What could possibly go wrong?
Extra fuel is joining peanuts and magazines on the list of things American Airlines wants to ditch at the gate. The airline announced plans this week to save cash by using “scientifically precise” computer models to load less fuel. If pilots want more, they’ll need to submit a request in writing.
There’s seems to be a lot of controversy flying (sorry, that’s a bad pun even by my standards) around the grounding of most of Europe’s aircraft fleet following the eruption of an unpronounceable volcano. Sheesh.
While I’ve been able to unsubscribe from most email newsletters because they either offer an RSS/Atom equivalent or because they’re pointless, some contain personal information which can’t obviously be syndicated in the clear. I submit that of these remaining newsletters, Qantas is guilty of sending the most useless ones!
Got an email this morning from Google claiming one of their advertising products will be retroactively branded as DoubleClick. Huh?
Well that’s just a tad bit worrying.
Delta chief executive Richard Anderson has reiterated his bullish view that the carrier’s large fleet of ageing Boeing MD-80s retain a cost advantage over newer Boeing 737-800s that is largely driven by lower ownership costs.
Having already typed one pointless aviation related post, I figured one more before I head off to bed wouldn’t hurt. I call it "what a bit of paint can do!" The photos were both taken this year by Jan Ostrowski and Nils Baker respectively.
And you know I never did learn what those "nostrils" in the DC-8 nose were for. Were they for bleed air? Because if they were, one could say the DC-8 had a… nosebleed! Get it? Get it? I’m going to bed now.
Today’s favourite photo I found on the internets is the one included above for your convenience. Really, there’d be no point talking about a photo I’d found without showing you what it was, otherwise for all you know I could have been making it up. It’s an integrity thing.
In the paraphrased and modified words of Tom Lehrer, if I may digress momentarily from the mainstream of blog posts here, I would like to share something that is completely pointless. Aside from the lack of wood veneer on some of the walls, don’t you think Yerevan’s new airport kinda looks a bit like Adelaide’s new airport? It even has the slanted roof, round skylights, free standing signs and whatnot.
Hard hitting stuff.
If I had posted this entry before my praise for Unicomp (Kudos to Unicomp), it would have been entry 1787, a particularly onerous number considering troubles at Boeing with their latest generation 787 Dreamliner. A sub-par segue I admit, but I did think it was spooky.
After yet more delays, Qantas have cancelled their order for 15 of the medium range, energy efficient airliners and have deferred their order for Jetstar, their low cost subsidiary. From Flightblogger:
The news came early this morning in Sydney, that Australia’s largest airline, Qantas had made significant changes to its 787 order, deferring the 15 787-8s it was supposed to receive starting in mid-2010 for Jetstar, while [cancelling] 15 additional 787-9s scheduled for delivery in 2014 and 2015.
Qantas management claim this has nothing to do with the repeated delays for the 787, instead citing troubling economic times as the reason. I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on this one, but I can’t help but think these delays did have some bearing on their decision. On the other hand as a regular air traveller I would take designs thoroughly safety tested over well timed releases any day of the week!
While ultimately I’d much prefer to have high speed trains replace the bulk of air travel because they’d use less energy and would be more comfortable and fun, I think the 787 Dreamliner is a remarkable plane. If you haven’t followed it’s development, the fuselage is the first to be fabricated largely out of composite materials which is more lightweight and stronger than aluminium, and the uniquely shaped GE engines give similar thrust with less fuel consumption. We’re really looking at the future here, at least I hope we are.
ANA Lockheed L-1011 TriStar alongside a Boeing 747 (a -200 series I think) for size comparison. Taken by hyougushi in Osaka, 1992
I’ll preface this post by saying that while I am aware this is supposed to be a blog discussing software and the intertubes, I have long since given up attempting to stay on topic here the whole time because it’s just not in my nature. It’s not that I’m scatterbrained or anything, more that I just have far too many unrelated interests for my own good. One of these disparate interests is commercial aviation, you can check out my Transport category to read more if that’s your cup of tea.
I narrowly missed post 1011 by one entry; 1011 isn’t only an important number because it could be interpreted as binary (it’s 11 in decimal by the way), but also because it was the service number of the commercially unsuccessful Lockheed L-1011 TriStar developed in the 1970s.
For those not versed in the history of the jetliner, the L-1011 TriStar was a widebody commercial airliner developed shortly after the Boeing 747 for customers who wanted the 747′s range but didn’t need as much passenger capacity. While the temptation was there to place deck chairs on the nose to resemble a 747, the high cruising speeds of the jetliner would have made safety hard to guarantee, ant it would have been horribly noisy for the passengers sitting in such chairs. And a bit chilly. I’m such a dolt.
As with the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 with which it competed in the same market segment, the L-1011 TriStar was a trijet with the second engine mounted in and under the vertical stabiliser. Unlike the DC-10 which placed the second engine above the fuselage, the L-1011 used an S duct similar to the Boeing 727 which was far more complicated to design and maintain, but was much quieter and more stable. Indeed the L-1011 was one of the quietest commercial jetliners of the period which I’m sure people who had houses in the flight paths of jetliners would have appreciated.
Another L-1011 photo by Hyougushi in Osaka, 1992
One of the interesting aspect of the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar’s development was it’s turbofans. Unlike McDonnell Douglas, Lockheed opted to partner with Rolls Royce exclusively for the engines for the new jetliner. In a cruel twist, given the complexity and size of the project Rolls Royce went bankrupt and had to be purchased by the British government, an eerie thing to read about given all the bailouts governments around the world now are undertaking. Ultimately because of Rolls Royce’s financial difficulties Lockheed were unable to complete any of their airframes until over a year after Douglas had entered the market with the DC-10.
Despite the bad initial reputation the DC-10 had with reliability and noise, the quieter L-1011 was never able to recover from this year long lag in development time, and Lockheed abandoned all commercial airline manufacturing after delivering 250 aircraft, only half of what they would have needed to break even.
Another interesting aspect of the development of the L-1011 which I didn’t even know about until reading it’s article on Wikipedia (and if it’s on Wikipedia it has to be true!) was that Lockheed officials and senior members of the Japanese Diet were even involved in a bribery scandal!
Lockheed bribed the members of the Japanese government to subsidize ANA’s purchase of L-1011s. The resulting political scandal led to the arrest of Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka. Within Lockheed, board chairman Daniel Haughton and vice chairman and president Carl Kotchian resigned from their posts on 13 February 1976. Tanaka was eventually tried and found guilty of violating foreign exchange control laws, but was not charged with bribery, a more serious criminal offense.
Definitely a very troubled airliner, but the L-1011 still to this day is one of my favourite designs just because it was so unconventional, and because of Lockheed’s decision to proactively tackle the problem of sound pollution.
Now if only the eejit who has the cheap 4 cylinder 1990s Honda Accord across the street from us removed the silly, 1 metre wide muffler so we wouldn’t have to put up with his noise pollution every evening and early morning we’d be home free. "Muffler" in this case is really stretching the term. Then again, who am I to judge, perhaps he’s desperately attempting to compensate for something he lacks, or can’t do very well. I take public transport and ride motor scooters for this reason.
Hi! I'm Ruben Schade and this is my labour of love blog from beautiful Singapore and Sydney.
I also lurk on Twitter, Flickr, Google Reader and lots more places.
