Saw this interesting piece on the newswire today:
Delta and TPG assessing Bids for AMR
Looks like Delta Airlines and US Air are looking at potential bids for AMR. Now that would make for interesting combinations. What are your thoughts???
Minutes ago, predictably successful Flight 418, a Boeing 747-400 (Registration D-ABTB) from Frankfurt(FRA) to Washington Dulles (IAD) arrived safely after it’s 8hr 12min journey.
What makes this flight significant is the fact that it accomplishes a landmark achievement in the the airline industry. It demonstrates the successful use of BioFuels as an alternative to the current fuels being used to power jet airliners.
For Lufthansa this flight marked the conclusion of 6 months of test flights that had been taking place in Germany. 1187 flights were successfully operated using a 50/50 BioFuel/Regular fuel mix on flights between Hamburg(HAM) and Frankfurt(FRA)since July of 2011.
With this achievement, Lufthansa demonstrates the ability for an aircraft to significantly reduce the amount of carbon pollution that is released into the atmosphere. When an aircraft uses BioFuel it is estimated to reduce carbon emissions by 50%.
On this specific flight, the amount of carbon emissions that was reduced was the equivalent of pollution that is released by 6 flights between Frankfurt and Berlin.
For more on this topic, you can read my post here. Or visit Lufthansa’s website covering the topic here: http://www.puresky.de/en/
Thanks to “Mike” for sharing this video link in his comments on one of my postings.
How many times have you been aboard an airliner and the entertainment system wouldn’t function properly? Do you have enough fingers to count? I recall several flights on domestic US carriers where even the simple safety video would crash several times to the point that the Flight Attendants had to resort to the “old school” way of doing it themselves. It looks like things have come a long, long way!!
In this Boeing News video , the aircraft manufacturer takes us on a rare behind the scenes look at some of the testing that went on in developing the new 787’s Inflight Entertainment System. A Dreamliner full of Boeing employees flew aboard the 787 for a flight lasting several hours during which they subjected the airliner’s IFE systems to heavy use and worst case scenarios such as everyone starting the same task at the same time. During the course of the flight other cabin features were also tested to make sure they could handle the workload of a plane full of passengers.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO57mnBgEkc[/youtube]
