See the HondaJet (above) as it performs its first flight from Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro, N.C.

Airbus Military's fourth A400M transport made its first sortie from Seville, Spain. Dubbed Grizzly 4, the aircraft will be used mainly for cargo and air-to-air refuelling tests.

And Eurocopter completed four first flights, including the debut sortie of the second prototype EC175 heavy twin civil helicopter being built in a joint venture with the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC).

Read data obtained by FlightBlogger detailing Boeing's historic order backlog for the 787. Author Jon Ostrower says it was based partly on steep discounts driven by now-discarded design and manufacturing assumptions.

See Runway Girl's video post of SAS cabin crew rapping in celebration of an inflight gay wedding ceremony plus a video of her new song which may be heard as the sign off on each of her vlogs.

And don't forget to enter the Webbies - the Flightglobal Aviation Web Awards.  

Links

A400M Hondajet Eurocopter: http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2010/12/17/351077/pictures-eurocopter-completes-four-first-flights-in-one-day.html

Flightblogger

Runway Girl  / 

Comac also released the aircraft's specifications to seat 168 in an all-economy configuration or 156 in a mixed configuration and said it aims to conduct first flight in 2014, followed by entry into service in 2016.

Read FlightBlogger's post about Boeing "examining a host of incremental improvements to the 737", and see a gallery of superb images from the show including this one of a Gulfstream G450.

Don't forget to enter your great images into the Flight International front cover competition. The winning image will adorn the magazine's front cover on the end of year issue. The winner will also receive a framed copy and £100.

Over the last four years you've entered exceptional images for the competition and Flightglobal is looking forward to having even more aircraft images to choose from.

Flightglobal has launched Atlas, a new realtime aircraft tracking service overlaying aircraft/airline flight data onto Google Maps to provide a flight tracking service. Over the coming weeks and months Atlas will have new features and enhancements. Any comments or suggestions are welcome.

FlightBlogger reports that Greenpoint Technologies, which is already supplying the SkyLoft overhead space utilization (OSU) on Boeing's 747-8I VIP, has dreamed up an addition to the new jumbo that looks as though it has come straight out of a James Bond Film. The firm has designed an internal elevator that exits on the outside of the aircraft! Not surprisingly it's called the SkyLift. Greenpoint is in talks with two customers about the product.

Don't forget to enter your images for the front cover competition where you could have your photo on the end of year issue of Flight International magazine. Take a look at previous entries from the various categories.

The entire online aviation community can enter and nominate their favourite websites, from established industry leaders to striving newcomers, in celebration and acknowledgement of the best and brightest aviation websites and online activities the Internet has to offer.

Closing date for entries and nominations is 10 January.

See a great image of a Team Guinot Wing Walker unharnessed. The image is an entry for Flightglobal's photo competition.

There are four categories and the best image will feature on the front cover of Flight Interntional's end of year edition. This image has been uploaded by AirSpace user flyer1 can be found in the General Stars gallery, a category for general aviation images. The winner will receive a framed copy of that front cover and £100. The competition closes midnight GMT 6 December.

The Holiday Season will soon be upon us, so if you're looking for gift inspiration for friends and family, look no further. Check out Flightglobal's festive offers including books, DVDs and framed cutaways and there's even a 10% discount with our seasonal sales offer.

For the third year running, you have a chance to get your best image featured on the front cover of the world renowned Flight International magazine, by uploading your images to our AirSpace galleries.

Below is last year's winner - one of over 1,500 high quality entries we received for the 2008 festive issue:

Last year's winning image by Begemont

The best image from the four categories below will adorn the front cover of Flight International's end of year edition.

The winner will also receive a framed copy of that front cover and £100 (GBP).

The four categories this year are:

• Big Birds
The big beasts in aviation are featured in this gallery, encompassing airliners, cargo aircraft and tankers

• Sleek Jets
From nimble and speedy fighters to the more refined biz jets, only the sleek jets need apply

• Old Flyers
An affectionate hat tip to the rich tapestry of aviation gone by, this category is for the old classics

• General Stars
This category is for the GA leading lights and other general aviation images

Here are the rules ...

And here's a descrption of how you can add your image to AirSpace ...

Good luck!

Last week Willie Walsh announced proposals to cut airline emissions by half the 2005 level by 2050.

Users on AirSpace are discussing this and some say they've heard all this before. One user suggests airlines "don't expand, and use hydrogen", another says: " aviation should have been included in Kyoto but it is one polluter among many."

A flying programme to celebrate Birmingham International's 70th anniversary included an autogyro, a military air display and a large number of civil aircraft including an imperial Hercules and an Emirates A380 see more of the event on AirSpace.

You can now buy photos and reprints from Flightglobal's unique 100-year image archive. The Flightglobal Image Store features thousands of historical and modern images, including our extensive technical cutaway drawings and they're available any way you want them, from canvas or jigsaws.

• Week on the Web is also available as an audio podcast on AirSpace and iTunes. 

Last week Flightglobal celebrated the 40th anniversary of Concorde's first flight. Take a look at the 6 March 1969 issue of Flight in our pdf archive dedicated to the first supersonic aircraft which includes an article on the technology used, aircraft structure, fuel system, aerodynamics, flight testing, payload accommodation, aircraft data, a cutaway drawing and an airline pilot's view.

We have 5 copies of a new book; Concorde: A Photographic History to give away and we've created a gallery for you to upload your images and a forum discussion to share your memories of the iconic aircraft.

Get involved in the discussion on AirSpace about Rolls-Royce confirming its RTM322 turboshaft engine is the "engine of record" for a new Eurocopter high-speed rotorcraft research programme dubbed "X3".

One user suggest the X3 looks "remarkably like a modernised Fairy Rotodyne" but wonders "what powers the rotor because the drawing shown (in the discussion) has no anti torque tail rotor which suggests that the rotor is powered, when required, by blade tip jets."

Have you suffered from contaminated cabin air asks another forum post. Neurotoxins get into the cabin air of almost all passenger airliners.

Aircraft manufacturers and the airlines say that when it happens the doses are harmless. One user says he was regularly exposed to fumes over a five year period and suffered headaches, lightheaded and dizziness.

Nausea, stomach pains and diahorrea. Fatigue and lack of concentration. He was later diagnosed with Aerotoxic Syndrome and declared medically unfit to fly.

See a great image of three Virgin aircraft at Los Angeles International Airport last week following the launch of Virgin Blue's long-haul arm V Australia with an inaugural flight from Sydney.

Week on the Web is also available as an audio podcast on AirSpace and iTunes.

The Competition really kicked into another gear this year with nearly 1,500 images submitted in the six categories. In addition the quality of the entries was second to none and caused the judging process to drag out over several days!

Congratulations go to Begemont and was this spectacular shot of a Russian Air Force Su-27 releasing flares at MAKS 2007

And here's the front cover:

The other category winners were:

Menace - Fighters in Flight
Winner - runlikehell
F-22 Raptor at 2008 Oceana air show in Virginia

History - Birds from Bygone Eras
Winner - Photomotion
Ray Hanna memorial flight at Biggin Hill air show 2006

Precision - Aerial Display Teams
Winner - fleeting_images
UK Royal Navy Lynx Black Cats at RIAT

Majesty - Airliners in Action
Winner - bwiadca
Boeing MD-11 climbing to Alaskan storm from Anchorage 2008

Voyage - General Aviation in Dramatic Locations
Winner - allegra66
Rega A109KT during mountain landing in Switzerland

Response - Inspiring Business Jets
Winner - Global Ranger
Bombardier Challenger 300 (G-KALS) on approach to London Luton 2008

His picks are:

• Cutaways
• 100 Years of Flight Archive
• Incident Watch
• Commercial Aircraft Directory
• Videos

Regular readers of this Blog should be aware of most of this stuff but in case some of this great content is slipping by unnoticed I'll join Jon in selecting my choices for 5 cool things on Flightglobal that you might not know about:

Week on the Web podcast - it's an audio version of the regular Week on the Web feature which appears here and in the magazine. You can subscribe via iTunes or on AirSpace

AirSpace image competitions - as well as the big front cover one that's running at the moment, there are regular weekly image-based competitions over on AirSpace. They include: caption competition and spaceflight image of the week

Dynamic aircraft profiles - our growing porfolio of aircraft profiles dynamically bring the best and latest information on any given aircraft together in one place 

Email newsletters - why go through the rigmoral of browsing to find out the news when stuff that's relevant to you can be delivered straight to your inbox

Flightglobal on the web - if you love flightglobal and want to embed it into some of your other web activity you can do so in various ways. This page showcases some of our other web activity

The competition is back again for 2008 ...

The judges are looking for something exceptional. The front cover of Flight International is prestigious podium for any budding photographer to say the least, so understandably the bar is set pretty high.

In order to give anybody entering a shove in the right direction, I've listed a few suggestions below:

The magazine has a rich heritage of striking front covers stretching right back to 1909 so for any image to be included for consideration it has to be:

It's got to be striking

Any front Flight International cover image has to do the job of helping the publication stand out among other magazines

Be unique or out of the ordinary in someway

This is a competition so there will be plenty of other punters entering their images. To stand the best chance yours should have something that makes it stick in the judges' minds

Get the composition right

Remember this is going to appear on the front cover of a magazine which has a predefined size and shape. You may have an unbelievable extra-wide panorama photo of LAX but that's not going to work for the magazine so try something else instead.

Make sure it's the right size and dpi

Simple logistics of the matter. Unless you image is minimum resolution of 300 DPI and 22cms high or wide it is not going to be of a high enough quality to run on the cover. 

To recap, we have snapped a Google Maps' image of ten International Airports around the world. Each week one of those images will be revealed, and the person who guesses the quickest each week (by commenting on the photograph) will win an exclusive brand new AirSpace t-shirt, plus the endless respect of your peers.

Here this week's teaser (sent in by a previous week's winner Aiso)

Please post the name and IATA code into the comments field below the image (on AirSpace not here!) ...

Hats off to mikec who recognised Dunedin International Airport (DUD) in New Zealand. At least it to you a couple of days to work it out.

Here's this week's offering.

As usual please post the name and IATA code into the comments field below the image on AirSpace ...

Good luck!