All Systems & interiors articles – Page 916
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News
Why lemons can make pilots sick
Gunter Endres/LONDON WHAT WOULD YOU do if you are a pilot and you smell lemons in the cockpit? You would most likely to assume that the cabin staff is serving a gin and tonic, or cleaning the toilets, and you would ignore it. What you probably will ...
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Ringing in the new
What does the new Bell 407 offer over its predecessors? Graham Warwick/MONTREAL IF BELL IS renowned for two things in the commercial-helicopter field, they are the Model 206 and the two-blade rotor. These traditional Bell strengths have threatened to become weaknesses, however, as the prolonged ...
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Mesa-backed airline to start UK service
NEW UK CARRIER Community Express Airlines is awaiting the delivery of the first of two Shorts 360-300s from Liberty Express in the USA, to inaugurate a domestic schedule. Community Express will initially link Birmingham with London Gatwick, most probably from early October. Expansion to connect Bristol, ...
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FANS datalink component becomes operational
A PROTOTYPE OF the new oceanic-sector workstation - the controller's link to the Future Air Navigation System (FANS) - is now in operational testing at the US Federal Aviation Administration's Oakland, California, air-route traffic-control centre. The workstation, called the telecommunications processor, represents the first phase of the ...
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Born-again fighter
Israel's low-cost upgrade, for the venerable MiG-21, has entered the flight test stage. Arie Egozi/TEL AVIV THE UPGRADE prepared by Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) for the MiG-21 (Flight International, 15-21 March, P14) has been driven by the assumption that most potential customers want to enhance the aircraft's ...
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DASA/Collins team succeeds with GPS-based landing tests
Andrzej Jeziorski/MUNICH A TEAM FROM Collins Commercial Avionics of the USA and Germany's Daimler-Benz Aerospace (DASA) has carried out successfully what is claimed by the companies to be the first fully automatic satellite navigation-based landing. The trials were part of the Boeing-led GPS Landing System ...
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All American airline dream
What is it about the airline industry that makes an entrepreneur's heart go of a flutter? Few people outside Houston ever grow up dreaming that they will one day start an oil company - though take note if your kid asks what the per-barrel price of East Texas crude will ...
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2005: An airline odyssey
In ten years time, what will have become of the conventional wisdom of the airline industry? In looking ahead 10 years, this survey concentrates on how the electronic revolution will reshape the airline business. But first, Mead Jennings balances the projected technological advances against less quantifiable developments in labour ...
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Slots to grumble about
Virgin seems to have it all, well almost. Improving profitability, strong international codeshare partners and a highly successful brand name. But further expansion is hampered by the independent UK carrier's old bogey: slot restrictions at London/Heathrow. Sara Guild examines Virgin's dilemma.Washington, none; Philadelphia, none; Chicago, none; Boston, none; Bombay, none; ...
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Equity links act as lifeline
The chances of an airline alliance surviving are increased threefold if there are equity links between the partners, according to an analysis of all airline alliances undertaken by Boston Consulting Group. The same analysis, presented at a recent IIR/Airline Business conference, shows that the survival rate of intercontinental alliances is ...
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The digital age: A virtual reality?
Second-guessing future developments will help airlines in key areas like distribution.Good morning. It's 0800 local time on 1 August 2005. This synthesised, virtual reality, digital Airline Business newscast is brought to you, wherever you are, by satellite from London. The top stories this morning: * United Lufthansa buys final tranche ...
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Blanc brings Inter change
With sleight of hand and a change of name, Christian Blanc, now heading up both Air Inter and Air France, has dissipated the social unrest brewing around him. Air Inter's unions were against being merged into Air France Europe, wanting instead independence and the ability to develop freely. ...
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A new breed?
The US airline industry has produced several waves of startup carriers at various points in its history. The latest such surge, centred on low-cost entrants, started in 1992 with the recession in full swing and is now slowing in the swell of an economic upturn. Mead Jennings examines the new ...
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A changing game plan
In coach class passengers are contentedly gazing at seatback video screens, absorbed in a broad range of quality in-flight entertainment. Live television and radio vie for passengers' attention with the latest movie releases of 2005. Adults while away the hours making purchases of questionable wisdom or slowly gambling away their ...
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Germans win out on codes
A recent report on codesharing for the German ministry of transport has pushed Bonn to the centre of the debate in Europe, as Brussels prepares to launch its own long-awaited study. The report by the quasi-independent state research institute, DLR, is the first of its kind in Europe, following the ...
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Japan cool on codesharing
Judging from attitudes recently expressed in Tokyo, codesharing is not the key to solving the Japan-US dispute. It may have provided the way out of the US-Germany bilateral impasse, but with Japan trying to instill pan-Asian unity on aeropolitical issues, Tokyo believes extensive codesharing rights for US carriers would upset ...
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Superjumbo or white elephant?
Mrs Akido is flying from Sapporo to Fukuoka to visit her mother. While the aircraft is taxiing to the runway, she goes through the safety procedure on her virtual reality screen. In the noise-proofed cabin she cannot hear the roar of the engines, nestling under the 80 metre wingspan, as ...
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LAX land fee row rolls on
US airlines continue their landing-fee battle with Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), but so far all they have made is a small dent in the increases, as new fees are imposed and the validity of the old ones is largely upheld by the Department of Transportation. In late ...
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Tomorrow's flight plan
They call it the autonomous aeroplane. An aircraft which can be navigated around the world independently of any ground navigation aid and which, rather less easily, can return to earth anywhere in any weather. Technically the concept is a practicable one. Whether it will be coming to an airport near ...
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A fourfold future
How will airline passengers acquire travel products in the future? Can the airline industry retain control of the distribution pipeline through which carriers sell their products and get information on their customers, or will the large travel agencies take over? By Jay Rein, Michael Gelhausen and Scot Hornick. Ten years ...