• Design Your Own Boeing 787 Dreamliner
• Airliners.net

• PC-12 Digital Airplane Flight Manual
• Upcast Jetbook

• Bombardier's 25th anniversary
• Avios

• David Parker Brown's Airline Reporter
• Latedeparture.com

• Boeing - Design your own Dreamliner
• Estonia Air

We launched the annual Webbies to find the best aviation resources on the internet. The awards, in their fourth year, include several new categories, such as best mobile app. The deadline for entries is 13 January.

See the new categories and enter now 

FlightBlogger Jon Ostrower continued his unrivalled Boeing Commercial Airplanes coverage, focusing this week on the deal with unions to ensure the 737 Max is made in Seattle.

Aviation safety is the subject of entries from John Croft on his general aviation blog As the Cro(ft) Flies, and from David Learmount on his eponymous blog.

Croft praises the robustness of the Air Tractor after a crash in which the pilot survived and was quoted as saying: "If I'd had been flying anything else, I'd have been dead."

Learmount bemoans the lack of risk awareness among sections of the helicopter community in a blog accompanied by real-time video of a low-altitude accident on an Auckland construction site, in which the chopper was torn in two but from which the pilot walked away, albeit shakily.

 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  / 

Stories coming out of the show included the opening of a new business aviation airport, Al Bateen, in Abu Dhabi, and Rizon Jet (which has fixed base operations in the Gulf and Europe) becoming the latest Middle Eastern operator to take on an Airbus Corporate Jet liner.

FlightBlogger discovered at the show that Airbus has yet to decide if the smallest member of the A320 family, the A318, will receive the company's new engine option (neo), though if it does happen the airframer's corporate jetliner business will likely drive the decision, he writes.

Fellow blogger As the Cro(ft) Flies posted from MEBA about the differences between blended and elliptical winglets because "[winglet companies] don't like it when you get the two technologies mixed up, despite the fact that both increase maximum load and increase cruise range."

Flightglobal, for the third year running, has launched the Webbies - the Flightglobal Aviation Web Awards - this year with three new categories, (Online Campaign, Launch, and Digital Technology) in order to recognise areas that have seen the most intense innovation and progress in the last 12 months.

You have until 15th January to enter your own site and nominate your favourite sites.

Here at Flightglobal, we put together some lists including Flightglobal's list of the year's first flights, roll-outs and anniversaries, how we covered the air shows around the globe and of course the usual top tens from the stories, the pictures and the videos that had you clicking furiously to see what the big noise was about.

You've still got time to enter the Webbies 09 Flightglobal's Aviation Web Awards. You can nominate your own favourite sites, as well, in the eight aviation-related categories including two new categories celebrating community and enthusiast websites and effective use of social media. The closing date for entries and nominations is 10th January so get cracking.

See how Flight saw the world in its last issue of its first year. In the 18th December 1909 issue, a reader, Harold Kelk wrote to the editor questioning the origination of the word "aviation", saying: M. Jules Verne used [the word] in his book "The Clipper of the Clouds ".

"I think 'aviation' a much pleasanter word to use than 'volitation', and its exact meaning quite near enough to the mark to justify its use," he says.

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.

In case you missed it I've included the winners and runners up below together with the judges' comments.

Running and judging the inaugural Webbies has been an interesting and rewarding experience.

There was a great variety of styles, content, design and innovation in the hundreds of website nominated, and it's encouraging to see that the aviation industry is getting serious about online.

Having worked in several other industries I can say that it's not always the case. Some industries simply do not get the potential of the web and how it can make their businesses (both for transactions and marketing) much more efficient and effective. And many fail to see that we're really just scraping the surface of how business methods can be transformed through the new opportunities the web offers.

However, I think two things are at the heart of our industry's adoption of online technologies: the global nature of this business means that any process which helps to bridge the distances between companies and people is something will be actively embraced; secondly, many people involved in aircraft and flying have an innate love of new technology and innovation, of which Web 2.0 technologies are an obvious candidate.

Either way, with so much energy going into our websites and online innovations, it's a great online environment to be working in.