomber Command and view a prototype of the so-called aerial mine used to breach the Ruhr dams.
Wallis spent almost four decades working at Brooklands, including time spent on the Wellington bomber.

BoJo's H-ro rant
London mayor Boris Johnson - whose pet project remains a new hub airport in the Thames estuary - recently told opponents of a third Heathrow runway that such a project would "desecrate" the capital with "hundreds of thousands, if not millions of great flying fleets of fortissimo flatulence".
That image of large, noisy objects descending from the sky over London, often unable to land... it reminded us of something. Not sure what.

The last survivor
Another icon of the Second World War - the only surviving Dornier Do 17 "Flying Pencil" - is to be raised from the English Channel, 73 years after it was shot down during the Battle
of Britain.
The aircraft - preserved largely intact - was spotted by divers in 2008 off the Goodwin Sands in Kent. Aside from barnacles and other effects of sea life, the condition of Do 17Z Werke nr 1160 is said to be "remarkable", with its tyres inflated and damage to the propellers only, inflicted during its final crash landing.
The three-week project to raise the Do 17 is described as the biggest recovery of its kind in UK waters.
The restored aircraft will go on to be exhibited at the Royal Air Force Museum.

Taking to the aria
Leisure airline Monarch entertained passengers who were checking in at London Gatwick for its inaugural flight to Verona with some traditional Italian opera. Sadly, there were no seats for a tenor.

Still human
Jesper Vanddam writes from Denmark saying that it was with some relief that he read our flightglobal.com headline: "USAF leader confirms manned decision for new bomber." He says: "I have long feared that such a decision would be taken by robots."
Hands off Earth!
EADS Cassidian's "Defending world security" certainly wins the prize for most ambitious corporate slogan. Those Klingons must be terrified to invade now.

Week on the web 14 May

2013-05-13T14:26:34Z

Never say Flightglobal's head of web Michael Targett opts for an easy life. While anybody can go transatlantic on a jumbo, Targett is making a multi-legged hop from Manassas, Virginia to Le Bourget aboard FLIR's Paris air show-bound Pilatus PC-12NG (pictured); join him on the Editor's Blog. David Learmount flagged up a good deal for aspiring flyers; from September, UK commercial pilot candidates may apply for student loans of up to £14,500 a year for their three-stage ab-initio training, finishing with a BSc (Hons) degree in professional aviation pilot practice, from Middlesex University. On the Ariel View blog, our eyes in Israel observe that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to China has raised hopes of lucrative arms sales - and the spectre of (yet another) nyet from Jerusalem's big brothers in Washington DC.

EasyJet makes a dash for ash

2013-05-13T14:05:38Z

This first appeared as a Comment in the 14 May issue of Flight International

EasyJet's move to develop volcanic ash tracking technology shows impressive lateral thinking. Not, in fact, the kind of thinking normally associated with the stereotype of a low-cost carrier.
Anyone who doubts that assertion should test it by trying to imagine Ryanair investing time and money developing a similar system. For all the raucous protests by Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary when his airline was grounded in April 2010 because of airborne ash, investing in a system that would not deliver specific advantage to Ryanair is not his style. But, to be fair, IAG boss Willie Walsh - then chief of British Airways - protested just as loudly at the time, but has not matched EasyJet's imagination either.
As with all experimental systems, there is a financial risk. After all, this aircraft-mounted ash detector - known as Avoid - is not guaranteed to be a total success. So, with airlines presently at their most risk-averse, why is EasyJet, with Airbus and Nicarnica Aviation, taking the risk? The answer is that an ash cloud will definitely affect European airspace in the future. With some of its aircraft fitted with Avoid, EasyJet may be airborne with loads of zero-discount passengers when its competition is grounded.
But actually, and EasyJet knows this, aircraft-mounted Avoid will play its part with other sensor technologies in keeping the skies usable when ash threatens.

De-risking the future

2013-05-13T13:54:32Z

This first appeared as the lead Comment in the 14 May issue of Flight International

Boeing's board of directors has been busy in the past two years. Among its other duties, the board is charged with authorising its sales staff to present new products to customers. Years normally pass between such landmark events for an aerospace company, but not recently.
Since August 2011, Boeing's 11 directors have flexed this authorising role three times, giving the go-ahead to the 737 Max, the 787-10X in November 2012 and, most recently, the 777X in late April. Including the 767-2C-derived KC-46A tanker, Boeing now has four major programmes in active development.
But this burst of development activity cannot last forever, and the proverbial door to launching developments, in fact, may already have slammed shut.
Further derivatives of the 777X may come before the board during the next decade, but no other new developments are foreseeable until Boeing begins work on a replacement for the 737 Max several years after the re-engined narrowbody makes its operational debut in 2017. Barring any surprise developments, Boeing's product mix appears fully scoped for most of the next two decades.
The company is clearly ready to take a breather from new product development. The 10-year saga of the 787 - from missing fasteners to overheating batteries - has exhausted the company's leadership. Boeing chief executive Jim McNerney now talks about harvesting hard-won lessons, not learning new ones. It is an understandable position, but carries its own kind of risk. Boeing's next all-new aircraft - most likely a 737 replacement - may not appear for at least 15 years, or 25 years after the launch of the 787. An entire generation of Boeing engineers could pass into retirement before the next new aircraft enters service.
A similar gap was allowed to grow between the authority-to-offer milestone for the 777 in 1989 and that for the 787 in 2003. Indeed, McNerney himself has partly blamed that hiatus for the costly errors which delayed the 787 and for those that have continued to plague it.
McNerney also seems aware of the trap he has set for his successors. "Thirty years from now, will there be some new technology that we'll all wrestle with? Probably," McNerney said on 24 April. "Will there be enough people in Boeing that are here today that will remember the lessons learned from the 787? I hope so. I'm old. I'll be on a beach somewhere then."

Fly into EBACE with Flight International

2013-05-13T12:53:44Z

Our 14 May issue is packed with everything you need to be fully briefed up on European business aviation ahead of next week's EBACE in Geneva.

Our cover and cutaway star is the latest Dassault business jet, the Falcon 2000LXS. The main selling point of the type, which replaces the 2000LS, is its short-runway performance. Our poster takes you under the aircraft's skin, while the technical description explains how the French manufacturer is positioning the aircraft.

Also in our pre-EBACE package, Mike Gerzanics flies the Nextant 400XT, the independently remanufactured successor to the Hawker 400. How does it compare to the original?

Stephen Trimble looks at what new aircraft announcements are on the horizon, and which ones will be revealed at EBACE. He also gets an update from Aerion on its plans to produce a supersonic executive jet. Kate Sarsfield finds out about the rapidly-growing African business aviation sector. Michael Gubisch takes a glimpse at some of the more exotic and innovative cabin designs gracing the largest business jetliners. Murdo Morrison asks if there is an future for the air taxi concept in Europe.

In news: David Learmount explains how EasyJet and Airbus plan to bring to market on-board equipment designed to detect volcanic ash, David Kaminski-Morrow reports on CFM International's roll-out schedule for its new Leap engines, and Greg Waldron looks at how Asia-Pacific is shaping up to be the main battleground for Airbus's and Boeing's latest-generation widebodies.

Straight & Level 7 May

2013-05-12T10:08:00Z

This is one of a series of more than 50 stunning images by German photographer Dietmar Eckell of abandoned aircraft wrecks in remote locations around the world. It is not as morbid as it sounds: all the accidents were non-fatal; the project's title is Happy End. Eckell is looking for at least $4,000 to produce a book and has turned to crowdsourcing site Indiegogo. In exchange for an investment, punters can get anything from an acknowledgement to a "museum-quality", limited edition print.

A go-around to remember
Our story about the world's most spectacular airport approaches (Flight International, 5 February) illustrated the winner using a familiar photograph of a widebody airliner descending low over sunbathers on St Maarten's beach.
Chris Barnes speculates as to what would happen if the landing pilot pressed the TOGA (take off go around) while over the shore. "The max power
and high alpha climb out
would do some considerable sandblasting and remove any remaining punters from the beach," he suggests.

Song for Eamon
Ryanair captain and singer-songwriter Sean Kelly has penned a tribute to fellow Ryanair captain and musician Eamon Wall, who died in January.
Kelly, a base captain at Prestwick, first performed the song at a gathering in Scotland for friends and colleagues who could not make it to Wall's funeral. "I played Drive Her On, a song I had written about Eamon that seemed to capture his spirit. It went down so well that we decided to release it as a charity single," he says.
Proceeds will be donated to the Carlow Kilkenny Home Care Team, the organisation that looked after Wall in his last weeks.
Drive Her On (The Ballad Of Eamon Wall) is available as a download from iTunes, Amazon, Spotify and other online stores.

Jetihad/Jatihad
When, during its lengthy courtship of India's Jet Airways, Etihad announced a codeshare agreement with JAT, it led HSBC analyst Andrew Lobbenberg to mischievously wonder if a typo on an email from James Hogan's office had caused confusion.
Had, he speculates, a minion gone west to cut a deal with the ailing flag carrier of lowly Serbia (population 7 million) rather than one of the emerging giants of aviation in India (population 1.2 billion).

Flight fiction
Back when what we said really mattered. The storyline on a recent episode of Endeavour, a prequel to the long-running TV series Inspector Morse, set in the 1960s, centred on murders at the British Imperial Electric Company, a (fictional) family-owned defence contractor building the Standfast surface-to-air missile.
One of the company's directors is seen reading your favourite aviation magazine and remarking: "I see we got a good write-up in Flight..."

Saving Trident
Tony Jarrett updates us on the effort to restore the last example of a Hawker Siddeley Trident IC. The project needs £3,000 ($4,700) to carry out work earmarked for this year.
The aircraft - G-ARPO - the 16th Trident built and the last 1C variant to fly, was dismantled from its last resting place at Teesside airport and brought to the Sunderland aircraft museum in 2011.
The volunteers behind the project have already raised £1,100 and say the trijet has been "transformed quite a lot".
This year, they want to finish the flightdeck and fore galley as well as paint the fuselage.
If you want to see how G-ARPO was moved to its latest home, check progress or contribute to the project, go to www.savethetrident.org

Week on the web 7 May

2013-05-12T09:57:09Z

Craig Hoyle gives his take on the "anti-drone" protest at RAF Waddington in late April on The Dew Line. "It's good that the protesters can have their voices heard," notes Hoyle. "And I'm sure that the peace camp at Waddington will remain for some time - probably until combat operations in Afghanistan end late next year and all the Reapers get stuffed into boxes as they can't yet be flown in UK airspace. But claims that the UK's 'drones' are participating in 'extrajudicial assassinations' and the slaughter of innocent civilians 'without democratic oversight or accountability to the public' simply aren't supported by the facts." All the latest developments from the world of space can be found on our Hyperbola blog, where, in one of a host of recent entries, David Todd notes how NASA is renting extra seats on Russia's Soyuz to fly Americans to the International Space Station.

A tale of two industries

2013-05-12T09:48:04Z

This first appeared as a Comment in the 7 May issue of Flight International:

Size certainly matters when it comes to the fortunes of business jet manufacturers during the past four years. Demand for super-midsize types and larger has remained robust since the start of the global financial crisis; that for medium, light and very-light aircraft sluggish or worse.
For those in the latter segments, it is difficult to detect any light at the end of the tunnel, and there is a serious question over whether these segments are victim to a permanent structural shift in market demand.
Citations, Learjets and Hawkers - for decades the workhorses of the North American corporate world - and a new breed of very-light and personal jets which promised to smash entry barriers to business aviation have simply not taken off in the markets that matter: Asia, the CIS, Middle East and Africa.
Meanwhile, demand for these types of aircraft in their backyards is struggling to recover, partly due to a glut of for-sale signs on unwanted, nearly-new jets because makers were slow to put the brakes on production lines as the downturn deepened.
As a time machine for busy executives, the business case for the compact business jet remains compelling. Their manufacturers must be hoping that - as spending power and corporate confidence return in the West and newer markets broaden their tastes beyond large-cabin status symbols - that message gets through.