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18 votes
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What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane
54 votes -
Transit study recommends new express bus service to Kansas City International Airport
5 votes -
Boeing whistleblower found dead in US
88 votes -
'If anything happens, it's not suicide': Boeing whistleblower's prediction before death
52 votes -
Boeing is withholding key details about door plug on Alaska 737 Max 9 jet, NTSB says
29 votes -
A man who crashed a snowmobile into a parked Black Hawk helicopter is suing the government for $9.5M
19 votes -
What Boeing’s door-plug debacle says about the future of aviation safety
13 votes -
Diversity in the skies: US FAA’s controversial shift in air traffic controller hiring
17 votes -
New report from US Federal Aviation Administration: Boeing lacks key elements of safety culture
19 votes -
Air Force OKs autonomous cargo flights across California after successful test
20 votes -
Finnair is now weighing passengers to update weight and balance calculations – identity of the volunteers remains anonymous
25 votes -
A cycle of misery: The business of building commercial aircraft
6 votes -
Boeing wants US FAA to exempt MAX 7 from safety rules to get it in the air
103 votes -
Greta Thunberg marched with activists to protest against Farnborough Airport expansion, which mainly serves private jets – planned increase from 50,000 to 70,000 flights per year
20 votes -
Boeing whistleblower: production line has “enormous volume of defects” bolts on MAX 9 weren’t installed
74 votes -
Russian who boarded flight from Copenhagen to Los Angeles last November without ticket, passport or visa has been found guilty of being a stowaway
20 votes -
Russia State Duma to prepare statement to US Congress and German parliament regarding Belgorod plane crash
17 votes -
US judge blocks JetBlue-Spirit merger after DOJ’s antitrust challenge
12 votes -
‘This has been going on for years.’ Inside Boeing’s manufacturing mess.
28 votes -
Boeing discovers accountability a little too late
20 votes -
Oblique wing aircraft - Could this change air travel forever?
12 votes -
Helicopters on Everest
9 votes -
Helsinki Airport clears runway snow in just eleven minutes – why do some airports cope better with snow than others?
11 votes -
Norse Atlantic Airways successfully completed the world's first Boeing 787 Dreamliner flight to Antarctica, carrying scientists and essential research equipment to the continent
11 votes -
The world’s largest aircraft breaks cover in Silicon Valley
36 votes -
Coming up short: The crash of MarkAir flight 3087
8 votes -
Boarding planes could have been very different
15 votes -
Cogs in the machine: The crash of Colgan Air flight 3407 and its legacy
9 votes -
Sergey Brin's airship gets US FAA clearance
27 votes -
Kansas City receives $15 billion in federal funding for mobility and infrastructure projects
13 votes -
Personal aviation is about to get interesting
20 votes -
Stop blocking the aisle: how to board an aircraft
11 votes -
What to expect when expecting electric airplanes
12 votes -
Air travel is profoundly bad for the environment but one of the hardest industries to decarbonize. Can green technologies make a difference before it’s too late?
https://www.noemamag.com/the-seductive-vision-of-green-aviation/ Picture yourself in an airship pushing into the northern latitudes. From the vantage of a barstool in the center of a luxurious...
https://www.noemamag.com/the-seductive-vision-of-green-aviation/
Picture yourself in an airship pushing into the northern latitudes. From the vantage of a barstool in the center of a luxurious lounge, you look through panoramic windows to see an Arctic vista scroll past. The ride is as smooth as a cruise liner cutting through a mirror sea. Above you is a white canopy, the base of the great bladder of gas keeping you airborne. Down below, a huge oval shadow glides across the pack ice.
I disembarked from this flight of fancy and came back to reality in an industrial estate on the outskirts of the town of Bedford, a couple hours north of London. For now, the airship of my imagination sat disassembled in front of me — an engine, the top section of a tail fin, a salubrious sample cabin.
Hybrid Air Vehicles calls it the Airlander: a colossal, state-of-the-art dirigible that was originally conceived as a military surveillance platform for the U.S. Air Force. That idea was scrapped as America de-escalated its operations in Afghanistan, but by then a new application for airships was emerging. Aviation is the most energy-intensive form of transport, and in recent years the industry has come under intense scrutiny for its environmental footprint. Unlike a passenger airplane, a passenger airship — buoyant and slow — doesn’t have to burn much fuel to stay in the air.
“We’ve completely normalized flying in an aluminum tube at 500 miles an hour, but I think we’ve got some big changes coming,” said Tom Grundy, an aerospace engineer and HAV’s CEO, who was showing me around the research facility.
Many of the scientific principles behind Grundy’s airship are a throwback to a bygone age, when Goodyears and Zeppelins carried affluent clientele around America and Europe and occasionally between the two. Other aspects are cutting-edge. The cambered twin hulls will be inflated with 1.2 million cubic feet of inert helium, not flammable hydrogen like most of the Airlander’s interwar forebears. The skin, a composite of tenacious, space-age materials, is barely a tenth of an inch thick but so strong that there is no need for any internal skeleton. Grundy handed me a handkerchief-sized off-cut. “You could probably hang an SUV off that,” he said. When it goes into production later this year, it will be the world’s largest commercial airliner: around 300 feet long, nearly the length of a soccer field.
But arguably its key selling point — the reason HAV resuscitated a mode of aerial transport once thought to have gone down in flames with the Hindenburg — is that it’s green. Even powered by today’s kerosene-based jet fuel, the total emissions per kilometer from its four vectored engines will be 75% less than a conventional narrow-bodied jet covering the same distance. The Airlander of course is much slower. A maximum velocity of under 100mph means that it’s never going to compete directly with jet airliners. “We tend to think of it as sitting between the air and ground markets — a railway carriage for the skies,” Grundy told me.
“When it enters service, perhaps as soon as 2026, the Airlander will offer premium, multi-day cruises to hard-to-reach places like the Arctic Circle.”
A 100-seat cabin designed for regional travel has already attracted orders from carriers in Spain and Scotland. The prototype we were sitting in, with a futuristic carbon-fiber profile and wine glasses dangling above a wraparound bar, is the central section of another configuration called the “expedition payload module.” When it enters service, perhaps as soon as 2026, it will offer premium, multi-day cruises to hard-to-reach places like the Arctic Circle. Behind the communal lounge, a central corridor will lead to eight double ensuite bedrooms. “You’ll even be able to open the windows,” Grundy said.
35 votes -
Countdown to collision: The crash of LATAM Perú flight 2213
10 votes -
One hundred seconds of confusion: The crash of China Airlines flight 140
17 votes -
How not to fly a plane: The 2017 Teterboro Learjet crash
19 votes -
How a single flight plan with unexpected waypoint data caused a meltdown of the UK's air traffic control system
24 votes -
The dead man’s gambit: The crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 961
9 votes -
Tempest over Texas: The crash of Braniff International Airways flight 352
6 votes -
Controlled Pod Into Terrain episode 1: Asiana Airways 214
7 votes -
Should airships make a comeback?
25 votes -
US senator and pilot Tammy Duckworth: anyone who votes to reduce the 1,500 hour rule for pilot training will have blood on their hands
62 votes -
Finnish citizens traveling with Finnair between Helsinki Airport and the UK will be able to trial Digital Travel Credentials, using them to leave and enter Finland
8 votes -
Cruelty of chance: The Cerritos mid-air collision and the crash of Aeroméxico flight 498
16 votes -
Antonov’s curse: The crash of Sepahan Airlines flight 5915 and the story of the An-140
8 votes -
US agencies investigate close call between Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 and a Cessna Citation 560X business jet in San Diego
8 votes -
Complacency kills: The crash of Continental Airlines flight 1713
19 votes -
US Federal judge orders Southwest Airlines attorneys to attend ‘religious-liberty training’ from conservative Christian legal advocacy group
42 votes