iPad & airlines pilots: The case of Air France & American Airlines

Air France: iPads serving the needs of flight safety

Air France is the first major European airline to equip its 4,100 pilots with an iPad digital tablet. Boeing 777- qualified pilots have been using it on a daily basis since June, and all the Company’s pilots will be equipped by summer 2013.

Interview with Sébastien VEIGNEAU, First Officer on B777 & iPad project pilot correspondent. 

What are the advantages of using this tablet?

The Flight Operations Division and the Air France IT Systems Division have been working together with Apple to personalize this tool and adapt it especially for our pilots. It will simplify access to information, notably for consulting regulatory documentation, and facilitate our communication channels within the Company.

Starting in 2013, iPad will offer training and refresher e-learning modules, i.e., aircraft system revision, self-service briefings, flight path and airfield recognition. With this tool, Air France has chosen to promote use of new technologies and is the first European airline to equip its pilots. 

New Technology Could Protect Against Parts Counterfeiting

Several years ago, the FAA estimated that unapproved parts played a role in 174 U.S. aircraft crashes or less serious accidents between May 1973 and April 1996, causing 17 deaths and 39 injuries, although none involved a major airline. Every year, with the help of the industry, FAA finds "suspected unapproved parts" in the supply chain. While the number of unapproved parts flagged by FAA’s unapproved parts program is fairly small, how many counterfeit parts escape notice? How much damage do they cause? Because crashes frequently destroy the parts that fail, it’s hard to know.

We haven’t heard much about the counterfeit parts problem since 1995, when then-FAA Inspector General Mary Schiavo sounded the alarm and triggered Congressional hearings. Speculating about the threat of bogus parts isn’t a favorite talking point for manufacturers, airlines or the FAA.

We do know that counterfeit parts makers are getting more sophisticated. For instance, in 2007, FAA issued an "unapproved parts notification" regarding counterfeit tail rotor hanger bearings electro-etched with fake Bell Helicopter part numbers.

Clear to land: NASA new 'augmented reality' goggles will let airline pilots 'see' through fog

Prototype: The glasses, now being offered commercially, track the
user's eye-movements to overlay information

NASA has created augmented reality goggles which could soon be available to airline pilots and help them 'see' through fog.

The goggles can track a pilot's head-movements and overlay runways, towers and potentially other airplanes over their view - an invaluable tool when fog rolls down across an airport.

Even as the pilot turns his head, the goggles can react in real-time to ensure the virtual representations always stay in the same place as their real-world counterparts.

Trey Arthur, an electronics engineer at NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia, told InnovationNewsDaily: 'If pilots are not familiar with the airport, they have to stop and pull out maps.

Jetman, the first and only man in the history of aviation to fly with a jet-propelled wing

In 2006, the Swiss pilot Yves Rossy became the first and only man in the history of aviation to fly with a jet-propelled wing, and still is to this day.

Yves Rossy was born on August 27th, 1959 in Switzerland. After attending an airshow and admiring military jets when he was 13, he decided that was what he wanted to do. He succeeded in becoming a military pilot, was assigned on the Hawker Hunter, and later Mirage III. After his career in the Air Force, he has worked as a captain with Swiss International Air Lines on commercial flights on Boeing and Airbus airliners.

Yves has always dedicated all his free time to flight and experimented all its forms. His dream was however to try to fly in the most natural way possible, by removing the need for the complicated enclosure an aircraft is. He was therefore drawn to the world of  free fall, and experimented by trial and error all ways that could allow him to stay longer in the air and control his trajectory, to turn a fall into a flight: sky surf, wingsuit. Still not satisfied, he developed his first real wing, made of a rigid harness and inflatable wing panels, that he was to strap to his back to exceed the performance of all other attempts at “falling forward” that existed at the time.

Aircraft of the Future Could Capture and Re-Use Some of Their Own Power

Capturing energy direct from a plane's landing gear and 
recycling it for the aircraft's own use really could work.

Tomorrow's aircraft could contribute to their power needs by harnessing energy from the wheel rotation of their landing gear to generate electricity.

They could use this to power their taxiing to and from airport buildings, reducing the need to use their jet engines. This would save on aviation fuel, cut emissions and reduce noise pollution at airports.

The feasibility of this has been confirmed by a team of engineers from the University of Lincoln with funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

The energy produced by a plane's braking system during landing -- currently wasted as heat produced by friction in the aircraft's disc brakes -- would be captured and converted into electricity by motor-generators built into the landing gear. The electricity would then be stored and supplied to the in-hub motors in the wheels of the plane when it needed to taxi.

'Engine-less taxiing' could therefore become a reality. ACARE (the Advisory Council for Aeronautics Research in Europe) has made engine-less taxiing one of the key objectives beyond 2020 for the European aviation industry.

Google looking to make big impact on airline distribution

Google spent less than $2bn to buy 79 businesses in 2011, the largest being its $700m cash purchase of flight data specialist ITA Software. "By combining ITA's expertise with Google's technology, we'll be able to develop exciting new flight search tools for all our users," Google says.

Within five months of the deal closing in April 2011, Google launched Google Flight Search (GFS) in the USA. GFS, which despite being live is officially still in testing, searches inventory and fares from airline websites, giving users a direct link to the airline's booking page. At the moment GFS is limited to major airlines and key domestic routes, but it includes filters so users can search by budget, departure times and location-specific tools. In its current form, it presents a clear idea of how powerful it might be once more airlines become involved. GFS does not have a presence in Europe, although Google's official soundings promise an international roll-out.

Ian Tunnacliffe, an independent IT consultant, believes Google is serious about becoming a major player in airline distribution. "Arguably, with so many large online travel agencies (OTAs) dependent on traffic from Google's natural and paid search, it already is," he adds.

Office in the Sky Becomes Reality

There’s just never enough productive work time available during the workday. That’s why for nearly three decades, business aviation operators have looked forward to the day when they could use their aircraft cabins as “offices in the sky” where their passengers could continue to work as productively at 41,000 ft. as they could on the 41st floor.

Years ago, air-to-ground radiotelephones and faxes, complemented by onboard computers and printers, were the tools available for business aircraft passengers to maintain communications between ground and sky. That level of office technology seemed to suffice then.

However, about two decades ago a revolution in communications began taking place on the ground with the advent of Internet connectivity. The new technology began to collapse the information float to near zero between offices and factories, customers and suppliers, headquarters and subsidiaries. Connectivity speeds soared from 56 Kbps using dial-up in the early 1980s to today’s cable modem, high-speed DSL and satellite broadband speeds of 1 Mbps upload and 20 Mbps download. Some ground-based connectivity systems now provide 45 Mbps, or higher, Internet speeds.

Airberlin First Airline In Europe To Use Satellite-Based Landings

GBAS (Ground Based Augmentation System)

Following the German Federal Office for Air Traffic Control’s accreditation of the ground station for the new satellite-based approach and landing system GBAS (Ground Based Augmentation System) as a primary landing system, Airberlin will be the first airline in Europe to use satellite-based landings on regular flights at Bremen Airport.

Since 2008, the German Air Traffic Control Authority (DFS) has been working closely with Airberlin on the development of the new system. In November 2009, Airberlin was the first airline worldwide to receive approval for its Boeing 737 Next Generation fleet to use the GBAS on landings up to a visual range of only 550 meters.

The new satellite-based landing system is much more precise than the instrument- based landing system (ILS) which has been used until now.

Other advantages of GBAS landings are that noise pollution on the ground is reduced because approach angles can be varied and in the future it will be possible to use the system in mountainous areas, where it was not previously possible to land using the instrument-based landing system.

Airbus Conducts 4-D Trajectory Management Test

Airbus has conducted what it is calling the world's first flight using a four-dimensional optimized and upgraded air traffic management (ATM) technology to fly more accurate and efficient routes, the airframe manufacturer said Friday.

The test, using Airbus's dedicated A320 test aircraft flying from Toulouse, France, to Copenhagen and Stockholm, used Initial-4D (I-4D) trajectory management, which relies on an aircraft function to predict and transmit data to the ground in order to accurately fly a trajectory. It is described in three dimensions (lateral, longitudinal and vertical) and it includes one target time at a specific merging point (time as the fourth dimension), Airbus said.

NASA Offers Reward For Green Propellant

NASA’s Technology Demonstration Missions Program is looking for “green” alternatives to toxic hydrazine as a storable propellant for spacecraft, offering contracts worth as much as $50 million each to researchers with promising ideas.

The agency is seeking proposals for demonstrations of systems that use storable monopropellants or bipropellants that are safer than hydrazine to generate spacecraft propulsion and power. The broad area announcement, which is available at http://go.usa.gov/Qbx, calls for complete integrated systems that include engines, tanks, valves, injectors, igniters, thrust chambers and propellant-control systems.

Top ten flying cars!

For more than five decades, science fiction has been tormenting us with hallucination of in-the-air roadways and hastily choreographing sports car-like flying cars. A number of businesses have been hunting the reverie for such a long time. NASA's PAV (Personal Air Vehicle) Challenge could do a great job to chase the wild dream. To kindle rapid modernism and advancement in PAV performance, NASA has funded $2,000,000 in cash prizes for the PAV flight competition. Here is a list of some of the flying cars, including some vehicles that have taken a voyage in the air while some are waiting to do the same in the near future.


Read the full article on: Gizmowatch


And also, check this article explaining the technology behind these Flying cars:
http://www.gizmowatch.com/top-flying-cars-technology.html

easyJet to trial greener electric taxiing

UK-based bargain airline easyJet has thrown its weight behind the development of an electric taxiing system in a bid to cut its fuel consumption and enhance its environmental credibility.

The "electric green taxiing system" (EGTS) is a joint venture by engineering and aerospace conglomerates Honeywell and Safran. Safran claims that four percent of easyJet's fuel consumption is used taxiing aircraft before take off and after landing from and to gates.

Four percent may not sound much, but it's a figure that's higher than the norm for budget airlines like easyJet which typically have a high turnover of short-haul flights and so spend a proportionately higher amount of time on the ground. easyJet's planes are thought to average 20 minutes of taxiing time per flight, amounting to 3.5 million ground-miles a year over its entire fleet.

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Qantas grounds A380 after finding 36 cracks on wings

A Qantas Airways Airbus A380 has been grounded after 36 cracks were found on its wings on 5 February.

The aircraft, which bears the registration VH-OQF, had its airframe built in 2010 and has clocked 399 flight cycles totalling 2,454 flight hours, according to Flightglobal's ACAS database.

The aircraft was first grounded when Airbus requested a second phase of precautionary checks on its wings after it went through severe turbulence in January, said Qantas. Airbus made the request after reviewing data of the turbulent flight.