Aviation Report

Operator and integrator Hub One, which specializes in professional solutions, ran an experiment at the Parus Charles de Gaulle airport to test 4G-LTE in partnership with Alcatel-Lucent. The goal of that experiment is to test the very high bandwidth mobile network LTE technology in a real world setting for airport mission critical systems such as anticollision systems, air ground data transfers, surveillance cameras for baggage sorting zones, operational communications with intervention vehicles, multimedia communications between ground personnel and control towers... In order to run that experi,ent, a state of the art Alcatel-Lucent LTE network was setup. An ePC (evolved Packet Core) with 3 eNode B base stations were deployed. The first base station covers the aircraft zone, the second covers the baggage sorting zone and the thrid one covers the passenger zone. They were set to work with a 700 MHz frequency. Mobile LTE routers were also installed onboard aircrafts and interventi...

GE has just revealed the private leaderboard on Flight Quest 2 -- and four outstanding winners from the Kaggle community.  Flight Quest 2 began last August as the second part in GE’s Industrial Internet Flight Quest, in partnership with Alaska Airlines and Kaggle. They challenged data scientists around the world to develop algorithms to increase flight efficiencies in real time, reducing delays and maximizing a flight’s profitability. Using national airspace data provided by Flight Stats, the winning Flight Quest 2 algorithms determine the most efficient flight routes, speeds and altitudes at any moment taking into account variables such as weather, wind, and airspace restraints. The winning model by José Fonollosa proved to be up to 12 percent more efficient when compared to data sets from actual flights. GE plans to develop rapid prototyping from these algorithms to deliver a first-of-a-kind solution that will give pilots and dispatchers a prescriptive, network-wide view of ...

30 Pilots And Flight Attendants Confess The Best Kept Secrets You Dont Know About Flying: THE TRUE STORY BEHIND THOSE OXYGEN MASKS That if the oxygen masks drop down, you only have about 15 minutes of oxygen from the point of pulling them down. However, that is more than enough time for the pilot to take us to a lower altitude where you can breathe normally. More important – at altitude, you have 15-20 seconds before you pass out. Put yours on first, then do your kids. Passing out for a few seconds won’t harm the kids. DON’T DRINK WATER ON A PLANE THAT DIDN’T COME FROM A BOTTLE Former Lufthansa cargo agent here. Do not EVER drink water on an aircraft that did not come from a bottle. Don’t even TOUCH IT. The reason being the ports to purge lavatory shit and refill the aircraft with potable water are within feet from each other and sometimes serviced all at once by the same guy. Not always, but if you’re not on the ramp watching, you’ll never know. The drinking water, th...

To solve the mystery of what happened to Malaysia Airlines (MAS:MK) Flight MH370, investigators need the airplane’s data and voice recorders. In an airplane tragedy, however, the information stored in the so-called black box inevitably ends up inside a wreck. This seems like a terrible place to keep the clue you need to find most. As investigators scour the Gulf of Thailand and waters as far north as Hong Kong for debris from the Boeing (BA) 777-200 that vanished en route to Beijing on Saturday, there’s almost no indication yet of what doomed the flight and the 239 passengers on board. So far, at least, no wreckage or jet fuel has been found. Without recovering the black box, there’s little way to know what caused a plane cruising at 35,000 feet to disappear from radar. Why not transmit this flight data off the plane so it’s accessible almost instantly? Airlines, after all, track each of their flights everywhere in the world and can advise crews on course adjustments, security a...

Ryanair's colorful CEO is in the travel headlines again. But this time it's not for promising to someday charge passengers for using the bathroom in-flight. Michael O'Leary said his airline plans to offer flights from Europe to the United States for as little as $14. Flights from the United States to Europe will be even cheaper, he said. He made his remarks at the Irish Hotels Federation conference earlier this week, as reported by The Telegraph. A Ryanair representative confirmed to ABC News O'Leary's comments at the conference. The flights would leave from up to 14 major European cities to 12 to 14 destinations in the United States. But Ryanair does not yet operate any aircraft capable of making long-haul flights. It needs to acquire appropriate aircraft first and Ryanair told ABC News it "will not engage in speculation." “We can make money on 99 cent fares in Europe,” O’Leary said at the conference. “Not every seat will be 10 euros [about $...

NetJets reconstructed market boundaries to create a blue ocean by looking across alternative industries. NetJets observed that business travellers, the most lucrative mass of customers, have two principal choices: They can fly business class or first class on a commercial airline or the company can purchase its own aircraft to serve its corporate travel needs. Why would corporations choose one alternative industry over another? Commercial travel avoids the high up-front, fixed-cost investment of a multimillion dollar jet aircraft. Also, a company purchases only the number of corporate airline tickets needed per year, lowering variable costs and reducing the possibility of unused aviation travel time that often accompanies the ownership of corporate jets. On the other hand, corporations buy private jets to dramatically cut total travel time, to reduce the hassle of congested airports, to allow for point-to-point travel, and to gain the benefit of having more productive and energized...

  ONE of the scarier videos on YouTube was recorded by the nose-cone camera of a fighter jet as it was taking off. Just after the plane leaves the runway a large bird comes hurtling towards it and vanishes into the aircraft’s engine. The pilot spends an agonising 30 seconds or so trying to regain control, before issuing the order to eject, after which the viewer is treated to a shot of the onrushing ground before the screen goes blank. Bird strikes are a problem—sometimes a fatal one—for military and civil aviation alike. America’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reports that there are about 10,000 such strikes a year to the country’s non-military aircraft, costing more than $957m in damage and delays. The worldwide figure is estimated by the European Space Agency to be $1.2 billion. Moreover, though relatively few people have been killed in accidents caused by bird strikes (research by John Thorpe, former chairman of the International Bird Strike Committee, recorded...