Aero Wiki

18 survive MH3516 crash-landing in Lawas

2011-08-25T04:08:00.000-07:00

The front landing gear of a MASwings Twin Otter (DHC6) aircraft broke off upon landing at Lawas Airport, Malaysia about 3.30pm yesterday.

All 16 passengers and two crew – pilot and co-pilot – were lucky to escape unscathed as their aircraft skidded to a stop a short distance from the river at the end of the runway.

According to one of the passengers, the plane stopped just 5metres short of the river.

Fine weather was reported at the time of the incident.

The MH3516 aircraft, belonging to Malaysia Airlines’ subsidiary MASwings took off from Miri Airport at 2.45pm.

MASwings ,in a statement emailed from Kuching yesterday evening, said that following the incident, the Lawas terminal was temporarily closed to traffic to facilitate investigation.

“The aircraft is being guarded by MAB airport security and police.

MASwings meanwhile is sending an investigation and recovery team from Kota Kinabalu by land to remove the aircraft from the site. For the time being, Lawas Airport is closed for all flight operations until the airfield is cleared,” the statement added.

It said the airline would extend its full co-operation to the Department of Civil Aviation which is investigating the incident. This is an isolated incident and that safety remains a high priority in the company.

MASWings makes six flights daily from Miri. In a week it makes 17 flights to Lawas from Miri, three from Ba Kelalan and one from Kota Kinabalu.

The 19-seater Twin Otter aircraft is one of four used by MASWings for its rural air services (RAS) in Sarawak.

via BorneoPost

Falcon HTV-2 hypersonic glider failed high speed test

2011-08-11T23:12:00.000-07:00

An unmanned experimental aircraft designed to fly at speeds of 13,000 mph (20,900 kph) went out of control and crashed in the Pacific on Thursday in the second failed test of a military program to deliver a warhead anywhere on Earth in an hour.

The Falcon HTV-2 hypersonic glider was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 7:45 a.m. PST (1445 GMT) and successfully separated from a Minotaur IV rocket in the upper atmosphere several minutes later, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said.

Initial information about the flight was first circulated on the Internet via Twitter. About 10 minutes after the flight began, DARPA tweeted that the mission was "on track, entering glide phase."

But about 26 minutes later, the agency tweeted that its monitoring stations had lost contact with the glider.

Separation of the arrowhead-shaped aircraft from the rocket was confirmed by an on-board camera, and the glider began a descent aimed at reaching 20 times the speed of sound, the agency said in a statement later.

But nine minutes later an "anomaly" caused a loss of signal between the aircraft and monitoring stations. The plane evidently crashed into the Pacific along its planned flight path, the agency said.

"Here's what we know," said Air Force Major Chris Schulz, an aerospace engineer who manages of the hypersonic flight program. "We know how to boost the aircraft to near space. We know how to insert the aircraft into atmospheric hypersonic flight.

"We do not yet know how to achieve the desired control during the aerodynamic phase of flight. It's vexing. I'm confident there is a solution. We have to find it," he said.

The glider is attempting to become the fastest aircraft ever built, with the ability to fly anywhere in the world within an hour. To do that it has to achieve speeds of 13,000 mph (20,900 kph) and endure temperatures in excess of 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,926 degrees Celsius).

It was the second time the aircraft had been tested. In April 2010 tracking stations lost contact with the aircraft after just nine minutes.

'WE'LL LEARN, WE'LL TRY AGAIN'

DARPA said achieving separation of the glider from the rocket was a critical step in maneuvering the craft into hypersonic flight.

Researchers also collected nine minutes worth of telemetry data that they hope will help them learn to fly at super high speeds.

"In the April 2010 test, we obtained four times the amount of data previously available at these speeds. Today more than 20 air, land, sea and space data collection systems were operational," said DARPA Director Regina Dugan. "We'll learn. We'll try again. That's what it takes."

Schulz said three technical challenges exist in HTV-2 flight -- aerodynamic, aerothermal, and guidance, navigation and control.

"To address these obstacles, DARPA has assembled a team of experts that will analyze the flight data collected during today's test flight, expanding our technical understanding of this incredibly harsh flight regime," Schulz said. "As today's flight indicates, high-Mach flight in the atmosphere is virtually uncharted territory."

The Falcon HTV-2 glider is part of the Defense Department's Conventional Prompt Global Strike program, an effort to build a system that can deliver a conventional warhead anywhere in the world within an hour.

Moroccan C-130 military plane crashed near Guelmim

2011-07-26T18:12:00.000-07:00

A plane crash in southern Morocco killed 78 people Tuesday, the state news agency reported.
The Moroccan C-130 military plane crashed in the southern part of the country, state-run Agence Maghreb Arabe Presse reported.

The aircraft, belonging to Morocco's Royal Armed Forces, crashed into a mountain as it attempted to land at a military airport about eight kilometers (five miles) away, the news agency said.

Three people were hurt.

The plane was flying from Agadir to Al-dakhla and was carrying 81 people -- 60 military, 12 civilians and nine crew members, Agence Maghreb Arabe Presse reported, citing a military statement.

The plane crashed at 9 a.m. (4 a.m. ET), 10 kilometers away from the city of Guelmim, the statement said.

Local news agency Lakome.com, citing sources with knowledge of the event, said rescue efforts were ongoing.

Ali Anozla, managing editor of Lakome, said local sources told him the cause of the crash was bad weather.

RusAir Tupolev-134 plane crashed in Karelia, Russia

2011-06-20T20:00:00.000-07:00

At least 44 people were killed when a passenger plane broke up and caught fire on coming into land in heavy fog in north-western Russia, an Emergency Ministry spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

The Tupolev-134 plane, carrying 43 passengers and nine crew, crashed near a road about 1 km (0.6 miles) from the runway at the Besovets airport outside the northern city of Petrozavodsk at about 11.40 p.m. local time (1940 GMT) on Monday.

"The preliminary information is that 44 people were killed," the spokeswoman said by telephone. "Eight people were injured." She said nine crew were on board; officials had earlier said there were five crew on board.

Photographs on the www.lifenews.ru Internet news website showed firemen battling with fires among the wreckage of the plane, which crashed about 700 km (430 miles) north of Moscow.

The news site, which posted a full list of the passengers, said a 10-year-old boy named Anton had survived the crash but gave no details about his condition.

The crash comes on the eve of the Paris Air Show which Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is due to attend.

The plane, operated by the private company RusAir, was traveling from Moscow's Domodedovo airport. RusAir, which specializes in charter flights, declined immediate comment.

Most of the passengers were Russian but a Swedish national was also on the aircraft, Interfax news agency said.

The Tuploev-134 is a Soviet aircraft whose maiden flight was in 1967. It was unclear when the plane which crashed was made.

The aircraft's black boxes have been recovered.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who has swapped his Tupolev for a French-made executive jet, in April criticized flaws in domestically-built planes and the nation's poor safety record.

One of the most high-profile Tupolev air disasters in recent times occurred in April 2010 when Polish President Lech Kaczynski's official Tupolev Tu-154 plane crashed near Smolensk airport in western Russia, killing 96 people including Kaczynski, his wife and a large number of senior officials.

List of survivors (list from http://www.lifenews.ru/news/61719):
Anna Nazarova
Sergey Eremin
Julia Skvortsova,
Sergei Belgesov,
Anna Terekhina - 27 years
Alexander Kargopolova.
Vladimir Stepanov - 40 years
Anton Terekhin, 10 years old.
All the other people who were on board the crashed airliner, died.

via Reuters

Qantas jet grounded because of rats

2011-06-03T07:33:00.000-07:00

Qantas has been forced to ground one of its jets after rats were found on board.

Flight attendants discovered five rats in the cabin of a Boeing 767 Monday as they were preparing for take-off from Sydney Airport, Sky News reported.

The rats were found in emergency medical equipment just before passenger were due to board.

The passengers, who were bound for Brisbane on the 5pm flight, were moved to another flight while the rats were killed and engineers checked if they had damaged any wiring.

Qantas is unsure how the rats got onboard.

"We still don't know how they got on board but it is obviously not a common occurrence,'' a Qantas spokesman said.

A Qantas spokeswoman said the airline was currently investigating how the rats came to be in the plane but described the incident as "unusual''.

Engineers who inspected the plane on Monday found no damage had been caused to the plane's wiring systems.

The aircraft was due to return to service this morning, the spokeswoman said.

While not a common occurrence, it's not unheard of to find rats or other pests on planes. In April health inspectors found rodent droppings "too numerous to count" near a Delta Airline jet's food and drink storage area.

In February last year hundreds of passengers were ordered off an Air Canada flight bound for London from Ottawa after a huge rat was discovered on board.

Rats aren't the only creatures to invade jets - a colony of cockroaches was discovered in the first class section of an American Airlines flight last March

Martin Jetpack closer to commercial use

2011-06-02T07:30:00.000-07:00

Jetpacks, once thought to be the future of travel, seemed to go the way of the flying car, but if Glenn Martin, founding director and inventor of Martin Jetpack, has his way, anyone will be able to buy one for about US$100,000 within the next 18 months.

Martin Aircraft Co., located in New Zealand, passed a crucial milestone this month when it tested its Jetpack at 1,500 metres, before it deployed an emergency parachute, allowing the flying machine and its dummy pilot to drift down to the ground.

"This successful test brings the future another step closer," said Martin in a statment.

"This test also validated our flight model, proved thrust to weight ratio and proved our ability to fly a Jetpack as an unmanned aerial vehicle, which will be key to some of the Jetpack's future emergency/search and rescue and military applications."

RQ-170 Sentinel was used to spy Osama bin Laden hideout

2011-05-18T07:53:00.000-07:00

The CIA employed sophisticated new stealth drone aircraft to fly dozens of secret missions deep into Pakistani airspace and monitor the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed, current and former U.S. officials said.

Using unmanned planes designed to evade radar detection and operate at high altitudes, the agency conducted clandestine flights over the compound for months before the May 2 assault in an effort to capture high-resolution video that satellites could not provide.

The aircraft allowed the CIA to glide undetected beyond the boundaries that Pakistan has long imposed on other U.S. drones, including the Predators and Reapers that routinely carry out strikes against militants near the border with Afghanistan.

The agency turned to the new stealth aircraft “because they needed to see more about what was going on” than other surveillance platforms allowed, said a former U.S. official familiar with the details of the operation. “It’s not like you can just park a Predator overhead — the Pakistanis would know,” added the former official, who, like others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the program.

The monitoring effort also involved satellites, eavesdropping equipment and CIA operatives based at a safe house in Abbottabad, the city where bin Laden was found. The agency declined to comment for this article.

The CIA’s repeated secret incursions into Pakistan’s airspace underscore the level of distrust between the United States and a country often described as a key counterterrorism ally, and one that has received billions of dollars in U.S. aid.

Pakistan’s spy chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, last week offered to resign over the government’s failures to detect or prevent a U.S. operation that he described as a “breach of Pakistan’s sovereignty.” The country’s military and main intelligence service have come under harsh criticism since the revelation that bin Laden had been living in a garrison city — in the midst of the nation’s military elite — possibly for years.

The new drones represent a major advance in the capabilities of remotely piloted planes, which have been the signature American weapon against terrorist groups since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

In 2009, the Air Force acknowledged the existence of a stealth drone, a Lockheed Martin model known as the RQ-170 Sentinel, two years after it was spotted at an airfield in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The aircraft bears the distinct, bat-winged shape of larger stealth warplanes. The operational use of the drones has never been described by official sources.

The extensive aerial surveillance after the compound was identified in August helps explain why the CIA went to Congress late last year, seeking permission to transfer tens of millions of dollars within agency budgets to fund intelligence-gathering efforts focused on the complex.

The stealth drones were used on the night of the raid, providing imagery that President Obama and members of his national security team appear in photographs to have been watching as U.S. Navy SEALs descended on the compound shortly after 1 a.m. in Pakistan. The drones are also equipped to eavesdrop on electronic transmissions, enabling U.S. officials to monitor the Pakistani response.

via: TheWashingtonPost

Predator drone strike in Libya

2011-04-23T07:40:00.000-07:00

The United States launched its first Predator drone strike in Libya today, the Defence Department said in a statement.

It did not provide details on the target of the strike, saying only that it occurred in the early afternoon local time in Libya.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates announced on Thursday that the unmanned aircraft would be used in Libya for Hellfire missile attacks on the forces of leader Muammar Gaddafi.

General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the US plan called for keeping two patrols of armed Predators above Libya at any given time, permitting better surveillance – and targeting – of Gaddafi’s forces. The drones are based in the region but typically flown by remote control by pilots in the United States.

The US military has been using other drones to target militants along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. The drones in Libya were not taken from Afghanistan, US officials said. – Reuters

Related posts:
* Gray Eagle - New Predator Variants

Helicopter Crashed in Sibu

2011-04-11T01:51:00.000-07:00

A helicopter crashed when taking off from Dataran Sibu in East Malaysia in the heart of the city at 1.40pm Monday after its three passengers, including an aide to Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin had already disembarked.

The pilot, who was the only one inside when it happened, was rushed to the Sibu Hospital. His condition is unknown.

Press Secretary to the Education Minister, Hafiz Abdul Halim, who was walking towards the RH Hotel, less than 100m from the square when it happened, was shocked.

"There was no problem with the helicopter when we took off from Bintangor or during the ride. I was walking towards the hotel when I heard a crash," said Hafiz, who was with two security officers in the helicopter.

Muhyiddin and his special officer had landed at the same square in separate helicopters shortly before the incident. They were also returning from Bintangor.

"The deputy prime minister and his entourage are safe," Hafiz said.

UN plane crashed in Congo

2011-04-04T20:44:00.000-07:00

One person survived the crash of a U.N. plane that killed 32 others in the Congo on Monday, U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said.

The aircraft, a Bombardier CRJ-300 jet which carried 33 people, belonged to MONUSCO, the U.N. mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to a Congo Transportation Ministry official.

The plane crashed early afternoon Monday while attempting to land at the Kinshasa airport after a flight from Goma in the eastern part of the vast nation in central Africa, the official said.

The Kinshasa airport reported strong thunderstorms and sustained winds of 37 kph (23 mph) at the time.

U.N. Peacekeeping Director Alain Le Roy said the aircraft missed the airstrip likely because of the wind, but he cautioned the investigation was in its early stages.

Most of those on board were U.N. personnel; five worked for other agencies, Le Roy told reporters.

Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said America "stands ready to assist the U.N. in the aftermath of this terrible accident."

"As we know well, a stable and prosperous future for the DRC must begin with peace for its people, and U.N. personnel have worked courageously to strengthen the protection of the nation's women, men and children after years of strife," Rice said.

Sri Lankan Air Force Kfir fighter jets collided

2011-03-01T08:15:00.000-08:00

Two fighter jets collided and crashed Tuesday while practicing for an exhibition marking the Sri Lankan air force's 60th anniversary, killing one of the pilots, officials said.

The two Israeli-built Kfir jets crashed in the western district of Gamapah, a government statement said. One pilot was killed and the other survived after ejecting from his plane.

The cause of the crash was not immediately announced.

Police spokesman Prishantha Jayakody said no casualties to residents on the ground or damage to property has been reported. The area is about 22 miles (35 kilometres) northeast of the capital, Colombo.

Athula Priyantha, a resident in the district, said burning debris from one plane was strewn across a nearby open patch of land, while the second jet crashed a few miles (kilometres) away.

Kfir jets were widely used by the air force during Sri Lanka's civil war with the Tamil Tiger rebels, who were fighting for an independent state for ethnic minority Tamils.

Government troops crushed the rebels in May 2009, ending a decades-long civil war that killed an estimated 80,000-100,000 people.

Boeing launches new 747-8 luxury airliner

2011-02-14T04:39:00.000-08:00

Boeing rolled out a new jumbo jet today, hoping to revive the glamour surrounding the birth of the 747 over 40 years ago and use it to boost slow sales.

The 747-8 Intercontinental will seat 467 passengers, 51 more than the current version of the 747, and burn less fuel while offering passengers more comfort, the US planemaker says.

The unveiling comes almost 42 years to the day since the maiden flight of the 747, which went on to become the world's most recognized jetliner and transformed the global travel industry.

It is the first appearance of a radically new version of the passenger jet since the first jumbo, with its humped two-storey cabin and 69-metre wingspan, took the world's breath away on a sunny morning at Everett in September 1968.

"People were awe-struck. It was a monster, nobody had seen anything like it," said Jim Mullins, a Paris-based science writer who covered the original rollout for King Broadcasting.

"Today it looks ordinary, but at that time there were no airplanes even close to it in size. They opened up the hangar doors and it was just unbelievable. People reacted as if they were rolling out the Empire State Building."

This morning's rollout (Sunday local time), in front of a crowd of almost 10,000 Boeing employees, their families and a select group of industry VIPs, took place at the same Everett plant outside Seattle.

Near the front of the seated audience was Joe Sutter, Boeing's chief engineer on the original jumbo, and known as the "father of the 747."

The plane itself, unveiled from behind an enormous curtain to rapturous, thudding music, was bright red and white -- a departure from Boeing's classic blue -- bearing generic Boeing livery on the side and '747' on its orange tail.

The 747 lost its crown as the world's largest airliner when the 525-seat Airbus A380 was unveiled in 2005. But at 5.8 metres longer than its predecessors, this one will be the longest.

It is the first time the 747 fuselage has been stretched to make the biggest passenger jet marketed by a US manufacturer.

The 747-8 - listed at $317.5 million ($A316.8 million) - also boasts new wings, a new tail, state-of-the-art engines and a new cockpit, making it, according to specialist magazine Flight International, "unrecognizable from that first jumbo jetliner."

SLOW SALES

However, big is not yet beautiful for the Boeing order book.

Despite its hopes of securing a new lease of life for the 747 family, Boeing has so far managed to win 33 orders for the 747-8 passenger version including just two airlines - Lufthansa and Korean Air Lines.

The first delivery will be to an unnamed VIP customer instead of an airline late this year, but Boeing has said it is confident of winning new orders as the plane enters service.

It may also become the new international face of the United States as Boeing seeks to replace the Air Force One fleet of two instantly recognizable 747s used by American presidents.

Production has been delayed as the 787 Dreamliner, a carbon-composite plane which represents a bigger leap in technology than the revamped 747-8, diverts engineering time.

Boeing says the first 747-8 that the public will get to fly on will be delivered to Germany's Lufthansa in 2012.

A stronger-selling freighter version, which has already taken flight, is due to be delivered in mid-2011 -- 18 months later than first planned. Boeing has sold 74 747-8 freighters.

Both Boeing and Europe's Airbus have suffered multiple plane project delays, damaging their credibility, say many analysts.

Sales of earlier generations of the 747 far soared above the industry's initial expectations, with more than 1400 classic jumbos sold until the 747-400 was withdrawn from sale last year.

Although the 747-8 and A380 will compete directly for years to come, analysts say airlines are mostly interested in lighter wide-bodied planes in the 200- to 350-seat range, like the 787 and the future Airbus A350. They are designed to bypass crowded hubs and take passengers closer to their final destination.

Boeing will give an update on the delayed 787 on Monday.

Reuters

Recommended reading:
* Airbus A350 XWB

Fake Chinese J-20 stealth fighter jet

2011-01-23T21:37:00.000-08:00

A Chinese stealth fighter jet that could pose a significant threat to American air superiority may borrow from US technology, it has been claimed.

Balkan military officials and other experts said China may have gleaned knowledge from a US F-117 Nighthawk that was shot down over Serbia in 1999.

"At the time, our intelligence reports told of Chinese agents crisscrossing the region where the F-117 disintegrated, buying up parts of the plane from local farmers," said Admiral Davor Domazet-Loso, Croatia's military chief of staff during the Kosovo war. "We believe the Chinese used those materials to gain an insight into secret stealth technologies ... and to reverse-engineer them."

The Nighthawk was downed by a Serbian anti-aircraft missile during a bombing raid on 27 March 1999. It was the first time one of the fighters had been hit, and the Pentagon blamed clever tactics and sheer luck. The pilot ejected and was rescued.

A senior Serbian military official confirmed that pieces of the wreckage were removed by souvenir collectors, and that some ended up "in the hands of foreign military attaches". Efforts to get comment from China's defence ministry and the Pentagon were unsuccessful.

Parts of the F-117 wreckage, including its left wing, cockpit canopy, ejection seat, pilot's helmet and radio, are exhibited at Belgrade's aviation museum. Zoran Milicevic, deputy director of the museum, said: "I don't know what happened to the rest of the plane. A lot of delegations visited us in the past, including the Chinese, Russians and Americans ... but no one showed any interest in taking any part of the jet."

Zoran Kusovac, a Rome-based military consultant, said the regime of the former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic routinely shared captured western equipment with its Chinese and Russian allies. "The destroyed F-117 topped that wish-list for both the Russians and Chinese," Kusovac said.

China's multi-role stealth fighter – known as the Chengdu J-20 – made its inaugural flight on 11 January, revealing dramatic progress in the country's efforts to develop cutting-edge military technologies. It is at least eight or nine years from entering service.

Russia's Sukhoi T-50 prototype stealth fighter made its maiden flight last year and is due to enter service in about four years. It is likely that the Russians also gained knowledge of stealth technology from the downed Nighthawk.

Tarco Airlines plane crashes at Darfur, Sudan

2010-11-12T03:38:00.000-08:00

A plane crashed while attempting to land in Darfur, western Sudan, killing at least one woman though most passengers walked away with minor or no injuries, according to a local government official.

The Tarco Airlines plane was carrying 44 passengers and six crew members when it took off west from Khartoum, Sudan, for Zalingei. An explosion erupted in the aircraft's side as it was touching down at 4:20 p.m. local time Thursday at the airport, said Abdullah Mohammed al-Amin, a commissioner for the district of Zalingei.

"Nothing is clear, at the moment, as for the reasons behind the explosion," said al-Amin, who was at the scene and talked to authorities involved in the investigation and recovery operations.

In addition to the woman who was killed, one person was seriously injured, and four others suffered minor injuries, according to al-Amin. The governor of the west Darfur state planned to accompany the body back to Khartoum, added al-Amin.

Previous media reports had put the death toll as high as 15, with news agency AFP citing hospital sources as saying six people were killed.

The full plane carried passengers were coming back to Darfur to join their families in celebrating Eid al-Adha, the Muslim holiday that commemorates the prophet Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice his son for God, according to al-Amin.

Boeing Dreamliner makes emergency landing during test flight

2010-11-10T05:44:00.000-08:00

A Boeing 787 jetliner on a test flight over Texas made an emergency landing on Tuesday after smoke was detected in the main cabin, the latest setback in development of the new plane.

The plane landed safely in Laredo and the crew was evacuated, Boeing spokeswoman Loretta Gunter said. Boeing is still gathering information about the incident, she said.

The smoke appeared in the rear cabin of the plane, farthest from the cockpit, said Lynn Lunsford, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.

Advertisement: Story continues below
"The pilot landed and advised he was declaring an emergency," said Lunsford, who added that the airport fire department was called to the scene. He said the FAA would look into the incident.

Boeing said one person suffered a minor injury as the crew of 30 to 40 people were being evacuated down exit slides.

The 787, which Boeing calls the Dreamliner, is made of composite material designed to make it lighter and more fuel-efficient, but Boeing has run into a series of delays in developing the big, two-aisle passenger plane.

Boeing has said it will deliver the first production models of the 787 to Japan's All Nippon Airways in the middle of the first quarter of next year - about three years behind schedule.

Development of the aircraft has been pushed back several times by snags including availability of Rolls-Royce engines and supplier workmanship issues. The company halted test flights last summer after finding that some parts in the tail were not properly installed.

It was unclear whether Tuesday's incident would add to the delays.

Boeing is conducting flight tests with several 787s, some with Rolls-Royce engines, which will be the first models delivered to airlines, and others with General Electric engines.

The company said last month it had completed takeoff and handling tests for the initial version of the plane but that more testing was needed for 787s with GE engines.

Boeing is relying on suppliers from around the country and the world to build components for the plane. The company has taken 847 orders from 56 customers.

The Dreamliner involved in the Texas landing has made 179 test flights spanning more than 558 hours, according to Boeing's website.

If it ain't a Boeing, I'm not going

2010-11-08T05:38:00.000-08:00

The investigation now underway into Qantas's A380s is one of the most complex detective stories ever to unfold in the aviation world.

Qantas is going to extraordinary lengths to ensure that there is no repeat of last Thursday's uncontained engine failure on one of its A380s just after it left Singapore for Sydney.

"Uncontained engine failure" is technical talk for an explosion that ripped apart the engine casing, sending hot metal fragments into the wing at high speed. It's not yet known whether it was good luck or good design that prevented a fuel explosion that could have killed all 466 people aboard.

Advertisement: Story continues below
In fact the explosion did damage the aircraft's hydraulics and cut some of the control lines to another of the plane's engines, which could not be shut down normally after the plane returned to Singapore.

The fact that the engine type, the new-technology Rolls Royce Trent 900, was developed and built by the British manufacturer with a fearsome reputation for reliability simply adds to the intrigue that has gripped the aviation industry.

So does that fact that the only other A380 operators using the Trent 900 design, Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa, cleared their A380s to fly again after inspections that took less than 24 hours.

About 70 per cent of the airlines that have ordered the A380 have chosen the Trent 900 engine option; the rest, such as the world's biggest A380 operator Emirates, have gone for the Engine Alliance GP7000, developed by an American joint venture between aero engine manufacturers General Electric and Pratt and Whitney.

Whatever the cause of the fault that is eventually tracked down by the forensic engineering now underway, the people who are paying for the tickets to fly in these mega-machines are already forming opinions based on their own prejudices.

"If it ain't a Boeing, I'm not going" was one of the many cliches wheeled out this week – the irony being that even though there are more Boeings than Airbuses in the skies, Airbus in the past few years has been decisively outselling Boeing in the airline marketplace.

Recommended reading:
* Air France A380 grounded for fourth time due to fueling problem
* Qantas A380 Airbus fly passengers over Antarctica
* Qantas A380 passengers tarmac ordeal

Cirrus SR22 crashed in Agua Dulce, Los Angeles

2010-10-21T19:51:00.000-07:00

A small plane crashed and burst into flames Thursday in a horse corral in northern Los Angeles County, killing at least two people and three horses, a fire official said.

The single-engine Cirrus SR22 went down at about 12:10 p.m. behind a barn in Agua Dulce, county fire Inspector Matt Levesque said. The plane caught fire but was quickly doused, he said.

The plane had departed from Van Nuys Airport and was headed to Parker, Ariz., when it went down, said Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration. The crash site was about a mile west of the Agua Dulce Airpark.

Fire Inspector Don Kunitomi said two people were confirmed dead but it was not known if anyone else was aboard due to the state of the wreck. Fire officials earlier reported four people dead.

Three horses in the corral were killed and a fourth was injured, Levesque said.

Neighbor Scott Strickland told KCAL-TV he was inside his house when he heard a big explosion, then ran to the crash site.

"The two horses are on fire and I just see smoke everywhere," Strickland said. "I saw somebody yell `grab a gun.' Somebody grabbed a gun, came over and put the horse out of his misery 'cause he was just on fire, you couldn't do much after that," he said.

The cause of the crash was under investigation. The skies were overcast at the time of the crash, Gregor said.

The plane was registered to a Calabasas company, Gregor said. He would not provide the name until the FAA confirms the owners were notified.

The high-desert area about 30 miles north of Los Angeles is flanked by forest and the urban communities of Santa Clarita and Palmdale. It is near Vasquez Rocks, a local rock formation often used as a filming location for movies and TV shows.

84 F-15 fighter jets and 72 Black Hawk Heli for Saudi Arabia

2010-09-14T01:03:00.000-07:00

Got oil, got new jets and helicopters.

The Obama administration will soon notify Congress of an arms package for Saudi Arabia worth up to $60 billion, U.S. officials said on Monday, a potentially record-breaking deal that may help counter Iran's growing regional muscle.

A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he expected the Saudis to initially commit to $30 billion in purchases, but that could double.

The package would include 84 new Boeing Co F-15 fighter jets and upgrades to another 70 of them. It also involved 72 Black Hawk helicopters built by Sikorsky Aircraft, a unit of United Technologies Corp.

"It's massive," said Andrew Exum, an analyst at the Center for a New American Security, calling the long-anticipated deal a "shot-in-the-arm" for the U.S. defense industry.

"What the United States is trying to do here is pretty clear. (It is) basically trying to work by, with, and through our partners in the region to balance against Iran," he said.

The regional buildup comes amid deepening international concern about Iran's moves to bolter its military muscle, including advances in its nuclear program the West believes is aimed at developing atomic bombs -- accusations Iran denies.

The United States has also flagged concern about Iran's growing missile capabilities, and has been quietly helping Arab states boost their missile defenses.

The Saudi package, Exum said, had to be viewed in the context of other deals in the region. He cited the expected sale of a missile defense system manufactured by Lockheed Martin Corp to the United Arab Emirates.

Earlier on Monday, Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan said he expected Congress would receive official notification of the long-anticipated Saudi deal within the next week or so.

Lapan declined to comment on details, however, saying Congress needed to be notified first.

BOOST FOR BOEING

The senior defense official said the U.S.-Saudi arms deal also included 70 of Boeing's Apache helicopters and 36 Little Birds.

If approved, the Saudi deal would provide a huge boost to Boeing Co's defense unit, which had several key programs axed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates last year.

"This transaction shows that there may still be a lot of life in the F-15 fighter and other Boeing legacy aircraft programs," said defense analyst Loren Thompson of the Virginia-based Lexington Institute.

"The Saudi sale by itself will make a big difference to the company's revenues for at least the next five years," Thompson said.

Boeing share were up 36 cents at $64.20 in mid-afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Upon congressional notification, lawmakers get 30 days to object to the deal. But notifications are usually not sent unless lawmakers have already broadly agreed to the sale.

Saudi Arabia was the biggest buyer of U.S. weapons during a four-year span of 2005 through 2008, with $11.2 billion in deals, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service.

Conviasa Airlines plane crash in Puerto Ordaz

2010-09-13T09:38:00.000-07:00

A plane owned by Venezuela's state-run airline Conviasa crashed on Monday during a domestic flight with about 50 people on board, but at least 23 survived, witnesses and authorities said.

The ATR-42 plane was en route between the Caribbean island of Margarita and the southern industrial city Puerto Ordaz when it came down.

"We still don't know the exact cause," local governor Francisco Rangel Gomez told state TV, adding that the pilot had radioed warning the plane was in difficulty.

A Reuters witness at a nearby Puerto Ordaz hospital said 30 survivors -- and two corpses -- had been brought in from the crash site where wreckage was still smoldering after the mid-morning accident, hampering rescue efforts.

Gomez put the number of survivors at least 23. He said 51 people were on the Conviasa flight, while Transport Minister Francisco Garces earlier had said 47 were on board.

ATR, which makes 40-70 seat twin-engined turboprops, is a joint venture between Airbus parent company EADS and Italian aerospace group Finmeccanica.

Officials said the plane crashed on land belonging to Sidor, which has a large mill near Ciudad Guayana, but without causing any injuries or damage to installations.

"The plane fell on a waste area where they put barrels of unused steel materials," governor Gomez said.

In the last major crash in Venezuela in 2008, a plane belonging to private local airline Santa Barbara with 46 passengers on board crashed into mountains, with no survivors.

Alrosa Mirny Air jet crash landing

2010-09-08T20:41:00.000-07:00

A Russian passenger plane carrying 81 people has made a "miracle" crash landing at a deserted air strip in Siberia after a complete mid-flight power failure, officials says.

The Tupolev (TU-154) airliner en route to Moscow on Tuesday was forced to glide down from its cruising altitude with no working navigation gear and at a high speed after its wing flaps failed, the general prosecutor's office said yesterday.

The 72 passengers, including three children, and nine crew members were in shock but unhurt after the pilot guided his plane down onto the defunct runway, overgrown with weeds, television images showed.

"After its electrical equipment failed, the crew was forced to land the plane. The landing was manual, without radio contact," the prosecutors' office said in a statement.

Forced down at the tiny air strip built for helicopter use, the passenger liner overshot the tarmac, tearing through 200 metres of forest brush before coming to rest, it said.

The plane, operated by Alrosa Mirny Air Enterprise, which belongs to diamond monopoly Alrosa, now lies sunk in a bog beyond the disused air field, near the village of Izhma in Russia's far northern Komi region, 1500 kilometres from Moscow.

Local blogs and twitter pages buzzed with calls for Russia to award the airliner's pilot a medal for his "miraculous" and "heroic" landing.

Meanwhile, the ITAR-TASS news agency said all of the stranded passengers had Wednesday safely made it to Moscow on another flight -- except for one couple who preferred to travel by train after their ordeal.

UPS cargo plane crashes in Dubai

2010-09-03T20:19:00.000-07:00

A Boeing 747-400 cargo plane operated by United Parcel Service Inc crashed shortly after takeoff into a military compound near Dubai's airport on Friday, killing two crew members, authorities said.

U.S. parcel delivery company UPS confirmed the crash of the plane, which was en route to Cologne, Germany.

"I saw the plane suddenly dive down into the base and heard a huge explosion," said a nearby resident.

A government source familiar with the initial crash report said the plane had taken off from Dubai International Airport at 6:40 p.m. (1440 GMT) and was diverted to a military compound after reporting trouble.

The aircraft caught fire, hit a covered parking lot, then bounced and crashed, the source said, adding that there were no injuries on the ground. Smoke was billowing from the base, a Reuters witness reported.

The United Arab Emirates civil aviation authority said the bodies of the two crew members were recovered.

Saif al-Suwaidi, general manager of civil aviation, told Dubai TV that flights had not been affected at Dubai's airport, the busiest in the Middle East.

"The pilot reported fire and smoke in the cockpit and was instructed to return to Dubai. After failing to land at the airport, the plane disappeared from radar screens and was found later (at the crash site)," Suwaidi said.

Boeing said on its website it would send a team to provide technical support to the investigation upon invitation from the authorities.

GE Aviation spokesman Rick Kennedy said plane was running GE CF6-80C2 engines. GE Aviation, a unit of General Electric Co said it is sending investigators to the scene.

"It is unusual to lose an aircraft on take-off, particularly once airborne. Crashes in this phase of flight are not common. Without more information it is difficult to speculate what happened," said Paul Hayes, director of air safety at UK-based aviation consultancy Ascend.

Both UPS and the Boeing 747-400 have relatively good safety records, he added.

Initially, Al Arabiya television had reported the plane had hit a busy highway, but later reports indicated it did not hit the road.

Henan Airlines plane crashed in Yichun City, northeast China

2010-08-24T17:30:00.000-07:00

Forty-two people were killed and 49 injured when a passenger plane overshot the runway at an airport in northeast China on Tuesday evening, state media reported.

The aircraft belonging to regional Henan Airlines overshot the runway at an airport in Yichun City, a city in Heilongjiang Province, at around 9.35 p.m. local time. A total of 96 people were believed to be on board, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.

Heilongjiang provincial civil aviation authorities said the Embraer E190 aircraft, with tail number VD8387, skidded off the end of the runway as it was landing at the airport. It broke into two and caught fire.

The fire that engulfed the aircraft after the crash was put out about two and a half hours after the accident, Xinhua reported.

The Henan Airlines aircraft had departed the provincial capital of Harbin at 9.51 p.m. local time, but it was not immediately clear if Yichun City was its destination. The airline website did not specify Yichun City as one of its regular destinations.

Rescue operations are continuing.

Agni Air plane crashed in Makwanpur district in Nepal

2010-08-24T02:21:00.000-07:00

A Nepal Army team has reached the incident site in Makwanpur district in central Nepal, where the Agni Air plane crashed early Tuesday morning, and has started collecting the dead bodies.

Saroj Dhakal, chief of Central Division Headquarters, said the 35-men army team found body parts scattered elsewhere and the plane broken into pieces.

Meanwhile, following the slight improvement in weather, a Nepal Army helicopter has left the capital Kathmandu for Makwanpur to carry out rescue operation of the Agni Air.

According to the Army's Public Relations Directorate, a MI-17 helicopter, doctors and trained rescuers flew to Makwanpur, where the Lukla-bound plane, returning to Kathmandu after it could not land there due to bad weather, crashed near a local school Tuesday morning.

A total of 14 people -- six foreigners, five Nepali people and three crew members -- were feared dead in the incident.

Officials of Nepal Police, Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal are also in the team. The chopper could not fly to the crash site earlier due to the inclement weather.

It is said that there is a little chance of survivors as the plane has broken into pieces and a plume of smoke is rising from the crash site.

North Korea Air force jet crashes in China

2010-08-18T08:02:00.000-07:00

A small aircraft crashed in northeastern China close to the border with North Korea, killing its pilot and fueling speculation Wednesday about its origin.

China's official Xinhua news agency said in several brief dispatches that the plane, which went down Tuesday afternoon at Lagu Township in Fushun County, "might be" from North Korea. It confirmed the death of the pilot and the destruction of a residential house on the ground, but added no one else was hurt. Xinhua said that the Chinese government is communicating with Pyongyang about the incident.

The crash location in Liaoning province is about 200 kilometers (120 miles) away from a North Korean air base in the border town of Sinuiju, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency.

An employee at Songgang Iron Ore, a company near the crash site, told CNN there was a large security presence in the area, with armed police officers and special forces agents cordoning off the crash site.

Photographs of the wreckage purportedly taken by an eyewitness have been circulating on Chinese websites, showing the North Korean air force emblem on the fuselage beneath the tail. Military enthusiasts online have identified the aircraft as a Russian-built MiG jet but differed on the specific model, with some calling it a MiG-21 fighter and others claiming it to be a MiG-15 trainer

Yonhap quoted unnamed sources in South Korea as saying the plane's pilot may have been trying to defect from North Korea to Russia, losing direction en route and killing himself on impact of the ensuing crash. Chinese commentators have speculated that the plane may have run out of fuel.

An official at the Liaoning provincial foreign affairs office declined to comment, while the Chinese foreign ministry in Beijing referred journalists to the Xinhua news report.

$12.4 billion Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellite launches into orbit

2010-08-18T01:46:00.000-07:00

An Atlas 5 rocket carrying a national security communications satellite is in orbit after an early morning launch.

The rocket launched at 7:07 a.m. Saturday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. It took into space the first of a series of new satellites that will be used for advanced military data.

The Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellite, made by Lockheed Martin, has 10 times more capacity and moves data six times more efficiently than the five Milstar II communications satellites currently in use. The higher data rates can send video, battlefield maps, targeting data and other communications in real time.

The program will put six satellites into orbit over the next decade at a cost of $12.4 billion.

AIRES plane crashed at San Andres Island

2010-08-16T07:20:00.000-07:00

A Boeing 737 jetliner belonging to AIRES airline with 131 passengers aboard crashed on landing and broke into three pieces at a Colombian island in the Caribbean early Monday. The region's governor said it was a miracle that only one person died.

Colombian Air Force Col. David Barrero said officials were investigating reports the plane had been hit by lightning before crashing at 1:49 a.m. (3:49 a.m. EDT; 0649 GMT) while landing at San Andres Island, a resort island of 78,000 people about 120 miles (190 kilometers) east of the Nicaraguan coast.

San Andres Gov. Pedro Gallardo said 125 passengers and six crew members had been aboard, but the only person killed was Amar Fernandez de Barreto, 65. At least five people were reported injured.

"It was a miracle and we have to give thanks to God," the governor said.

Barrero, commander of the Caribbean Air Group, said by telephone from San Andres that "the skill of the pilot kept the plane from colliding with the airport."

Barrero said the 7,545-foot (2,300-meter) runway had been closed because parts of the plane were still scattered across it.

The AIRES jet had left the Colombian capital of Bogota at about midnight.

Police Gen. Orlando Paez said by telephone that a group of police officers who had been waiting at the airport for the plane to take them back to the Colombian mainland aided in rescuing the victims.

HondaJet

2010-08-02T01:05:00.000-07:00

The HondaJet is the first venture into aviation for Honda, more commonly known for its cars and motorcycles, with the brand saying that it incorporates many technological advances in aviation design.

Among them are engines that are mounted above the wing instead of below, which Honda says significantly reduces drag (improving fuel efficiency), cuts noise pollution on the ground and creates additional space in the aircraft cabin.

Honda says that the factory for the new jet will be completed in early 2011 so that the aircraft can be delivered to its first customers in the third quarter of 2012 with a price tag of $US4.5 million ($5 million).

Aerion Supersonic Business Jet

2010-08-01T01:53:00.000-07:00

Nevada-based Aerion Corporation is championing the comeback of supersonic air travel in the form of a new executive jet. The company says it has already received $US4 billion in orders for the Aerion Supersonic Business Jet, which it expects to be launched in 2014.

At its top speed, the company says the jet will shave about three hours off the flight time between Paris and New York.

In theory, you could take-off from Paris at 8am and touch down in New York in time for a breakfast meeting.

Cessna is also building a jet called the Cessna Citation X. It is claimed to be the fastest civilian aircraft in the sky, cruising just shy of the sound barrier at Mach .92.

The Aerion Supersonic Business Jet

Cost: Starting from $US80 million, depending on the fitout

Maximum speed: Mach 1.8, (1030 knots / 1909 km/h)

Cruising speed: Mach 1.7 (966 knots / 1790 km/h)

Paris-New York: 4:14 hours

Seating: 12 passengers ( a 50-seat version is in the works)

Crew: 2

Expected launch date: 2014

Taranis - Britain latest unmanned combat air vehicles

2010-07-30T01:29:00.000-07:00

The UK Ministry of Defence's "combat aircraft of the future" -- a state-of-the-art jet capable of deploying weapons and bringing back intelligence without human guidance -- made its long-awaited debut at a ceremony Monday.

Named after the Celtic god of thunder, the Taranis comes equipped with advanced stealth technology. Unlike the current generation of propeller-driven unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAV), the Taranis would therefore be able to carry missiles into regions where the military does not have air dominance.

Initially budgeted at 125 million pounds, the Taranis was originally scheduled to enter ground testing last year in time for military use this year. Instead, the aircraft set producers BAE Systems back an estimated 143 million pounds, and flight testing is expected to commence next year.

Taranis "is a prelude to the next generation of fighting capability," Nigel Whitehead, group managing director of programs and support at BAE, told the Financial Times. "If we are not on top of that, there will be no future for UK aircraft capability."

Though the use of UCAVs and other automation of weaponry is a growing military trend as part of a way to reduce budgets, the Taranis' debut has its share of detractors.

Airblue plane crashed near Islamabad

2010-07-28T16:33:00.000-07:00

No one survived the crash of a Pakistani passenger plane that went down in the outskirts of the capital Islamabad Wednesday morning with 152 people on board, officials said.

Rescuers worked in heavy rains to recover bodies from the wreckage, as officials launched an investigation to determine why the accident occurred. Pakistani Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira said 115 bodies have been taken to area hospitals.

Initially, Kaira and Interior Minister Rehman Malik reported survivors in the crash. Kaira said there were eight survivors and Malik said there were six.

But Kaira said the initial information received from the scene was incorrect, and both men later said no one survived the crash.

Hours ago, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistan's ambassador to the United Kingdom, said crews combing through the debris had recovered a so-called "black box" -- which is actually orange -- that is either the craft's flight data recorder or cockpit voice recorder. Information from the recorder will help authorities determine the cause of the tragedy.

But Kaira later told reporters that the "black box" has not been recovered.

The Airblue plane was headed to Islamabad from the sea port city of Karachi when it crashed in a hillside while trying to land, said Pervez George, a spokesman for the country's civil aviation authority.

The Airbus A321 was carrying 146 passengers and six crew members, George and AirBlue said. The U.S. Embassy in Pakistan said two of the people aboard were American citizens.

Raheel Ahmed, an AirBlue representative, told CNN that among the passengers, 110 were male, 29 were female, five children and two infants. Ahmed said the pilot was Capt.
Pervez Iqbal Chauhdary, one of the airline's top pilots with 35 years and more than 25,000 hours of flying experience.

Malik, appearing on Pakistani TV, said the plane was at 2,600 feet as it approached Islamabad but went back up to 3,000 feet before eventually crashing.

"It came from the city toward the Margalla Hills. It was raining heavily," said area resident Ahsan Mukhtar, who saw the plane go down. "It shattered into pieces as soon as it crashed. A burst of flames came off, but the rain put out the fire."

The Margalla Hills are a series of small hills north of the capital.

Officials do not know if weather played a factor in the crash. Pakistan is in the midst of the annual monsoon season, when rain sweeps across the subcontinent from June until September.

Airblue, a private airline company, offers flights within Pakistan, as well as to the United Arab Emirates, Oman and the United Kingdom. It makes a fuel stop in Turkey when it is flying from Manchester, England.

"The aircraft was absolutely airworthy. There was nothing technically wrong," said Taheel Ahmed, a spokesman for the airline.

Airbus issued a statement saying the Airbus A321 was delivered from the production line in 2000, leased to Airblue in 2006, and had accumulated about 34,000 flight hours in some 13,500 flights.

Lufthansa Cargo flight MD-11 crashes

2010-07-27T07:20:00.000-07:00

A Lufthansa cargo plane crashed in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday, and two pilots aboard were injured, the German company confirmed.

Lufthansa Cargo said the MD-11 plane was traveling from Frankfurt, Germany when it crashed at 11:38 a.m. local time (4:38 a.m. ET). The cause of the crash was under investigation.

A company spokesman said the plane was on fire but the blaze was under control. The craft had been carrying 80 tons of cargo.

Lufthansa said it did not know the extent of the pilots' injuries but both were being treated in a hospital.

The plane crashed at King Khalid International Airport. It was not yet clear what freight was on the plane and whether customers were affected.

Airshow CF-18 Jet Fighter Crashes

2010-07-24T07:17:00.000-07:00

A CANADIAN Forces pilot has survived after ejecting from a fighter jet moments before it crashed during practice for an airshow.

The pilot was admitted to a hospital in Alberta. Captain Brian Bews was performing low-flying manoeuvres in the CF-18 fighter jet when he ejected and parachuted to the ground.

Witnesses said his plane appeared to stall while he was practising a run for the airshow at Lethbridge County Airport.

The fighter jet burst into flames on impact. Canadian newspapers reported Captain Bews, 36, was alert and speaking in hospital after the crash.

Virgin Galactic Spacecraft Makes 1st Crewed Flight

2010-07-18T07:43:00.000-07:00

A company working to send tourists on suborbital flights says it has tested its spacecraft with a crew for the first time.

Virgin Galactic says the craft remained attached to a specially designed airplane throughout a six-hour flight over California's Mojave desert Thursday.

On its website, the company congratulated the crew and said "Objectives achieved." It says the two crew members evaluated all of the spaceship's systems and functions.

Virgin Galactic says the flight test program will run through 2011 before it starts commercial operations.

Recommended reading
* VSS Enterprise maiden flight
* VSS Enterprise - SpaceShipTwo Unveiled

Solar Impulse started 24-hour test flight

2010-07-07T10:43:00.000-07:00

A solar-powered aircraft which one day hopes to circle the globe has started a 24-hour test flight in Switzerland.

Solar Impulse took off shortly before 5 am GMT, Wednesday from an airfield in Payerne, 80 miles northeast of Geneva.

The plane is being piloted by Andre Borschberg who will fly the plane to a height of nearly 28,000 feet (8,500 meters) throughout the day.

During the evening the plane will slowly descend to an altitude of 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) where it will remain for the rest of the night, before Borschberg attempts a dawn landing.

Solar Impulse has a wingspan of over 63 meters -- the same as an Airbus A340 -- and is nearly 22 meters long. It weighs 1,600 kilograms and has nearly 12,000 solar cells attached to its wings and horizontal stabilizers.

The plane is also equipped with four electric engines and has a top speed of 70 kilometers per hour.

"The goal of the project is to have a solar-powered plane flying day and night without fuel," co-founder of the project, Bertrand Piccard said.

The Swiss adventurer, who piloted the first non-stop balloon flight around the world in 1999 in the Breitling Orbiter III said the test flight was "crucial for the credibility of the project."

The challenge to fly a solar plane around the world was officially announced in 2003.
If the 24-hour flight is successful, a second airplane will be designed to fly much further next year, with the aim of flying across continents and the Atlantic Ocean.

In 2012, the team hope to fly Solar Impulse around the world in five stages.

Predator drone UAV deployed on U.S. Customs Border Patrol mission

2010-06-24T06:07:00.000-07:00

The Homeland Security Department will use unmanned surveillance aircraft and other technological upgrades in its ongoing effort to protect the southern border of the United States.

The department said Wednesday it has obtained Federal Aviation Administration permission to operate unmanned planes along the Texas border and throughout the Gulf Coast region. Customs and Border Protection will base a surveillance drone at the Corpus Christi Naval Air Station in Texas.

Homeland Security also said it is working with the Office of National Drug Control Policy on "Project Roadrunner," a license plate recognition system designed to seek out possible drug traffickers.

And the department is collaborating with the Justice Department to improve information sharing between state, local and federal law enforcement agencies.

In a speech at the Center for International and Strategic Studies, a Washington think tank, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano also announced a new partnership with the Major Cities Chiefs Association. The agreement would allow non-border cities to provide more assistance to state and local law enforcement agencies that are on the border.

Recommended reading:
* Guardian UAV for drug traffic-monitoring

Putin boasts new Sukhoi T-50 better than F-22 Raptor

2010-06-17T21:36:00.000-07:00

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin climbed into the cockpit of Sukhoi T-50, Russia's newest fighter jet on Thursday and said it would trump a U.S.-built rival, the F-22 Raptor.

Putin watched a test flight of a "fifth-generation" stealth fighter, dubbed the T-50 and billed as Russia's first all-new warplane since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

"This machine will be superior to our main competitor, the F-22, in terms of manoeuvrability, weaponry and range," Putin told the pilot after the flight, according to an account on the government website.

Putin said the plane would cost up to three times less than similar aircraft in the West and could remain in service for 30 to 35 years with upgrades, according to the report.

Successful development of the fighter, built by Sukhoi, is crucial to showing Russia can challenge U.S. technology and modernise its military after a period of post-Soviet decay.

Russia also plans to manufacture T-50s jointly with India.

The F-22 raptor stealth fighter first flew in 1997 and is the only fifth-generation fighter in service. Fifth-generation aircraft have advanced flight and weapons control systems and can cruise at supersonic speeds.

According to the government website, the test pilot told Putin the controls of the T-50 allowed the pilot to operate most of the plane's systems without taking his hands off the joystick, which he said would be very useful under high forces of gravity.

"I know, I've flown," Putin replied. Sukhoi has said the plane should be ready for use in 2015.

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches

2010-06-05T06:50:00.000-07:00

Friday's test launch of the Falcon 9 rocket was "essentially a bullseye," SpaceX officials said after the rocket successfully pushed past the earth's atmosphere and deposited a mock-up of its Dragon space capsule in orbit.

The successful launch is the latest step toward commercial space ventures that could eventually ferry astronauts and cargo to the international space station.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal, sent out the technical details of the successful launch, which he said performed its mission to deposit the Dragon mock-up into a 155-mile (250-km) orbit to near perfection.

"Nominal shutdown and orbit was almost exactly 250 km," Musk said in a written statement. "Telemetry showed essentially a bullseye: 126;0.2% on perigee and 126;1% on apogee."

The capsule is expected to orbit for about a year and eventually burn up in the atmosphere.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden congratulated the SpaceX team.

"Space X's accomplishment is an important milestone in the commercial transportation effort and puts the company a step closer to providing cargo services to the International Space Station," he said.

Former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart was high on the launch's possibilities.
"As a former Apollo astronaut, I think it's safe to say that SpaceX and the other commercial developers embody the 21st century version of the Apollo frontier spirit. It's enormously gratifying to see them succeed today," he said.

NASA hopes companies such as SpaceX can take over transportation to the international space station.

"It's time for NASA to hand that over to commercial industry who can then optimize the technology and make it more reliable, make it much lower cost and make it much more routine," said Musk in an interview with CNN last month.

Musk says he believes the United States is at the beginning of a profound, fundamental renaissance in space exploration, perhaps greater than when President Kennedy declared the United States was going to the moon during the infancy of the space program.

"If the country executes and the administration and Congress execute in that direction, the impact of these changes will be on par, perhaps even greater, than ... the task that Kennedy put us on to," he said.

This push toward the privatization of space is part of President Obama's blueprint to allow NASA to do bigger and better things with its budget, such as a mission to Mars.

NASA has been flying shuttles in low Earth orbit and going to and from the space station for 30 years. The administration would like to see whether private companies can do it cheaper and more efficiently, as the shuttle program is about to fly into retirement.

NASA selected SpaceX and another company, Orbital Sciences, to each develop an orbital vehicle because the United States will not have its own way to get to the space station. The United States will be renting space from the Russians aboard their Soyuz spacecraft.

"They're standing on NASA's shoulders, so they're designing rockets based on the experience we've had for 50 years or more, going into space," said George Musser, editor of the Scientific American.

"And any enterprise that learns from past experience will hopefully do better," he said.

But the competition is rabid. SpaceX is the first company to reach the launchpad. So far, its spent almost $400 million to get there.

"They probably hate each other's guts, but the competition is really good for space and for all of us," said Musser.

"Ultimately, what do we want from this? We want to get into space cheaply, so our kids and grandkids someday can go into space and explore the planets," he said.
But SpaceX acknowledges there will be failures, as there have been since the the beginning of aviation.

"This is an all-new rocket. There's a lot that can go wrong, and during the test phase -- that's why you have a test phase, because things may go wrong," he said.

Ken Bowersox is a vice president for SpaceX. In his previous life, he flew five space shuttle missions as a commander and pilot. He also lived on the space station for more than five months as its commander.

"Either way, we're going to learn something," he said. "If we have a problem, we can move forward accepting a higher level of risk. That's how we can be more cost-effective.

If all goes as planned after a series of test flights, Musk says SpaceX will be ready to begin flying cargo to the space station next year. If NASA awards SpaceX a contract, Musk says they can begin ferrying astronauts to the space station within three years. He says his company is profitable, but his motivations go beyond dollars.

"We want to see a future where we are exploring the stars, where we're going to other planets, where we're doing the great things that we read about in science fiction and in the movies," Musk said.

Recommended reading:
* China to launch 2nd lunar probe

X-51A Waverider set a record for hypersonic flight

2010-05-30T06:18:00.000-07:00

An experimental aircraft has set a record for hypersonic flight, flying more than 3 minutes at Mach 6 – six times the speed of sound.

The X-51A Waverider was released from a B-52 Stratofortress off the southern California coast Wednesday morning, the Air Force reported on its website. Its scramjet engine accelerated the vehicle to Mach 6, and it flew autonomously for 200 seconds before losing acceleration. At that point the test was terminated.

The Air Force said the previous record for a hypersonic scramjet burn was 12 seconds.

"We are ecstatic to have accomplished many of the X-51A test points during its first hypersonic mission," said Charlie Brink, an X-51A program manager with the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.

"We equate this leap in engine technology as equivalent to the post-World War II jump from propeller-driven aircraft to jet engines," Brink said.

The Waverider was built for the Air Force by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and Boeing Co.

Joe Vogel, Boeing's director of hypersonics, said, "This is a new world record and sets the foundation for several hypersonic applications, including access to space, reconnaissance, strike, global reach and commercial transportation."

Four X-51A cruisers have been built for the Air Force, and the remaining three will be tested this fall.

"No test is perfect," Brink said, "and I'm sure we will find anomalies that we will need to address before the next flight."

Aircruise Airship

2010-05-23T01:59:00.000-07:00

Design company Seymourpowell has unveiled a new transport concept, the Aircruise - a giant, vertical airship powered by natural energy and designed to carry travellers in style and luxury.

Recommended reading:
* Bullet 580 Airship from E Green Technologies

Bullet 580 Airship from E Green Technologies

2010-05-20T09:52:00.000-07:00

The latest in aviation technology is from the distant past. Airships are back, in the shape of the huge Bullet 580. The 76-metre long Bullet is the world's largest airship, taking more than six hours to inflate, says manufacturer E Green Technologies.

The airship can stay at high altitude for long periods, offering near-space experiences for scientists, and offering a remote communication and observation base, monitor military situations and keeping watch on oil spills, bushfires or even pirates.

E Green says its new airship "offers cost-efficient operations versus fixed-wing aircraft". It will cost $8 million, or can be rented for $500,000 a month.

The first test flight is due to take place later this year.

E-Green chairman Michael Lawson said the new airship wasn't your typical blimp.

"Airships have undergone surprisingly little evolution throughout their more than 150-year history," he said.

"Our airships are radically different designs that move beyond the performance limitations of traditional blimps or zeppelins by combining advanced technology with simple construction and the ability to fuel with algae, protecting our environment."

Mr Lawson told MSNBC that hard landings are a far more comfortable experience that than normal planes.

"If you hit a hard landing with any of our airships, it's just going to kind of bounce," he said.

Airships or blimps were widely used before the 1940s, which was followed by numerous accidents, including the 1937 Hindenburg explosion that killed 37 people.

Afriqiyah Airways Flight 8U771 in Tripoli, Libya

2010-05-12T07:37:00.000-07:00

One person -- believed to be a 10-year-old boy -- survived a passenger plane crash in Libya that was feared to have killed more than 100 people, an official said Wednesday.

The boy was undergoing surgery at a hospital in the Libyan capital of Tripoli after the Afriqiyah Airways plane that left Johannesburg crashed as it neared the end of its flight.

The Dutch Foreign ministry said it had a representative at the hospital waiting to identify the boy, believed to be a Dutch national. He apparently suffered bone injuries.

The plane was carrying 93 passengers and 11 crew members when it crashed while trying to land at the Tripoli International Airport.

The president of the European Parliament said about 100 people perished, and Libya's state news agency said 96 bodies had been recovered.

Nicky Knapp, a representative of the Airports Company South Africa, provided the breakdown in the destinations of the passengers aboard: seven to London, 32 to Brussels, 42 to Dusseldorf, one to Paris, and 11 to Libya. She was speaking on behalf of Afriqiyah Airways.

The plane, an Airbus A330-200, was at the tail end of its nearly nine-hour-long flight when it crashed.

"We express our sincere regret and sadness on behalf of the airline. As well, we would like to express our condolences to the relatives and friends of those who had passengers on Flight 8U771 destined for Tripoli late last night, due to arrive around 6 o'clock this morning," she said.

Calling the incident a tragedy, Jerzy Buzek, the president of the European Parliament said "some 100 people have died no doubt from many countries around the world."

He said the child's survival "given this tragic event, is truly a miracle."

The Dutch Royal Touring Club said 61 of 62 Dutch passengers on the plane died.

A Dutch Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman said the government was trying to get more information about those aboard.

The British Foreign Office said it was looking into whether British nationals were on board the flight.

At the crash site, workers with surgical masks combed through the smoldering wreckage that spilled over a large area. A wheel lay atop a pile of bags. Two green airline seats sat upright and intact amid burned parts of the aircraft.

Officials recovered the plane's flight data recorder, which investigators use to piece together a flight's last minutes.

The Tripoli-based Afriqiyah (Arabic for "African") operates flights to four continents. The planes in the fleet carry the logo 9.9.99 -- the date when the African Union was formed.

The Airbus that crashed is one of three Airbus 330-200s that the airline owns.

Recommended reading:
* Aero Union freight plane crashed in Monterrey, Mexico
* Indian Navy Jet crashed near Begumpet Airport in Hyderabad
* US Black Hawk helicopter crashed in Darmstadt, Germany
* Ethiopian Airline Flight 409 crashes off Beirut international airport

NATO F-16 fighters damaged by volcanic ash

2010-04-19T05:56:00.000-07:00

A senior Western diplomat says several NATO F-16 fighters suffered engine damage after flying through the volcanic ash cloud covering large parts of Europe.

The official declined to provide more details on the military flights, except to say that glass-like deposits were found inside the planes' engines after they patrolled over European airspace.

Last week, two Finnish Air Force F-18 fighter-bombers suffered similar damage while flying through the ash plume that has paralyzed air traffic over much of Europe. Both landed safely, but their jet engines will require expensive overhauls.

Volcanic ash tends to stick to a jet engine's interior parts, such as the turbines, where it melts to form a glassy coating. This restricts air flow and heats up the engine, leading to engine failure.

Aero Union freight plane crashed in Monterrey, Mexico

2010-04-14T20:11:00.000-07:00

Six people died, including a motorist on the ground, when a freight plane crashed as it was about to land in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, local authorities said on Wednesday.

The private Airbus A300-B4 crashed shortly before midnight on Tuesday, and pieces of the plane fell on airport land and a nearby road, said Jorge Camacho, director of the local civil protection.

Five people travelling on the plane were killed, as well as a car driver hit by debris, Camacho said, adding that the cause of the crash was as yet unknown.

The airport was functioning normally, he said.

The plane had taken off from Mexico City and was operated by Aero Union, Airbus said in a statement.

Cathay Pacific pilot steer crippled Airbus A330 to safety

2010-04-14T07:00:00.000-07:00

The Australian pilots of a Cathay Pacific flight who managed to steer an Airbus A330 to safety at Hong Kong's airport after both its engines malfunctioned, have been hailed as heroes by colleagues.

Cathay Pacific said in a statement the plane's left engine had shut down as the aircraft made its landing approach at Hong Kong's international airport yesterday with 309 passengers on a flight from Surabaya in Indonesia.

The right engine also began to "cut out inexplicably, leaving the [pilots] to cope with dips and surges in power and the prospect of the plane plunging into the sea short of [the airport]," the South China Morning Post reported.

The emergency landing caused all four tyres on the left side of the plane to deflate, while two on the right side also deflated, the airline said. Passengers were evacuated on emergency inflatable slides. There were eight injuries.

"It was an amazing piece of piloting in extremely testing circumstances," one colleague of the two Australian pilots was quoted by the South China Morning Post as saying.

"One engine was shut down completely and the other was going on and of. They effectively landed the plane on half an engine."

The paper quoted another Cathay Pacific staff member as saying: "Their stories will come out in due course when the investigation is complete but what they did was nothing short of heroic. It's a miracle they managed to get the plane down safely."

Hong Kong's Civil Aviation department said it would investigate the "serious aircraft incident" and release a report in a month's time.

Recommended reading:
* Merpati airline Boeing 737 crashes

Merpati airline Boeing 737 crashes

2010-04-12T21:08:00.000-07:00

A passenger jet carrying about 100 people has skidded off a runway and plunged into a river after landing in heavy rain in Indonesia.

Officials say at least 20 people are injured.

The Merpati airline Boeing 737 broke into pieces this morning as it bounced off the tarmac at Rendani domestic airport in Manokwari, West Papua, director general of civil aviation Herry Bhakti Singayuda said.

Passenger plane skids off runway in Indonesia

A jet carrying about 100 passengers skidded off the runway into a shallow river as it landed in Indonesia today, injuring about 20 people, officials said.

The Merpati airline Boeing 737 broke into pieces as it bounced off the tarmac at Rendani domestic airport in Manokwari, West Papua, director general of civil aviation Herry Bhakti Singayuda said.

"It skidded off the runway and part of its body landed in a river," he said, referring to a shallow waterway about 200 metres from the runway.

"All 103 passengers and six crew members are safe. Some are injured. They have been rushed to hospital."

The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has confirmed that there were no Australians on board.

Bad weather including heavy rain and fog were suspected of playing a part in the crash although expert investigators had yet to arrive at the scene, he said.

Manokwari Hospital emergency unit nurse Benget Hutagalung said "about 20" people had been brought in with shattered limbs and head injuries.

Witnesses said the left wing broke off as the plane hurtled into trees at the end of the runway.

The body of the plane came to rest with the tail section in the river and the cockpit almost sheared off.

The plane was flying on a domestic route from Sorong, also in West Papua province, to Manokwari, a distance of about 340 kilometres.

Transport Ministry experts from the capital, Jakarta, were on their way to the rugged province in the far east of the country to investigate the crash, an official said.

The vast archipelago of Indonesia relies heavily on air transport but has one of Asia's worst air safety records.

Indonesian airlines have been attempting to recover from a poor safety record in recent years.

In August last year a Merpati aircraft disappeared in remote Papua. Its wreckage was found two days later and all 16 passengers and crew aboard were killed.

Three years ago 21 people, including five Australians, were killed when a Garuda plane crashed on the runway at Yogyakarta airport.

Last year 102 people were killed in two separate crashes involving Indonesian military aircraft.

Shortly after the Garuda crash, the European Union banned all Indonesia-registered aircraft from flying to Europe. The EU lifted the ban on Garuda in December last year, citing improvements in the airline's safety standards.

China to launch 2nd lunar probe

2010-04-12T20:39:00.000-07:00

China will push ahead with its lunar exploration program despite the United States' decision to suspend its return to the moon, a senior space exploration scientist has said.

"China should not slow down its pace of lunar exploration even if other countries change their plans," said Ye Peijian, chief designer of the nation's first lunar probe, Chang'e-1.

The country plans to launch its second lunar probe, Chang'e-2, in the latter half of this year as well as send a lunar lander and rover by 2013, Ye said.

The latest signal of China's resolve in lunar exploration follows U.S. President Barack Obama's announcement in February that his administration was axing the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Constellation program, which former president George W. Bush started in 2004 to return Americans to the moon by 2020.

Instead, NASA was asked to focus on technologies to prepare for human missions to other destinations in the solar system.

Billions of dollars will be spent on new commercial spacecraft that could carry U.S. astronauts into low Earth orbit, on technology development, and extending the life of the International Space Station, media have reported.

The U.S. investment in new technology is expected to lay the foundation to support effective and affordable journeys to the moon and eventually to Mars.

Ye conceded the refocused efforts of the U.S. on Mars and Earth observation do represent a future trend.

The U.S. could postpone moon-landing plans because "they made it to the moon some 40 years ago and still hold the technological advantage", he said.

China stands a better chance of joining more international projects in the field with a smaller technological gap, he said.

The country should also explore Mars independently, Ye said.

X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle set for launch April 19

2010-04-05T06:11:00.000-07:00

After a decade of development, the Air Force this month plans to launch a robotic spacecraft resembling a small space shuttle to conduct technology tests in orbit and then glide home to a California runway.

The ultimate purpose of the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle and details about the craft, which has been passed between several government agencies, however, remain a mystery as it is prepared for launch April 19 from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

"As long as you're confused you're in good shape," said defense analyst John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org. "I looked into this a couple of years ago – the entire sort of hypersonic, suborbital, scramjet nest of programs – of which there are upwards of a dozen. The more I studied it the less I understood it."

The quietly scheduled launch culminates the project's long and expensive journey from NASA to the Pentagon's research and development arm and then to a secretive Air Force unit.

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on the X-37 program, but the current total has not been released.

The launch date, landing sites and a fact sheet were released by Air Force spokeswoman Maj. Angie I. Blair. She said more information would be released soon, but questions on cost and other matters submitted by e-mail weren't answered by Friday.

While the massive space shuttles have been likened to cargo-hauling trucks, the X-37B is more like a sports car, with the equivalent trunk capacity.

Built by Boeing Co.'s Phantom Works, the 11,000-pound craft is 9 1/2 feet tall and just over 29 feet long, with a wingspan of less than 15 feet. It has two angled tail fins rather than a single vertical stabilizer.

Unlike the shuttle, it will be launched like a satellite, housed in a fairing atop an expendable Atlas V rocket, and deploy solar panels to provide electrical power in orbit.

Space shuttle Discovery set for launch April 5

2010-03-29T01:02:00.000-07:00

Space shuttle Discovery set for launch April 5

Space Shuttle Discovery will launch April 5 on one of the last remaining shuttle flights to the International Space Station, mission managers said Sunday.

NASA managers said concerns over potential valve leaks had been settled and the shuttle was considered ready for the mission.

Discovery will blast off at 6:21 a.m. ET, according to NASA. The 13-day mission will provide the international space station with eight tons of science equipment and cargo, NASA said.

VSS Enterprise maiden flight

2010-03-27T01:36:00.000-07:00

British billionaire Richard Branson's dream of space travel that thousands of people can afford took a leap toward reality with the maiden flight of the world's first commercial spacecraft over California's Mojave Desert.

Branson's company Virgin Galactic announced Monday that the VSS Enterprise had successfully completed what it called a captive carry flight attached to a carrier plane.

The spacecraft's developer called it a "momentous day."

"The captive carry flight signifies the start of what we believe will be extremely exciting and successful spaceship flight test program," said Burt Rutan, founder of Scaled Composites, which built the spacecraft.

The VSS Enterprise remained attached to its carrier aircraft for the duration of the 2-hour, 54-minute flight, reaching an altitude of 45,000 feet, according to a statement from Virgin.

Eventually, the 60-foot long rocket plane will be taken 60,000 feet above the Earth by its carrier and fire rockets to propel itself into space.

The test-flight program is expected to continue through 2011, going first to a free glide and then to a powered flight before commercial flights begin.

"Seeing the finished spaceship in December was a major day for us but watching VSS Enterprise fly for the first time really brings home what beautiful, ground-breaking vehicles Burt and his team have developed for us," Branson said.

"Today was another major step along that road and a testament to U.S. engineering and innovation," he said.

Virgin Galactic has envisioned one flight a week, with six tourists aboard. Each will pay $200,000 for the ride and train for at least three days before going. About 80,000 people have placed their names on the waiting list for seats.

"What we want to be able to do is bring space travel down to a price range where hundreds of thousands of people would be able to experience space, and they never dreamed that [they] could," Branson said last year.

He has said he hopes the technology will lead to a new form of Earth travel, jetting people across oceans and continents faster through suborbital routes.

Recommended reading:
* VSS Enterprise - SpaceShipTwo Unveiled

Comac C919

2010-03-26T01:19:00.000-07:00

The Comac C919 is a planned 168-190 seat narrow-body airliner to be built by the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac).

It will be the largest commercial airliner designed and built in China since the defunct Shanghai Y-10. Its first flight is expected to take place in 2014, with deliveries scheduled for 2016. The C919 forms part of China's long-term goal to break Airbus and Boeing's duopoly, and will compete against Airbus A320 family and the Boeing 737 Next Generation.

Recommended reading:
* Inside Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental
* Airbus A400M may get canceled

Avic AC313 helicopter

2010-03-25T01:16:00.000-07:00

A heavy-lift AC313 helicopter, built by the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (Avic), can carry 27 passengers or up to 13.8 tonnes. The AC313 helicopter has a maximum range of 900km (560 miles)

Related link:
*

Airbus A350 XWB

2010-03-24T01:30:00.000-07:00

The German government is ready to grant a 1.1 billion euro ($A1.62 billion) loan to develop the Airbus A350 extra wide body (XWB) long-haul passenger aircraft, a senior economics ministry official said yesterday.

"As far as we are concerned all pre-conditions have been met and the funds are available," said Peter Hintze, parliamentary state secretary at the ministry of economics.

His statement implied that the conditions were in line with World Trade Organisation rules.

Hintze said that "final issues" would have to be solved, notably how to divide up work between France and Germany on another project, the A30X, a potential successor to the A320.

"We want to be sure that (A30X) research and development will be done in Germany," he said.

The A30X's completion is widely expected to take place in Hamburg, northern Germany.

"We want an agreement quickly," he said. "We want to wind up the negotiations in spring."

Airbus, a division of the European aerospace giant EADS, intends to launch the A350 as a rival to Boeing's 787 Dreamliner.

The Airbus A350 XWB (extra-wide body) is described by the company as an eco-friendly passenger aircraft that can seat between 270 and 350 passengers.

Photos: Inside the Airbus A350 XWB

Able to run on less fuel than current planes, its development is supported by four partner nations -- Britain, France, Germany and Spain.

France has announced support of 1.4 billion euros for the 12-billion-euro programme and Britain around 400 million.

The Spanish government remains in discussions with Airbus over its funding offer but reports say it could be around 300 million euros.

T-Hawk UAV

2010-03-23T01:28:00.000-07:00

The T-Hawk is made by Honeywell Corp. and used by U.S. Army infantry in Iraq. The T-Hawk can zip up to 10,000 feet for up to 45 minutes. At 16.5 pounds it is lightweight.

RQ-7B Shadow UAV

2010-03-22T01:26:00.000-07:00

This is being used in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Army battalions need tactical surveillance. It has flown hundreds of thousands of hours. A little more than 11 feet long, it weighs 375 pounds and has a wingspan of 14 feet. An infrared illuminator can laser-pinpoint targets for laser-guided missiles and bombs.

Related posts:
* RQ-4 Global Hawk UAV

Wasp III

2010-03-21T01:11:00.000-07:00

Used by U.S. Air Force Special Ops. The Wasp weighs one pound, and is a hand-launch flying wing is outfitted with a day and night camera. Electric, two-bladed propeller makes it sneaky quiet. Its inventory is classified.

RQ-11 Raven

2010-03-20T01:05:00.000-07:00

Made by AeroVironment, the Raven is the most prominent UAV with more than 7,000 units in service. Nearly every Army combat brigade in Afghanistan or Iraq has one. Three feet long and 4.2 pounds, the Raven is fitted with an electronically stabilized color video camera or an infrared video camera for night missions, which pan, tilt and zoom digitally.

Hermes 450/Watchkeeper UAV

2010-03-19T01:14:00.000-07:00

Made by Elbit Systems of Israel, this drone furnishes target coordinates over Israeli battlefields, and provides reconnaissance for British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. It can hover for about 20 hours on its 34-foot wing, up to an altitude of 18,000 feet, providing real-time surveillance.

Scan Eagle UAV

2010-03-18T09:22:00.000-07:00

The Scan Eagle is in use by Marine Corps troops in Iraq and aboard U.S. Navy ships anywhere in the world. The device is about 40 pounds and four-feet long with a 10.2-foot wingspan, and is powered by a gasoline engine for 15 hours.

MQ-5 Hunter

2010-03-18T07:55:00.000-07:00

The MQ-5 Hunter is made by Northrup Grumman and flown by the Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Hunter has been in service since the Balkans war, and was recently retrofitted in the MQ variant to run on heavy fuel and carry Viper Strike munitions.

Related posts:
* MQ-1C Sky Warrior

Hypersonic X-51 Waverider

2010-03-15T01:02:00.000-07:00

The U.S. Air Force is gearing up for the first of four planned test flights of a hypersonic aircraft designed to operate for much longer durations and cover far greater distances than previous platforms of its type.

The maiden flight of the X-51 Waverider aircraft — the first U.S. hypersonic vehicle to fly in six years — is scheduled to take place later in March. Boeing Defense, Space & Security Systems of St. Louis has been developing the aircraft since 2003 on behalf of the Air Force Research Laboratory and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The missile-shaped X-51 will be carried aloft under the wing of a B-52 bomber, Joe Vogel, Boeing's director of hypersonics, said in a Feb. 22 interview. It will be released from the jet over the Pacific Ocean and drop for four seconds until its rocket motor ignites and accelerates it to about 5,800 kilometers per hour, just shy of the widely accepted start of hypersonic flight at Mach 5, or about 6,100 kilometers per hour. At that point, its air-breathing scramjet — or supersonic combustion ramjet — engine, built by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne of Canoga Park, Calif., will kick in, shooting the craft to Mach 6, or more than 7,400 kilometers per hour.

Grand plans for hypersonic vehicles have been around for decades, but their goals were often unrealistic and not matched by budgets, resulting in failure. The approach on X-51 has been to demonstrate the technologies that could one day enable things like single-stage-to-orbit vehicles.

"Theoretically you can probably get there someday, but trying to do it all at once with not enough money is very, very challenging," Vogel said.

Potential applications for hypersonic technology are superfast airplanes, missiles and reusable space launch vehicles, Vogel said. While the technology is not ready to ferry passengers from New York to Los Angeles in under an hour, such a scenario is not all that far-fetched, Vogel said. The upcoming demonstrations should show that the technology could be used in a next-generation missile program, he said.

Boeing has 42 people working on the X-51 program, down from a peak of about 90 people in 2007. Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne's team peaked around 60 people and is now down to nine people, Vogel said.

Boeing also built the United States' previous hypersonic flight demonstrator, the X-43A, on behalf of NASA. The X-43A program made two successful flights in 2004: an 11-second flight that reached Mach 7, and a 10-second flight that approached Mach 10 and set a new record for fastest flight by a jet-powered aircraft. Both vehicles were designed to plummet into the ocean and be destroyed.

Scramjet engines like those on the X-43A and X-51 must be accelerated to very high speeds to deliver compressed air to their combustion chambers. Both crafts rely on rocket propulsion to create this initial speed.

While the X-51 will not reach the top speed of its predecessor, it is intended to demonstrate more operationally realistic technologies, Vogel said. Whereas the X-43A used a highly energetic hydrogen fuel, the X-51 uses the same JP-7 fuel that powered the SR-71 surveillance aircraft, and its engine could be adapted to use other hydrocarbon-based fuels, he said. The X-51 is expected to fly about 900 kilometers under jet power in about five minutes, 30 times longer in duration than the X-43A flights.

Boeing has built four X-51 aircraft for the upcoming test campaign. Though none will be recovered after its test flight, their liquid-cooled scramjet engines have shown in ground testing to be very durable, Vogel said. The X-43A engine was not actively cooled and was not intended for reuse.

"This [the X-51] engine has been tested extensively in the laboratory, and it's come out and been reused multiple times," Vogel said. "In theory, if we had more time and more money and more space in the vehicle, we probably would have put a recovery system into it. Future vehicles could have a recovery system, and we have started looking at ways to recover the engine."

The government does not currently plan to support the X-51 program beyond the four identical flight tests, which should be complete by the fall, Vogel said. Boeing has proposed a next phase of the program to the government, but he declined to be specific.

Since 2003 the government has spent about $250 million on the X-51 program, Vogel said. Air Force Research Laboratory spokesman Derek Kaufman was unable to provide funding details by press time.

© 2010 Space.com. All rights reserved. More from Space.com.

Vulture UAV

2010-03-14T01:10:00.000-08:00

Vulture UAV by Jim Wilson/Lockheed Martin

Class: High-Altitude

Habitat: A belt of relatively calm air around 55,000 feet

Behavior: Lockheed Martin’s design for Darpa’s Vulture program can stay aloft for five years, turning lazy circles above any patch of ground that needs continuous monitoring. A suite of day-and-night cameras can scan a 600-mile swath, sending data back to handlers on the ground. The craft will have to beat out species from a Boeing-led consortium and Virginia-based Aurora Flight Sciences for a second round of funding.

Notable Feature: The craft’s semiflexible structure bends instead of breaking when winds cause the long span to oscillate violently

Embla UAV

2010-03-13T01:07:00.000-08:00

Embla UAV by Aesir

Class: Hovercraft

Habitat: Afghanistan and disaster zones, starting in June, according to British manufacturer Aesir. About the size and shape of a spare tire, the Embla lifts straight up from the ground without the need for a runway, making it more useful to combat soldiers stationed in rough terrain. Its diminutive size lets it zoom down urban canyons to find hard-to-reach enemy hideouts, and it can send video to a remote PDA-size controller, revealing potential ambushes. Loaded with explosives, it could even enter an enemy compound on a suicide mission. Yet it’s not exclusively a military breed—Embla’s maneuverability makes it a good scout in emergency scenarios too dangerous for humans to enter.

Behavior: The Embla can change direction on a dime, fly at 50 mph, and climb to 10,000 feet. It also has the ability to hover in place to, for instance, transmit encrypted HD video. Notable Feature: Whereas a ducted fan funnels air straight down to generate lift, the Embla’s turbine sucks air in through its top and forces it out through a skirt-like wing. This design bends the flow toward the ground. This makes Embla strong enough to carry cameras, weapons and sensors on its belly, oriented toward the terrain it’s watching.

Ion Tiger UAV

2010-03-12T01:05:00.000-08:00

Ion Tiger UAV by Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C.

Class: Endurance

Habitat: European airfields, potentially, from which it could reach the Middle East, once the Navy perfects the fuel-cell technology inside. It could fly as low as 1,000 feet without being heard on the ground, or as high as 14,000 feet.

Behavior: Its ability to stay aloft for 24 hours allows the Ion Tiger to encroach on the terrain of much bigger birds, such as the Predator, and its small size lets it get closer to a target to shoot footage with its lighter, cheaper camera.

Notable Feature: Its carbon-wrapped aluminum hydrogen tanks weigh only about nine pounds each, which helps this UAV stay airborne longer.

Excalibur UAV

2010-03-11T01:00:00.000-08:00

Excalibur UAV by McArdle Productions

Class: Hunt-and-kill

Habitat: Future war zones, on land and at sea. If Aurora Flight Sciences can scale up the prototype, Excalibur could be deployed on the battlefield within five years.

Behavior: Unlike Air Force drones, which are flown by operators stateside and are in short supply, the Excalibur can be remotely operated from wherever it’s deployed—the mountains of Afghanistan or the helipad of a ship—providing immediate tactical support to Army, Navy and Marine troops. It can take off and land without a runway and flies at 30,000 feet. Fitted with 400 pounds of laser-guided munitions, including Hellfire missiles, the hybrid turbine-electric Excalibur strikes enemy targets up to 600 miles away from its handler. It can loiter and inspect the damage with a suite of infrared or electro-optical surveillance cameras and follow anyone who gets away.

Notable Feature: After takeoff, the jet engine pivots in-line with the fuselage, and the lift turbines retract inside the wing section for forward flight. It travels at a brisk 530 mph—twice as fast as a helicopter.

S-100 Camcopter UAV

2010-03-10T01:58:00.000-08:00

S-100 Camcopter UAV by Franz Pfluegl/Schiebel.

Class: Hovercraft

Habitat: Warships, borders, forest fires, mob scenes

Behavior: Made by Austrian electronics manufacturer Schiebel, the helicopter can take off and land autonomously from a half-sized helipad and fly for six hours with a 75-pound payload at 120 knots. Fitted with its standard infrared and daytime cameras, it can hover at up to 18,000 feet and watch anything from troop movements to illegal border crossings to spreading forest fires.

Notable Feature: Separate controls for the vehicle and the cameras or payload allow for complex missions, such as deploying tear gas over a crowd.

BAE Demon UAV

2010-03-09T07:34:00.000-08:00

Being developed by the BAE Systems laboratory in London, the Demon flies with no fins. The entire body of the craft is shaped like a wing. Dozens of thrusters situated on its top and bottom shape airflow, replacing the work typically done by tail fins and ailerons. Onboard software varies the strength of each thruster to control pitch, side-to-side movement, or yaw, and roll.

Boeing Phantom Ray UAV

2010-03-08T07:24:00.000-08:00

This stealth UAV aircraft is being tested at the Edwards Air Force Base, Lancaster, Calif. This prototype jet-powered flying wing has morphed into a test bed for advanced UAV technologies, including electronic warfare tools like radar jamming, autonomous aerial refueling, air-missile defense and surveillance. Engineers expect it to fly at up to 40,000 feet. With an anticipated cruising speed of up to 610 mph, the Phantom Ray will be one of the fastest UAVs on record.

RQ-4 Global Hawk UAV

2010-03-07T07:21:00.000-08:00

RQ-4 Global Hawk UAV from Northrop Grumman.

Habitat: High above Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan—or anywhere else the U.S. Central Command wants to keep under watch.

Behavior: Soaring at 65,000 feet with an endurance of 36 hours, the Global Hawk can keep watch over 40,000 nautical square miles per mission. Carrying a full suite of electro-optical, infrared and synthetic aperture radar sensors, it can operate day and night in all weather conditions. The larger variation has a 130-foot wingspan.

Notable Feature: The fact that it can take off and land autonomously greatly reduces the potential for crashes, which have handicapped the Predator and Reaper.

Recommended read:
* RQ-170 Sentinel Drone - Beast of Kandahar

Skylite UAV

2010-03-07T01:22:00.000-08:00

Class: Stealth

Habitat: Israeli borders

Behavior: Equipped with cameras and sensors, SkyLite typically flies up to 36,000 feet, the same altitude as commercial airplanes, providing a bird’s-eye view of enemy terrain and movement.

Notable Feature: Fits in a backpack and can stay aloft for four hours on a single charge

Mantis UAV

2010-03-06T01:19:00.000-08:00

Mantis UAV from Ronen Nadir/Bluebird Aero Systems

Class: Autonomous

Habitat: Up to 40,000 feet above any battlefield, disaster site or border, relaying intelligence data back to controllers on the ground

Behavior: All a soldier will have to do to send the self-piloted Mantis on a mission is push a button. From there, it can calculate flight plans, fly around obstacles, and check in with ground controllers when it spots something interesting, like smoke or troop movement. At the end of the mission, it flies home and lands itself. Mantis’s maiden flight went off without a hitch in Australia last October, an astoundingly fast development—it didn’t even exist in 2007. BAE Systems expects it to be ready for sale within two years and hopes to use it as a proving ground for systems in its forthcoming automated stealth bomber, the Taranis.

Notable Feature: Mantis is the first in a new breed of smart drones. A craft that can hone its searches requires less bandwidth than those that constantly stream images. Mantis can also monitor itself for damage—a sputtering engine, for example—and adjust its electronics to complete a mission. It can fly up to 345 miles an hour and operate for up to 36 hours.

Avenger UAV

2010-03-05T00:17:00.000-08:00

Avenger UAV from General Atomics Aeronautical Systems

Class: Hunt-and-kill

Habitat: Flight-operations center for General Atomics Aeronautical Systems in Palmdale, California, where it’s performing final test flights for prospective buyers

Behavior: The stealthy jet-powered Avenger is packed with 3,000 pounds of surveillance equipment and lethal munitions, such as laser-guided Hellfire missiles and 500-pound GBU-38 bombs. It can reach speeds of up to 530 mph, far faster than its spindly predecessors, the Predator and Reaper. With fuel packed into every available nook of the fuselage, it can loiter above a target for nearly 20 hours.

Notable Feature: Its internal weapons bay allows for interchangeable payloads, such as next-gen wide-area surveillance sensors.

Zephyr UAV

2010-03-04T01:14:00.000-08:00

Zephyr UAV from QinetiQ

Size: Less than 100 pounds, 75-foot wingspan

Habitat: 50,000 feet above Yuma, Arizona, where London-based manufacturer QinetiQ is testing prototypes.

Indian Navy Jet crashed near Begumpet Airport in Hyderabad

2010-03-03T08:26:00.000-08:00

An Indian Navy jet crashed during an air show in southern India Wednesday, killing the pilots and injuring two civilians on the ground, authorities said.

The pilot and co-pilot died in the crash of the Kiran MK-II, according to Murli Krishna, a deputy police commissioner.

Indian navy chief Nirmal Verma told reporters that the pilot and the co-pilot probably avoided ejection in a bid to minimize damage on the ground.

The plane hit a three-story building in a residential area near Begumpet Airport in Hyderabad, injuring two civilians, he said.

A mother and her son, who were watching the air show from the balcony of their apartment suffered minor injuries, Hyderabad police commissioner A.K. Khan said

The plane was flying as part of a four-plane formation by a Navy aerobatics team when it went down.

Boeing HALE UAV

2010-03-03T01:12:00.000-08:00

Concept of High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) UAV from Boeing.

Size: 7 tons, 250-foot wingspan

Habitat: 65,000 feet above future battlefields, where it will provide 24/7 surveillance and data communication.

Notable Feature: The plane stays up for 10 days, powered by a Ford truck engine modified to run on hydrogen fuel.

Global Observer UAV

2010-03-02T01:32:00.000-08:00

Global Observer UAV from AeroVironment

Size: Weight undisclosed, 175-foot wingspan

Habitat: Made by Monrovia, California’s AeroVironment, Global Observer will circle up to 65,000 feet above battlefields, disaster sites, borders—any locale in need of aerial surveillance or a wireless data link

Notable Feature: Liquid hydrogen powers an electric generator, which drives four propellers.

5th Generation Fighter Jets

2010-03-01T09:18:00.000-08:00

The different 5th Generation Fighters illustrating the capabilities of Sukhoi-T50 and Martin/Boeing F-22 Raptor.

Samarai UAV

2010-03-01T01:24:00.000-08:00

Samarai UAV from Lockheed Martin

Class: Biomimetic

Size: 150 grams, 12-inch wingspan

Habitat: Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Tech Laboratories in Bethesda, Maryland

Behavior: Like the spiraling maple-leaf seedlings—more commonly known as whirlybirds—that inspired it, the single wing spins around a central hub to create lift. A miniature jet engine provides thrust. A tiny flap on the trailing edge of the wing, its only moving part, controls direction. If engineers can shrink it to three inches and 15 grams, the autonomous device could be used to spy indoors.

Notable Feature: In the future, a camera mounted on the central hub that snaps a picture once every rotation will collect enough images to stitch together full-motion video. Diet: Today, batteries; but engineers plan to feed the next version propane, which is light and readily available in the military supply chain.

Martin Jetpack - World's First Commercial Jetpack

2010-02-28T01:49:00.000-08:00

The Martin Aircraft Company has created the first jetpack that will be commercially available.

The jetpack has a height of five feet, width of five-and-a-half feet and a length of five feet, and features a dual-propeller construction that uses fans to provide lift instead of jets of exhaust gas.

The company's chief executive, Richard Lauder, expects the jetpacks will be sold to a variety of different buyers--from emergency service personnel and private users to the military.

Its fuel capacity is five gallons, but its consumption is ten gallons an hour, which results in an operation time of around 30 minutes on a full tank. FAA regulations limit the maximum speed to 63 mph, which means the furthest a pack can travel on one tank is about 31.5 miles. When empty, the Jetpack weighs 250 pounds and can carry a pilot of over 280 pounds.

The jetpack complies with FAA Ultralight Regulations, and though users will not need a pilot's license to fly the equipment, they will be required to complete Martin's training program before receiving their jetpack. Training for the first ten owners will be held in New Zealand, where the company is headquartered.

Safety features include an internal roll cage, parachute, a proposed "minimal avoidance curve," and no tail rotor or exposed rotors that are often the cause of light helicopter accidents.

The company intends to manufacture 500 packs a year and sell them for 50,000 pounds (around $76,000) each.

See the jetpack in action below:

Guardian UAV for drug traffic-monitoring

2010-02-26T18:37:00.000-08:00

Over-water developmental tests of the Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) first Guardian UAV at Point Mugu Naval Air Station, Calif., were completed on Feb. 11 after “a flawless 8-hr. flight”. In light of this success, all back-up flights previously scheduled have been canceled and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) crews are currently preparing the aircraft for transit to Florida, with an expected arrival date of Feb. 22 and first-flight date of Feb. 25.

The prototype maritime variant, distinguished by a belly-mounted APS-134 SeaVue surveillance radar, is aimed at drug traffic-monitoring. The radar provides inverse synthetic aperture and synthetic aperture imaging as well as weather and target detection and search-and-rescue transponder modes. The UAV will be used initially by CBP in partnership with the U.S. Coast Guard to test its reconnaissance, surveillance and targeting acquisition capabilities in coastal waters. CBP says the Guardian will eventually support joint counter-narcotics operations against drug-running “fast boats” and difficult-to-detect semi-submersible craft.

With a second vehicle due for delivery for trials next month, GA-ASI is optimistic additional Guardian systems can follow the initial deployment. CBP has a strategic plan for up to 18 Predator-type vehicles, of which at least six will be for maritime missions.

Gray Eagle - New Predator Variants

2010-02-26T18:16:00.000-08:00

Weapons tests of the Army’s MQ-1C Sky Warrior, a heavily modified derivative of the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) Predator A, were successfully completed following the last live firings of nine Hellfire P+ missiles. A post-test review identified “minor technical and desired fixes,” and that an “ updated software release will be verification-tested in March from GA-ASI El Mirage flight operations facility.”

The MQ-1C, soon to be redesignated the Gray Eagle —currently also known as the Army’s extended range/multipurpose (ER/MP) unmanned aircraft system —is being fast-tracked into service with newly formed quick reaction capability (QRC) units in Iraq and Afghanistan. The updated release will be used to support soldier training prior to a limited user test scheduled for May, and subsequent fielding slated for July .

The weapons tests, which began at the U.S. Naval Air Weapons Center at China Lake in late November, are part of preparations to arm aircraft for a second quick-reaction unit, QRC-2. The first QRC unit was created during Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance surge and is deployed in Iraq with four unarmed aircraft providing long-endurance, wide-area reconnaissance, surveillance, target acquisition and communications relay capability.

GA-ASI says it also “preparing proposals” to support low-rate initial production of the MQ-1C following the Army’s Feb. 2 announcement that the UAV had successfully completed the Milestone C review. The San Diego-based manufacturer now expects a contract award in March for 26 aircraft to be delivered in 2012.

Air France A380 grounded for fourth time due to fuelling problem

2010-02-23T00:09:00.000-08:00

The first A380 superjumbo operated by Air France was forced to turn back to New York mid-flight yesterday because of a fuelling problem, the plane's fourth glitch in as many months, the airline said.

"The fault involves a problem in the fuel system," an Air France spokeswoman said, confirming that the A380 turned back to New York on Monday morning and was grounded there.

The plane had no passengers on board at the time and was returning to Paris for servicing, she added.

Air France started flying the giant double-decker jet, the world's largest passenger plane, on November 23. The same plane was grounded three times last year for technical glitches, one of which also involved the fuel system.

The company has a second A380 in service on its route from Paris to Johannesburg and has ordered 10 more.

Recommended reading:
* Qantas A380 Airbus fly passengers over Antarctica
* Qantas A380 passengers tarmac ordeal

Inside Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental

2010-02-11T13:00:00.000-08:00

Photo gallery of Inside Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental

Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental

Inside View of Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental

Inside View of Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental

Inside View of Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental

Inside View of Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental

Inside View of Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental

Inside View of Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental

Inside View of Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental

Inside View of Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental

Recommended reading:
* Boeing 747-8 Freighter maiden flight

Boeing 747-8 Freighter maiden flight

2010-02-08T18:52:00.000-08:00

US aerospace giant Boeing's newest version of its 747 jumbo jet took to the skies for the first time yesterday, the company said.

The 747-8 is Boeing's answer to the A380, the super-jumbo aircraft made by European rival Airbus.

Boeing claims the high-capacity 747-8 Freighter will give cargo operators the lowest operating costs and best economics of any freighter plane while providing enhanced environmental performance.

It provides customers with 16 per cent more revenue cargo volume compared with the 747-400 freighter, the company says.

A commercial passenger version, the 747-8 Intercontinental, is also under development.

The 747-8 Freighter destined for launch customer Cargolux, a Luxembourg-based cargo airline, taxied down a runway at Paine Field Airport in Everett, Washington state, and lifted off at 12.39pm, a Boeing webcast showed.

The airport is home to the Boeing manufacturing plant for the 747, 767, 777, and the new 787 Dreamliner aircraft, whose advanced technologies the new 747-8 shares.

Pilots Mark Feuerstein and Thomas Imrich have about "three to four hours to test out this airplane for the first time", a Boeing spokesman said on the video.

They may decide to cut the flight short because the take-off had been delayed by inclement weather and they would want to land before nightfall, the spokesman said.

Like the 787 Dreamliner program, the 747-8 program has been plagued by delays due to production problems and a machinists' strike.

First deliveries, initially slated for late last year, are now set for the fourth quarter of this year.

The 787 Dreamliner made its first flight on December 15, more than two years behind the original schedule.

The designation 747-8 was chosen to reflect 787 Dreamliner technologies, the Chicago-based aerospace giant said.

The 747-8 Freighter "performed well" in taxi tests on Saturday, the last functional test before the aircraft's first flight, said Mo Yahyavi, 747 program vice-president and general manager of Boeing Commercial Airplanes.

"Based on early indications, the airplane is ready to fly."

Boeing highlights that this latest fuel-efficient version of its popular jumbo jet is the only large plane that fits existing airport infrastructure.

The 747-8 Intercontinental is 16 per cent more fuel efficient than the 747-400 and 11 per cent more fuel efficient than the A380, the super jumbo plane made by European rival Airbus, the company says.

Boeing launched the 747-8 plane on November 14, 2005, with firm orders for 18 747-8 Freighters; 10 from Cargolux and eight from Nippon Cargo Airlines of Japan.

The company said that through January it had 76 orders for the 747-8 Freighters, including from Cathay Pacific Airways and Dubai Aerospace Enterprise. The listed price range was $US301.5 million ($349.4 million) to $US304.5 million.

For the 747-8 Intercontinental, Boeing reported 32 orders: Lufthansa (20), Business Jet/VIP customers (seven), and Korean Air (five). The passenger aircraft was priced between $US293 and $US308 million.

Recommended reading:
* Boeing's 787 Dreamliner maiden flight

US Black Hawk helicopter crashed in Darmstadt, Germany

2010-02-03T20:39:00.000-08:00

A U.S. military Black Hawk helicopter crashed in Germany on Wednesday, killing three crew members, U.S. Army public affairs specialist Bruce Anderson said.

A police officer in the German state of Hesse put the crash site near Darmstadt, south of Frankfurt, near a helicopter landing site in Mannheim.

Names of the victims were being withheld pending notification of relatives, Anderson said.

The cause of the crash was under investigation, he said.

The state of Hesse is in west-central Germany.

Recommended reading:
* Air Berlin Boeing 737-800 overshoots Dortmund runway

Australia Heron UAV

2010-02-03T08:24:00.000-08:00

The first Australian-leased Heron Unmanned Aerial Vehicle will shortly begin operations supporting Australian troops in Afghanistan. For the past four months, a small Royal Australian Air Force detachment has been preparing for the delivery of the Australian Heron, by working with the Canadian Heron detachment at Kandahar airfield, drawing on the Canadians operational knowledge, experience and facilities.

Pilot-less A160 Black Hawk Drone

2010-02-02T07:05:00.000-08:00

Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. is launching a $1 billion venture featuring a pilot-less Black Hawk helicopter as military demand rises for technology to fight two wars.

The Stratford-based helicopter maker and military contractor announced Monday the creation of Sikorsky Innovations, intended to speed the transformation of the mechanical helicopter into a computerized aircraft.

It also will promote projects that are now designing helicopters to fly faster, simulate vision and monitor their own performance.

The Black Hawk is a military workhorse, used in Afghanistan, Iraq, Grenada in 1983, Panama in 1989 and the Gulf War in 1991. It's also part of military packages sold to other nations and has been used in civilian missions such as rescuing snowbound mountain climbers.

The Black Hawk helicopter, used for air assault and medical evacuation, was featured in the book and movie, "Black Hawk Down," chronicling a battle in Somalia in 1993 when two helicopters were shot down, killing 18 soldiers.

Some of the deadliest crashes involving five Black Hawk helicopters in Iraq killed 51 soldiers between 2003 and 2007. The helicopter is relied upon in Afghanistan, a mountainous nation with long stretches of desert and few decent roads.

Unmanned war planes are not recent, but are drawing interest from commanders trying to reduce casualties while not relenting in combat.

"The new thing here is to apply technologies in small airplanes and rotorcraft to the 20,000-pound Black Hawk," said Chris Van Buiten, director of Sikorsky Innovations. "It ups the stakes."

Mark Miller, vice president of research and engineering at the subsidiary of United Technologies Corp., said officials want to harness Sikorsky's rapid growth -- revenue and profit have more than doubled over the past five years -- with technological advances that are remaking helicopters.

Sikorsky Innovations can now "change the game" in the manufacturer's next generation of helicopters, he said.

"It will be chartered with doing things quicker, faster and bringing new technology to markets," Miller said.

Sikorsky will design and build an "optionally piloted helicopter" to resupply troops or engage in battle. It will give commanders a choice between operating a Black Hawk with one pilot or two or none.

"We'll let it adapt to the mission," Van Buiten said.

Sikorsky is jumping into a lucrative and growing market. Steven Zaloga, a senior analyst at Teal Group Corp. in Fairfax, Va., said unmanned aerial vehicles represent "one of the few dynamic markets" in the aerospace industry hit hard in the recession.

The Teal Group estimates the global market for unmanned aerial vehicle hardware will rise from $2.9 billion this year to $5.5 billion in 2019, Zaloga said.

Mark Tattershall, director of marketing and business development at Kaman Corp., a Bloomfield, Conn.-based aerospace manufacturer, said Kaman and Lockheed Martin Corp. demonstrated an unmanned cargo helicopter in Utah last week.

"To control something that's within sight is one challenge," he said. "To control something on the other side of a mountain and have it safely put down a load successfully and safely is a big challenge."

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has developed the A160, which is now being tested by the Army and its network of researchers.

Phil Hunt, a program manager at the agency, said challenges include unmanned aircraft seeing and avoiding other aircraft in federally-regulated or military airspace and the potential dangers of carrying weapons at the time of a crash.

Sikorsky Innovations, which over 10 years will spend $1 billion from Sikorsky and its customers, also is researching technologies that would vastly increase a helicopter's speed, enable helicopters to use computers to see through dust storms kicked up during takeoffs and landings, allow helicopters to gather data about their own condition and tailor the performance for quieter and more comfortable rides if necessary.

"We can allow a helicopter to morph itself for each function," Miller said.

Recommended reading:
* MQ-1C Sky Warrior
* RQ-170 Sentinel Drone - Beast of Kandahar
* MQ-1 Predator Drone

MQ-1C Sky Warrior

2010-02-01T01:20:00.000-08:00

After completing a 24-hour mission, an MQ-1C Sky Warrior aircraft makes a landing (see photo below). The Sky Warrior aircraft has the ability to remain airborne for up to 24 hours straight to conduct continuous missions in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Recommended reading:
* RQ-170 Sentinel Drone - Beast of Kandahar
* MQ-1 Predator Drone

Necker Nymph - Underwater plane

2010-01-31T00:59:00.000-08:00

Billionaire Sir Richard Branson may already own an airline, a record label, a mobile phone company, several luxury restaurants and a Caribbean island. But today the entrepreneur unveiled his latest toy - an underwater plane.

The £415,000 prototype submersible is called the Necker Nymph and can dive to depths of up to 130ft. Sir Richard hopes to one day explore depths of 35,000ft - which is far more than the height of Mount Everest.

Sir Richard plans to lend the Nymph out to visitors of his luxury hideaway, Necker Island. Gliding like an aeroplane through the water it can carry a pilot and two visitors on a two-hour trip.

After undergoing scuba training, guests can uncover ancient shipwrecks, fly side-by-side with dolphins or follow whales.

Such a unique experience comes at a price of course. The Nymph is available to hire for $25,000 a week (£15,000), but only after you have forked out a minimum of $88,000 (£55,000) for seven nights on the luxury catamaran, the Necker Belle.

The luxury sub has fighter jet technology and is piloted with a joystick. While most subs use ballast to propel subs under the water, the Nymph uses downward 'lift' on the wings to fly down.

It was designed and built by Graham Hawkes, chief of Hawkes Ocean Technologies and is the first of its kind.

Marketing manager Karen Hawkes, said: 'The Nymph is an entirely new class of vehicle for us - think of a sleek convertible under water. It is different from our other submersibles because it was specifically designed to dive to scuba depths in tropical waters.

'It has the flexibility to glide peacefully over glorious reefs or bank adventurously in 360 degree turns.'

She described the sub, which is part of its Deep Flight range, as 'hydrobatic' with individual 'wind shields' that removes the pressure of slipstream. This means the sub can have an open cockpit that gives guests panoramic views.

Ms Hawkes also insisted that the sub had a low environmental impact.

'Its positive buoyancy prevents the sub from landing on a reef, and its low light and noise emissions ensure the fragile ocean ecosystems remain undisturbed.'

Sir Richard is expecting the sub to be delivered on February 20. So those readers who have a spare £70,000 may jump at this adventurous week's holiday. The rest of us can just dream...

Recommended reading:
* VSS Enterprise - SpaceShipTwo Unveiled

Sukhoi T-50 Stealth Fighter Jet

2010-01-29T18:11:00.000-08:00

Russia's first stealth fighter intended to match the latest U.S. design made its maiden flight Friday, boosting the country's efforts to modernize its rusting Soviet-built arsenals and retain its lucrative export market.

The Sukhoi T-50's flight comes nearly two decades after the first prototype of the U.S. F-22 Raptor took to the air, and Russian officials said it will take another five years for the new jet to enter service. Still, the flight marked a major step in Russia's efforts to burnish the faded glory of its aviation industries and strengthen a beleaguered military.

The sleek twin-engined jet closely resembling the Raptor flew for 47-minutes from an airfield at Sukhoi's production plant in the Far Eastern city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur on Friday. Development of the so-called fifth-generation fighter has been veiled in secrecy and no images of it had been released before the flight.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin hailed the flight as a "big step forward," but admitted that "a lot remains to be done in terms of engines and armament."

Craig Caffrey, an analyst for Jane's Defense Procurement-Military Aircraft, said the new fighter is "hugely important," both for modernizing the aging Russian air force fleet and retaining export markets.

"The T-50 should offer the Russian Air Force a significant boost in its capabilities and ensure that it remains one of the best equipped air forces in the world," he told The Associated Press by e-mail.

Caffrey said the new fighter will attract many foreign customers. "For those countries that don't traditionally purchase military equipment from the U.S. it will be the only fifth generation aircraft available," he said.

The NPO Saturn company said in a statement that the jet has new engines, but military analysts suggested that they were a slightly modernized version of the Soviet-era engine powering the Su-27 family of fighters.

"It's a humbug," said independent military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer. "It's just a prototype lacking new engines and a new radar. It takes new materials to build a fifth-generation fighter, and Russia lacks them."

Putin said Friday the first batch of new fighters is set to enter an Air Force evaluation unit in 2013 and serial production is set to begin in 2015.

Caffrey said the task looks "very challenging, given the amount of new technology that is being incorporated into the new aircraft."

Russian military analysts were also skeptical, pointing at a history of delays in the program and other Russian weapons projects.

"The schedule will likely be pushed back as usual," said Alexander Konovalov, the head of the Moscow-based Institute of Strategic Assessment, an independent think tank.

Russia's prospective Bulava intercontinental ballistic missile has failed in at least eight of its 12 test launches, dealing a blow to Russia's hopes of making it a cornerstone of its nuclear arsenal. Officials have blamed the failures on manufacturing flaws resulting from post-Soviet industrial degradation.

Felgenhauer and other observers said the fighter program, which depends on hundreds of subcontractors, has been dogged by similar problems.

Russian officials have said the new fighter, like the Raptor, will have supersonic cruising speed and stealth capabilities. Its pilot, Sergei Bogdan, said in televised remarks that it was easy and pleasant to fly.

While officials saw the new fighter as essential, some analysts said the country has more pressing needs.

"There is no mission and no adversary for such plane," Konovalov said, adding that the Russian military lacks a modern communications system and satellite navigation. "It would be more expedient to fit modern avionics to older generation jets."

The U.S. administration decided to quit buying the F-22 Raptor, the world's most expensive fighter jet at more than $140 million apiece, effectively capping its production at the 186 already ordered.

NASA Global Hawk AV-6

2010-01-29T01:17:00.000-08:00

The NASA Global Hawk unmanned aircraft has completed 10.4 hours for pilot training and flight characterization in preparation for the Global Hawk Pacific (GloPac) Campaign set to start this spring. Five flights have been completed since the first flight of Air Vehicle Six (AV-6) in October.

Currently, AV-6 is being modified to carry eleven different earth science sensors in preparation for the GloPac Campaign. Missions will be based from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base and be conducted over remote areas of the Pacific and Arctic. Initial flights to test these sensors will begin in March.

Northrop Grumman's E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System

2010-01-27T01:15:00.000-08:00

Northrop Grumman's E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS) aircraft program can provides wide area surveillance covering more than 50,000 square kilometers and detect objects moving at a wide variety of speeds.

The system's expanded capabilities were recently demonstrated in a major coalition exercise in Korea. Its aircrews received their sixth consecutive battle management award. "These are significant examples of the system's battle management capabilities, and illustrates its ability to adapt to the needs of the warfighter," said Dale Burton, vice president for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and battle management command and control for Northrop.

Ethiopian Airline Flight 409 crashes off Beirut international airport

2010-01-24T21:59:00.000-08:00

An Ethiopian Airlines plane with 90 people on board crashed into the Mediterranean sea shortly after taking off from Beirut international airport in the early hours of Monday, airport sources said.

The Boeing 737-800 disappeared off the radar some five minutes after taking off, shortly after its scheduled departure time of 2:10 a.m. (0010 GMT), during a thunderstorm and heavy rain, the sources said. It was heading for Addis Ababa.

Eight-two passengers and eight crew were aboard, according to the plane's manifest, the sources said.

About 50 passengers were Lebanese nationals, three with dual nationalities: British, Canadian and Russian. Most of the others were Ethiopians. Hundreds of Ethiopians work as domestic helpers in Lebanon.

According to one source, residents on the coast saw a "ball of fire" crashing off Na'ameh village, a few kilometres (miles) south of the Lebanese capital.

Senior Lebanese officials and some family members of Lebanese passengers headed to Rafik Hariri International Airport after news of the crash. The plane had flown in from Addis Ababa earlier in the night, the sources said.

State-owned Ethiopian Airlines, which could not immediately be reached for comment, has positioned itself as a major player in international air traffic in Africa and has recently expanded its Asian network.

Last Friday it announced an order for 10 of Boeing's Next-Generation 737-800s for a total price of $767 million.

Airbus A400M maiden flight had technical glitch

2010-01-24T17:24:00.000-08:00

The Airbus A400M military transport plane experienced a software glitch during its first test flight in December, but the problem was minor, the European planemaker said Sunday.

The technical glitch was not reported when the four-engine turboprop aircraft - over-budget and behind schedule - made its maiden flight Dec. 11.

Airbus' comments came after the German weekly Der Spiegel reported on the problem this weekend, citing confidential documents from engine maker Europrop.

The issue was with the software controlling the engines and has been fixed, Airbus spokesman Jaime Perez-Guerra said.

The software glitch led the pilots to disengage an engine, meaning that its blades turn freely.

The plane has since logged nearly 30 hours of flight and is performing above expectations, he said.

The aircraft is four years behind schedule and more than euro5 billion (US$7.3 billion) over budget.

European aerospace contractor EADS wants the seven customer nations to pay for the extra costs, though a fixed price was agreed on in 2003.

The A400M's customers are Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain and Turkey

Airbus has asked for a decision to be made by the end of January on how the project is to proceed.

Recommended reading:
*Airbus A400M may get canceled

Puffin - NASA One-Man Stealth Plane

2010-01-20T08:03:00.000-08:00

A super-quiet, hover-capable aircraft design, NASA's experimental one-man Puffin could show just how much electric propulsion can transform our ideas of flight. It looks like nothing less than a flying suit or a jet pack with a cockpit.

On the ground, the Puffin is designed to stand on its tail, which splits into four legs to help serve as landing gear. As a pilot prepares to take off, flaps on the wings would tilt to deflect air from the 2.3-meter-wide propeller rotors upward, keeping the plane on the ground until it was ready to fly and preventing errant gusts from tipping it over. The Puffin would rise, hover and then lean over to fly horizontally, with the pilot lying prone as if in a glider. When landing, the extending spring legs would support the 3.7-meter-long, 4.1-meter-wingspan craft, which is designed with carbon-fiber composites to weigh in at 135 kilograms, not including 45 kilograms of rechargeable lithium phosphate batteries.

In principle, the Puffin can cruise at 240 kilometers per hour and dash at more than 480 kph. It has no flight ceiling—it is not air-breathing like gas engines are, and thus is not limited by thin air—so it could go up to about 9,150 meters before its energy runs low enough to drive it to descend. With current state-of-the-art batteries, it has a range of just 80 kilometers if cruising, "but many researchers are proposing a tripling of current battery energy densities in the next five to seven years, so we could see a range of 240 to 320 kilometers by 2017," says researcher Mark Moore, an aerospace engineer at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. He and his colleagues will officially unveil the Puffin design on January 20 at an American Helicopter Society meeting in San Francisco.

Moore and his colleagues at NASA, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the National Institute of Aerospace, and M-DOT Aerospace named their craft the Puffin because "if you've ever seen a puffin on the ground, it looks very awkward, with wings too small to fly, and that's exactly what our vehicle looks like," he explains. "But it's also apparently called the most environmentally friendly bird, because it hides its poop, and we're environmentally friendly because we have essentially no emissions. Also, puffins tend to live in solitude, only ever coming together on land to mate, and ours is a one-person vehicle."

This design relies on electric motors. These remain efficient regardless of their size, whereas internal combustion engines become less efficient the smaller they are. As such, electric aircraft can use small motors while generating impressive propulsion—the Puffin can lift a person with just 60 horsepower.

At up to 95 percent efficiency, electric motors are far more efficient than internal combustion engines, which only rate some 18 to 23 percent. This means electric aircraft are much quieter than regular planes—at some 150 meters, it is as loud as 50 decibels, or roughly the volume of a conversation, making it roughly 10 times quieter than current low-noise helicopters.

This super-quiet quality makes the Puffin potentially ideal for covert military insertions of special operations units and other troops—indeed, it was originally aimed to launch from submarines; unmanned versions could also help transport supplies. Quieter aircraft also mean that airports for civil applications such as personal travel and fast courier services could be located much closer to population centers and perhaps even residences without bothering others, significantly cutting down commute times. Inventors all over the world are still striving to develop personal air vehicles, the equivalent of a plane in every garage—for instance, Samson Motorworks is trying to develop a land/air-capable motorcycle.

In addition, since electric motors are so efficient, they also generate far less heat. This not only gives them a lower thermal signature for military stealth, but means they don't need anywhere near the same amount of cooling air flowing over them that internal combustion engines do, thereby reducing aerodynamic drag that can slow them down.

Because electric motors have fewer moving parts, they are perhaps 10 or even 20 times more reliable than piston engines. In addition, the Puffin's design allows pieces of either of its two electric motors to fail without any reduction in power to the prop rotors. The plane could also take a hard, forceful landing if necessary, as the landing gear supports the brunt of the load instead of the pilot, unlike some other one-man flying craft.

"The Puffin is an exciting idea.... It converges and demonstrates many technologies at once," said Brien Seeley, president of the Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency (CAFE) Foundation, a Santa Rosa, Calif.–based independent flight test agency that hosts the annual Electric Aircraft Symposium. "In my opinion, a mass-marketable version will need conventional seating, cup holders and a short runway for glide-in, view-ahead landings—but opening up people's imagination is the first essential step."

By March, the researchers plan on finishing a one third–size, hover-capable Puffin demonstrator, and in the three months following that they will begin investigating how well it transitions from cruise to hover flight. They are already looking past the Puffin, however. The next-generation of this design might incorporate more than just two pairs of prop rotors, so that if one was struck by, say, a bird or gunfire, the aircraft could survive on redundant systems. "We could make it so there's no single point of failure—that's the cool next step," Moore says.

Source: scientificamerican.com

Antonov 124 visiting Brisbane

2010-01-18T20:54:00.000-08:00

The giant Russian Antonov 124 will visit Brisbane International, carrying two naval combat NH90 NATO frigate helicopters on its giant cargo deck. The arrival of the aircraft has been organised by Australian Aerospace, Australia's only helicopter manufacturer, and NH Industries, the prime contractor for the NH90 helicopter.

The Antonov 124 has a wingspan of 73.5 metres, a little shy of its big brother the Antonov 225, which spans 88 metres. The Antonov is about the same size as the Airbus A380.

The six-engined Antonov strategic airlifter is commercially available to carry oversized payloads anywhere in the world due to its massive cargo deck.

The Canadian military is using an Antonov to carry relief supplies to earthquake-stricken Haiti.

The Anatov 124 was developed foremost as a military transport aircraft to replace the aging AN-22, designed by Russia in the 1950s.

About Antonov AN-124

The Antonov An-124 Ruslan (Ukrainian and Russian: Антонов Ан-124 «Руслан») (NATO reporting name: 'Condor') was the largest airplane in production until the Antonov An-225 was built. During development it was known, in house, as Izdeliye 400 and An-40 in the West. First flown in 1982, civil certification was issued by the CIS Interstate Aviation Committee on 30 December 1992. Over forty are currently in service (26 civilian models with airlines and 10 firm orders as of August 2006) and 20 were in commercial use in 1998 in Ukraine, Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Libya.

Airbus A400M may get canceled

2010-01-11T21:08:00.000-08:00

The production of Airbus A400M may get canceled. The chief executive of Airbus has warned he is prepared to cancel production of the company's A400M military transport plane.

Delays to the A400M project have already increased its budget by 25%. The project is now 5bn euros ($7.25bn; £4.5bn) over its initial budget as a result of weight and engine problems.

The seven European governments that have ordered the plane will decide by the end of January whether to pay more.

Fixed price error

Seven countries - Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain, Turkey and the UK - have ordered 180 A400M aircraft in total between them.

Under contracts signed ahead of the start of the programme six years ago, Airbus has agreed to sell them the planes for a fixed price.

"We made a big mistake when we [entered into] contracts for this aircraft six or seven years ago," Mr Enders said, speaking to BBC World Business Report.

"If you make mistakes don't repeat them. We should not again take a decision which would lead us to further problems in the years to come."

However he added that the final decision on whether to scrap the project would be the decision of the whole board at Airbus' parent company EADS.

Customers disagree

The A400M, which was designed to fly troops and equipment, is set to replace ageing military cargo carriers in several European air forces.

It had been due to go into service last year, but will not take to the skies until 2012 at the earliest. The delay led to South Africa cancelling an order for eight planes.

There is a split between those countries who want the aircraft built and in use quickly, notably the UK and France, and those who would prefer to proceed more slowly to spread the cost, in particular Germany.

Serious threat

Ditching the A400M would cost EADS some 5.7bn euros in advance payments - more than double the 2.4bn euros it has already set aside to cover losses it expects to incur from the project.

There is every chance such losses could rise further, so analysts say Mr Enders' warning is more than just posturing aimed at putting pressure on European governments.

"There will come a point where it is better for EADS to simply walk away," said Nomura aerospace analyst Jason Adams.

Doing so would severely damage Airbus' reputation and boost arch rival Boeing, which has seen the order book for its A400M rival, the C-17, swell.

Air New Zealand latest cabin crew uniforms

2010-01-10T22:31:00.000-08:00

Air New Zealand has revealed it's new cabin crew uniforms, but the bright pink design has been labelled fit for a drag queen.

Air NZ male uniform

Air NZ ground staff uniform

Air NZ cabin crew dress

Qantas A380 Airbus fly passengers over Antarctica

2010-01-08T06:47:00.000-08:00

A Qantas A380 Airbus has become the first of the giant airliners to fly passengers over Antarctica, taking 450 revellers out of Melbourne to see in the new year.

The cheapest seat is $999, the dearest more than $6000. It's the first time an A380 has done such a trip. The travel company involved has run these Antarctic flights since 1994, until now on Boeing 747s. In a way it's a voyage to nowhere, take-off and landing in the same place. It feels somehow as if it shouldn't be happening. The plane has orange, yellow and purple streamers inside. At midnight we find ourselves with champagne and party whistles. In a plane.

The first iceberg is seen from the plane's left side at 9.50pm. It triggers a rush of excitement, but it's an exercise in diplomacy to get near a window. Head pilot John Dennis is lounging in first class at the time, letting his underlings fly. He's done 40 of these missions. The pilots are treated like celebrities. Later they will sign autographs.

Captain Dennis waves off that first iceberg with the air of someone who knows what will happen next. ''Don't worry about it,'' he says. ''There will be more.''

Recommended reading:
* Qantas A380 passengers tarmac ordeal

Qantas A380 passengers tarmac ordeal

2010-01-06T06:56:00.000-08:00

The 2010 annus horribilis continues for Qantas, with passengers stuck on the tarmac in another Airbus 380 for hours on end, this time in Los Angeles.

It has emerged that 398 passengers were stuck for three-and-a-half hours on the tarmac on board the flagship superjumbo in Los Angeles on Sunday, US time, while engineers tried to rectify technical faults.

Eventually passengers on QF12 were off-loaded after the crew had exceeded their allowable on-duty hours. The Sydney-bound flight was rescheduled for the next day and arrived this morning.

A Qantas spokesman said the plane had a brake indication fault that occurred twice, the second time after an attempted repair.

It is the second time this week Qantas passengers have been stuck on board an A380 for hours.

The incident mirrors Monday's hold-up at Melbourne Airport, where almost 450 passengers were stuck on board an A380 for more than five hours while engineers tried to fix a technical fault.

The repairs dragged on and eventually passengers were let off the plane after the flight was postponed to the next day.

Qantas blamed the strict new security screening regime required for US flights to America for the decision to keep passengers on board for so long.

Bizarrely, the two incidents were happening almost simultaneously, with the delay hitting the LA flight as passengers prepared to disembark the faulty A380 in Melbourne.

Since the New Year, Qantas has suffered outages of its check-in system, baggage system and aircraft malfunctions that have caused lengthy delays to the travel plans thousands of passengers in Australia and internationally.

Air Berlin Boeing 737-800 overshoots Dortmund runway

2010-01-03T16:30:00.000-08:00

A jet veered off the runway at a western German airport, but no one was injured, authorities say.

The pilot of the Air Berlin Boeing 737-800 braked to abort the takeoff from Dortmund airport because of a "technical irregularity", but the plane left the runway in wintry conditions, airline spokeswoman Diane Daedelow said.

It came to rest with its nose pointing down a slight, snow-covered slope.

None of the 165 passengers and six crew members was hurt, and the plane was undamaged, Daedelow said.

Passengers left the aircraft normally using steps, and were taken to nearby Paderborn airport, where another plane flew them to their destination, Las Palmas, in Spain's Canary Islands.

Later in the day, the airline said takeoff was aborted because the pilot and co-pilot were being shown different speeds by their instruments.

Dortmund airport was closed after the incident at 7.05 am (1705 AEDT) on Sunday to allow for the aircraft's recovery.

Other flights were cancelled or diverted. Dortmund fire service official Thomas Osthoff said on n-tv television about 120 officers initially were dispatched to the scene - but "fortunately it turned out that a deployment on this scale wasn't needed".

The plane is the second Boeing 737-800 to leave the runway in recent weeks.

On December 22, an American Airlines flight from Washington left the runway as it landed in Kingston, Jamaica, in heavy rain.

In that case, the fuselage cracked open, the left main landing gear collapsed and the nose was crushed as the plane lurched to a halt at the ocean's edge. There were no deaths, but many passengers needed hospital treatment.