Taking flight

In February 2018, after in-flight failures of the PW1100G with its high pressure compressor aft hub modified, apparently caused by problems with its knife edge seal, European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and Airbus grounded some A320neo family aircraft until they were fitted with spares.As of February 2018, P&W engines had flown 500,000 hours since introduction and 113 P&W-powered A320neo family aircraft were operated by eight customers.Airbus then stopped accepting PW1100G engines.

ADS-B, which consists of two different services, "ADS-B Out" and "ADS-B In", could replace radar as the primary surveillance method for controlling aircraft worldwide. In the United States, ADS-B is an integral component of the NextGen national airspace strategy for upgrading and enhancing aviation infrastructure and operations.[11] Also within the United States, the ADS-B system can provide traffic- and government-generated graphical weather information at no cost through TIS-B and FIS-B applications.[11] ADS-B enhances safety by making an aircraft visible, realtime, to air traffic control (ATC) and to other appropriately equipped ADS-B aircraft with position and velocity data transmitted every second. ADS-B data can be recorded and downloaded for post-flight analysis. ADS-B also provides the data infrastructure for inexpensive flight tracking, planning, and dispatch.[11]

On 13 June 2005 at the Paris Air Show, Middle Eastern carrier Qatar Airways announced that they had placed an order for 60 A350s. In September 2006 the airline signed a memorandum of understanding with General Electric (GE) to launch the GEnx-1A-72 engine for the aircraft.[8][9][10] Emirates sought a more improved design and decided against ordering the initial version of the A350.[11][12] The Boeing 777X is the latest series of the long-range, wide-body, twin-engine Boeing 777 family from Boeing Commercial Airplanes. The 777X features new GE9X engines, new composite wings with folding wingtips, greater cabin width and seating capacity, and technologies from the Boeing 787. The 777X was launched in November 2013 with two variants: the 777-8 and the 777-9. The 777-8 provides seating for 384 passengers and has a range of 8,730 nmi (16,170 km) while the 777-9 has seating for 426 passengers and a range of over 7,285 nmi (13,500 km). The 777-9 first flew on January 25, 2020, with deliveries expected to commence in 2024.

Breeze Aviation Group, Inc., trading as Breeze Airways, is an American airline headquartered in Cottonwood Heights, Utah. The airline was founded by David Neeleman, who previously co-founded Morris Air, WestJet, JetBlue, and Azul Linhas Aereas.[4] Breeze's operations launched on May 27, 2021, with its inaugural flight from Tampa International Airport to Charleston International Airport. devices are intended to improve the efficiency of fixed-wing aircraft by reducing drag.[1] Although there are several types of wing tip devices which function in different manners, their intended effect is always to reduce an aircraft's drag by partial recovery of the tip vortex energy.

On this episode of Taking Flight I talk about Boom’s Supersonic Overture jet, and the likelihood of the aircraft ever entering service.

Our discussion of Boom’s proposed supersonic jet covers the challenges Boom, and any airline seeking to fly the supersonic jet, will encounter.

Technology

BOOM’s Overture aircraft currently lacks a critical component for flight: engines. While Rolls Royce is in talks to provide an engine for Overture, there is no deal—or design—ready at the moment.

Money

Aircraft development is hard and expensive. Billions of dollars expensive. So far, Boom just doesn’t have enough cash to get it from paper to passenger airplane.

No one likes a sonic boom

Opposition to supersonic flights over land will be a main driver of where any future supersonic aircraft can operate. And that in turn, leads to…

Economics

The small market and multitude of constraints on any supersonic aircraft’s operations makes the economic case for such an airplane very challenging.

Environmental costs and challenges

Boom has said it’s designing the Overture to run on 100% ‘Sustainable Aviation Fuel’ (SAF). But that doesn’t solve the problem of having to burn many times more fuel than a comparable subsonic flight in the first place. Nor does it account for where the SAF is going to come from. SAF accounts for a tiny percentage of global fuel stocks at the moment and raising that share to the level necessary to support supersonic flights is by no means an easy feat.

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You don’t want to miss this episode of taking flight!

Happy fourth weekend!

A sincere thank you to all my listeners!

Thanks for listening to taking flight a podcast designed for the pilot at heart and the aviation enthusiast like me. Till next time fly safe!

In this very short episode I talk about seeing the Boeing 737 max 10 on final