UAE’s Alhameli Highlights Innovation in Accident Prevention
Assistant director general of the Air Accident Investigation Sector (AAIS) at the UAE’s General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) for the past two years, Aysha Alhameli plays a key role in aviation safety in the Middle East region. In a recent Q&A with AIN, she outlined a transition the AAIS is undergoing from testing of projects such as the use of virtual reality of accident site reconstruction to implementation.
“In 2022, we have done a lot of testing. This year, we’ll be working on the actual project: the virtual reality reconstruction of the accident site will provide a kind of simulator to train accident investigators on techniques for following processes in order to increase their competencies in a safe environment,” she told AIN. “Once it’s done, this will be promoted internationally because, as I said, this will be the first of its kind in the world.”
BJT: 10 of Our Travel Writer’s Favorite U.S. Cities
Long-time BJT travel writer Margie Goldsmith has traveled to more than 130 countries but she also likes to spend time exploring her American homeland.
Here, she picks 10 of her favorite U.S. cities and notes the reasons why each one made the list. First on the list isSan Francisco: Drop-dead views, delicious food, soothing foghorns.
A Qatar Executive Gulfstream G650ER has broken the polar circumnavigation of the Earth record, accomplishing the flight in 46 hours, 39 minutes, and 38 seconds. Scheduled to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing mission, the flight departed NASA’s Cape Canaveral facility at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida July 9, 2019 at 9:32 a.m.—the same time as the moon mission launch a half-century earlier—and landed there July 11, 2019 at 8:12 a.m., shaving 5 hours, 51 minutes, and 26 seconds off the previous speed record set in 2008.
“We did this during the 50th-anniversary celebrations of the Apollo moon landing and the 500th anniversary of man first circling the planet,” said Hamish Harding, chairman of Action Aviation and the mission’s director, as well as one of its pilots. “It is our way of paying tribute to the past, present, and future of space exploration.”
Connecting aircraft data is perhaps the easiest and fastest of the paths to sustainability in the airline industry, Boeing Global Services and Raytheon Technologies subsidiary Collins Aerospace each said this week at the 2023 Paris Air Show. But a patchwork of national government regulations, pilot union rules, and passenger data privacy concerns stand in the way of its full potential for saving fuel, lowering emissions, and reducing costs.
While optimizing flight paths using data presents no such concerns, squeezing more efficiencies from monitoring how pilots fly the airplane could be fraught with red tape. For example, monitoring individual pilot habits regarding landing speed and brake pedal application could reduce brake wear. Extended brake life means longer intervals for brake disc changes, lowering maintenance costs and subsequently lowering CO2 emissions with a reduction in the need for replacement parts. But pilot unions will likely block the use of data in such a manner.
VoltAero debuted the first full-scale prototype of its Cassio 330 hybrid-electric aircraft at the Paris Air Show this week. The Cassio 330, which can be configured with either four or five seats, will be the first of three hybrid-electric aircraft that VoltAero intends to produce for cargo, air taxi, and medevac applications.
The French start-up plans to begin flight testing with the newly revealed Cassio 330 prototype later this year. For the upcoming flight test campaign, VoltAero will equip the aircraft with a four-cylinder, 165-kilowatt engine supplied by company partner and strategic investor Kawasaki Motors, a company best known for its motorcycle engine products.
BJT: Greg Norman Reveals Another Side in Face-to-face
Greg Norman’s public persona conjures up a swashbuckling extrovert. But when I meet the golf great turned enormously successful CEO at his Palm Beach, Florida headquarters, he turns out to be soft-spoken and thoughtful—self-confident but certainly not flamboyant.
The dichotomy doesn’t come as a complete surprise, because I’ve read Norman’s 2006 autobiography, The Way of the Shark: Lessons on Golf, Business, and Life. The book reveals a self-described introvert who enjoys spending time alone contemplating his next triumph. It’s simply written, but the messages are profound, and Norman does not shy away from detailing some of the early career disappointments, failures, and betrayals that shaped the entrepreneur he is today.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recently added three more recommendations to those already issued surrounding air tour safety in Ketchikan, Alaska.
The latest recommendations, included in a short report, call for a special federal aviation regulation (SFAR) to be developed for Ketchikan air tour flights, the imposition of weather minimums more conservative than Part 135, and a pilot training requirement focused on reducing continued VFR into IMC.
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