Since the Wright Brothers invented the aircraft, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have tried to build aircraft that fly higher, faster, and farther than all other competitors.
In warfare, an aircraft with a higher max altitude could be a huge advantage in that it could attack from above or climb to escape. In the same fashion, as a bird of prey taking out its target from above, the German Messerschmitt Me262 jet could climb faster and higher than Allied piston-powered fighters.
Gregg Brunson-Pitts wasn’t even old enough to order a cocktail when he received security clearance to work at the White House in 2002. As an intern for President George W. Bush’s scheduling office, he got a crash course in attention to detail.
After graduating from Ohio’s Bowling Green State University, he was named director of the White House Travel Office, where he spent seven years sharpening his skills and knowledge as he coordinated flights, hotel bookings, and bus rides for the hundreds of people who circle POTUS at any given time, including Secret Service members and the press corps. He faced constant logistical nightmares, challenging personalities, and different ways of doing things in countries all over the world.
Gulfstream and Israel Aerospace Industries on October 6, 2009, rolled out the new Gulfstream G250 at IAI’s facility at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, an event I was fortunate to attend. The super-midsize G250 has its roots in the G200, which was formerly the Galaxy.
Gulfstream acquired the Galaxy and Astra SPx type certificates from IAI/Galaxy Aerospace in 2001, with the objective of expanding Gulfstream’s product line by adding these midsize jets. The Savannah, Georgia-based OEM then took over completions, painting, marketing, and product support of the Galaxy and Astra airplanes, and soon rebranded them the G100 and G200, respectively. IAI remained the manufacturer of the jets and continues as the OEM for the G150 and G250 models. The G150 replaced the G100 and the G250–when it goes into production–will replace the G200.
Flight data monitoring was a key topic at the recent Air Charter Safety Foundation (ACSF) annual Safety Symposium as the organization hopes to build momentum for its recently launched program and encourage others to adopt such practices. The ACSF Safety Symposium was held late last month at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida.
ACSF scheduled a session that included top executives from Mayo Aviation, GrandView Aviation, and Jet It who discussed the challenges they faced regarding the perception of FDM, how they overcame those challenges, the hardware involved, data analysis that comes with the program, and the safety and operational benefits.
As relations between China and the U.S. continue to deteriorate, an official state visit by French President Emmanuel Macron to Beijing last Thursday served as a backdrop for Airbus’s latest cooperative venture with the People’s Republic. The European airframer signed an agreement with Tianjin Free Trade Zone Investment Company and Aviation Industry Corporation of China to expand production capacity for the A320 airliner family with a second assembly line in Tianjin.
Witnessed by Macron, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury, the agreement will help the company meet its global production rate objective of 75 aircraft per month in 2026.
Flying Whales this week selected Honeywell’s one-megawatt generator to power its planned giant hybrid-electric airship. The start-up, which is based in France and has a Canadian subsidiary, has been developing its hybrid-electric airship since 2012.
Known as the LCA60T, the blimp-like aircraft is 200 meters (650 feet) long and will be capable of transporting up to 60 tonnes (130,000 pounds) of cargo. Flying Whales has said that the airship will have a maximum range of up to 1,000 kilometers (620 miles), but it will mostly be used for shorter flights of around 100 km (62 miles).
Airlines have welcomed the ruling by a Dutch court on Wednesday that the government cannot impose a stricter cap on the number of flights at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport with the start of next winter's schedule. The major Northern European hub now may handle 500,000 flights annually, but authorities in the Netherlands in February decided to curtail its capacity to 440,000 annual movements to reduce noise levels in two steps.
In the first step, the government sought to introduce a temporary arrangement to reduce the number of annual flights to 440,000 from November.
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