Sikorsky X2

Sikorsky helicopter company is developing a new helicopter design, using new technologies dubbed the X2 technologies. The aim of the program is to create new helicopter technologies to be able to make the helicopter fly faster without the overly complicated tilt rotor design.

Currently many passenger helicopters have a top speed of about 170 mph, and similar sized fixed wing aircraft can double that speed. The new design would add about 60% extra speed, to somewhere around 280mph. The increased speed would bring the advantages of a vertical takeoff/landing aircraft with more speed leading to shorter trip times.

The current design for the new helicopter prototype has two counter rotating main rotors and it appears that at the rear there is a pusher propeller to gain the addition speed that is desired in this design.

If you want some more info on this, check out the full story over at Aviation.com or Sikorsky.com



Godspeed

Top Ten War Planes

Here's a list put together by Aviation.com of the top ten war planes. Here is the list:


#10:

Fokker D.VII Biplane

#9:

Mitsubishi Zero

#8:

Messerschmitt Bf109

#7:

Supermarine Spitfire

#6:

North American P-51D Mustang

#5:

North American F-86 Sabre

#4:

Mikoyan MiG-21

#3:

Boeing F-18 Hornet

#2:

Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber

#1:

UCAV

Check out the entire list and descriptions over at Aviation.com



Godspeed

Favorite Aircraft Poll

Here are the most recent poll results:

A-10 Thunderbolt ........................25%
F-4 Phantom .............................16%
F-14 Tomcat .............................. 8%
F-22 Raptor ............................... 8%
SR-71 Blackbird ..........................33%
One I Didn't Include ...................... 8%




Godspeed

MD-80's Grounded

American Airlines and Delta Airlines have decided to ground almost 500 planes in order to conduct inspections on wire bundles in their fleets of MD-80's and MD-88's. The companies have done these inspections voluntarily in order to check to make sure the wire bundles are maintaining the FAA requirements.

American finished checking 243 of their aircraft yesterday and will finish inspecting the remaining aircraft today. American's grounding of their MD-80 fleet interrupted the schedules of about 26,000 passengers yesterday.

Delta Airlines has not disclosed the number of passengers effected by the grounding of the 117 MD-88's they are inspecting. Delta promises to have all aircraft inspected and back into service by Saturday.

These inspections come in the wake of a major saftey problem involving Southwest Airlines not being inspected for long periods of time. Rebounding from this, the FAA has issued audits on many maintenance logs, in order to make sure nothing is being missed after this huge saftey slip- up with Southwest.

American and Delta will be back to full operation by this weekend.


Godspeed

F-35B Lightning II

The Lockheed Martin/Boeing F-35 is the next generation Joint Strike Fighter which is set to replace the aging fighter fleet along with offer many planes to allied countries. The F-35B version of this plane is one of the most capable and amazing aircraft ever created. The F-35B was created to service the Marines and replace the AV-8B Harrier. The F-35B has a lift fan right behind the cockpit and the main engine swivels downward.

The F-35B is the first aircraft that can take off, go supersonic, and land vertically. The design of the aircraft is amazing, and the engine is able to pull of some pretty crazy things.

Watch the video below and enjoy this new aircraft!



Godspeed

Aloha Chapter 11

Aloha Airlines has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy, just 2 years after emerging from a previous bankruptcy. They plan on continuing to fly as long as their bankruptcy is accepted by the courts.

Aloha Airgroup Inc. is blaming the loss of revenue on the low prices of competitor Go! airlines which is managed by the Mesa Air Group Inc.

Go! came into the market in 2006 to compete with both Aloha Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines. Aloha is claiming that Go! is operating the business at below cost, meaning they are losing money on passenger tickets. The money coming in is less than the money going out, no net profit, they are operating at a loss. This seems to be backed by the fact that Go! reported a net loss in its first year of operation.

Aloha CEO and President David A. Banmiller had the following to say, "It is a travesty and a tragedy that the illegal actions of a competitor and other factors completely beyond our control have forced us to take this action." Banmiller is referring to the fact that Go! is operating at a loss in order to draw as many people as possible to the airlines and in turn forcing Aloha and Hawaiian to dramatically lower ticket prices in order to compete. All of this occurs at a time when fuel prices are skyrocketing out of control.

We'll see how everything plays out. For more information on this story, visit Aviation.com


Godspeed

DARPA Loves Long Flights

That's right, DARPA is at it again with a pretty crazy project. DARPA is looking to have an aircraft built to meet some pretty crazy criteria. The main one being, a 5 year flight duration.

Yep, DARPA wants to fly an aircraft for 5 year straight without touching down. The aircraft will be mainly used to sample the atmosphere over the five year mission time. DARPA has named this project the "Vulture" project.

DARPA is close to awarding a contract and will move forward after that. The picture above is of the NASA long endurance aircraft and could be one possible design choice for entries into the project.

Currently the longest duration aircraft flying is the Global Hawk. The Global Hawk is an UAV that can fly for 40-48 hours straight without refueling. This new proposed aircraft would fly for 1000 times longer than the Global Hawk. Some ideas of how this could be achieved include solar power which would work really well and possibly fuel cells.

We'll see how this interesting project pans out in the near future!

Godspeed

EADS Outpreforms Boeing? Who Got Paid Off Here?

As I spoke about a week or two ago, EADS company, Airbus, has won the contract for the Air Force tanker program. Recently the Air Force clarified things, saying that the A330 beat out the 767 in every category. This leaves me personally confused as to how they determined this. Someone got a payoff with this one.

Lets review the 5 criteria for the contract:

-capability
-risk
-past performance
-cost
-"integrated fleet aerial refueling assessment"

Ok, lets review these one by one and assess how exactly Boeing lost in every single category.



Capability

As far as capability, the 767 should be just as capable as the A330 with the only exception being that the A330 can carry more fuel. At the same time though, Boeing was given the criteria of medium sized air refueler, if the Air Force had specified that it wanted a large refueler, then the 777 would have been put forth as an option. A330 has the capacity, but capacity is not the same as capability.


Risk

This one confuses me, how is a 767 which has been through flight testing and proven as a reliable aircraft, more risky then an aircraft that hasn't been built yet, by a company that has never made a tanker aircraft before. That’s right, Airbus has never made a tanker before, while Boeing has two under its belt.


Past Performance

I'm not sure if this is past performance of the aircraft or the company. If it’s the aircraft, I'm not sure you can measure the past performance of planes that have no past. If it's the company, then how is the performance of a company that has never made a tanker before, better than that of a company that has created two, to date.


Cost

Well there, somehow Boeing lost with a lower cost per plane, and it currently fits all available hangars. The A330 costs more per plane, and is larger so it doesn't fit all of the current hangars requiring more money to be spent on modifying hangars and possible the runways for a heavier aircraft. Not sure how the 767 costs more.

"Integrated fleet aerial refueling assessment"

Ummmm, What does that mean? at the least this is a tie to anyone outside of the, Air Force elite who are the only ones who actually know what this criteria means.




As far as I can tell, the 767 still came out on top, well unless you factor in the changing of criteria after bids were due. That’s a whole other issue though.

Southwest Under the Microscope

Southwest has backed themselves into a corner, and now must attend a hearing on some pretty serious charges.

Apparently Southwest has been operating many planes (117 to be exact) without proper saftey inspections. Due to a few crashes of 737 aircraft in the past, 737's being the only aircraft operated by Southwest, these aircraft must undergo inspections of the rudder and for metal fatigue on a regular basis.

It seems as though some of Southwest's 737 have gone up to 30 months without an inspection. These are some serious issues brought up by two FAA inspector who are claiming that some FAA administrators have relaxed the rules on purpose for Southwest, as to not interrupt regular flight schedules. As far as I can tell, 30 months is not "relaxing" the rules as much as breaking right through them and leaving their shattered remains in the dust.

This is a huge problem, as it risked passenger lives, and overall may have been part of the reason that Southwest has been turning profits and bragging, when other airlines struggle.

This is unacceptable, saftey is always the first and foremost in any situation.

USAF Slammed By the Public and Boeing

Yesterday the USAF announced its decision for the purchase of the new air refueling tankers. Their decision was for the KC-30 (named the KC-45A by the USAF), built in France by Airbus. This aircraft was chosen over the Boeing 767. Needless to say, the general public, and Boeing were livid... to put it lightly.

In order to understand why everyone, admittedly including myself, were so angered by this decision we have to look at many factors. When you look at the stats between the two planes that each tanker is based off of, the reason for the decision is fairly clear; fuel capacity. The KC-30, based on the A330, is larger than the Boeing competition the KC-767, modeled from the Boeing 767. While this seems to be an obvious choice for the winner, thats just about the only thing going for the KC-30.

At the moment, Airbus has built a grand total of, yes count them.... 0 KC-30 tankers, yep thats right, this plane has not even been built and flight tested yet. The KC-767 has recently finished flight testing and has started to be delivered to both the Italian Air Force and the Japanese Air Force for their use. This puts Boeing way ahead of Airbus, they have a deliverable model... right now!

Now lets look at a few more things. Boeing is an American Company, and Airbus is European. This mean the USAF, will be supporting mainly another country, although Airbus has promised to use the American company Northrop Grumman for the mods. So in a time of recession, the USAF decides to send our tax dollars to another country, nothing like giving the stock market a negative boost.

Then there's the issue of price. The sale price for the KC-767 will be $40 million less than that of the KC-30. So the Air Force, who at the moment is complaining because their fighter fleet needs updating and they don't have the budget, is spending over $7.1 billion extra in the initial contract, just by picking the KC-30 over the KC-767. So if they supported the American economy and bought the cheaper plane, that would allow them to buy an additional 51 F-22 Raptors, to update their fighter fleet; not nearly enough, but a good start.

Now we'll talk about the serious impact to the American economy, other than straight cash... rather... Jobs! Boeing estimates that if the contract was given to them, that would allow them to create/sustain about 44,000 jobs in about 40 states between all the supplies and Boeing employees. This also kills Kansas, as many know, I live in Wichita. Our mayor was told this news at a meeting, and shook his head in disbelief, as did many of the other people attending the meeting.

The contract would have created 300-500 new jobs at the Boeing facility in Wichita, as well as another 500 jobs for supplier Spirit Aerosystems. This contract would also have kept the 767 production line running for the next few years, allowing those jobs to remain in Everett, Washington. Overall in Kansas the new job total was expected to be about 3,800. The Wichita agenda meetings produced disbelief and people saying something about an "explosion in Congress."

In a time when European companies are very hesitant to give any money to the American economy, case and point, British Airways. Why should we be supporting another country... in any way if avoidable.

We can only hope that this decision is reversed after the publics reaction to this. I am personally disappointed by this decision. This raises many questions for me about the leadership of the USAF.

Your WIng is in My Body... No Your Body is in My Wing

NASA has recently been testing the new Blended Wing Body (BWB) concept. The new concept takes the conventional build for an aircraft and modifies the fuselage into a lifting surface. The new design could prove to be more efficient and will definitely allow for more passenger space/ cargo space on-board.

The current flight tests being preformed by NASA will for one, validate the airworthiness of the design. Secondly, and most importantly, the tests will give valuable feedback on flight performance. As this is a completely new design and a fairly significant departure from current aircraft design, the aircraft must be tested. The feedback from the test flights will help determine how the BWB design will react in situations and how flight controls will work.

The information gathered from the test flights will allow the refinement of flight control software and basic flight controls for maximum in-flight performance. This new design could be the future of large scale passenger travel.

This design could prove to be very valuable to military forces. The BWB would be able to efficiently carry huge amounts of cargo on-board and may replace the conventional heavy lift cargo planes used in the Air Force today.

This would be a cool sight in full scale, coming to an airport near you!