Murdo Morrison: July 2010 Archives

My favourite moment of Farnborough was father of the 747 Joe Sutter stepping up to collect his Lifetime Award at the Flightglobal Achievement Awards, held during the show.

 

We had some great other winners too. The passengers and crew of Delta 253 won the Aviator of the Year award for their courageous actions in tackling a would-be bomber on board a flight over Detroit on Christmas Day last year. The passenger who first wrestled the terrorist when he saw smoke coming out of his trousers, Dutchman Jasper Schuringa, came over from Amsterdam to pick up the trophy on behalf of everyone on the flight. Well, almost everyone. "Not the guy who tried to kill us," he noted wryly.

 

Willie Walsh, scourge of the jobsworths and the man trying to put the great back into British Airways, was Leader of the Year. He too turned up to collect his award.

 

The Innovator of the Year category went to the engineers who came up with the fly-by-wire system for Embraer's Legacy 450/500 business jets - the first time such technology has been deployed on aircraft that size.

 

And Boeing Engineering Student of the Year Rick Cory recounted how a passion for robotics had set him on a path from high school drop-out, stacking shelves at a DIY store and playing in a band to a PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and some ground-breaking research into perch landings using a small UAV.

 

You can read full details of the awards here.

The Flightglobal team are embarking on their most intense week of the year, covering the Farnborough air show.

As I write, about 30 of my colleagues and I - some from other markets in Reed Business Information spending some time with us to find out about our multimedia operation here at Farnborough - are packed into our media chalet as we put together issue one of Flight Daily News as well as our video-rich interactive daily and our constantly updated flightglobal.com web site.

For all of you who are fans of the magazine, our 27 July show report issue, with analysis of all the big news stories of the week, will be out on Friday 23rd for those at the show.

 

Fancy working in the Middle East? For all the publicity about Dubai's economic collapse last year, the region's aviation sector is still buoyant. The idle cranes, huge offices to let signs and empty plots on Dubai's Sheikh Zayed Road are testament to how quickly that highly-speculative market collapsed. And thousands got their fingers burned. But the Gulf's airlines and burgeoning aviation support infrastructure - from airports to MRO facilities - are continuing to expand. And while they all want to provide high-value careers for their own citizens in the long term, at the moment they are still crying out for ex-pat experience. Our interactive Middle East Careers Guide - presented by yours truly - tells you a lot of what you need to know about building a new career in the region. 

In the latest issue of Flight International we're talking scrap. Or more precisely why more newer airliners are ending their lives at the breaker's yard rather than being taken on by airlines in parts of the world where modern types are harder to afford. A waste or an inevitable result of rising fuel prices and the struggling efficiency of even middle-aged airliners? My colleague Olivier Bonnassies explains the complex economics behind the trend. Brendan Sobie has been in Brazil to look at that country's changing MRO scene, where some new players have big ambitions to attract customers from further afield. Really? Their logic is not as daft as it sounds, as Brendan explains. Plus: victory for Boeing and fair play, vindication for Airbus's policy of seeking taxpayer support to launch its programmes, or a pointless legal wrangle no longer relevant in a world which has moved on from the old duopoly and with no winners except some highly-paid lawyers? We look at the implications for the World Trade Organisation's latest ruling on subsidies. Check out a digital version of our issue here. You can subscribe to Flight International's print or digital version here.