Did American Airline Companies Kill The Super Sonic Transport?

Even though such aircraft are notorious for being not environmentally friendly and abysmally expensive to operate – but did the American airline companies been out to kill the super sonic transport program from the very start?

By: Ringo Bones 

Before being retired back in 2003, most of us probably still harbor the impression that it was the horrible accident of Air France Flight 4590 where an Air France Concorde flight tragically crashed back in July 2000. Some could say it was the post 9/11 “fear-of-flying” that eventually killed off the Concorde – the only supersonic capable civilian transport plane that was part of the 1960s super sonic transport program started by both the United States and leading European economic superpowers back then. But does anyone still know that as far back as the late 1960s, American airline companies already harbored a disdain for civilian super sonic transport programs like the Concorde? 

A few years before the Concorde’s maiden flight at Toulouse, France back in 1969, American airline companies were already concerned over declining profits and were already committed – at the time – to the purchase of 5-billion US dollars’ worth of wide-bodied subsonic jets, they were in no mood to pledge additional billions in super sonic transport orders. Back then, American airline companies cancelled their options for the Concorde and left the Anglo-French combine with only 16 orders. Remaining customers back then, at almost 50-million US dollars per plane were Britain, France, The People’s Republic of China and Iran. Eventually, only Britain and France maintained a fleet of Concorde planes as part of their national flag carriers when the civilian super sonic transport entered regular service. 

Though designed in the 1960s, the Concorde still looks fresh long after its retirement into a museum piece ten years ago – even long after the other design fads of the 1960s have worn into a cliché. And it was only after a few years it debuted in the 1976 Paris Air Show – while competing with the then Soviet Union’s version of the civilian super sonic transport, the Tupolev TU-144 – that the Concorde entered into full commercial service. 

But in truth, the Concorde is abysmally expensive to operate in comparison to typical subsonic jumbo jets. It takes three times the maintenance cost of a Boeing 747 and burns 50% more fuel despite carrying only 100 passengers to the 747’s 400. And during the austere fiscal environment of the post Operation Desert Storm early 1990s, Air France and British Airways, the only airline companies that operated the plane, have taken to using gimmicks to fill the seats. It wasn’t until the Clinton era economic boom of the mid to late 1990s that the romance of mere civilians with a little extra cash can safely break the sound barrier while sipping champagne and eating caviar while being pampered like royalties – until the tragic crash of Air France Flight 4590.  

Charging Passengers By Their Weight: Fairest Way To Fly?

Even though this is how fledgling airline companies did business when they first set up shop during the 1920s should airline passengers be charging their passengers according to heir own weight and how heavy are their baggage are? 

By: Ringo Bones

Believe it or not, during the dawn of the airline industry when passenger planes were no more than converted World War I era multi-engine biplane bombers, passengers were first asked to stand on a weighing scale with their carry-on baggage and were charged according to how heavy they are. Fast forward to 2013, Samoa Air CEO Chris Langton recently gained unintended fame after he decided to charge passengers by how much they and their baggage weigh – i.e. by the weight airfare billing – as opposed to by seat class that had since been de rigueur way back when airline companies started using the Douglas DC-3. Given that the law of physics has made practical aviation a weight-sensitive endeavor, isn’t it more pragmatic to charge airline passengers by how much they and their baggage weigh as opposed to seat class? 

Actually it was back in November 2012 that Samoa Air started charging passengers by how much they and their baggage weigh because the small airline company flies just three small planes in their fleet and these type of planes require more fuel – thus increased operating costs – the heavier their passengers and loads are. As a way to avoid running their airline company to the ground financially, Samoa Air introduces surcharges for passengers weighing more than 72 kilograms. In Samoa Air CEO Chris Langton’s experience of running his own airline company – and it is also proven by the existing laws of physics – airlines primarily run by weight (passengers and baggage / cargo) and not by seating class. 

So is charging passengers by how much they and their baggage weigh the fairest way to fly? Many frequent fliers on Samoa Air’s routes are quite skeptical – given that most of them are rather the burly American tourist types who normally weigh over 80 kilograms and Samoans who have grown heavier as they integrate into a rather sedentary urban lifestyle as they go to work in the tiny South Pacific island nation’s major urban centers. The Western style meat based diets are not helping matters either for the native Samoans who are the likely passengers of Samoan Air’s “by the pound” – as opposed to by the quid according to seating class- airfare billing. I wonder if Virgin Galactic’s space tourists’ fares will be based on the passenger’s weight.  

Low Cost Airlines Fueling The Latest Civil Aviation Boom?

With Ryanair and Lion Air ordering billions of dollars worth of new planes, is the budget airline sector fueling the latest civil aviation boom? 

By: Ringo Bones 

Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary might have picked the very right time to order 15.6 billion US dollars worth of the new Boeing 737 Max aircraft. After all, with Boeing’s on-going problems with the lithium ion batteries of the auxiliary power unit of their fleet of 787 Dreamliners already in service around the world, the Ryanair CEO could easily negotiate Boeing to buy a new fleet of 737 Max at a very keen price. 

On the East Asian low cost airline scene, Indonesia’s Lion Air  - currently Indonesia’s largest privately run airline company - decides to buy 24 billion US dollars worth of new fleet of aircraft from Airbus back in March 19, 2013 given that budget air travel is the only economically viable business move in the region at the moment. But can the budget airline sector manage to revitalize the currently struggling civil aviation market? 

Even though well-healed tourists had always associated budget airlines with shoddy sub-par service, overseas contract workers – especially from the economically depressed parts of the East Asian region – had been embracing low-cost carriers since the late 1990s as their commute of choice on their way to work in the more affluent parts of the Persian Gulf to earn money for their families. And if the world’s major civil aviation firms manage to make keenly priced intermediate range passenger planes favored by low cost airline operators, then maybe, low cost airlines could spearhead the global economic recovery all of us desperately needs. 

F-35 Lightning: Not Airworthy?

As the current most expensive weapons systems procurement program by The Pentagon, is the F-35 Lightning’s jet engine problems affecting its airworthiness status?

By: Ringo Bones 

 

Back in February 25, 2013, a news story aired about a fleet of 50 F-35 Lightning aircraft were grounded after a routine maintenance discovered cracks in one of the plane’s turbine blades of its Pratt & Whitney F135 jet engine. Given that the F-35 program is currently The Pentagon’s most expensive weapons systems procurement program, will this turbine blade problem eventually affect its airworthiness? 

Given that current Federal laws still prohibit the export of the 120 million US dollar F-22 Raptor – even to America’s allies – Lockheed Martin developed a “budget” version of the Raptor called the F-35 Lightning during the late 1990s and it currently retails around 85 million US dollars each. Currently there are two variants of the F-35 – a conventional takeoff and landing version that needs 10,000-foot runways that Turkey and other American allies had been eyeing to purchase since 2010 and a short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing or STOVL version which the UK had been also eyeing to buy as a replacement for its ageing fleet of Harrier jump jets. 

Ever since the first decade of the 21^st Century, Lockheed Martin had been pitching the F-35 Lightning – especially its conventional takeoff and landing version – as the logical replacement of the F-16 Fighting Falcon, although these days, the top brass of the various arms of the US DoD had been eyeing the F-35 as a viable replacement of the A-10 Warthog and the F-18 Hornet. And there are two main capabilities of the F-35 that is absent of the older generation of military aircraft it sets to replace – like stealth and supercruise. 

As with the F-22 Raptor, the F-35 Lightning was designed with stealth capability - that is it is very hard to “see” or detect using conventional air defense radar. And its lightweight mostly composite material airframe allow the F-35 to have supercruise capability – i.e. fly supersonic without turning on its jet engines fuel hungry afterburners and like the F-22, the F-35 only requires the pilot to turn the afterburners only if he or she wishes to fly faster than Mach 1.5. 

Also, the short-takeoff-and-landing or STOVL version of the F-35 Lightning also has the advantage over the Harrier jump-jet it sets to replace due to its use of a lifting fan. The F-35’s lifting fan allow it to perform a very short running 100-yard takeoff and land vertically without the hot-gas ingestion problems that often cause the Harrier to crash during vertical landing maneuvers. 

IN the austere fiscal era of the post credit crunch world were shrinking national defense budgets are the norm - rater than the exception, Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning seems to be the best high performance military aircraft out there with a good price-performance ratio, if only the famed aerospace firm can solve its current turbine blade crack problems. If it does, it could probably become a leading figure in the aerospace industry for years to come despite the world’s ever shrinking national defense budgets.     

Lithium Ion Batteries: Not Airworthy?

With the recent fire that grounded fleets of Boeing 787 Dreamliner passenger planes due to their auxiliary power unit batteries being a fire hazard, are lithium ion batteries not airworthy?

By: Ringo Bones

Believe it or not, the world’s first all-electric powered propeller plane that has successfully flown – Calin Gologan’s Elektra One – uses lithium ion batteries as its primary power source and there are already large-scale all-electric passenger planes intended aimed for airline company use already in the works of Bauhaus Luftfahrt that will be powered with 40-megawatt-hour lithium ion batteries. Given their allegedly inherent fire hazard, why are lithium ion batteries got airworthy credentials despite the ones supplying the auxiliary power unit of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner that entered service with JAL and ANA were recently deemed a “fire hazard” in a recent Federal Aviation Administration inquiry?

As a fruit of our continuously galloping technology, lithium ion batteries are a notch above nickel cadmium and nickel metal hydride storage batteries that are a few rungs below it on the battery technology evolutionary scale. While lead acid / lead calcium storage batteries – which might work just fine for golf carts and short-range all electric cars – are deemed too heavy for aviation use. Even the nickel cadmium and those nickel metal hydride batteries used in hybrid cars just don’t have the power-to-weight-ratio requisite for general aviation applications.

The secret of the lithium ion batteries high power-to-weight ratio is its inherently low internal resistance compared to nickel cadmium or nickel metal hydride batteries of similar watt-hour ratings. Although, at the moment, lithium ion batteries seems like the ideal battery – the inherent fire hazard of its design was first noted in the remote controlled model plane hobbyist world and in Airsoft electric gun gaming world because less than ideal charging and discharging cycles in its applications always lead to the cause of hydrogen gas build-up which can be highly inflammable when it leaks and ignited by a stray electrical spark. Given its inherent fire hazard, aircraft manufacturer Airbus are already finding alternatives of the lithium ion battery planned to be used on the auxiliary power plant of its upcoming A350 plane due to the recent battery fire on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Will the next generation of lithium ion batteries intended for aviation use should be made more fire resistant or have a built-in fire suppression system? 

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner: A Flying Nightmare?

With a Japan Air Lines Boeing 787 Dreamliner recently having its auxiliary power unit’s batteries catching fire, is the new jumbo jet a “flying nightmare”?

By: Ringo Bones

Maybe its just due to the inevitable technical “teething problems” of a new product being introduced into a rather “technically conservative” market of the currently financially austere airline industry, but probably all frequent flyers still hope that the glitches currently plaguing the recently introduced Boeing 787 Dreamliner won’t result in a rather tragic crash in a near future. Unfortunately as of late, certain shaken passengers and JAL executives back in Tokyo now harbor the impression that Boeing’s latest headlining product – the Boeing 787 Dreamliner – could be a “flying nightmare”.

With a much delayed rollout that its maiden flight only happened near the tail end of 2011, Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner had been plagued by a recent spate of technical difficulties that now endanger the plane’s long-term economic viability in the currently financially austere global airline industry. There had been only 46 Dreamliners had been delivered by Boeing to its customers so far, and now, 5 of them had been grounded for thorough preventive maintenance due to the recent problems experienced by a couple Japan Air Lines owned 787 Dreamliners.

Back in Monday, January 7, 2013, a Japan Air Lines operated Boeing 787 Dreamliner’s auxiliary power unit’s batteries caught fire while waiting for its scheduled flight in Boston which resulted in an emergency evacuation of passengers and crew. A few days before, another JAL owned 787 Dreamliner’s scheduled flight was cancelled due to a fuel leak. Fortunately, both harrowing incidences never resulted in a single loss of life, but will it tarnish the image of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner as a “flying nightmare”?

It seems that every relatively newly rolled-out plane tends to experience technical teething problems during the first few years of regular service. Back in November 4, 2010, Qantas had experienced problems with the Rolls Royce Trent 900 turbofan engines used in their then newly acquired Airbus A380 Superjumbo – i.e. the Qantas Flight 32 incident. Fortunately, the problem too was resolved by the plane’s heroic flight-crew with no loss of life. Maybe the Boeing 787 Dreamliner needs new “fireproof” batteries to prevent another battery fire. 

BAE – EADS Merger: Economically Freshly Still-Born?

Slated to supposedly result in the biggest non-American aerospace firm, is the BAE – EADS merger be freshly still born due to insurmountable regulatory hurdles and declining defense markets?

By: Ringo Bones

Even though concerned parties may have until Wednesday, October 10, 2012 to decide to give the green light of the proposed merger of BAE – EADS, regulatory hurdles permitting. And at the proverbial “11^th Hour” of the proposed merger, there is still no agreement between the governments of France, Germany and the UK despite Number 10 Downing Street stating that state ownership of the resulting aerospace firm should be limited. Given the seemingly insurmountable regulatory hurdles, politics and the “declining defense markets”, will the BAE – EADS merger, if it goes through, result in an economically viable merger?

INVESCO – the main underwriter of the merger was never shy in recently stating that there’s no strategic logic in the proposed merger. And to “seasoned observers” in the post Cold War development of the global aerospace / defense industry – a.k.a. the proverbial “Military-Industrial-Complex”, the oft quoted buzzword of the “declining defense markets” seems to be a euphemism for Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban not having a preexisting aerospace industry in which the remaining superpower has to destroy as the world’s aerospace and defense industries’ makes a really handsome profit. So if the merger goes through, how will it ever make a profit?

In our post-9/11 world where America and her NATO allies are currently busily involved in the “War on Terror”, the only pieces of military hardware oft used in this on-going conflict are large propeller driven military troop carriers and long-haul subsonic high capacity long jumbo-jet like cargo planes. Not to mention the odd unmanned aerial drone or two. The truth is, the post-9/11 War on Terror is not just as profitable to established global aerospace and defense firms as the saber-rattling between the US and USSR during the height of the Cold War.