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A new study says that within three years jumbo jet–makers could be testing a new type of wing that reduces midair drag and cuts fuel costs by an estimated 20 percent. The wing would do this using small, built in jets that redirect air around the wing during flight.

“This has come as a bit of a surprise to all of us in the aerodynamics community,” Duncan Lockerby, an associate professor of fluid-solid mechanics at the University of Warwick in the U.K. and head of the research project funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and aircraft maker Airbus, said in a statement. “It was discovered, essentially, by waggling a piece of wing from side to side in a wind tunnel.”

Lockerby acknowledged that he and his team weren’t sure exactly how the small jets actually reduce drag, but they’re building prototypes they hope will be ready for testing as early as 2012 and will eventually reduce surface friction drag by up to 40 percent.

Part of this learn-as-they-go approach stems from the Advisory Council for Aeronautical Research in Europe’s (ACARE) goal of cutting carbon dioxide emissions from passenger aircraft in half by 2020, Lockerby notes on Warwick’s Web site.

From http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=not-a-drag-high-tech-airplane-wings-2009-05-22

Swiss deploy glass airliner

Stealth tech spied at Geneva airport

A certain Harry Lime once famously explained that “in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance”, whereas in Switzerland they had “brotherly love … 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock”.

Well, it’s taken them a while, but the Swiss have finally challenged this uncharitable analysis of their contribution to human advancement with the deployment of a sensational glass airliner, spotted mid-cloak down at Geneva aiport:

A semi-transparent airliner on the tarmac at Geneva airport

The Swiss are not normally noted for their transparency, as their banking system attests, but this technological marvel is a clear challenge to the US’s own cloaked aircraft, reportedly used to carry out rendition flights to Guantanamo without attracting the attention of pesky pinko-liberal human rights activists.

Quite what use Switzerland will make of its invisible air transportation remains to be seen, although it seems the ideal method for clandestine export of cuckoo clocks to Third World dictatorships and the Axis of Evil.

From From Theregister.co.uk/2007/09/07/glass-airliner

Airliners of the world

The worst might be over for the aviation industry as the latest international traffic data for April 2009 has shown passenger demand fall only 3.1 percent compared to an 11.1 percent fall in March.

April figures were released by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) on Wednesday, showing the average passenger load factor was 74.4% compared to 72.1% in March. Read more…

In a letter to the editor of  The Peoples Defender Rick Kenny a spokesperson for GE strongly defends the GE Rolls project . Read more…

Despite being cut from the Pentagon’s budget, the GE Aviation/Rolls-Royce F136 engine is progressing toward flight testing.

The companies said Wednesday that it is beginning its flight clearance certification review, a process that will prepare the F136 for flight testing. It expects that, following certification, the engine will be tested on an F-35 Lightning aircraft in early 2011.
Read more…

A MiG-21 Bison fighter aircraft crashed Wednesday in Luni region of Rajasthan but the pilot ejected out safely, an air force official said here.

‘The aircraft took off from the Jodhpur air base at 12 noon and crashed in the Luni region sometime later. The pilot, Squadron Leader S.P Deb, ejected in time,’ an Indian Air Force spokesperson said.
This is the third aircraft that has crashed in Rajasthan in the past one month. Earlier, the air force lost one of its frontline combat jets Sukhoi-30 MKi and a MiG-29.
From IANS

The body that monitors UK airspace is seeking a solution to the potentially disastrous problem of commercial and military aircraft disappearing in radar blackout zones caused by wind farms.

National Air Traffic Services (Nats) has asked Raytheon, the American defence company, to design the world’s first system for allowing radar to see through wind farm interference.

The cost of the £5 million project is expected to be picked up by the wind energy industry. Read more…

Aust Nav in RAF Crash

The British Ministry of Defence has admitted there was a litany of faults with a

military transport plane that crashed in Iraq in 2005, killing 10 servicemen

including an Australian navigator.

Royal Air Force Flight Lieutenant Paul Pardoel, 35, was flying on the Hercules when

it was shot down by insurgents.

Last year a British coroner found there were serious systematic failures in

measures to protect the 10 men on board.

Now it has been revealed that the C-130 had other faults.

In the Ministry’s response to a negligence claim filed by the Australian airman’s

widow, Kellie Merritt, it admits the plane had outdated wings and intelligence

system failures. Read more…

Recovery Is in Sight, Say Bizjet Makers at Ebace
 
 
Their production slowed, workforces slashed, products and reputations besmirched,

and giddy forecasts turned into fiction, the battered and bruised makers of

business aircraft are beginning to express cautious optimism that the current

market downturn may be changing direction.

Hopeful signs include some sales of large-cabin aircraft and increased interest in

general aviation models, says Gulfstream Aerospace President Joe Lombardo, who was

among the many industry executives gathering at the European Business Aviation

Convention and Exhibition (Ebace) here last week. Compared to February, which saw a

steady stream of order cancellations and deferrals, Lombardo says, “anything is

better.” Read more…

Drone aircraft used for storm predictions

The U.S. government is experimenting with a new weapon in its quest for more accurate hurricane tracking and predictions: unmanned airplanes.

Like the U.S. military, which uses unmanned Predator drone aircraft to track terror suspects and even attack targets, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is sending remote control planes where it’s too dangerous for even the bravest pilots to fly — into the guts of some of nature’s most powerful storms.

Their Mark 3 model planes have proved rugged in early test flights, and NOAA has high hopes riding on them.

“This is one of the pioneering new technologies to improve hurricane predictions, ” said Robert Atlas, director of NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Lab on Virginia Key.
Read more…