For the first time yesterday, an Airbus A320 flew on biofuel – its energy supplied by 50% biofuel from the jatropha plant and 50% normal Jet A1 fuel. Importantly, the test flight took place in Brazil, using Brazilian-grown jatropha and with Brazil’s national carrier TAM Airlines. It was the first such test flight to take [...]

We are often talking about the effects that planes have on the climate, but not so often the impact that the climate has on planes. Well, Boeing has released some video of their new 787 aircraft being frozen to ensure that it can operate in all conditions. The 787, currently undergoing its very rigorous test [...]

With the Boeing 787 test programme in full swing, Wired Magazine’s Jason Paur has been given special access to the test programme and written an insightful series of articles. He was in the flight testing analysis centre as the aircraft completed ‘flutter testing’- putting the airframe through vibration tests which is a crucial part of the [...]

In December, we witnessed the first test flight of the Boeing 787, a new generation of super-efficient aircraft. The 787 test aircraft (ZA001 and ZA002) have now logged well over 100 hours of flight tests and are proving to be even more fuel-efficient than the designers thought. Well, on Monday another new Boeing, the 747-8, [...]

Things are hotting up here in Copenhagen. After the country representatives spent all last week working on the text dealing with aviation, suddenly yesterday the President of the COP – who chairs the proceedings – announced that she was splitting these workstreams into even smaller groups and making the sessions closed to observers. It is [...]