All Opinion articles – Page 36
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OpinionOPINION: Can Solar Impulse 2 really inspire change?
In this age of intercontinental travel, the setting of aviation records may seem like a throwback to a bygone era. But there remain boundaries to push, and Solar Impulse’s bid to set new endurance standards for solar powered, no-fuel flying is impressive and important.
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OpinionOPINION: Can gadget-free H160 be a revolutionary success?
As the curtain dropped behind Airbus Helicopters’ beaming chief executive Guillaume Faury at the Heli-Expo show in Orlando, Florida, it revealed... well, what appears to be just another helicopter.
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OpinionOPINION: Why search for MH370 could come to an end
A year after it disappeared, not a trace of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has been found. Tantalising but vestigial satellite links with the aircraft have enabled Australian Transport Safety Bureau-led searchers to reach a consensus on where it is worth looking for the Boeing 777’s remains – but ...
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Opinion
OPINION: UK SAR transition leaves no room for error
Privatising public services is not a new concept, but selling off a nation’s coastal and inland helicopter search and rescue operation is a bold move.
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OpinionOPINION: Why the A380 is a Neo too far
Slightly more than a decade ago, it was Boeing’s turn to make a hard decision. Airbus had launched the A380, so the company weighed up whether to respond with a clean-sheet design or a simpler product revamp.
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OpinionOPINION: Walsh all set to steer IAG to next opportunities
While the US legacy triumvirate have been making headlines about unfair competition from the Gulf carriers, Europe's leading airline group, IAG, has become part-owned by one of them.
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OpinionOPINION: Will US proposals clear the air for unmanned systems?
It was a landmark week in the history of unmanned aviation. In an industry segment normally driven by technology advances, this time the push came from two separate and very different policy decisions by the US government. First, the Federal Aviation Administration released on 15 February a draft of proposed ...
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OpinionOPINION: Where have the steely-eyed pilots gone?
Despite the statistics suggesting that flying is as safe as it has ever been, it feels increasingly fragile with every passing accident.
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OpinionOPINION: Bombardier counts cost of CSeries gamble
As Bombardier reshuffles its leadership and seeks to contain a financial crisis, it is time to consider how things could have gone so wrong for the Canadian manufacturer.
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OpinionOPINION: Is ICAO on right track with 15min position updates?
After Air France flight 447 was lost in the Atlantic in 2009 the industry debated what it should do to ensure that never again would an aircraft’s oceanic position be so ill-defined that it takes two years to find the wreckage. But nothing actually happened.
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OpinionOPINION: How wi-fi policy could threaten airline brands
In November 2014, Jeremy Gutsche, a well known Canadian entrepreneur, was on a Singapore Airlines Airbus A380 flight from London to Singapore. A busy executive, he was happy that there was wi-fi available on his flight.
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OpinionOPINION: Is big spending coming back for the US military?
On the surface, the US military’s half-trillion dollar budget request for fiscal year 2016, unveiled on 2 February, feels quite profligate compared with recent, sequestration-constrained years.
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OpinionOPINION: North Sea helicopter operators must maintain safety drive
When offshore oil support helicopter operations in the UK sector suffered five serious accidents or incidents between 2009 and 2013, the Civil Aviation Authority’s initial response was defensive. It dismissed the fact that the Norwegian sector – with a similar fleet and only slightly fewer operations – had suffered no ...
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Opinion
OPINION: Time for Boeing to control 787 costs
Boeing has spent a lot of money on the 787 programme. How long will it take to make a profit on the project, and do investors care if accounting rules allow it to declare a unit profit now?
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OpinionOPINION: Keeping psychology out of the cockpit
Last year 537 people died on two separate Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 flights. One of them – flight MH17 – was definitely not an accident, and the other, MH370, may not have been accidental either.
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Opinion
OPINION: Will Lockheed cope with F-35 production rate hike?
A complex global supply chain, unfamiliar structural materials and aircraft systems, a history of supplier bottlenecks and serial breakdowns on the assembly line: are we talking about the Lockheed Martin F-35 or the Boeing 787? Frustratingly, the answer is both.
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OpinionOPINION: Oil's well for the airframers
When Airbus and Boeing opted to launch re-engined versions of their A320 and 737 families rather than develop all-new narrowbodies, their logic was that – while the industry was happy with the design, reliability and capacity of their current single-aisle offerings – long-term high oil prices would spur a rush ...
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OpinionOPINION: Airbus in it for the long-haul with A321
The future of the long-haul narrowbody market is now slightly clearer. Airbus has officially launched a 4,000nm (7,400km)-range version of the A321neo that can match or exceed the Boeing 757-200, including the niche role of flying from the US East Coast to secondary cities in western Europe.
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OpinionOPINION: After Indonesia AirAsia crash, hand-wringing is not enough
Modern airliners should not fall out of the sky, so why did an Indonesia AirAsia Airbus A320 do so with no emergency call? Unless it was some form of terrorism or sabotage one can only look to previous experience for answers.
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Opinion
OPINION: Airbus delivers great wide hope; but what next?
A year ago, Airbus’s widebody strategy looked ragged at best. At one end of its offering, the A330 was a two-decade-old programme with a depleting backlog (its thirsty A340 sibling having already been killed off). At the other, the A380 was struggling to expand its appeal beyond Emirates. In the ...