Wings and Wheels air show

Thirty Thousand Feet received some information about the 2008 Wings and Wheels air show:

Located in Dunsfold Aerodrome, Surrey on Sunday August 24th, Wings and Wheels promises to be an exciting day of family entertainment! The Air Show features displays from the Royal Air Force Red Arrows and the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight. There will be a great mix of civilian and military flying displays throughout the afternoon, performing fantastic aerobatics in the skies over Dunsfold!

The Motoring Displays will include some exciting runway demonstrations of both historic and modern supercars in action! Throughout the day there will be a great display of static supercars, classic cars and military vehicles as well as trade stands & other attractions.

All proceeds of the event are being distributed to charities.

Sounds like a great event. View the 3 minute video of the 2006 show and you'll want to be there.

New emissions calculator reveals true cost of your flight

See the elliott.org blog for information and a link to a calculator that quantifies the emissions of the airline flight you enter. The comments on this topic are fairly active too.

Prizes for GA pilots

Into Flight, the new community for general aviation pilots, wanted to commemorate the launch of their website, so they're holding a contest. You can win some great prizes, including an iPod Touch 8GB, and iPod Classic 80GB, as well as a Nano and a Shuffle.

All you have to do is add your review, photo, or video to the site before the contest deadline of May 27th, 2008. They'll select the winners from all contributors during the month, and contact them by email.

There are 3 categories you can enter:

Best Personal Plane Description and Photo - You can add your own plane to Into Flight, including photos, description, videos, etc. When you're looking to upgrade, you can list it for free in the classifieds. For the contest, they're looking for the best composed personal aircraft on the site - beautiful photos, well written description, nicely done.

Most Englightening Review - Write the most interesting, insightful review of an aircraft, including well thought out pros and cons. Want to find a plane to review? Look in the Plane Model database and be inspired. Your review doesn't have to be the only review for a plane - just the best.

Funniest Plane Video - What contest is complete without a comedy prize? Humor can take any form here. Look at their videos section and upload your own.

Take a look at the site, contribute an entry, and maybe win a prize!

How much does an airliner cost?

Well, the actual cost to the airline is between the airframer and the engine manufacturer, and it's usually at a "discount" from list price. The amount of the discount depends on many factors: size of the order, if it's a launch order, strategic objectives of the seller, and many others. In the end, it's hard for "outsiders" to know just how much the airplane costs.

Generally, however, we do know the "list" price, and it's kind of interesting to look at the numbers. Speednews just published the average 2008 list prices for Airbus aircraft:

A318: US$59.1m
A319: US$70.3m
A320: US$76.9m
A321: US$90.3m
A330-200: US$180.9m
A330-200F: US$184.2m
A330-300: US$200.8m
A340-300: US$215.5m
A340-500: US$237.1m
A340-600: US$249.4m
A350-800: US$208.7m
A350-900: US$240.6m
A350-1000: US$269.6m
A380: US$327.4m

Find the Boeing prices at http://www.boeing.com/commercial/prices/index.html.

Five year flights in a UAV

Aurora Flight Sciences, a supplier of high-altitude unmanned aerial systems (UAVs), announced that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded them a contract to develop new aircraft that can stay aloft for up to five years.

This program is known as “Vulture.”

The objective of the Vulture program is to develop an aircraft capable of remaining on-station uninterrupted for over five years to perform intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR), and communication missions over an area of interest. The technology challenges include development of energy management and reliability technologies capable of allowing the aircraft to operate continuously for such extended durations. Vulture, in effect, will be a retaskable, persistent pseudo-satellite capability, in an aircraft package.

The Aurora design is called “Odysseus” and uses solar energy to power the aircraft during daylight and store energy for power at night.



See:

Aurora Flight Sciences, DARPA Selects Aurora for Vulture Program.

CompositesWorld.com, Aurora Flight Sciences unveils Odysseus unmanned aircraft.

DARPA 2007 Industry Day announcement.

Pilot employment opportunity

Weather Modification Inc., Canada, is seeking turbine and twin piston Captains for the 2008 Alberta Hail Mitigation Program. The contract runs June 1st through September 15th. Aircraft are King Air C90, Piper II Cheyennes and Cessna 340s. Pilots based out of Calgary and Red Deer, Alberta, Canada. Seeking 2500TT for turbine captains with commercial licenses. FAA or CAA licenses acceptable. Aircraft are US registered. Future opportunities exist abroad. Please send resumes to Dr. Terry Krauss at krausst@telusplanet.net entitled Alberta 2008, and Hans Ahlness, VP Operations: hans@weathermod.com. Aircraft will be cloud seeding, IMC time is critical.

Weather Modification Inc. provides atmospheric resource management technologies - also known as cloud seeding, cloud modification, atmospheric resource management, and precipitation management.

Delta / Northwest merger

Delta Press release: Delta Air Lines, Northwest Airlines Combining To Create America's Premier Global Airline.

Website: http://www.newglobalairline.com/.

Merged name: Delta.

Investment community webcast: Tuesday, April 15, at 9:00 a.m. EDT. www.delta.com/about_delta/investor_relations/webcasts or http://ir.nwa.com

Press Conference: Tuesday, April 15, at 10:30 a.m. EDT, webcast live over the internet at www.newglobalairline.com.

The press conference will also be available live via satellite through the following feed:

Feed time: 1000-1130 EDT w/15 approx. (test time from 10-10:30 AM)
Coordinates: KU-band: GAL11 / Transponder 15 / Audio 6.2 & 6.8 / Downlink frequency: 12000 (H).

Rocket Racing League at Airventure

The Rocket Racing League has announced that their first exhibition race will (finally) be held at the EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh August 1st and 2nd, 2008.

The Racing League features rocket-powered aircraft that are flown by through a "three-dimensional track way" at venues throughout the world.

At Oshkosh:

...two Rocket Racers will compete head-to-head in a demonstration race in the raceway in the sky. The Rocket Racer pilots will view the "raceway in the sky" via in-panel and 3D helmet displays and the 700,000 people in attendance at EAA AirVenture will witness the racing action live on multiple large projection screens.

After the Oshkosh event, the 2008 schedule looks like this:

Reno National Championship Air Races (Reno, NV) - September 10-14
X Prize Cup (Las Cruces, NM) - TBD 2008
Aviation Nation, Nellis AFB, (Las Vegas, NV) - November 8-9

You won't find anything like this elsewhere!

AirNav Airport Info for Pilots

There is a really handy search engine plug-in for the Firefox browser that adds AirNav Airport Info to the list of engines available in the search bar. After you install it, you simply type an airport identifier into the Firefox search bar, and you get an AirNav.com page with information about location, airport operations, communications, radio nav aids, services, runway information, ownership and management, instrument procedures, departure procedures, FBO's, hotels, and more.

It really is a handy little thing.

If you want to see what the search produces in your browser if you install the plug-in and search for JFK, see this page: http://www.airnav.com/airport/KJFK.

You can get the plug-in at http://mycroft.mozdev.org/.

Just how green are the airlines?

The Air Transport Association of America (ATA), was before the U.S. House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming today to talk about the industry and environmental issues. The ATA feels good about the accomplishments of the airlines, and offered some data to make their point:

U.S. commercial aviation contributes just 2 percent of domestic greenhouse gas emissions, compared to 25 percent for the balance of the transportation industry.

U.S. commercial airlines improved their fuel efficiency by 103 percent between 1978 and 2006...

[Airlines] are dedicated to developing commercially viable, environmentally friendly jet fuels.

The ATA press release then goes on to one of their favorite topics: air traffic control modernization.

...the commercial aviation industry can achieve an additional 15 percent in fuel efficiency if NextGen, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)-led initiative to modernize air traffic control, is approved by Congress.

A new air traffic control system means more direct routes which leads to fuel savings, according to the ATA. Of course, the big unstated issue is funding for NextGen. The ATA and the airlines claim general aviation does not currently pay their fair share and looks to user fees. The private pilots generally claim that fees are not needed to fund ATC modernization, and besides that, GA does not cause congestion for commercial aviation.

It's easy to see the passion between the opposing points of view, but hard to tell what the true facts are.

An Aviation Blog Fest at AirVenture

From the JetWhine blog comes word of a planned Aviation Blog Fest at AirVenture 2008 in Oshkosh Wisconsin. They're talking about cold drinks, special guests, a barbecue, lots of aviation talk, bloggers and podcasters. This should be a great opportunity to expand the community and have some fun.

The EAA AirVenture runs from July 28 to August 3, 2008. Times and locations of the Blog Fest events are yet to be determined.

JetWhine is also looking for some volunteer to help out.