At Farnborough Airshow Hélène Gagnon shared with us the environmental initiatives being spearheaded by business jet and commercial aircraft manufacturer Bombardier.
Watch the video to hear how Bombardier incorporates environmental stewardship throughout the production lifecycle; the company's leadership in establishing a carbon offset programme for business jet customers; and how Bombardier is helping the aviation industry 'walk the talk' with recycling at the air show
Boeing has unvieled a new prototype unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or spy plane to you and I, called Phantom Eye which runs on hydrogen fuel. While this strange-looking aircraft will not be used for commercial flights, we often get questions such as "when will we be flying on hydrogen-powered planes?".
The answer is: "no time soon". While hydrogen is a great, clean, fuel source, it's main problem is the volume of fuel required. Compared to our current fuel, or the biofuel we will be using in the coming years, hydrogen has a lot less 'power' for each litre of fuel - and therefore a lot more needs to be carried. In effect, you'd almost need to replace the whole lower deck of an A380 with fuel tanks to power a flight of any reasonable length.
This is not to say that hydrogen might not have some benefits and projects like the Phantom Eye and Boeing's hydrogen fuel cell are providing much-needed insights into the use of such fuels.
Last night, just down the road from me in Switzerland, aviation history was made when Solar Impulse, the solar-powered aircraft, flew throughout the night, its batteries charged from the sun during a flight yesterday. It was in the air for more than 26 hours and used exactly 0 litres of jet fuel. The pilot, Andre Borschberg, who had been squashed in a cabin the size of a bathtub for all that time, had this to say:
"I've been a pilot for 40 years now, but this flight has been the most incredible one of my flying career. Just sitting there and watching the battery charge level rise and rise thanks to the sun... And then that suspense, not knowing whether we were going to manage to stay up in the air the whole night. And finally the joy of seeing the sun rise and feeling the energy beginning to circulate in the solar panels again!"
Bertrand Piccard, the initiator and president of the project, which he has been working on for 11 years, said: "This is a crucial step forward, it gives full credibility to the speeches we hold since years about renewable energies and CleanTechs and allows us now to get closer to the perpetual flight without using a drop of fuel!"
While we are not expecting that we will have passengers flying on the sun's energy any time soon (or at all), these types of experimental aircraft can actually have very practical purposes for aviation: in the use of very lightweight materials and, most importantly, the development of efficient solar cells. We may, for example, see a new generation of thin solar cells applied to the wings of commercial aircraft to power things such as air conditioning or cabin lighting.
The flight's take-off was captured in this video:
The Mitsubishi Regional Jet – the aircraft that it is expected to ‘revolutionise short-haul flying when it enters into service in early 2014 and the first passenger aircraft to be built by a Japanese company since the mid-1970s. Currently the aircraft is only a model in the Mitsubishi Aircraft corp. Office, yet reports on its progress in the press this week are suggesting this aircraft, thought to be one of the most environment-friendly aircraft in the world, is well on its way to becoming a reality. The jet features new Pratt & Whitney PurePower engines which burn 20% less fuel than other engines, and boasting significantly lower nitrogen oxide, carbon dioxide and smoke emissions, as well as reducing to less than half the noise of the aircraft on take-off. Not only is the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions kinder on the environment, but the cut in fuel consumption also lowers operators’ costs significantly savings it. Japan’s All Nippon Airways is set to be the first airline planning to fly the Mitsubishi Regional Jet in 2014 and has already ordered 15 of the $40 million jets.
Elsewhere this week, Finnair has become the first to commit to the new design for the Airbus A321s equipped with the fuel-saving "sharklet" wing tip devices. The eco-efficient A321s are expected to reduce Finnair's fuel consumption by 4% compared to its present fleet, corresponding to an annual CO2 reduction of more than 700 tonnes per aircraft.
Keeping on the subject of aircraft, the ‘zero-emission’ Solar Impulse has been preparing this week for its first ever night flight which will take place sometime at the end of this month. The Solar Impulse, designed by Andrew Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard, is the first ever aircraft propelled solely by solar energy and whilst the concept is far from being conceivable for commercial aircraft, the project demonstrates some exciting possibilities for the future of flight. The project aims to prove that a solar-powered craft is able to fly day and night without any fuel, thereby demonstrating the potential of the renewable energies and the technologies that will enable the aviation industry to cut fuel usage and lower its carbon emissions.
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 programme, will be one of the most fuel efficient aircraft in the sky when it enters the fleet later this year.
Out in the Swiss countryside last week the Solar Impulse made its virgin voyage, where it cruised for 87 minutes at an altitude of 1,200 metres, demonstrating conclusive proof that an airplane can fly without any emissions. This solar-powered airplane is designed to fly day and night without fuel or emissions as it relies solely on the energy absorbed from 12,000 solar cells, built into its wings of the aircraft. The energy absorbed is saved in high-performance batteries and is used to power the four electric engines the plane runs on. Key to the design of this zero-emission aircraft is its weight – the body is made from carbon fibre meaning in total it weighs just 1,600 kilograms- that’s about the same as a mid-sized car!
The objective of this particular mission was to verify that the plane’s flight behaviour is in line with the calculations and simulations done using the flight simulator. Given that such a large and light plane had never been flown before, the behavior of the plane under real flying conditions remained unexplored, yet the test showed extremely positive results. The test pilot, Markus Scherdel, reported a stable and controllable ride from the outset and project leaders confirmed that all objectives had been reached. The Solar Impulse project, initiated by Bertrand Piccard in 2004, had been designed as a prototype for an aircraft intended to fly around the world without fuel in 2012. Of course this plane is not the passenger-carrying type, yet the model has proved very useful for testing new technologies that could potentially be used for driving some aircraft systems in the future.
Last week was also witness to two successful test flights coordinated by AIRE (the Atlantic, Interoperability Initiative to Reduce Emissions). The door to door flights were undertaken by Air France and American Airlines on the Paris – Miami route, and represented the first ever transatlantic flights whose objective was focused entirely around the reduction of greenhouse gas emission and noise pollution. The flights involved the cooperation of the air traffic control centres of France (DSNA), the UK (NATS), Portugal (Nav-Portugal) and the USA (FAA) along the route. Procedures adopted by Air France included shorter taxiing times at both airports, continuous climb, optimum altitude and speed during the cruise phase, and a continuous descent approach on arrival into Miami. The American Airlines’ flight included single-engine taxiing, continuous climb-out and descent, optimized routing over water and a tailored arrival. The results announced showed CO2 emissions reductions of 6-9 metric tons and fuel savings of 2-3 metric tons!
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 testing of any new aircraft. As Boeing’s Randy Tinseth explains:
“Flutter is something you definitely do not want to happen in flight. It occurs when aerodynamic forces act on airplane structures and control surfaces causing a rapid, self-feeding motion that can be very destructive. So, during flutter clearance testing we purposely introduce oscillations to verify that the airplane is not subject to flutter when operating within normal parameters. We verify it by demonstrating that even when an oscillation is introduced, the airplane will dampen the effect.”
Jason also spoke with Boeing test pilot Doug Benjamin, who said that the process of testing an aircraft today is quite different to the early days of test piloting a new plane. He relies on the team on the ground throughout the flight testing process.
There are now four 787 aircraft involved in the flight test programme. Together, they have completed 122 flights and over 370 hours of flying.
We've spoken about the benefits of retro-fitting winglets on aircraft before. Now, Aviation Partners Boeing, the makers of winglet devices for the Boeing 737, 757 and 767 have announced just how much these devices can save - as of tomorrow, March 5 at 19:05 in Seattle, blended winglets will have saved the world's airlines 2 billion gallons of jet fuel. This represents a global reduction in CO2 emissions of almost 21.5 million tonnes since they were first introduced in 2001.
These winglets are now flying on more than 3,700 aircraft around the world and many, such as Air New Zealand, are finding that they are saving more fuel than planned. Airbus is also getting in on the game, joining Aviation Partners to design blended winglets for their own models.
- Image from Flickr user Erwyn van der Meer.
Two pieces of news from Paris-based Eurocopter in the past week, as reported by Wired Magazine:
1) The helicopter company is working on perfecting diesel-driven engine to power a new generation of choppers which could see fuel consumption cut by 40%.
2) In a radical new design of rotor blades, futuristically named "Blue Edge", Eurocopter has managed to design a much quieter helicopter - I would explain how it works, but Wired does a much better job of it. When used in conjunction with another new technology, "Blue Pulse" which actually places movable flaps on the trailing edge of helicopter rotors much like the back of normal aircraft wings, the rotary-winged aircraft market is set to become quieter (and sound a lot like Knight Rider in its marketing materials). The video below demonstrates the noise difference between normal rotor blades and the Blue Edge type:
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, took to the skies for the first time. And this new model will also be a very thrifty plane if the first test flight is anything to go by.
In 1969, Boeing rolled out the first generation of true jumbo jet - the 747. Since then, new models have included the -200, -300 and -400 series. But when Boeing sat down to look at its next generation of big aircraft, they decided to re-engineer the 747 with a whole new wing, new engines (actually based on the 787's engines), and a stretched fuselage. They called it the 747-8 series and these new features were designed specifically to increase fuel efficiency.
As Jason Paur of Wired Magazine reports, they may have reduced fuel use even more than they thought:
"Well into the first flight of Boeing’s new 747-8, co-pilot Tom Imrich brought up the fuel page on a display in the cockpit. Chief pilot Mark Feuerstein did a double take when he saw it. The plane, which was burning less fuel than expected. “You’re generally familiar with the odd burns — off nominal, and you know what they are,” Feuerstein said, explaining the unusual flying conditions of a first flight. “I said, ‘This is amazing.’”
The test flights, and first deliveries of this new aircraft, are the frieght-only version. But the normal version, expected to carry around 465 passengers, has been sold to Lufthansa and Korean Air.
