June 2010 Archives

What's that? It is a plane, is it a car? Well, it's both. Remember those childhood dreams you had of flying in your car. Careering at speed down the road, and then suddenly a super-engine comes out the back, and you blast off into the skies, avoiding the traffic below.

Well, this vehicle comes quite close. Terrafugia, a small, privately-owned business, has developed a car, which, put simply, really can fly.

 

The car is able to travel 740km at a speed of 185kph whilst up in the air, about a fifth of what a normal plane can achieve. The wings are fold-out, so when you land at the airport, you can fold them up, and then drive out of the airport. Unfortunately, you won't be allowed to just take off randomly in the middle of a road, so taking off has to be kept to airports, for the moment at least.

And there will be no need to buy special gas; it will run on a single tank of regular unleaded gas and will be released in America next year.

When on the ground, the car uses front-wheeled drive, and has a roll-cage and airbags. It will not be very economic however, with a 30mpg rate, plenty of money will have to be spent on fuel. It can however, achieve highway speeds should you wish. You also do not need to leave the vehicle to unfold or fold the wings, as it can all be done within the cockpit, like a retractable roof on a super-car.

Overall, it may have its faults, it may be quite expensive to buy and run, and it could well cause some extra air traffic, but this is definitely the car of the future, now. The aircraft is much more convenient than having to go to the airport, checking in, waiting in the terminal and finally boarding the plane. With the Terrafugia, you can book your place early, and then arrive and go.

Flightglobal's business and general aviation editor Kate Sarsfield reports that Terrafugia has secured US approval to boost the maximum take-off weight of its Transition roadable light sport aircraft by 50kg (110lb) to 650kg, the same limit already allowed for LSA seaplanes.

By Joel Foreman from Sutton Grammar School currently doing work experience with Flightglobal

Artist Fiona Banner unveiled her latest exhibition yesterday at the Tate Britain, of two decommissioned fighter aircraft models of aircraft the Sea Harrier and the Sepecat Jaguar.

Banner, who was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2002, is better-known in the art world for her "wordscapes", or hand-written and printed texts that retell in her own words entire feature films or sequences of events.

Information on the Tate's website says that "[her] personal transcriptions, which began in 1994 with the film Top Gun, highlight the way actual or imagined events are fictionalised and mythologised."

Banner says that the aircraft represent the 'opposite of language', used when communication fails.

In this exhibition she "explores the tension between the intellectual perception of the fighter plane and physical experience of the object by bringing body and machine into close proximity".

Suspended from the ceiling of the Duveen Gallery at the Tate Britain, the Sea Harrier transforms machine into a "captive bird, the markings tattooing its surface evoking its namesake; the Harrier Hawk".

 

A Jaguar lies belly up on the floor, its posture, she says: "is suggestive of a submissive animal. Stripped and polished, its surface functions as a shifting mirror, exposing the audience to its own reactions. Harrier and Jaguar remain ambiguous objects implying both captured beast and fallen trophy".

Banner remembers "long sublime walks in the Welsh mountains" with her father.

She recalls: "Suddenly a fighter plane would rip through the sky, and shatter everything. It was so exciting, loud and overwhelming; it would literally take our breath away. The sound would arrive from nowhere, all you would see was a shadow and then the plane was gone.

"At the time harrier jump jets were at the cutting edge of technology but to me they were like dinosaurs, prehistoric, from a time before words."

Aircraft profiles with information collated from Flightglobal and the rest of the web:

Sepecat Jaguar

Harrier

 

 By Joel Foreman from Sutton Grammar School currently doing work experience with Flightglobal 

 Image credit © Fiona Banner, Photo: Tate p>

Pilot and actor John Travolta flew into Lanseria, South Africa, in his Boeing 707 from Buenos Aires into the ExecuJet facility. With him were wife Kelly Preston, and daughter Ella, to support the Australian national team in the World Cup.

ExecuJet South Africa is set to do record business during June and July. Its FBO facility handled 197 business jet movements in the first week of the World Cup.

Business jets are being parked on the ExecuJet apron, the Lanseria freight apron, as well as on the parallel runway 06R.

Approximately 160 different aircraft and over 350 movements are already confirmed to arrive at ExecuJet's Lanseria FBO for the duration of the soccer tournament.

By Joel Foreman, currently doing work experience in the Flightglobal office from Sutton Grammar School. 

In the Flight archives Flight reported on the first flight of the Northrop XB-35 Flying Wing aircraft in Hawthorne California.

 

Flight reported at the time that the Ka-52 Alligator combat helicopter, built at the Arsenyev Progress production plant in Russia, which flew for the first time today in 1997, would be flown in battlefield reconnaissance, target identification, distribution and hand-off roles.

It is a two-seat variant of the Hokum equipped with the Phazotron FH-01 Arbalet (Crossbow) millimetre-wave radar.

Flight wrote: "Russia's ministry of defence so far has not paid a rouble for the Ka-52 development programme, and there is as yet no production order for the twin-seater."

It was on this day in 1982 that the world learned, in dramatic fashion, precisely what kind of damage tropopausal volcanic ash can do to an aircraft.

• Case study: When volcanic ash brought down a 747

In the archive: the original article: "I don't believe it... all four [engines] have failed..."

• Capt Eric Moody, pilot-incommand of the British Airways Boeing 747 which suffered total engine failure, tells David Learmount what happened that night.
• More about Capt. Eric Moody's experience that night.

On the Iceland Volcano...

• Ash cloud leaves lessons to be learned
• VIDEO: David Learmount analyses the volcanic dilemma
• More on the Icelandic ash cloud...
• LIVE UPDATES: (at the time) of the chaos caused to the aviation industry including satellite images, images of the cloud from the air and the ground, video footage and more interesting links

I wrote on the Airline Business blog last week that Spirit Airlines, known for its cheeky promotions, started offerings "strikingly" low fares once the company and its pilots had reached a tentative labor agreement.

Well today Spirit launched another corny promotion advertising the airline's leisure destinations, titled "Check Out the Oil on Our Beaches." As one can see its a (thinly) veiled reference to the current BP oil spill going on in the Gulf of Mexico.

Apparently the promotion, which offers $50 off on some bookings, was not understood by everyone who saw it. This afternoon the airline released a statement saying that "we are merely addressing the false perception that we have oil on our beaches, and we are encouraging customers to support Florida and our other beach destinations by continuing to travel to these vacation hot spots...The only oil you'll find when traveling to our beaches is sun tan oil."

MeetTheBoss.tv has an interesting interview with Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn. Whitehorn had been with Virgin for over two decades. He frequently worked alongside Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson, which earned him the title as Branson's right-hand man, although Whitehorn plays down the nickname.

In the interview Whitehorn talks about the early days of the Virgin Group, British Airways' Dirty Tricks Campaign, his experience with Virgin Trains, and finally about Virgin Galactic.

Here's a teaser of the interview:

Russian model Irene Ferrari brought her seat back to the upright and locked position and stowed and secured her tray table, but she never thought to check another device: her breast implants.

The turbulence on her Swiss International Airlines flight was so strong it caused her size F breast implant to hit the seat in front of her--and mind you, she was flying business class--which consequently resulted in "bruises and strong pain".

So how does €100,000 factor in? That's the amount she's suing Swiss for, the Daily Telegraph reports. Fox explains that will cover the cost to replace the implants, each of which reportedly weighs 20 pounds.

This is not the first injury for Ferrari and her twinjets: in a separate incident last year, Gadling says, one of her implants ruptured during flight. Ferrari said it best, even if she did not mean a double entendre: "When I went to see a surgeon in Russia I was told I have problems with my breast."

This video is only a taster of the amount of aircraft on display at ILA 2010 (find a full list here). You can find images of the aircraft on our images section and the rest of the news from the show on our ILA show page.

Schiebel's Camcopter S-100 has become the first vertical take-off and landing unmanned aerial system to take part in the flying display at ILA, hot on the heels of its debut at last year's Paris air show.

Here's a video from inside the Camcopter as it performed during the air show.

British model Nell McAndrew touched down at the US Air Force Base at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire for the launch of this summer's Royal International Air Tattoo, RIAT says.

It adds its front-line fighter Typhoon "faced off against its US counterpart, the F-15, as Nell donned an England shirt to kick-off both the launch of the airshow . . . and England's chance of victory over the USA in their opening match of the World Cup campaign, at Rustenburg, South Africa, on Saturday."

Nell posed with USAF Capt Calvin 'Quake' Peterson and RAF Flt Lt Jim 'Woody' Woodward pose in front of three of the RAF's strikers: the Typhoon, Tornado and Harrier.

This year's Air Tattoo takes place from July 17 to 18 at RAF Fairford, when more than 160,000 visitors are expected to view around 300 aircraft from across the world.

The event is staged in support of its parent charity, the Royal Air Force Charitable Trust, which provides financial support to a wide variety of RAF-related projects and initiatives within the RAF family. Since 2005 it has gifted over £1.3 million to worthy causes.

Russia's Irkut Corporation exhibited a fair-sized model of its MS-21 twin-jet at the Berlin Air Show, although clearly not big enough to attract the attention of EADS chief Louis Gallois.

 

At an EADS press event during the show, the question cropped up about whether Airbus was concerned about the competition threat of the MS-21.

 

Gallois looked momentarily bewildered, then said: "I don't know this aeroplane."

 

History will be made at ILA today when Airbus Military's A400M transport makes its public debut at an air show, less than six months after achieving its maiden flight.

Flightglobal's Defence Editor Craig Hoyle interviewed A400M's chief test pilot Ed Strongman to get a progress report on the test programme and some insight into what people can expect from the displays.

Why not take a look at the A400M in action, taken during its validation flight yesterday. 

What does a Polish plumber - scourge of his counterpart in Western Europe since European Union enlargement in 2004 - have in common with the rejuvenation of his country's aerospace industry? Find out in this week's Comment piece.

Yesterday, the Red Bull Air Race competition made its way to Windsor, Ontario. When Australian Pilot Matt Hall made his run, the former RAAF F/A-18 Hornet pilot made an incredible recovery after his plane hit the Detroit River:


You can catch some more photos of the event on Matt Hall's official website. And, if you're interested in learning a bit more about him, you can check out this hour-long podcast interviewing Matt. He can also be followed on Twitter.

No, it's the not the 1970s (you're on the internet after all) and nor are you looking at Braniff's fluoro jets. It's the A340 Swiss used to inaugurate its new route to San Francisco.

As the airline's photos (here and here) and video (below) show, a lot of effort went into making the grooviest aircraft in the sky.