Today’s Movie Monday is about commercial aerospace, but from a slightly higher altitude. This National Geographic documentary takes you inside the development of Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites’ White Knight Two and Spaceship Two for Virgin Galactic. If this is your first introduction to VG, the company’s goal is to achieve regular commercial space tourism and science missions with suborbital flights.
The intimate look at the development of these commercial spacecraft takes you from 2008 up to about a year ago when SS2 made its first glide flight in the skies over the Mojave Desert. NatGeo had a view from virtually every angle from inside the hangar to SpaceShipTwo’s cockpit. Virgin Galactic Will it Fly? runs just over 45 minutes. Enjoy!
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This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.
This video, posted yesterday, on YouTube by Clay Lacy Aviation, a major Fixed-Base Operator (FBO) based out of Boeing Field, captured an extended air-to-air photo shoot with ZA002. The nearly five-minute video was shot on the sunny side of the cloudy skies in the Pacific Northwest. Make sure to watch this one at full screen at 1080p resolution. Call it a short Movie Saturday, if you will.
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This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.
Quick item from the Department of Things That Probably Weren’t Meant to be Posted on the Internet: WSJ.com inexplicably posted an announcement from Nimrod Capital LLC, which today bought the first of three A380s it is leasing to Emirates, each for 12 years.
All the headlines have been focused on China Southern’s first A380 delivery today, but for Doric Nimrod Air Two Limited, MSN077 is their first aircraft, and the 16th of 90 that the Dubai-based carrier has on order.
Doric Nimrod Air Two Limited (the “Company”) is pleased to announce that its wholly owned subsidiary, MSN 077 Limited (the “Subsidiary”), has today acquired an Airbus A380-800 aircraft bearing manufacturer’s serial number 077 (the “Aircraft”) for the sum of US$234,000,000. The Aircraft was delivered to the Subsidiary today at the Airbus delivery centre in Hamburg, Germany.
The Airbus list price of an A380 currently stands at $375.3 million, providing an interesting glimpse into what Airbus’ largest superjumbo customer is paying for its new aircraft. At $234 million, Emirates is receiving a 38% discount off list price, which is not far off the industry standard for the magnitude of the carrier’s order.
What’s not clear from this figure is if the price of the Engine Alliance GP7200 engines, which list for $16.6 million each, is included in that price. Further, what share of the price includes the extensive interior customization and in-flight entertainment is also not known, but at the price Nimrod is paying, you begin to get a rough sense of the share that revenue that actually goes back to Airbus.
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This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.
With yesterday’s delivery of the first 747-8F to Cargolux, the type’s launch customer has taken a second jumbo freighter today. RC504 is currently enroute to Luxembourg after departing Paine Field shortly before 1 PM PT.
Also taking place today, the second 787 has been delivered to All Nippon Airways and a flyaway to Japan is expected in the days to come, several sources tell FlightBlogger.
Airplane 24, ZA103, will join Airplane Eight in Tokyo ahead of the formal service entry of the new majority-composite jetliner on October 26 on a special charter between Tokyo-Narita and Hong Kong. The two aircraft, each painted in special ANA livery, will enter scheduled revenue on November 1 connecting Tokyo-Haneda and Hiroshima and Okayama.
Airplane 45, the first 787 for United Airlines, departed Building 40-26 last night headed for the paint hangar. The aircraft, will be delivered to United in the second half of 2012, now accounting for more than eight months of additional delay beyond the airline’s assessment from the middle of last year.
The aircraft was to have inaugurated service to Auckland, New Zealand next month, but is now not scheduled to arrive in the airline’s fleet until sometime after July 1, 2012, at the earliest, said CEO Jeff Smisek. The carrier now expects to see five 787s in 2012, instead of six.
United did not respond to a request for explanation by Flightglobal.
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This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.
Boeing will deliver its first 747-8 freighter today to Cargolux, breaking an impasse over a contractual dispute, sources confirm.
The first 747-8F LC-VCB will be handed over to the carrier today with a second, LC-VCD, to be delivered October 13.
Cargolux, Boeing, General Electric, which supplies the GEnx-2B engines for the new jumbo freighter, have been wrangling over a contractual dispute surrounding the performance of the aircraft, which stalled the planned first delivery on September 19.
Boeing declined to confirm it plans to deliver the first 747-8F today.
Though Akbar Al-Baker, CEO of Qatar Airways, a 35% stakeholder in Cargolux, told reporters at the delivery of Qatar’s 100th aircraft the cargo carrier planned to take delivery on October 12 after approving the order at a planned October 7 board meeting.
On October 7, Cargolux announced that it had made progress with Boeing and GE, but a final resolution had not been secured.
Further, a flight plan has been filed for today under a Cargolux flight number for a 747-8F from Paine Field to Seattle-Tacoma International airport, indicating an imminent delivery to the carrier.
Cargolux has 13 747-8F aircraft on order.
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This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.
LAS VEGAS — Citing change incorporation stemming from flight test, Boeing Business Jets president Steve Taylor says the first and only delivery of the 747-8I in 2011 will be “right at the end of the year”.
“There’s not a lot of margin”, says Taylor of the 747-8I, which is expected to be certified late in the fourth quarter.
“We won’t get three to five, the plan is to get one. And it’s challenging,” said Taylor today of the 2011 747-8I deliveries.
Almost exactly one year ago at NBAA 2010, Taylor said Boeing planned to begin 747-8I flight testing in March, which it achieved, and anticipated a four month flight test program.
At the time Boeing aimed to deliver the first five 747-8Is to VIP customers before the end of 2011.
“I lay awake at night trying to figure out how I’m going to deliver five of them in the compressed period we have,” said Taylor in 2010.
Further putting pressure on flight test, weeks after that October 2010 estimate, Boeing suffered a fire aboard one of its 787 flight test aircraft, extending the majority-composite jetliner’s certification effort by approximately seven months.
Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Jim Albaugh said in July the company planned to deliver its first green 747-8I to a completion center in early-December.
Boeing forecasts delivering 25 to 30 747-8 and 787 aircraft in 2011 and Taylor declined to discuss any potential impact on that estimate, citing the US Securities and Exchange Commission quiet period ahead of the company’s quarterly earnings call on October 26.
Though, Taylor did say that the 25 to 30 estimate, which was revised downward in July, was developed when the company had already accepted that reality” of a single 747-8I delivery “before that plan came along”.
Boeing reduced its overall 2011 forecast for its new program deliveries from 25 to 40 down to 25 to 30.
The airframer plans to deliver its first passenger configured 747-8I to Lufthansa in Spring 2012, and Taylor says the company has been in close communication with its customers about its delivery schedule.
“All of our customers are aware exactly where we are. We’re talking directly with them, they know what’s going on, there’s no surprise that’s happening behind the scenes here.”
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This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.
LAS VEGAS — When the Sukhoi Superjet Twitter account checked into McCarran Airport on Foursquare late last week, more than an eyebrow’s worth of interest was raised. A sign, perhaps, of the 100-seater‘s growing presence in business aviation, with its recently announced Sukhoi Business Jet (SBJ).
At Sunday’s NBAA press day, Switzerland-based Comlux ordered two green SSJ100s which will be converted to an SBJ at the VIP charter company’s Indianapolis, Indiana facility starting in 2014. The aircraft will be fitted with auxiliary fuel tanks in the factory in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Russia to achieve non-stop London-New York and Moscow-Dubai flights.
The name Comlux may be unfamiliar in commercial aviation,
but the Zurich-based company operates a fleet of 19 aircraft, including
five A320 ACJ family aircraft, seven Bombardier Global and three
Challenger family aircraft, as well as a Dassault Falcon 900LX and
Boeing 767.
While it remains a modest order, Comlux, which has become a staple at NBAA and MEBA shows in past years, bringing
its Airbus ACJs to the static display, has thrown its weight behind the Russian regional jet, providing an unexpected Western stamp of approval from a major industry player.
Rendering Credit Superjet International
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This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.
LAS VEGAS — Yes, you read that right. One takeoff and one “custom” landing with Sky Dive Las Vegas. Climbing to 13-15,000 MSL then heading fast for earth. See you on the ground.
Update: Safe and sound on the ground. Wow.
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This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.
Ahead of the 2011 National Business Aviation Association conference in Las Vegas, which begins on Sunday, Pratt & Whitney Canada invited me to take a closer look at the Pacific Aerospace P-750 XSTOL and the engine that powers it, the PT6A.
The XSTOL, which stands for extreme short take off and landing, is a designation given by the New Zealand-based airframer when an aircraft can take-off with a payload in excess of its empty weight in under 800ft. At its core, the P-750’s missions include a 4,000lb payload on short field takeoff capability on semi-prepared runways, aerial survey, crop dusting, fire fighting or carrying up to 17 skydivers to dump at altitude. We’ll talk about that last mission a bit more later on.
That performance is due, in part, to the Cresco’s thick wing and a span of 42ft (12.8m), 305sq ft (28.34 sq m) wing area and pronounced outboard dihedral. The design of the P-750 was derived by combining the engine and wings of the older Pacific Aerospace Cresco crop duster with a new large fuselage design and modified empennage. The type made its first flight in 2001 and was certified in 2004.
The other part is the 750hp (560kW) PT6A-34 engine selected by Pacific to power the P-750, which is significant for an aircraft whose empty weight is only 3,100lbs.
Pratt & Whitney Canada started mass production of the PT6 in 1963, and is arguably aviation’s most resilient turbine engine design, evolving incrementally over time with each new application. The P-750 is one of 130 different aircraft that have been powered by the PT6.
The engine’s first application, the Beechcraft Model 18, first flew in May 1961 and was intended as a replacement of the P&W Wasp radial engine. To date, PWC has delivered 46,000 PT6 engines, 26,000 of which are still flying today having accumulated 350 million hours in service.
With its 1961 first flight, the PT6 architecture is only eight years shy of having as many years removed from its first flight, as its own first flight was from Orville & Wilbur at Kitty Hawk.
The engine, which can provide power from 500shp up to 2,000shp – depending on the application – and is principally made up of three major components, a gas generator comprising the compressor and combustor, the power section made up of the turbine which is spun by the combusted fuel and air, and a gearbox that connects directly to a propeller or rotor.
Those three elements have been scaled and customized over the years to create a modular system that can be tailored depending on the application.
“We can mix and match these to get better thermal ratings, better flat ratings, make the PT6 a sort of tailored engine to the aircraft these people are trying to make,” said John Saabas, PWC President in a Friday interview. “When you’re a small aircraft maker we can give you choice. We can give you a power range, thermal range, mechanical range.
“Socatas need lots of thermal power because they want to go fast at altitude, not so much mechanical power. King Airs want to take off with heavy loads and don’t go quite as fast need more mechanical power. So a different gear box for those two even those it may be the same basic engine behind it. It just depends on how its rated.”
“From a first-cost perspective, we also bring an advantage over some other technologies, some of the other choices that are out there,” he says, citing higher SFC but a lower acquisition cost of the PT6 than the GE T700 that powers civilian and military rotorcraft.
For Saabas the extended investment over decades and pressure to deliver another another major leap in fuel burn improvement is tempered by the cost competitiveness and market establishment of the existing engine.
To look at the engine through Red-Blue, London School of Economics academic Dr. Theodore Piepenbrock’s work on business evolution, the PT6 serves as a prime example of incremental, scalable development that has benefitted from continuous product evolution to drive out cost and improve efficiency and fuel performance over its extended lifetime.
Though even with its modular design, Saabas cautions that the PT6 is not focused as an off-the-shelf engine as it appears: “You don’t want to get to a point where you’re a commodity, we’re always trying to decomoditize ourselves.”
Though he acknowledges, the mix-and-match capability of the PT6 allows airframers small and large flexibility, but the scale of the complexity is the differentiator from project to project.
“There are some applications that some people want to take a [PT6A-42] and they want to adapt it, but we’re developing for the Eurocopter, right now, the [PT6C-67E] which is a brand new version of the PT6 for the EC175, we’re putting a FADEC on to that.”
Overall, Saabas attributes the success of the platform to its overall reliability, achieving an in-flight shutdown rate of two per every million flight hours. Though, he also acknowledges market pressures by relative new-comers in the market, General Electric and its M601 and H-80 engine, which grew out of its 2008 Walter Aircraft Engines acquisition.
The engine, says PWC, has improved in line with the industry standard, delivering an extra percent of specific fuel consumption improvement every year, translating into a 20% improvement over the last two decades.
In a 2010 interview, Saabas said its plans for the introduction of new technologies into the PT6 remained a higher priority that its plans for a replacement, calling it an “advanced design study”, though he says in Friday’s interview that the PT6 replacement will evolve from the PT6 itself: “We’re doing a couple of neat technologies to see if we can’t improve the efficiency of the PT6 by double digits, and some of them use PT6 architectures, some don’t. So let’s call them a general aviation engine replacement if you will.”
Yet Saabas, who has been PWC’s president since 2009, says the company has stuck with the PT6 for as long as it has because there have been “a lot of generations of leaders at Pratt Canada who have been customer focused and out there trying to adapt the product to different marketplaces and aggressively looking for these applications for the engine and spending the money to develop it with the confidence that there was a marketplace.”
Video Credit Pacific Aerospace
Cutaway Credit Pratt & Whitney Canada
This post was originally published to the internet between 2007 and 2012. Links, images, and embedded media from that era may no longer function as intended.
This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.
FlightBlogger, along with Runway Girl and The DEW Line, now have a new (and fully operational) comment system.
Over the years I have received several hundred thousand comments on this blog and sadly only a small fraction have been from real people, making actual comments about the content here.
People have suggested all kinds of solutions from email filters to cleaning the spam filter daily, but each solution left too much room for good comments to get lost among the crush. Further, the spam filter built in to Movable Type would often keep comments from ever making it to a place where they could even be seen, just lost to oblivion. With the wave of valid and spam comments coming in, those that weren’t deemed spam the filter (which couldn’t really tell spam from non-spam) would be delivered to my inbox at a rate of dozens per day (sometimes per hour). It was an unsustainable situation.
Well, today we have – what I hope – is a final solution to the problem. We have installed Disqus as the new platform for our comments and enable people to use different logins to post comments. You can use your Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, OpenID and/or Google accounts to log-in to the new system.
Most importantly, you can still comment anonymously on posts using a Guest or Disqus login, which will require you to supply a username, password and email address. Most importantly, the email address does not need to be verified, so you can be creative with that field.
Disqus enhances your ability to comment by allowing you to subscribe to a comment thread, upload and attach photos locally or from flickr and videos from Youtube. The full social media integration across Facebook and Twitter also allows you to easily share the posts here across networks.
A very, very special thanks to Adam Tinworth and Stuart Clarke for making Disqus a reality.
Happy commenting!
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This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.
LAS VEGAS — When the Sukhoi Superjet Twitter account 
