Honeywell Gulfstream G550 N933H
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Downtown Boston at night while climbing out for the 50-minute flight
to JFK. That unlit part of the photo at the upper right is Logan
Airport. Beautiful sight.
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Yesterday’s temporary grounding of the QANTAS A380 fleet due to contaminated fuel probes has raised questions about a design flaw in the superjumbo’s fuel system, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
[Lyell
Strambi, the airline’s executive general manager of operations] denied the fuel-tank problem raised questions about the
airline’s decision to purchase 20 A380s from manufacturer Airbus for
$350 million each, describing the issues as “a few teething problems”.But he refused to rule out the possibility of a problem with the aircraft’s design.
“Is this a problem with design? It’s too early to tell. We’ll have to work out what’s caused the contamination in the tank.
Since its entry into service in October 2007, the A380 has seen
several groundings due to unrelated faults within the fuel system:
February 18, 2008 – SIA – Problem source traced to electrical relay powering fuel pump.
March 24, 2008 – SIA – Problem traced to “premature failure” of the fuel pump.
March 1, 2009 – QFA – One aircraft prompts cancellation due to fuel leak.
March 2, 2009 – QFA – Two aircraft grounded due to fuel probe contamination.
The new jet has been subject to a higher level of visibility because of the unprecedented size of the airliner, yet all new jets have their
teething problems.
During the February 2008 cancellation Airbus said the A380 had been operating with a dispatch reliability of more than 99.5 percent. Adding, “Like with a normal car, things can happen, things need to be repaired.”
Though, when discussing the dispatch reliability of an aircraft type
with a fleet of only 13 aircraft operating worldwide, aircraft related cancellations or
groundings can greatly skew the average drastically.
Overall, Mr. Strambi said of his airline’s three superjumbos: “The A380 is actually a fantastic aircraft and, until now, we’ve
had a very good entry to service with the aircraft.”
Image courtesy of David Barrie
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I’m working on a bunch of other things this afternoon and I’m out and about in Boston, but I wanted to keep in touch via Twitter. I’ll be back in DC late tonight. Also this post is the first test of the new Apture plug-in for Movable Type. The photo above is one I took from Oshkosh last summer. The plane is N707JT a Boeing 707 owned and operated by John Travolta.
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Snowed in!
My trip to Boston this weekend has been extended a bit as I’ve found myself sitting under about a foot or more of fresh snow this morning. I’m heading back to DC tomorrow and really, I should be more careful about what I wish for. I have a feeling I’ll be leaning on Twitter the next few days.
Korean Air A330s
On Friday, Korean booked an order with
Airbus for six new A330-200s, bringing their total -200 fleet to nine.
The order is the first for the longer ranger WV058 (Weight Variant)
A330-200 with a 238 tonne MTOW, providing it a range of 7,200 nm. The
variant was intended to take on early 787-8s
coming off the line in terms of performance. To speculate, this order
says much more about how Korean views the 787 performance and the
delivery timeline much more than it raises any spectre of the airline
not taking its order for 10 787-8s.
Korean Aerospace has significant content
on the 787 including the wingtips, aft tail cone, nose gear wheel well
and flap fairings, so changing any order is not in the nation’s overall
economic interest. Though perhaps those -8s become -9s to replace the
16 296-seat A330-300s that the airlines operate. Only time will tell.
Air Austral 77W
Somewhere along the 777 moving line in Everett is the first of two 777-300ERs for Air Austral. The Reunion-based airline is leasing the aircraft from ILFC and made headlines recently with the purchase of two A380 aircraft which are expected to seat – wait for it, wait for it – 840 passengers! Before the airline receives those aircraft in 2014, Air Austral will take delivery of its first 777-300ER with a whopping 442 seats (18/40/384), amongst the highest capacity configurations selected for the aircraft type.
Also, Boeing should be celebrating its 777th 777 very, very soon.
What’s next for NextGen?
With the Obama FY10 budget unveiled, funding has been allocated to pay for the development of the revised US air traffic control system for the 21st century. WIRED magazine also penned an interesting feature article tracing the fragile, if not already broken, ATC system to the New York ARTCC. Make sure to explore the visual elements of this piece as well, including amazing animations depicting air travel over the US during the course of a normal day.
Fun with IFe™
I was joking around with IFE Guru Mary Kirby (Runway Girl) earlier today and I officially coined the term IFe™ to signify in-flight internet as a feature for in-flight entertainment. So, I’m on record saying it started here, folks.
Programming Note
I haven’t had a formal 787 update since late January and there is quite a bit to cover in the next edition (no. 23?) that will be released soon.
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Four decades ago today, an aircraft that requires no article ahead of its name, Concorde made her first flight from Toulouse. F-WSST, the first of two prototypes took flight at 3:40 PM on March 2, 1969, just three weeks after the 747-100. The second prototype, which was built in Filton in the UK, took flight in April. May I recommend a look into our archives from 1969? I went exploring through our cutaway archive this morning and found incredible array of Concorde content.
Even a cursory glance at the milestones of 1969 make it the most influential year for aerospace with the first Moon landing that followed in July.
One of my most vivid memories growing up was from a summer visit to Jones Beach on Long Island. I remember being transfixed by the extraordinary noise and speed generated by Concorde as she blasted across the sky headed for Europe. It was the only time I had a chance to see her fly.
Today’s Movie Monday is a celebration of the supersonic transport and her legacy. Today’s four clips, totaling about 40 minutes, take you inside the flight deck of Speedbird 001 from Heathrow to JFK for the takeoff, trans-Atlantic acceleration, landing at JFK and return departure on board the Mach 2 airliner. The clips come from a 5-hour look a the Concorde produced by ITVV in 1996.
Clips 2-4 after the jump.
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On Friday, two events transpired for two very different titans of the airline industry.
For Michael O’Leary, Friday may have marked the high or low water mark
in a strange marketing campaign that had the Ryanair chief announcing
that the airline, which turns 25 next year, is considering charging £1 for use of the lavatory on
board its fleet of 737-800 aircraft. The airline industry has been
trending in this direction for a while; un-bundling its ticket
prices to keep air fares low.
For O’Leary, the shock factor of charging to use the lav is a point of conversation that generated over 6,000 blog posts (including this one) about his airline in the last 24 hours. Is this type of coverage hurting Ryanair? No. Traffic on his budget airline was up 11% in January (over January 2008) even as European air travel dropped 5.6% last month (IATA). The cringe inducing idea of paying for a lavatory allowed O’Leary to come back to his central point: keeping fares cheap, which in a bad economy is something that can keep people flying.
Perhaps in contrast for Richard Branson, the close of last week marked the inaugural flight of his fledgling trans-Pacific spin-off carrier V Australia.
Branson moved his brand into one of the most traditionally protected
markets with the help of the US-Australia bilateral Open Skies
agreement signed
a year ago. The four engine A380 and 747 has found a long range
competitor across the south Pacific on the US-Australia routes with the
777-300ER.
Branson was concluding a highly publicized eight-day, round-the-world
trip that covered four continents and culminated in the launch the first commercial
service by V Australia from Sydney to Los Angeles and celebrated
25-years (four months shy) of operations by Virgin-branded airlines. Yet, the event was a
manifestation of Branson’s modus operandi – to push his way into
markets introducing new competitive dynamics (read: price wars) on routes long dominated by legacy carriers.
What connects these two seemingly unrelated events are the personalities of their
respective leaders, each known for eccentricity and surprising, often
shocking (may be NSFW), marketing techniques. Both are strong believers in the fact that any publicity is good publicity and finding a way to use bad publicity to your advantage. (In the airline industry this has a few notable exceptions)
Each airline chief has very different ideas about what
their brand represents and who it serves, though both have a keen
regard for getting ears and eyes on their products. In these unconventional economic times, unconventional approaches may just help to keep people flying, just as it did during better times. Perhaps it’s even more necessary now.
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Boston bound. Unexpected earlier flight. Fresh content coming this
afternoon. What a strange, strange week this has been. Thanks for
hangin’ on with me.
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Boeing has shaken up the leadership of the 747 program with the reassignment of its top executive.
Mohammad “Mo” Yahyavi will assume the leadership of the 747 program, departing his vice president position on the Commercial Airplanes 737 P-8A Poseidon team.
Yohyavi replaces Ross Bogue (pictured) who has served as head of the 747 program as VP and general manager since September 2007.
Bogue also served as Vice President and general manager of Boeing’s Everett Site, and has been reassigned as Vice President for the Fabrication Division, a position which he previously held until he was promoted to site leader in February 2006.
This change in the 747 program represents a second shake-up of program leadership in eighteen months. Dan Mooney previously served as head of the 747 program until Bogue assumed the position.
Boeing announced a delay to the 747-8 program of six to nine months in November of 2008, citing scarce engineering resources and a supply chain unable to accommodate the volume of engineering changes required to meet design release deadlines.
Boeing has earned 78 orders from nine customers for the freighter version and 28 orders for the passenger variant of the aircraft. Lufthansa currently stands as the only passenger airline to select the 747-8I, with an order for 20 of the type.
The limited orders for the -8I variant have sparked questions about the commercial viability of the 747-8I aircraft with only one airline customer, though internally Boeing continues to actively pursue its development. Flight International previously reported that Boeing has studied various options for the program, including terminating the 747-8I and running the 747-8F as a standalone program.
Delivery of the first 747-8F to Luxemberg-based Cargolux is expected to take place in the middle of 2010 following a flight test and certification program beginning late in the 3rd quarter of 2009.
UPDATE 2:40 PM 2/25: Yohyavi will be replaced by John Pricco as head of the P-8A program. Also, Bogue replaces Pat McKenna who will be leading a team to find and implement opportunities to improve the
efficiency of the 787 supply chain.
Photo of Ross Bogue courtesy of Boeing
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Special thanks to Boeing for the photo.
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