Airplane Geeks Come and Airplane Geeks Go

A recent press release:

Evanston, IL June 22, 2009 - A change has come to the top, the top of aviation geekdom that is. Courtney Miller, one of the daring-duo founders of the Airplane Geeks podcast (www.airplanegeeks.com) one year ago this week has produced his final show for the world famous radio program as he moves on to a new job in Canada. Airplane Geeks is the always relevant - often irreverent - look at the previous week's aviation industry news.

Replacing Courtney Miller are two bloggers and podcasters already well known to Airplane Geeks listeners. One who will valiantly attempt to fill Court's shoes is Rob Mark, CEO of CommAvia, a commercial pilot, writer and editor of the award-winning industry blog Jetwhine.com - (www.jetwhine.com). Rob was also just named an Aerospace Journalist of the Year for 2009 at the Paris Air Show. Dan Webb, a sophomore at Bryant University writes the Things in the Sky Blog at (www.thingsinthesky.com).

While listeners expressed sadness at Miller's decision to leave the podcast, co-host Max Flight said, "Courtney's leaving? Really?" Jetwhine editor Rob Mark said, "Although I learned quite a bit about being an airplane geek long before I met Court and Max, my daughter says I'll still fit right in." Webb added, "My coverage of both the shiny bits and the smudges within the airline industry should provide Rob and Max plenty to keep the discussion going."

Some industry competitors, obviously fearing for their own jobs now that Max, Rob and Dan have teamed up, piped in with their two cents. Flightblogger's Jon Ostrower said, "The world will never be the same," while Aviation Week's high priestess of the aviation world online, Benet' Wilson, said, "I am delighted to hear that my old friend Rob Mark will become the new co-host of the Airplane Geeks podcast. His segments are sure to kill the podcast giving the rest of us a chance to do our own version of the show. Just kidding. Good luck guys."

New episodes of the Airplane Geeks become available online and via RSS and iTunes each Tuesday afternoon. Airplane Geeks has also forged a new program syndication agreement with Flight Line Internet Radio - (www.flightlineinternetradio.com) - to run regular show segments.

Aviation museum articles

Thirty Thousand Feet has begun publishing a series of sponsored Aviation Museum Articles. Each article provides information about a museum, including the museum’s mission, exhibits, program offerings, location, and admission prices. There is also a link to the museum’s web site.

Three articles kick off the series:

The Frontiers of Flight Museum located in Dallas, Texas. This museum provides a fun, interactive, and thorough walk through aviation history.

The Glenn L. Martin Maryland Aviation Museum at Martin State Airport in Maryland. This museum has a general aviation focus, but is more broadly dedicated to the promotion and preservation of aviation and space exploration in the State of Maryland.

The Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington has a vast collection of aircraft, exhibits, interactive displays and workshops.
More articles will be added in the near future.

Visiting and supporting these and other aviation museums helps keep our aviation heritage alive, and its a great way to introduce our youth to the field of aviation. Find a museum near you and go have a great day exploring history!

Paris Air Show 2009 video

Flightglobal has produced some great video at the 2009 Paris Air Show. The flight display highlights features the Eurofighter Typhoon, Airbus A-380, F-18 Hornet, F-16 Fighting Falcon, C-130J Hercules, LH-10 Elipse, Bobin R-2160, and a beautiful old Lockheed Constellation.

Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields

My aviation website pick of the week from Episode 50 of the Airplane Geeks podcast:

My pick is Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields, a website with descriptions and images of 1,428 airfields in all 50 U.S. states.

The author is Paul Freeman, a pilot who says he has always been interested in the abandoned airfields that are all over the country. These airfields can sometimes be critical to a pilot in an emergency, and sometimes they just have a fascinating history.

To explore the site a bit, I pretty much randomly chose Jonnycake Airport in western CT. I found t was built between 1957-60, initially with a 2,400' unpaved runway, but later with a 2,800' paved runway. There are sectional chart images, and recollections from a pilot who trained there in 1960. Other photos show private planes at the airport in the early days and aerial photos of the airport.

The airport closed in 2004 after a dispute between the airport owners and the owner of the property, who no longer wanted an airport on his property. The pilots argued about the economic benefits to the region, and the property owner responded by saying in the past 50 years that only amounted to two nearby restaurants that were popular with visiting pilots.The town made noises about grabbing the land by eminent domain, the FAA made noises about buying the airport, and so it remains.  It's fascinating local history (in a lot more detail than I just related), but imagine that repeated for over 1,400 airports and you've got an impressive collection of aviation history here.

So, have a look at this site and you'll almost certainly find at least one abandoned airfield near you. Take the opportunity to learn a little local aviation history!

Five Key Trends Impacting the Aerospace and Defense Industry Amid Challenging Economic Times

The following opinion article was provided by Accenture. It was written by Damien Lasou and it sets the stage for the upcoming Paris airshow.

As this year’s Paris Air Show comes into view, it’s become clear that fundamental change is in the air in aerospace and defense. The industry is shrinking on many different levels. On the decline industry-wide during the past year are a vast number of metrics including the number of airplanes manufactured, revenues and overall market size. The root cause, of course, is the extraordinarily challenging global economy.

In Paris we will witness a dramatically altered industry with a new set of trends and issues that are rapidly coalescing and will help companies accelerate towards high performance. They include:

Executing a more strategic approach to managing costs: If aerospace and defense companies cut costs broadly and indiscriminately in response to the declining market, they risk a vicious deflationary cycle. Instead, companies should embrace a more strategic approach to managing costs. Rather than solely focusing on lowering costs, companies must cut costs wisely with future plans in mind. The aim should be to free cash and capital for investments that position them to emerge from the downturn in a stronger position.

Embracing a more proactive investment mindset: Aerospace and defense companies should make proactive investments as opposed to postponing investments until the market recovers. Investments in program management, industrialized portfolio management and new innovative platforms are required for companies to have a foot in markets now and in the future. Investments in talent management are also key now because they secure future competency in an era of an aging and rapidly retiring elder workforce. And investments in adaptive supply chains are also crucial as the overall industry shifts more to emerging markets and new entrants. Accenture research has found that long-term “winners” tend to use downturns as opportunities to invest. When the market recovers, these companies pull ahead of their peers in overall performance.

Taking a more strategic approach to systems integration and outsourcing: Large aerospace manufacturers are rapidly transforming themselves into systems integrators that outsource many other aspects of airplane production such as engineering and manufacturing. Such collaborations can allow these companies to tap more industry-specific talent and increase the depth and breadth of their product and business portfolios. This will create successful new business models.

Accelerating the shift to a services business model: Customer service and support are key competitive differentiators as companies seek during the downturn to extend the life of their physical and financial assets. Services are one of the most promising areas of untapped growth, particularly as customers defer or cancel put aside purchases during the recession.

Keeping these points top of mind, I’m looking forward to the Paris Air Show as a springboard for great future opportunities and growth. I’m anxious to see which companies will be the trailblazers in transforming their businesses, the ones that will move ahead of the curve and accelerate towards high performance.

Damien Lasou leads the global Accenture Aerospace and Defense business. He can be reached at Damien.lasou@accenture.com.

Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing company.

Living on an AirTran for a month

That's right, comedian Mark Malkoff is living on an AirTran Airways plane for the month of June. He'll use AirTran Airways’ new Wi-Fi service to blog about his experience from 35,000 feet.

Malkoff plans to stay on the plane for 30 days straight as he attempts to break a Guinness Book of World Records continuous flight record. He’ll fly to up to 12 cities each day and at night sleep on board the plane at its hub in Atlanta.

Crazy? See for yourself at http://www.markonairtran.com/. You can also follow him on Twitter as @mmalkoff.

Alternative Sources of Energy for Aircraft

From time to time we publish submissions from websitsite visitors.  This one is from Mark Sorne, the Marketing & Business Development Officer at Aerosup Inc.

ALTERNATIVE SOURCES OF ENERGY FOR AIRCRAFT

Due to increasing fuel costs, a lot of organizations in the aircraft industry are researching and investigating ways to come up with a solution. There are many major airlines around the world that reportedly incurred net losses already in the first quarter of the year 2008 compared to their previous revenues last year.

The use of alternative sources of energy may be the answer. Different companies are trying to develop alternative fuels to address its rapid rate of increase, which is a major problem globally.

The following might just be the answers:

a.. Hydrogen Fuel
b.. Biofuel
c.. Liquid Fuel Oil (GTL)
d.. Electric Power
e.. Fuel Cell

Hydrogen Fuel

Boeing has announced last April 03, 2008 that it has successfully managed to fly a manned airplane powered by hydrogen fuel cells.

It was the first time in the history of aviation. What was used is a lithium-ion battery pack and PEM hydrogen fuel cell, which was developed by Boeing Research and Technology Europe. Hydrogen is not considered an energy source rather a energy carrier because it takes huge amount of energy to extract it from water.

The plane which flown 3,300 feet for 20 minutes was a two-seat Dimona motor-glider with electric motor and conventional propeller. At one point during the course of the flight, the plane managed to reach a speed of 62 mph.

Boeing is not yet certain If this can be applied to a large passenger airplane but they would continue to research for the probability.

Biofuel

Last February 25, 2008, Virgin Atlantic successfully flown an airplane with biodiesel. This made them the first airline to have a breakthrough on this.

Biofuel can either a solid, liquid, or gas fuel derived from recently dead biological material. The use of it has a big potential to reduce our dependence on petroleum. Different types of biofules re vegetable oil, biodiesel, bioalcohols, biogas, syngas, cellulosic, and algae.

The company’s Boeing 747-400 flew from London to Amsterdam. One of its four fuel tanks has a 20 percent mix of biofuel derived from coconut and babassu oil. These were chosen because they are environmentally and socially sutainable and can be found in usual cosmetic products. No modifications were done to accommodate the biofuel.

Virgin Atlantic said that they are willing to share the results of its analysis to other organization also wanting to cut their carbon emissions.

But there might be a problem for flying planes with biodiesel, the fuel my freeze at high altitudes.

On October 19, 2007, Biodiesel Solutions and Green Flight International successfully completed a test flight in Nevada using a Czechoslovakian-made L-29 aircraft that has reached 17,000 feet during the course of the flight.

Liquid Fuel Oil

February 5, 2008. For the first time, an Airbus A380 aircraft has managed to fly using liquid fuel from gas, also known as GTL (Gas to liquids). It can be defined that GTL is a refinery method that transform natural gas or other gaseous carbons hydrocarbons into longer-chair hydrocarbons or liquid fuels. The resulting fuel then can only be blended with Diesel fuel. Shell International Petroleum provided the jet fuel used. The aircraft has flown from Filton UK to Toulouse France for three hours.

Electric Fuel

July 30, 2007. Sonex and Aeroconversions introduced an electric sports aircraft at the AirVenture OshKosh trade show. The aircraft was runned by electric engines and a high-output battery.

An electric aircraft is one, which runs on electric motors instead of combustion engines. The electricity can either come from fuel cells, solar cells, ultra capacitors, power beaming, or batteries.

Some of the advantages are decreased change of mechanical failure resulting to an increase in safety, lesser noise, greater torque from electric motors, and lesser risk of explosion or fire.

Fuel Cell

May, 2008. With the collaboration of German Aerospace Center and Airbus, the first commercial aircraft using fuel cells was introduced at the ILA Berlin Air Show 2008. The aircraft was an Airbus 320.

In the meantime, Sandia National Laboratories and Boeing are working together on a project for a possibility of using fuel cells to provide power backup for aircraft. The purpose is to provide alternative power for emergency situations when the main power shuts down. Also, Israel Aerospace Industries is currently developing an inter-city aircraft that will use fuel cells.

A fuel cell is electrochemical conversion equipment. It converts fuel and an oxidant to electricity, which reacts with the existence of electrolytes.

Mark Sorne
Marketing & Business Development Officer
Aerosup Inc.
E-mail: marketing@aerosup.com
Website: www.aerosup.com