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36 votes
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Big data reveals true climate impact of worldwide air travel
24 votes -
The United States leads the world in airline safety. That’s because of the way we assign blame when accidents do happen.
45 votes -
Whistleblower who accused Boeing supplier of ignoring defects dies
47 votes -
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7 votes -
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54 votes -
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52 votes -
Boeing whistleblower found dead in US
88 votes -
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29 votes -
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19 votes -
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13 votes -
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17 votes -
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20 votes -
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25 votes -
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6 votes -
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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 -
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74 votes -
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20 votes -
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17 votes -
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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 -
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 -
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 -
Countdown to collision: The crash of LATAM Perú flight 2213
10 votes -
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17 votes -
How not to fly a plane: The 2017 Teterboro Learjet crash
19 votes -
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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