AircraftNews.Com

French officials investigating the loss of Air France Flight 447 are still processing reams of data yet to be publicly released that was transmitted by the A330-200’s aircraft communications addressing and reporting system.

The revelation, from a source with knowledge of the investigation into the loss of the aircraft carrying 228 passengers and crew, comes after bodies and wreckage from the A330 were recovered about 500 mi. northeast of the Fernando de Noronha archipelago (ATWOnline, June 5).
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Red Bull pilot Peter Besenyei was forced to make an emergency landing in a field in Windsor Ontario while preparing for the latest of the Red Bull Air race series. The race scheduled for this week end is to be held over the Detroit River between The motor city Detroit in the USA and Windsor Ontario Canada. Read more…

Organizers of next week’s centennial Paris Air Show said Monday the world’s biggest aviation industry gathering won’t be diminished by the global economic crisis, which has hit the aviation industry hard.

Organizers expect around 300,000 visitors this year, half of them professionals, about the same as the last show in 2007 — despite notable no-shows such as business jet makers Gulfstream and Cessna.

“This year again, despite the crisis we consider that it is a considerable success because we’re full,” said Louis Le Portz, the air show’s chief executive. Roughly the same number of exhibitors will be present as in 2007, around 2,000, Le Portz said. Read more…

An insidious changes in recent times in Military aviation has been the advent of Unmanned aircraft. Pilots sit at desks on one continent flying remote drones on another. These can and do launch missiles that can wreak enormous damage. The pilot then goes home to his dinner and watches TV or does his chores. There is the potential here to fundamentally change the nature of warefare with some very unpleasant consequences such as the further dehumanisation of the “target”.
Just imagine how easy it may become to make a decision to bomb a village in Afghanistan because the choice is seen as eliminating a risk to “our boys over there” with on the one hand the saving of noble souls fighting for freedom to be balanced against on the other hand the unavoidable collateral loss of some Ethnic non-combatants.
There is now a proliferating multitude of both big small and in between unmanned vehicles.
Maybe it is now time for some more general discussion of what is being done in our name on the battlefields of the world.
As an example of the capability now being offered consider the KillerBee® Unmanned Aircraft System offered by Ratheon. Read more…

In a development made all the more important by the recent AF 447 tragedy a scheduled flight from Paris to Miami could revolutionize the aviation industry through its use of a network of satellite signals. The technology known as ADSB on which this is based is being used in Australia but is here being trialed in a more complete form.

Russ Moreno, Federal Aviation Administration support manager at Miami International Airport, said the flight will involve the NextGen aviation initiative that focuses on satellite guidance rather than a system of radio beacons on the ground, The Miami Herald reported Monday. Read more…

It might not happen just yet but people are working on it and it looks as as if it is only a matter of time. One of the more esoteric but nonetheless fascinating speculations around is elaborated in the posts of Phil Barns viewable on the www.esoaing.com website.
In these he details a quite rigorous analysis of what is to be gained using current technology to recover energy from the atmosphere while flying a modern high Tec aircraft which looks like a cross between a state of the art Glider and a solar powered UAV.
His conclusion- Its doable.
I hope this serves to lift the spirits of aviators somewhat flattened by an apparent recent spate of disasters

In the light of the recent very understandable outpouring of concern about the safety of public transport by air it might be time for a new approach to informing the public as well as a time for a very thorough rethink of procedures.
Despite the inevitable conspiracy theorists who will contend that the Airlines and manufactures “know” that modern airlines are unsafe there is really no sense whatsoever in this sort of thinking. The public can rest well assured that enormous effort ingenuity and thought will be put into resolving this matter.
Not only is there the normal duty of care humanitarian stuff it is actually enormously important economically that this be the case. So the conspiracy theorist are silly. There is however a clue here to something that might now be necessary.
Education.
Until recently it has seemed that the best solution to the fear of flying was a sort of total trust much as people used to have in Drs. They are super humans and not to be questioned and all will be well. They know better sort of stuff.
Now the worm is turning and the population is asking questions and perhaps more effort should be made to explain that Air transport is indeed still one of the safest if not the safest means of transport and is being relentlessly improved.
Maybe it is a time for a barrage of informative educative press releases from the various interested parties.
There would certainly be a very attentive audience.

The loss of AF 447 has rekindled simmering doubts about the safety of advanced composite aircraft and lent new wings to old concerns.
In 2007 a Boeing Employee alleged that he was fired for raising doubts about the long term safety of composite airframes as applied in the Dream liner and reports of the 2005 incident in which an A310 lost most of its rudder en route from Cuba to Canada have resurfaced.
This is the stuff conspiracy theorist love. Big Business suppressing vital safety concerns to protect profits.
While there is good cause for caution when introducing new technology it seems to have escaped the notice of the fear mongers that high performance Gliders have been using highly stressed composites for years without trouble and the A330 is still basically a metal aeroplane structurally.
It does seem that these concerns have been very carefully investigated but it also seems sure they will be revisited with a vengeance.

Regrettably even in the Hypersafety conscious world of Civil Aviation there is a tendency for the good old steady as she goes, conservative let’s not rock the boat character traits of people with turf to protect to work against innovation and constant vigilance in the search for a better way. Just as the People of the State of Victoria in Australia are discovering as they look at the aftermath of their recent tragic fires even a quick look at this disaster shows that there are very doable technological fixes which may have contributed to avoiding this diaster as well as very doable strategies for ensuring the retrieval of the vital black boxes (which are actually red).
Real time satellite surveillance of Airlines en-route with real time satellite derived weather could radically reduce the probability of a weather induced in-flight break up (which seems to be the current favoured theory) and an automatically ejecting and buoyant Black box is quite easily possible now.
Risk will never be absent but lessons should be heeded and what ever actions will reduce the possibility of such a terrible event in the future should be implemented.

WASHINGTON – The Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee is considering requiring the U.S. Air Force to study the viability of creating an export version of the Lockheed Martin Corp F-22 fighter jet, a source closely following the issue told Reuters on Monday.

“There may be language inserted into the fiscal 2010 appropriations bill that would at least look at the

possibility,” said the source, who asked not to be identified since the legislative language is still being finalized.

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