As it prepares to fly a hybrid-electric demonstrator in 2024, De Havilland Aircraft of Canada says it’s all about designing an aircraft for a bad day.
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Jon Ostrower is Editor-in-chief of The Air Current, where he leads coverage of the global aerospace and aviation industries. Prior to launching TAC in June 2018, Mr. Ostrower served as Aviation Editor for CNN Worldwide, guiding the network’s global coverage of the business and operations of aviation. Mr. Ostrower joined CNN in 2016 following four and a half years at the Wall Street Journal. Based first in Chicago and then in Washington, D.C., he covered Boeing, aviation safety, and the business of global aerospace.
Before that, Mr. Ostrower was editor of FlightBlogger for Flightglobal and Flight International Magazine covering the development of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and other new aircraft programs from 2007 to 2012.
He is also an instructor at the University of Southern California in the Viterbi School of Engineering's Aviation Safety and Security program. Mr. Ostrower, a Boston native, graduated from The George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs with a bachelor’s degree in Political Communication. He is based in Seattle.
DHC and Pratt & Whitney Canada are preparing to heavily modify a retired Dash 8-100 turboprop that will see half of its traditional propulsion replaced with a hybrid design. For the project, Pratt is designing a “new small engine” for sipping fuel at altitude. The 39-seat aircraft will have 20 to 24 battery packs to drive a 1 megawatt electric motor working in tandem with the new engine, providing the necessary horsepower when it’s needed most — at takeoff and climb.
The A380 is back, sort of. Airlines are reactivating the double-deck aircraft ahead of the loosening of COVID-related travel restrictions that promise to breathe life into dormant international routes. Just don't call it a comeback for the superjumbo. By all metrics, business aviation in 2021 is thriving. Back above 2019 levels, the industry is seeing a strong uptick in new development and commercial activity, but examining Honeywell's 10-year forecasts TAC steps back to look at the uncomfortable big picture for the industry's trajectory. What was it like to fly on the Convair B-36? We listen to a first-hand recollection about an aircraft that needed six turboprops and four jet engines just to get off the ground in the early years of the Cold War.
The operational disruption at the largest domestic carrier in the U.S. is a warning for the broader mid-pandemic economy, left fragile by the COVID-19 induced collapse of early 2020 and the whiplash-like rebound of some sectors of the economy.
Yet, over the past week, chatter across a cadre of Chinese aviation watchers and social media postings suggested that the prototype MA700 had made its maiden flight around Sept. 23 or 24 from the the Aviation Industry Corporation of China’s (Avic) manufacturing plant at Yanliang Air Base in Xian, where China produces many of its military aircraft. The new April 2021 footage was the first public appearance of any MA700 progress since March 2020 when Avic and Xian rolled-out the first static test airframe. Chinese state media had reported in early 2020 that MA700 was slated to fly before the end of that year.
Airlines rally new climate targets at IATA’s annual meeting, puts onus largely on sustainable fuel production to meet 2050 carbon neutrality goal.
With a red-hot market for business aircraft, Gulfstream plans two-front assault and bombardment on French and Canadian rivals.
The Air Current has focused recent months extensively reporting on Airbus’s, until now, secret research effort to completely re-wing a Cessna business jet and rapidly accelerate a suite of new advanced flight control technologies -- including a foldable wingtip designed to flap freely in turbulence and maneuvers.
While Boeing announced it would slow the rate at which it builds 787s in mid-July below five per month, some suppliers have halted work and deliveries of large structural sections by at least one major supplier won’t restart until at least October 26.
With this evaluation for its turboprop concept, Embraer is scratching at an entirely new strategic consideration for a multi-decade aircraft program. While large aircraft design has relied on the same fundamental type of fuel, coupled with successive generations of ever-improving engines, Embraer views its new 90-seater airframe as propulsion agnostic and a halfway step toward hydrogen. Positioning the engines on the rear of the aircraft might not produce the single most optimized design in 2027, but, in Embraer’s view, that deliberate non-optimization allows room for future evolution and growth.
As COVID-19 mutates to continue its torment, aviation adapts right along with it.
Fundamentally, even with this new shape, Embraer’s tentatively designated TPNG 70 and TPNG 90 (Turboprop Next Generation) haven’t changed in their overall mission. The aircraft is still a 70 to 90-seat turboprop with a range “a little bit more than 800 nautical miles” but optimized for flights between 250 and 300 nautical miles and flown at speeds “faster than an ATR, but not as fast as the Dash 8-400,” said Souza, putting its cruising speed between 300 and 360 knots. Embraer’s goal is a 15% to 20% improvement in cash operating costs for its bigger TPNG 90 compared to the ATR 72-600.
