Which booking sites exclude which airlines?
Posted by George on Monday, October 22, 2007 to Airline Industry News
Here's a partial list of airlines that are excluded from the fare listings of various online airfare booking sites. If you discover others, let us know.
Orbitz: Sun Country, Jet Blue, Southwest, SkyBus, Allegiant, USA3000
Travelocity: Southwest, SkyBus, Allegiant, Virgin America
Kayak: Southwest, SkyBus, Allegiant, USA3000
Expedia: Southwest, SkyBus, Allegiant, Virgin America, Spirit, USA3000
Sidestep: Southwest, SkyBus, Allegiant, Virgin America, USA3000
In addition to this list, it's important to note that many international, and some domestic, airlines reserve their best fares for their own web sites, even if they do list most of their fares with a third party site.
Monday, October 22, 2007
NASA won't disclose air safety survey
NASA won't disclose air safety survey By RITA BEAMISH, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 5 minutes ago
MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. - Anxious to avoid upsetting air travelers, NASA is withholding results from an unprecedented national survey of pilots that found safety problems like near collisions and runway interference occur far more frequently than the government previously recognized.
NASA gathered the information under an $8.5 million safety project, through telephone interviews with roughly 24,000 commercial and general aviation pilots over nearly four years. Since ending the interviews at the beginning of 2005 and shutting down the project completely more than one year ago, the space agency has refused to divulge the results publicly.
Just last week, NASA ordered the contractor that conducted the survey to purge all related data from its computers.
The Associated Press learned about the NASA results from one person familiar with the survey who spoke on condition of anonymity because this person was not authorized to discuss them.
A senior NASA official, associate administrator Thomas S. Luedtke, said revealing the findings could damage the public's confidence in airlines and affect airline profits. Luedtke acknowledged that the survey results "present a comprehensive picture of certain aspects of the U.S. commercial aviation industry."
The AP sought to obtain the survey data over 14 months under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.
"Release of the requested data, which are sensitive and safety-related, could materially affect the public confidence in, and the commercial welfare of, the air carriers and general aviation companies whose pilots participated in the survey," Luedtke wrote in a final denial letter to the AP. NASA also cited pilot confidentiality as a reason, although no airlines were identified in the survey, nor were the identities of pilots, all of whom were promised anonymity.
Among other results, the pilots reported at least twice as many bird strikes, near mid-air collisions and runway incursions as other government monitoring systems show, according to a person familiar with the results who was not authorized to discuss them publicly.
The survey also revealed higher-than-expected numbers of pilots who experienced "in-close approach changes" — potentially dangerous, last-minute instructions to alter landing plans.
Officials at the NASA Ames Research Center in California have said they want to publish their own report on the project by year's end.
"If the airlines aren't safe I want to know about it," said Rep. Brad Miller, R-N.C., chairman of the House Science and Technology investigations and oversight subcommittee. "I would rather not feel a false sense of security because they don't tell us."
Discussing NASA's decision not to release the survey data, the congressman said: "There is a faint odor about it all."
Miller asked NASA last week to provide his oversight committee with information on the survey and the decision to withhold data.
"The data appears to have great value to aviation safety, but not on a shelf at NASA," he wrote to NASA's administrator Michael Griffin.
The survey's purpose was to develop a new way of tracking safety trends and problems the airline industry could address. The project was shelved when NASA cut its budget as emphasis shifted to send astronauts to the moon and Mars.
NASA said nothing it discovered in the survey warranted notifying the Federal Aviation Administration immediately. Its data showed improvements in some areas, the person who was familiar with the survey said. Survey managers occasionally briefed the FAA during the project. At a briefing in April 2003, FAA officials expressed concerns about the high numbers of incidents being described by pilots because the NASA results were dramatically different from what FAA was getting from its own monitoring systems.
An FAA spokeswoman, Laura Brown, said the agency questioned NASA's methodology. The FAA is confident it can identify safety problems before they lead to accidents, she said.
In its space program, NASA has a deadly history of playing down safety issues. Investigators blamed the 1986 and 2000 shuttle disasters on poor decision making, budget cuts and improperly minimizing risks. NASA decided to go ahead with a 2006 shuttle launch and is moving ahead with one this week despite safety concerns by NASA engineers in both cases.
Aviation experts said NASA's pilot survey results could be a valuable resource in an industry where they believe many safety problems are underreported, even while deaths from commercial air crashes are rare and the number of deadly crashes has dropped in recent years.
"It gives us an awareness of not just the extent of the problems, but probably in some cases that the problems are there at all," said William Waldock, a safety science professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Phoenix, Ariz. "If their intent is to just let it sit there, that's just a waste."
Officials involved in the survey touted the unusually high response rate among pilots, 80 percent, and said they believe it is more reliable than other reporting systems that rely on pilots to voluntarily report incidents.
"The data is strong," said Robert Dodd, an aviation safety expert hired by NASA to manage the survey. "Our process was very meticulously designed and very thorough. It was very scientific."
Pilot interviews lasted about 30 minutes, with standardized questions about how frequently they encountered equipment problems, smoke or fire, engine failure, passenger disturbances, severe turbulence, collisions with birds or inadequate tower communication, according to documents obtained by the AP.
Pilots also were asked about last-minute changes in landing instructions, flying too close to other planes, near collisions with ground vehicles or buildings, overweight takeoffs or occasions when pilots left the cockpit.
The survey, known officially as the National Aviation Operations Monitoring Service, started after a White House commission in 1997 proposed reducing fatal air crashes by 80 percent as of this year. Crashes have dropped 65 percent, with a rate of about 1 fatality in about 4.5 million departures.
NASA had begun to interview general aviation pilots and initially planned to interview flight attendants, air traffic controllers and mechanics before the survey was halted.
In earlier interviews that helped researchers design the NASA survey, pilots said airlines were unaware how frequently safety incidents occurred that could lead to serious problems or even crashes, said Jon Krosnick, a survey expert at Stanford University who helped NASA create the questionnaire. Krosnick also led a Stanford team that paid for a joint AP-Stanford poll on the environment.
"There are little things going on everyday that rarely lead to an accident but they increase the chances of an accident," said Krosnick. "It's the little things beneath the surface that cause the very infrequent crashes. You have to tackle those."
NASA directed its contractor Battelle Memorial Institute, along with subcontractors, on Thursday to return any project information and then purge it from their computers before Oct. 30
1 hour, 5 minutes ago
MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. - Anxious to avoid upsetting air travelers, NASA is withholding results from an unprecedented national survey of pilots that found safety problems like near collisions and runway interference occur far more frequently than the government previously recognized.
NASA gathered the information under an $8.5 million safety project, through telephone interviews with roughly 24,000 commercial and general aviation pilots over nearly four years. Since ending the interviews at the beginning of 2005 and shutting down the project completely more than one year ago, the space agency has refused to divulge the results publicly.
Just last week, NASA ordered the contractor that conducted the survey to purge all related data from its computers.
The Associated Press learned about the NASA results from one person familiar with the survey who spoke on condition of anonymity because this person was not authorized to discuss them.
A senior NASA official, associate administrator Thomas S. Luedtke, said revealing the findings could damage the public's confidence in airlines and affect airline profits. Luedtke acknowledged that the survey results "present a comprehensive picture of certain aspects of the U.S. commercial aviation industry."
The AP sought to obtain the survey data over 14 months under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.
"Release of the requested data, which are sensitive and safety-related, could materially affect the public confidence in, and the commercial welfare of, the air carriers and general aviation companies whose pilots participated in the survey," Luedtke wrote in a final denial letter to the AP. NASA also cited pilot confidentiality as a reason, although no airlines were identified in the survey, nor were the identities of pilots, all of whom were promised anonymity.
Among other results, the pilots reported at least twice as many bird strikes, near mid-air collisions and runway incursions as other government monitoring systems show, according to a person familiar with the results who was not authorized to discuss them publicly.
The survey also revealed higher-than-expected numbers of pilots who experienced "in-close approach changes" — potentially dangerous, last-minute instructions to alter landing plans.
Officials at the NASA Ames Research Center in California have said they want to publish their own report on the project by year's end.
"If the airlines aren't safe I want to know about it," said Rep. Brad Miller, R-N.C., chairman of the House Science and Technology investigations and oversight subcommittee. "I would rather not feel a false sense of security because they don't tell us."
Discussing NASA's decision not to release the survey data, the congressman said: "There is a faint odor about it all."
Miller asked NASA last week to provide his oversight committee with information on the survey and the decision to withhold data.
"The data appears to have great value to aviation safety, but not on a shelf at NASA," he wrote to NASA's administrator Michael Griffin.
The survey's purpose was to develop a new way of tracking safety trends and problems the airline industry could address. The project was shelved when NASA cut its budget as emphasis shifted to send astronauts to the moon and Mars.
NASA said nothing it discovered in the survey warranted notifying the Federal Aviation Administration immediately. Its data showed improvements in some areas, the person who was familiar with the survey said. Survey managers occasionally briefed the FAA during the project. At a briefing in April 2003, FAA officials expressed concerns about the high numbers of incidents being described by pilots because the NASA results were dramatically different from what FAA was getting from its own monitoring systems.
An FAA spokeswoman, Laura Brown, said the agency questioned NASA's methodology. The FAA is confident it can identify safety problems before they lead to accidents, she said.
In its space program, NASA has a deadly history of playing down safety issues. Investigators blamed the 1986 and 2000 shuttle disasters on poor decision making, budget cuts and improperly minimizing risks. NASA decided to go ahead with a 2006 shuttle launch and is moving ahead with one this week despite safety concerns by NASA engineers in both cases.
Aviation experts said NASA's pilot survey results could be a valuable resource in an industry where they believe many safety problems are underreported, even while deaths from commercial air crashes are rare and the number of deadly crashes has dropped in recent years.
"It gives us an awareness of not just the extent of the problems, but probably in some cases that the problems are there at all," said William Waldock, a safety science professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Phoenix, Ariz. "If their intent is to just let it sit there, that's just a waste."
Officials involved in the survey touted the unusually high response rate among pilots, 80 percent, and said they believe it is more reliable than other reporting systems that rely on pilots to voluntarily report incidents.
"The data is strong," said Robert Dodd, an aviation safety expert hired by NASA to manage the survey. "Our process was very meticulously designed and very thorough. It was very scientific."
Pilot interviews lasted about 30 minutes, with standardized questions about how frequently they encountered equipment problems, smoke or fire, engine failure, passenger disturbances, severe turbulence, collisions with birds or inadequate tower communication, according to documents obtained by the AP.
Pilots also were asked about last-minute changes in landing instructions, flying too close to other planes, near collisions with ground vehicles or buildings, overweight takeoffs or occasions when pilots left the cockpit.
The survey, known officially as the National Aviation Operations Monitoring Service, started after a White House commission in 1997 proposed reducing fatal air crashes by 80 percent as of this year. Crashes have dropped 65 percent, with a rate of about 1 fatality in about 4.5 million departures.
NASA had begun to interview general aviation pilots and initially planned to interview flight attendants, air traffic controllers and mechanics before the survey was halted.
In earlier interviews that helped researchers design the NASA survey, pilots said airlines were unaware how frequently safety incidents occurred that could lead to serious problems or even crashes, said Jon Krosnick, a survey expert at Stanford University who helped NASA create the questionnaire. Krosnick also led a Stanford team that paid for a joint AP-Stanford poll on the environment.
"There are little things going on everyday that rarely lead to an accident but they increase the chances of an accident," said Krosnick. "It's the little things beneath the surface that cause the very infrequent crashes. You have to tackle those."
NASA directed its contractor Battelle Memorial Institute, along with subcontractors, on Thursday to return any project information and then purge it from their computers before Oct. 30
Sunday, October 21, 2007
What's the delay code on this one?
Tomato Juice Spill Causes Long Lines At NY Airport
Oct 21, 2007 10:57 am US/Eastern
TSA Shrugs Off Delays, Blames Technology
(AP) NEW YORK Tempers grew short at LaGuardia Airport Saturday. The American Airlines terminal was brought to a near-standstill because of an equipment malfunction, but it was the reason for the malfunction that really had people fuming.
People were welcomed to Terminal D of LaGuardia Airport with a line so long, it was difficult to tell where it began, or where it ended - all because someone spilled tomato juice on an x-ray machine.
When CBS 2 HD told one woman the reason for the delays, she asked if we were "kidding," but it was no joke. The Transportation Safety Administration confirmed the spill knocked out one of the five units that screen thousands of passengers here each day.
"That's insane," said Dallas bound passenger Pat Jones. "That shouldn't be our problem, should it?"
But it was.
The delays left many passengers stressed out. "I just want to make sure I make my flight," said one traveler. "I'm not sure that's going to happen."
Few could believe that a major airline terminal could be thrown into chaos by such a simple problem. "It makes one very sad and very worried," said Bonnie Schmitta.
The line to screen passengers started stretched down the length of several city blocks, yet a spokesman for the Transportation Safety Administration shrugged off the incident, saying: "That's the risk you take when you deal with technology."
But people here didn't see it that way. "It's the biggest crock of inefficiency," said Leonard Williams. "Things should be better."
It took all morning and much of the afternoon until things finally did get better. A TSA official said a vendor working at the airport this morning was responsible for the spill.
Oct 21, 2007 10:57 am US/Eastern
TSA Shrugs Off Delays, Blames Technology
(AP) NEW YORK Tempers grew short at LaGuardia Airport Saturday. The American Airlines terminal was brought to a near-standstill because of an equipment malfunction, but it was the reason for the malfunction that really had people fuming.
People were welcomed to Terminal D of LaGuardia Airport with a line so long, it was difficult to tell where it began, or where it ended - all because someone spilled tomato juice on an x-ray machine.
When CBS 2 HD told one woman the reason for the delays, she asked if we were "kidding," but it was no joke. The Transportation Safety Administration confirmed the spill knocked out one of the five units that screen thousands of passengers here each day.
"That's insane," said Dallas bound passenger Pat Jones. "That shouldn't be our problem, should it?"
But it was.
The delays left many passengers stressed out. "I just want to make sure I make my flight," said one traveler. "I'm not sure that's going to happen."
Few could believe that a major airline terminal could be thrown into chaos by such a simple problem. "It makes one very sad and very worried," said Bonnie Schmitta.
The line to screen passengers started stretched down the length of several city blocks, yet a spokesman for the Transportation Safety Administration shrugged off the incident, saying: "That's the risk you take when you deal with technology."
But people here didn't see it that way. "It's the biggest crock of inefficiency," said Leonard Williams. "Things should be better."
It took all morning and much of the afternoon until things finally did get better. A TSA official said a vendor working at the airport this morning was responsible for the spill.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Time to Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly?
Time to Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly?
By Entrepreneur.com
Click here for more stories from Entrepreneur.com
10/16/2007 7:59 AM EDT
A few weeks ago, New Yorkers -- myself included -- experienced some severe thunderstorms, as happens to most of us from time to time. The result of a lot of rain is that often our transit systems break down, leaving riders frustrated, late and at times downright angry. While I was waiting for the train during one of these extended delays I used my new smartphone to check out the schedule of the local commuter bus company.
Until recently I had been using a basic cell phone combined with a PDA. But I got tired of carrying two devices and decided to purchase a Motorola (MOT - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr - Rating) Q instead.
I'm not alone in this transition. Millions of consumers and business professionals are ditching their basic cell phones in favor of more advanced cell phones and smartphones that combine the functions of a PDA, cell phone and Web browser. In November 2006, Arizona technology research company In-Stat said that smartphone unit sales almost tripled from 2004 to 2005, and increased by 50% in the first half of 2006 compared to the same period in 2005. Mobile internet access is going to continue growing.
What It Means for Your Business
It's time to consider updating your Web site and making it compatible for mobile Web browsers.
Say you're a florist. With your current Web site, you probably have big, bold and beautiful pictures. Maybe a video on the front page of your Web site gives your customers a weekly tip on arranging flowers for an office environment. After a few seconds a pop-up window displays, encouraging visitors to sign up for your monthly floral e-newsletter. Your Web site works well for your corporate customers accessing it from their high-speed telecommunication lines.
But the corporate event planner who typically accesses your Web site via his computer at work might need to access it in a taxi cab using his new cell phone or smartphone with Internet-enabled connectivity. Or maybe a soon-to-be bride wants to share your flower selections with her mom while she's standing in line at a mall.
Is your Web site ready for these "new" customers wanting to access it in a mobile environment?
If it's not ready, now's the time to consider who your audience is and how they access your site. Work with your technology professional to analyze your traffic logs and see what types of browsers are accessing your site. Do you see mobile traffic? Take the time to poll some of your customers about the likelihood of them accessing your Web site and others on their smartphones. Once you've decided a mobile site is right for you, it's time to create one.
How to Create a Mobile-Optimized Site
If you have a very large Web site with thousands of pages, it might not be necessary to configure your entire site for mobile access. I would guess that many of your mobile customers visit your Web site for a specific purpose -- perhaps to check on orders or search your inventory. Find out what they want from your site and work from there.
By Entrepreneur.com
Click here for more stories from Entrepreneur.com
10/16/2007 7:59 AM EDT
A few weeks ago, New Yorkers -- myself included -- experienced some severe thunderstorms, as happens to most of us from time to time. The result of a lot of rain is that often our transit systems break down, leaving riders frustrated, late and at times downright angry. While I was waiting for the train during one of these extended delays I used my new smartphone to check out the schedule of the local commuter bus company.
Until recently I had been using a basic cell phone combined with a PDA. But I got tired of carrying two devices and decided to purchase a Motorola (MOT - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr - Rating) Q instead.
I'm not alone in this transition. Millions of consumers and business professionals are ditching their basic cell phones in favor of more advanced cell phones and smartphones that combine the functions of a PDA, cell phone and Web browser. In November 2006, Arizona technology research company In-Stat said that smartphone unit sales almost tripled from 2004 to 2005, and increased by 50% in the first half of 2006 compared to the same period in 2005. Mobile internet access is going to continue growing.
What It Means for Your Business
It's time to consider updating your Web site and making it compatible for mobile Web browsers.
Say you're a florist. With your current Web site, you probably have big, bold and beautiful pictures. Maybe a video on the front page of your Web site gives your customers a weekly tip on arranging flowers for an office environment. After a few seconds a pop-up window displays, encouraging visitors to sign up for your monthly floral e-newsletter. Your Web site works well for your corporate customers accessing it from their high-speed telecommunication lines.
But the corporate event planner who typically accesses your Web site via his computer at work might need to access it in a taxi cab using his new cell phone or smartphone with Internet-enabled connectivity. Or maybe a soon-to-be bride wants to share your flower selections with her mom while she's standing in line at a mall.
Is your Web site ready for these "new" customers wanting to access it in a mobile environment?
If it's not ready, now's the time to consider who your audience is and how they access your site. Work with your technology professional to analyze your traffic logs and see what types of browsers are accessing your site. Do you see mobile traffic? Take the time to poll some of your customers about the likelihood of them accessing your Web site and others on their smartphones. Once you've decided a mobile site is right for you, it's time to create one.
How to Create a Mobile-Optimized Site
If you have a very large Web site with thousands of pages, it might not be necessary to configure your entire site for mobile access. I would guess that many of your mobile customers visit your Web site for a specific purpose -- perhaps to check on orders or search your inventory. Find out what they want from your site and work from there.
NY to Cali 31 hours via BMW
Alex Roy was just recognized as the record holder for driving from NY to Santa Monica pier in 31 hours and 4 minutes, besting the time set by David Diem and Doug Turner, who were clocked in a Ferrari 308 during the 1983 US Express run of 32 hours and seven minutes. That's a sustained 89MPH for over 31 hours. What's made me especially proud is that Alex wrote about automotive laser jammers and radio scanners for Gizmodo under a previous regime. The seven-time world rally champ avoided cops and found his way with a dash full of gadgets, including multiple scanners, jammers, detectors and other mods on his BMW M5. Equipment is documented in the video above, but one thing not emphasized is that the guy had a plane spotting police activity en route.
The actual time was verified by gas station timestamps on credit card receipts and by Jalopnik editors, who witnessed the start and finishes, but Guinness won't have anything to do with verifying illegal acts. The actual race happened a little over a year ago, but Alex couldn't tell anyone of his exploits until the statute of limitations was up in all states he drove through. Congrats to Alex for his spectacular performance. For all the details, there's more at Jalopnik [Departure, Finish, the Record and Gear]
P.S. Ray Wert, editor at Jalopnik, ends the coverage on a sober note, wondering how many more times this record can be beaten before people start dying.
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/cars/man-drives-from-ny-to-la-in-31-hours-and-4-minutes-gadgets-helped-311140.php
The actual time was verified by gas station timestamps on credit card receipts and by Jalopnik editors, who witnessed the start and finishes, but Guinness won't have anything to do with verifying illegal acts. The actual race happened a little over a year ago, but Alex couldn't tell anyone of his exploits until the statute of limitations was up in all states he drove through. Congrats to Alex for his spectacular performance. For all the details, there's more at Jalopnik [Departure, Finish, the Record and Gear]
P.S. Ray Wert, editor at Jalopnik, ends the coverage on a sober note, wondering how many more times this record can be beaten before people start dying.
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/cars/man-drives-from-ny-to-la-in-31-hours-and-4-minutes-gadgets-helped-311140.php
Web 2.0 - the new and improved dot com bubble
Silicon Valley Start-Ups Awash in Dollars, Again
By BRAD STONE and MATT RICHTEL
Published: October 17, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 16 — Silicon Valley’s math is getting fuzzy again.
Great Expectations Internet companies with funny names, little revenue and few customers are commanding high prices. And investors, having seemingly forgotten the pain of the first dot-com bust, are displaying symptoms of the disorder known as irrational exuberance.
Consider Facebook, the popular but financially unproven social network, which is reportedly being valued by investors at up to $15 billion. That is nearly half the value of Yahoo, a company with 38 times the number of employees and, based on estimates of Facebook’s income, 32 times the revenue.
Google, which recently surged past $600 a share, is now worth more than I.B.M., a company with eight times the revenue.
More broadly, Internet start-ups are drawing investment based on their ability to build an audience, not bring in revenue — the very alchemy that many say led to the inflation and bursting of the dot-com bubble.
The surge in the perceived value of some start-ups has even surprised some entrepreneurs who are benefiting from it.
A year ago, Yahoo invested in Right Media, a New York-based company developing an online advertising network. Yahoo’s investment valued the firm at $200 million. Six months later, when Yahoo acquired Right Media outright, the purchase price had swelled to $850 million.
What changed? According to Right Media’s chief technology officer, Brian O’Kelley, very little, except that Yahoo’s rivals, Microsoft and Google, were writing billion-dollar checks to buy online advertising networks, and Yahoo thought it needed to pay any price to keep up.
“I have to say I giggled,” Mr. O’Kelley, 30, said of the deal that earned him millions. He has since left Right Media and is starting another company. “There is no way we quadrupled the value of the company in six months.”
The trend is described as a return to madness (by skeptics) or as a rational approach to unlimited opportunities presented by the Internet (by true believers). Greed, fear and a desperate rush to pick the next big winner are all adding fuel to the fire that is Silicon Valley’s resurgence.
“There’s definitely a lot of betting going on, and it’s not rational,” said Tim O’Reilly, a technology conference promoter and book publisher.
Mr. O’Reilly is credited with coining the phrase “Web 2.0,” which refers to a new generation of Web sites that encourage users to contribute material. His Web 2.0 conference, which begins Wednesday in San Francisco, has become a nexus for the optimism around the latest set of society-changing online tools. But that has not stopped Mr. O’Reilly from worrying that the industry is minting too many copycat companies, half-baked business plans and overpriced buyouts.
When the bubble inevitably pops, he said, “there are going to be a lot of people out of work again.”
Putting a value on start-ups has always been a mix of science and speculation. But as in the first dot-com boom and the recent surge in housing, seasoned financial professionals are seeming to indulge in some strange instinct to turn away from the science and lean instead on the speculation.
This time around, people indulging in that optimistic thinking are not mom-and-pop investors or day traders but venture capitalists whose coffers are overflowing with money from university endowments and hedge funds. Many of those financial professionals say that this time, everything is different.
More than 1.3 billion people around the world use the Internet, many with speedy broadband connections and a willingness to immerse themselves in digital culture. The flood of advertising dollars to the Web has become an indomitable trend and a proven way for these start-ups to make money, while the revenue models of the dot-coms of yesteryear were often little more than sleight of hand.
“The environmental factors are much different than they were eight years ago,” said Roelof Botha, a partner at Sequoia Capital and an early backer of YouTube. “The cost of doing business has declined dramatically, and traditional media companies have also woken up to the opportunities of the Web.
“That does open up the aperture for a different outcome this time,” he said.
Some trace the start of the new bubble to eBay’s $3.1 billion acquisition of the Internet telephone start-up Skype in 2005. EBay’s chief executive, Meg Whitman, reportedly outbid Google for the company. This month, eBay conceded it had grossly overpaid for Skype by about $1.43 billion, and announced that Niklas Zennstrom, a Skype co-founder, had left the company.
Google’s acquisition of YouTube last year for $1.65 billion, under similarly competitive bidding, might have accelerated the transition to loftier values. Google executives and many analysts argued that YouTube was well worth the price tag if it became the next entertainment juggernaut.
Great Expectations It still might. More than 205 million people visit YouTube each month, according to the research firm comScore. Still, Citigroup estimated that YouTube would bring in $135 million in revenue next year. At that rate, YouTube would have to grow considerably to account for just 5 percent of Google’s annual revenue of nearly $12 billion.
“We are almost going back to year 2000 types of errors,” said Aaron Kessler, an Internet analyst at Piper Jaffray. Internet companies “are buying users instead of revenue and profitability,” he said.
The Skype and YouTube windfalls helped to give the newest batch of Internet entrepreneurs dreams of improbable wealth. They also brought back practices that had seemingly been discredited during the first boom. For example, in the first dot-com gold rush, Internet companies did not have to make money to acquire serious investments dollars. Now that once again is true.
Twitter, a company in San Francisco that lets users alert friends to what they are doing at any given moment over their mobile phones, recently raised an undisclosed amount of financing. Its co-founder and creative director, Biz Stone, says that the company was not currently focused on making money and that no one in the company was even working on how to do so.
“At the moment, we’re focused on growing our network and our user experience,” he said. “When you have a lot of traffic, there’s always a clear business model.”
That is not necessarily illogical in the current climate. A European competitor, Jaiku, which is similarly devoid of a mature business model, was acquired last week by Google for an undisclosed sum. With the competitive logic that prevails at the major Internet companies, the deal might have further raised Twitter’s appeal to Google’s rivals.
The high value placed on many start-ups and minimal requirements for financial performance are raising expectations of other entrepreneurs. Sharon Wienbar, managing director of Scale Ventures Partners, an investment firm, cited the $100 million valuation that investors gave to the Internet genealogy site Geni.com, founded last year in Los Angeles by a veteran of PayPal.
“Now every entrepreneur thinks he should get that,” Ms. Wienbar said. “I have a feeling a lot of entrepreneurs are secretly meeting for beers on the Peninsula, saying, ‘Hey, look what I got.’”
Mr. O’Kelley, formerly of Right Media, said other entrepreneurs had begun to think that the financing game is best played by avoiding actual revenues — since that only limits the imagination of investors. “It’s a screwed-up incentive structure, just like you had in the first bubble,” he said.
Another company benefiting from the exuberance is Ning, which allows users to create their own MySpace-style ad-supported social networks. It was recently valued by investors at more than $200 million, mainly because its main backer and founder, Marc Andreessen, has a successful history with the Internet hits Netscape and Opsware.
Mr. Andreessen argues on his blog that there is no bubble and that the high prices represent a rational desire to stake a claim in the potentially huge markets of the future. But he acknowledges that a seemingly inexhaustible flood of capital into Silicon Valley is helping to power the boom. Venture capitalists are flush with cash from institutional investors, eager for Internet-style returns on their money.
“The upward valuations pressure is the result of decisions being made by people wearing suits in cities like New York and Boston who would never ever meet with start-ups,” Mr. Andreessen said in an interview. “If that ever goes away, it will have consequences. But it doesn’t look like they will change their minds.”
By BRAD STONE and MATT RICHTEL
Published: October 17, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 16 — Silicon Valley’s math is getting fuzzy again.
Great Expectations Internet companies with funny names, little revenue and few customers are commanding high prices. And investors, having seemingly forgotten the pain of the first dot-com bust, are displaying symptoms of the disorder known as irrational exuberance.
Consider Facebook, the popular but financially unproven social network, which is reportedly being valued by investors at up to $15 billion. That is nearly half the value of Yahoo, a company with 38 times the number of employees and, based on estimates of Facebook’s income, 32 times the revenue.
Google, which recently surged past $600 a share, is now worth more than I.B.M., a company with eight times the revenue.
More broadly, Internet start-ups are drawing investment based on their ability to build an audience, not bring in revenue — the very alchemy that many say led to the inflation and bursting of the dot-com bubble.
The surge in the perceived value of some start-ups has even surprised some entrepreneurs who are benefiting from it.
A year ago, Yahoo invested in Right Media, a New York-based company developing an online advertising network. Yahoo’s investment valued the firm at $200 million. Six months later, when Yahoo acquired Right Media outright, the purchase price had swelled to $850 million.
What changed? According to Right Media’s chief technology officer, Brian O’Kelley, very little, except that Yahoo’s rivals, Microsoft and Google, were writing billion-dollar checks to buy online advertising networks, and Yahoo thought it needed to pay any price to keep up.
“I have to say I giggled,” Mr. O’Kelley, 30, said of the deal that earned him millions. He has since left Right Media and is starting another company. “There is no way we quadrupled the value of the company in six months.”
The trend is described as a return to madness (by skeptics) or as a rational approach to unlimited opportunities presented by the Internet (by true believers). Greed, fear and a desperate rush to pick the next big winner are all adding fuel to the fire that is Silicon Valley’s resurgence.
“There’s definitely a lot of betting going on, and it’s not rational,” said Tim O’Reilly, a technology conference promoter and book publisher.
Mr. O’Reilly is credited with coining the phrase “Web 2.0,” which refers to a new generation of Web sites that encourage users to contribute material. His Web 2.0 conference, which begins Wednesday in San Francisco, has become a nexus for the optimism around the latest set of society-changing online tools. But that has not stopped Mr. O’Reilly from worrying that the industry is minting too many copycat companies, half-baked business plans and overpriced buyouts.
When the bubble inevitably pops, he said, “there are going to be a lot of people out of work again.”
Putting a value on start-ups has always been a mix of science and speculation. But as in the first dot-com boom and the recent surge in housing, seasoned financial professionals are seeming to indulge in some strange instinct to turn away from the science and lean instead on the speculation.
This time around, people indulging in that optimistic thinking are not mom-and-pop investors or day traders but venture capitalists whose coffers are overflowing with money from university endowments and hedge funds. Many of those financial professionals say that this time, everything is different.
More than 1.3 billion people around the world use the Internet, many with speedy broadband connections and a willingness to immerse themselves in digital culture. The flood of advertising dollars to the Web has become an indomitable trend and a proven way for these start-ups to make money, while the revenue models of the dot-coms of yesteryear were often little more than sleight of hand.
“The environmental factors are much different than they were eight years ago,” said Roelof Botha, a partner at Sequoia Capital and an early backer of YouTube. “The cost of doing business has declined dramatically, and traditional media companies have also woken up to the opportunities of the Web.
“That does open up the aperture for a different outcome this time,” he said.
Some trace the start of the new bubble to eBay’s $3.1 billion acquisition of the Internet telephone start-up Skype in 2005. EBay’s chief executive, Meg Whitman, reportedly outbid Google for the company. This month, eBay conceded it had grossly overpaid for Skype by about $1.43 billion, and announced that Niklas Zennstrom, a Skype co-founder, had left the company.
Google’s acquisition of YouTube last year for $1.65 billion, under similarly competitive bidding, might have accelerated the transition to loftier values. Google executives and many analysts argued that YouTube was well worth the price tag if it became the next entertainment juggernaut.
Great Expectations It still might. More than 205 million people visit YouTube each month, according to the research firm comScore. Still, Citigroup estimated that YouTube would bring in $135 million in revenue next year. At that rate, YouTube would have to grow considerably to account for just 5 percent of Google’s annual revenue of nearly $12 billion.
“We are almost going back to year 2000 types of errors,” said Aaron Kessler, an Internet analyst at Piper Jaffray. Internet companies “are buying users instead of revenue and profitability,” he said.
The Skype and YouTube windfalls helped to give the newest batch of Internet entrepreneurs dreams of improbable wealth. They also brought back practices that had seemingly been discredited during the first boom. For example, in the first dot-com gold rush, Internet companies did not have to make money to acquire serious investments dollars. Now that once again is true.
Twitter, a company in San Francisco that lets users alert friends to what they are doing at any given moment over their mobile phones, recently raised an undisclosed amount of financing. Its co-founder and creative director, Biz Stone, says that the company was not currently focused on making money and that no one in the company was even working on how to do so.
“At the moment, we’re focused on growing our network and our user experience,” he said. “When you have a lot of traffic, there’s always a clear business model.”
That is not necessarily illogical in the current climate. A European competitor, Jaiku, which is similarly devoid of a mature business model, was acquired last week by Google for an undisclosed sum. With the competitive logic that prevails at the major Internet companies, the deal might have further raised Twitter’s appeal to Google’s rivals.
The high value placed on many start-ups and minimal requirements for financial performance are raising expectations of other entrepreneurs. Sharon Wienbar, managing director of Scale Ventures Partners, an investment firm, cited the $100 million valuation that investors gave to the Internet genealogy site Geni.com, founded last year in Los Angeles by a veteran of PayPal.
“Now every entrepreneur thinks he should get that,” Ms. Wienbar said. “I have a feeling a lot of entrepreneurs are secretly meeting for beers on the Peninsula, saying, ‘Hey, look what I got.’”
Mr. O’Kelley, formerly of Right Media, said other entrepreneurs had begun to think that the financing game is best played by avoiding actual revenues — since that only limits the imagination of investors. “It’s a screwed-up incentive structure, just like you had in the first bubble,” he said.
Another company benefiting from the exuberance is Ning, which allows users to create their own MySpace-style ad-supported social networks. It was recently valued by investors at more than $200 million, mainly because its main backer and founder, Marc Andreessen, has a successful history with the Internet hits Netscape and Opsware.
Mr. Andreessen argues on his blog that there is no bubble and that the high prices represent a rational desire to stake a claim in the potentially huge markets of the future. But he acknowledges that a seemingly inexhaustible flood of capital into Silicon Valley is helping to power the boom. Venture capitalists are flush with cash from institutional investors, eager for Internet-style returns on their money.
“The upward valuations pressure is the result of decisions being made by people wearing suits in cities like New York and Boston who would never ever meet with start-ups,” Mr. Andreessen said in an interview. “If that ever goes away, it will have consequences. But it doesn’t look like they will change their minds.”
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Flying Car About to Take Off?
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Flying Car About to Take Off?
An aeronautic startup looks to complete a prototype of its roadworthy aircraft within a year.
By Michael Gibson
In 1918, long before George Jetson commuted to Spacely Space Sprockets, the U.S. Patent Office issued Felix Longobardi the first patent for a vehicle capable of both driving on roads and flying through the air. But given all the impractical prototypes built since Longobardi's original whimsy, history suggests that any vehicle design combining these two modes of transport will be a commercial failure: aero-auto hybrids always seem to result in a compromise that serves both functions poorly.
Now a group of MIT alums believe that they are on their way toward overcoming this problem. Founded in 2006 and called Terrafugia, their startup, based in Woburn, MA, recently produced the first automated folding wing for a light sport aircraft. (A light sport aircraft is a type of airplane deemed by the Federal Aviation Administration to be easier to fly and hence more accessible than regular private planes.) The wing, however, is just the first step toward an aero-auto hybrid that the company plans to call the Transition.
This summer, the group demonstrated its folding wing at the annual AirVenture aviation festival in Oshkosh, WI. With more than 650,000 attendees, the festival is the most important event in experimental-aircraft aviation.
"Going into this, we knew our two biggest design challenges to make it practical would be the wings and the power train," says Anna Mracek Dietrich, an engineer at Terrafugia and the company's chief operating officer. "By validating the durability of the wing's construction and engineering, we've checked one major design challenge off of the list, and now our focus is on the second."
Previous prototypes of road-drivable aircraft have featured manually folding or detachable wings. But to allow for a seamless and quick transformation from plane to car and back, the Terrafugia team has devised a system that allows the pilot to enfold or extend the wings by pushing a button in the cockpit. Dietrich says that at Oshkosh, the researchers opened and closed the wings more than 500 times--the equivalent of three to five years of typical use--and that they're more than pleased with the wings' durability.
The wing features off-the-shelf electric actuators, but Dietrich says that the team had to design from scratch the mechanical linkages between the actuators and the rest of the craft. The group also uses dual electromagnetic locks to hold the wings tightly to the fuselage when they're enfolded.
"We're building the rest of the first vehicle now," Dietrich says. "Our schedule calls for us to start flight testing by the end of 2008, and so far we're on track for that."
The technical challenge now before the team is to build a power train that uses one engine both in the air and on the ground and is capable of running on a tank of super unleaded gasoline--the kind that can be bought at any gas station. To make the transition between engine uses smooth, the team is devising a mechanism to transfer power from the propeller to the wheels and back as needed. The difficulty here, Dietrich says, is that the system has to be as simple, reliable, and lightweight as possible. (For the team, the weight of the vehicle is a constant concern, not only because the vehicle has to be relatively light in order to fly, but also because FAA regulations require it to be less than 1,320 pounds.)
"They're doing some interesting things," says Mitch LaBiche, an engineer at LaBiche Aerospace, a company based in Alvin, TX, that has assisted the military in the construction of a wide variety of flying vehicles, from the F-117 to the Apache AH-64 helicopter. LaBiche's company is now working to build a flying sports car called the FSC-1. "[The Transition] is a light sports aircraft, so they're going to have to work hard to meet the weight requirements," LaBiche says.
The greatest nontechnical challenge Terrafugia must face is meeting the regulatory requirements of both the FAA and the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). To satisfy FAA regulations for the category of light sports aircraft, the Transition must have a maximum level speed of 138 miles per hour, a one- or two-person occupancy, and fixed landing gear, among other things. For the NHTSA, the Transition must be able to pass the same requirements that a regular car would.
"There are systems in place with both organizations to make working with them as painless as possible," Dietrich says. "It is still a lot to go through, but we've made inroads with both, especially the FAA."
The company plans to build and sell between 50 and 200 Transitions a year, most likely starting in 2009, and it's marketing the vehicle to the roughly 600,000 licensed pilots in the United States. The Transition will be comparable in size to a Cadillac Escalade but won't be nearly as heavy. Terrafugia plans to charge $148,000 per vehicle.
"Very interesting! I would love to have one," says Kenny Huffine, a pilot for a major commercial airline who flies recreationally. "My one concern, though, is about having a plane parked around other cars. If it were pushed or damaged, would that make it unflyable and dangerous?"
Flying Car About to Take Off?
An aeronautic startup looks to complete a prototype of its roadworthy aircraft within a year.
By Michael Gibson
In 1918, long before George Jetson commuted to Spacely Space Sprockets, the U.S. Patent Office issued Felix Longobardi the first patent for a vehicle capable of both driving on roads and flying through the air. But given all the impractical prototypes built since Longobardi's original whimsy, history suggests that any vehicle design combining these two modes of transport will be a commercial failure: aero-auto hybrids always seem to result in a compromise that serves both functions poorly.
Now a group of MIT alums believe that they are on their way toward overcoming this problem. Founded in 2006 and called Terrafugia, their startup, based in Woburn, MA, recently produced the first automated folding wing for a light sport aircraft. (A light sport aircraft is a type of airplane deemed by the Federal Aviation Administration to be easier to fly and hence more accessible than regular private planes.) The wing, however, is just the first step toward an aero-auto hybrid that the company plans to call the Transition.
This summer, the group demonstrated its folding wing at the annual AirVenture aviation festival in Oshkosh, WI. With more than 650,000 attendees, the festival is the most important event in experimental-aircraft aviation.
"Going into this, we knew our two biggest design challenges to make it practical would be the wings and the power train," says Anna Mracek Dietrich, an engineer at Terrafugia and the company's chief operating officer. "By validating the durability of the wing's construction and engineering, we've checked one major design challenge off of the list, and now our focus is on the second."
Previous prototypes of road-drivable aircraft have featured manually folding or detachable wings. But to allow for a seamless and quick transformation from plane to car and back, the Terrafugia team has devised a system that allows the pilot to enfold or extend the wings by pushing a button in the cockpit. Dietrich says that at Oshkosh, the researchers opened and closed the wings more than 500 times--the equivalent of three to five years of typical use--and that they're more than pleased with the wings' durability.
The wing features off-the-shelf electric actuators, but Dietrich says that the team had to design from scratch the mechanical linkages between the actuators and the rest of the craft. The group also uses dual electromagnetic locks to hold the wings tightly to the fuselage when they're enfolded.
"We're building the rest of the first vehicle now," Dietrich says. "Our schedule calls for us to start flight testing by the end of 2008, and so far we're on track for that."
The technical challenge now before the team is to build a power train that uses one engine both in the air and on the ground and is capable of running on a tank of super unleaded gasoline--the kind that can be bought at any gas station. To make the transition between engine uses smooth, the team is devising a mechanism to transfer power from the propeller to the wheels and back as needed. The difficulty here, Dietrich says, is that the system has to be as simple, reliable, and lightweight as possible. (For the team, the weight of the vehicle is a constant concern, not only because the vehicle has to be relatively light in order to fly, but also because FAA regulations require it to be less than 1,320 pounds.)
"They're doing some interesting things," says Mitch LaBiche, an engineer at LaBiche Aerospace, a company based in Alvin, TX, that has assisted the military in the construction of a wide variety of flying vehicles, from the F-117 to the Apache AH-64 helicopter. LaBiche's company is now working to build a flying sports car called the FSC-1. "[The Transition] is a light sports aircraft, so they're going to have to work hard to meet the weight requirements," LaBiche says.
The greatest nontechnical challenge Terrafugia must face is meeting the regulatory requirements of both the FAA and the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). To satisfy FAA regulations for the category of light sports aircraft, the Transition must have a maximum level speed of 138 miles per hour, a one- or two-person occupancy, and fixed landing gear, among other things. For the NHTSA, the Transition must be able to pass the same requirements that a regular car would.
"There are systems in place with both organizations to make working with them as painless as possible," Dietrich says. "It is still a lot to go through, but we've made inroads with both, especially the FAA."
The company plans to build and sell between 50 and 200 Transitions a year, most likely starting in 2009, and it's marketing the vehicle to the roughly 600,000 licensed pilots in the United States. The Transition will be comparable in size to a Cadillac Escalade but won't be nearly as heavy. Terrafugia plans to charge $148,000 per vehicle.
"Very interesting! I would love to have one," says Kenny Huffine, a pilot for a major commercial airline who flies recreationally. "My one concern, though, is about having a plane parked around other cars. If it were pushed or damaged, would that make it unflyable and dangerous?"
Saturday, October 13, 2007
The Airbus A380
The Airbus A380
The giant on the runway
Oct 11th 2007 | TOULOUSE
From The Economist print edition
Despite its difficult birth, Airbus's new super-jumbo is about to enter service. So begins the next stage in the battle for the future of air travel
AFP
FLYING from Changi Airport to Sydney, in the blue and gold livery of Singapore Airlines, the Airbus A380 will at long last enter commercial service on October 25th. On board the giant double-decker plane will be about 470 passengers, many of whom will have bought their seats in an eBay auction, raising $1.9m for charities. For both the airline and the manufacturer, the day will be one of celebration, when delays, spiralling development costs and financial controversy can be put to one side. But it will also mark the next stage of a commercial saga in which fortunes are wagered on the way the world will fly.
Few industries are more given to self-dramatisation than the aviation business. The decision to build an important new plane invariably means “betting the company”, while the aircraft itself is usually referred to by its messianic (or blinkered) maker as a “game-changer”. Both were true of the first Boeing 747, which the A380 has been designed to replace. The original jumbo jet entered service nearly 38 years ago and the financial strain of developing it almost brought mighty Boeing to its knees. But the huge leap in capacity offered by the 375-seat 747-100 compared with the next biggest plane then available, the 250-seat McDonnell Douglas DC-8, transformed both the experience and the economics of long-haul flying.
Boeing's 747 gamble eventually reaped rich rewards. Without a direct competitor and with nearly 1,400 sold over its long life, the 747 has been a matchless earner. Apart from that beautiful flop, the Concorde, no other aircraft is as recognisable or as loved. With the A380, Airbus has now risked everything; not only to kill off its rival's greatest cash cow, but also to create a similarly enduring icon to capture the imagination of the world's travellers.
Its success will depend not only on the quality of the aircraft, but on whether there is demand for a plane that can fly more than 500 passengers in a conventional three-class configuration or more than 800 in a single-class layout. Airbus is in no doubt that there is; Boeing, explaining its decision to offer only a mildly updated jumbo—the 747-8—in competition to the A380, says that the market has changed and Airbus has got its sums wrong.
A long time coming
The design of any new airliner begins years before its first flight. Appropriately for a super-jumbo, the A380 has had a long gestation. Airbus began looking at the possibility of building a 600-800 seat aircraft in 1990. But two years later Daimler-Benz and British Aerospace, two of the partners in the Airbus consortium as it then was, pushed for co-operation with Boeing on what prosaically came to be known as a new Very Large Commercial Transport (VLCT). Both companies knew the risk of competing head-on over such a big new aircraft. An earlier battle between the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 and Lockheed's L-1011 had weakened both firms and pushed Lockheed out of the commercial-aviation business entirely.
Jürgen Thomas, a veteran German engineer appointed to lead the project and who became known as the father of the A380, remains convinced that Boeing was serious about the partnership. Others were less sure. The view that came to prevail within Airbus, particularly with its French chief executive at the time, Jean Pierson, was that the Americans wanted to string the talks out for as long as possible.
For one thing, Boeing was insistent on producing a plane substantially bigger than the 747, which would complement rather than replace it. For another, as long as there was no agreement on how to build the VLCT, Boeing could continue to milk its 747 monopoly. It is said to have used its estimated $30m profit per 747 to cut the price of its other jets, like the 737, which face direct competition from Airbus.
The Europeans eventually plucked up the courage to go it alone in 1995. A year later they created a self-contained Large Aircraft Division, under Mr Thomas. After a series of meetings with prospective customers, Airbus became convinced that there was indeed a large market for a modern plane capable of carrying between 550 and 650 passengers up to 9,000 miles (15,000km). Airbus forecast that if air travel continued to grow by about 5% a year (see chart), there would be a need for 1,235 such aircraft by 2020. In April 2000, seven weeks before its official launch, one of those potential customers, the fast-growing Dubai-based airline Emirates, showed its faith in the project by declaring that it would buy ten A380s. By the end of the year Airbus had five more customers: ILFC, an influential aircraft-leasing operator, Air France, Singapore Airlines, Qantas and Virgin Atlantic.
As well as offering the range the airlines said they were looking for it also had the room: by placing one cabin on top of another, the A380 has 50% more floor area than a 747-400. Airbus also promised operating costs would be at least 15% per passenger less than those of its Boeing rival. It committed itself to much lower noise levels for passengers and people living near airports and to lower emissions.
But amid the excitement stoked by Airbus and its customers—there was talk of bars, shops, casinos (from Virgin's Sir Richard Branson) and showers in first class—it intensified a furious debate between Boeing and Airbus over the future of aviation. That debate rages on even as the A380 enters service.
Boeing argues that the market for very large, long-haul planes has been fragmented by the increasing popularity and capability of so-called “heavy twins”—big, twin-aisle planes with only two engines—and that aircraft like its own 747 and the A380 are now no more than “niche products”. Boeing began the trend with the 777. Known as the “Triple Seven”, it can carry more than 350 passengers in three classes and its longest-range version can fly more than 10,000 miles. When the Triple Seven entered service in 1995, airlines were worried that passengers would not relish the idea of flying across oceans on only two engines (even though such aircraft can manage on just one in an emergency). But such is the reliability and power of modern high-bypass turbofan engines that it has ceased to be a worry.
Airbus competes in the heavy-twin market with the slightly smaller A330 and, after several false starts, is developing the A350 XWB (extra-wide body) for entry into service in 2013. But it is Boeing that has set the pace with its 787 Dreamliner, a plane with a revolutionary all-composite fuselage made out of several single-barrel sections rather than a conventional frame with panels. The 787 should have flown by now, but is running late because of a shortage of aluminium fasteners and problems with its flight-control software. On October 10th Boeing said first deliveries of the 210-330-passenger plane will be delayed by six months to late November or December 2008. It is a blow, but with more than 800 firm orders and commitments Boeing will still have the most successful launch in the history of commercial aviation.
Bypassing hubs
Boeing believes that a combination of airline deregulation and the popularity of heavy-twin aircraft have changed long-haul flying for good. Instead of the hub-and-spoke system, in which passengers flew in 747s to big hub airports and then took short-haul flights to their final destination, Boeing says that passengers now want the convenience of flying point-to-point and that smaller long-haul planes make it both possible and economical for them to do so. As evidence, Boeing points to the drying-up of orders for passenger versions of the 747.
Airbus has some equally persuasive counter-arguments. John Leahy, an American who is the top salesman at Airbus, dismisses the Boeing claims as not just wrong but irresponsible. “It's ridiculous,” he says. “Boeing's answer means burning more fuel per passenger, putting more strain on overloaded air-traffic control systems and creating more congestion at airports that are already finding it difficult to cope.”
Given the expected tripling of air-passenger traffic over the next 20 years, Airbus predicts that very large aircraft will reach some 3,400 flights a day out of 200 airports around the world. About 70% of those flights, however, will emanate from just 25 airports, many in Asia (see map). Today, 80% of 747 flights connect 37 airports. Airbus also points out that half the world's 100 fastest-growing long-haul routes connect two big hubs, such as Hong Kong-London and New York-Tokyo. The point is that many hub airports are also the origin and destination for more and more passengers.
Many of these big city airports are under enormous capacity and environmental strain. Significant expansion at London's Heathrow, for example, will be impossible without the construction of a third runway—and few believe it will ever be built because of restrictive planning rules and local political opposition. A recent order by British Airways (BA), the world's biggest 747-400 operator, for 12 A380s with options on a further seven has bolstered the Airbus case.
Willie Walsh, BA's chief executive, said that the A380's superior capacity would allow it to grow from its creaking Heathrow base, while its quietness—it spreads noise over only half the area that a 747-400 does on take-off and less than a third on landing—was also important. As one Airbus executive put it: “Willie would have had trouble explaining to the neighbours why he'd bought a noisier, dirtier aircraft [the 747-8] even if was a bit cheaper.” Likely destinations for BA's A380s include Johannesburg, Hong Kong and points in India and America's west coast, but not, for now, New York. And as Boeing quickly pointed out, at the same time as BA announced the A380 order, it also said it would buy 24 787s. Honours even.
Perhaps more worrying for Airbus, the BA order was the A380's first from a new, as opposed to existing, customer for the best part of two years. Airbus says that it is usual for orders to slow in the year or so before an aircraft enters service, as more cautious airlines wait to see how it performs. It also says that the 46 orders it has taken in the past year, bringing the total to 185, compares well with other aircraft at similar stages in their lives.
Delays on the line
The question that nobody can answer is how deeply the production problems that have assailed the A380 have affected confidence in the aircraft and its maker. The first delay was announced in June 2005, when Airbus confessed that delivery would be six months later than promised. Almost exactly a year on, another delay of up to seven months was announced.
Airbus
A greener footprintNews of the second delay knocked 26% off the value of shares in EADS, the parent company of Airbus, and led to the resignations of Noël Forgeard, its joint chief executive, Gustav Humbert, chief executive of Airbus, and Charles Champion, then in charge of the A380. The company's failure to provide more timely information about the scale of its problems also triggered investigations into the share dealings of executives and EADS board members. A report by the French stockmarket regulator has been sent to prosecutors.
The mood at Airbus's base in Toulouse is one of frustration rather than fear. But those senior managers who have so far survived both the resignations and a big overhaul of the once dysfunctional relationship between Airbus and EADS face an unwelcome distraction at the very least.
Part of the explanation for the catastrophe was the sheer complexity of the A380. The cabin wiring—more than 330 miles of it and over 40,000 connectors in each aircraft—caused problems because two incompatible versions of computer-aided design software were used. The Germans in Hamburg had one system, the French in Toulouse another. When the electrical harnesses came to be fitted in the forward and aft fuselage sections, many didn't connect with each other. Despite efforts to resolve this, it was decided in October last year that only by updating the computer-design tools would Airbus get on top of the problem. That meant a third delay.
John Leahy recalls that when airlines were told that not only would Singapore's first aircraft be delivered late, but that everyone else's orders would slip again, “they were stunned, speechless.” The reason was the need to deal with the work on two tracks. Although a new system for installing the harnesses was being developed, the first 26 aircraft would all need difficult and time-consuming rectification work. It will be another three to four years before production reaches its intended rate of four planes a month. Another consequence was that a freighter version would be delayed until at least 2014, which lost Airbus orders from both Fedex and UPS and raised its expected earnings shortfall up to 2010 to €4.8 billion ($6.8 billion).
Despite the setbacks, all due to the poor execution of industrial processes rather than design, it has not all been bad news for the A380. Despite rumours that it was overweight and struggling to meet performance targets, the indications are that Airbus has delivered a remarkable plane that, as long as they can fill it, will provide airlines with the step-change in operating economics they were hoping for. With reduced fuel burn from its Rolls-Royce Trent 900 or Engine Alliance 7200 turbofans, lower maintenance costs from its 25% composite airframe and its advanced avionics, Airbus claims the A380's cost per seat has come out at 20% below that of the 747-400.
Back at the gate
Another achievement is that despite the aircraft's size and weight, the A380 can take off and land on the same runways as the big Boeing, thanks to the efficiency of its wings. There is no need to build longer runways, although airports have had to spend heavily to make space for the plane's wingspan at departure and arrival gates—which must also be modified to allow upper-deck passengers on and off.
Above all, passengers stand to gain most. Stephen Forshaw, of Singapore Airlines, says that while meeting or exceeding noise and emissions targets was extremely important, the catalyst for ordering 19 A380s was the opportunity to provide its customers with more comfort and a better environment. “Keep it in mind that this is an aircraft—it has physical limitations and must meet economic considerations,” he says. “But we have been able to bring about a revolution in business class with four-abreast seating and much more personal space and privacy. Even in economy, there are two inches more legroom, extra seat width and larger TV screens. There will be 12 suites on the main deck which, with its straight walls, has a unique feeling of space. The plane is also remarkably quiet inside.”
Singapore believes that life for 747 operators, such as All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines, faced with direct competition from airlines flying the A380 will be hard. Mr Forshaw adds: “A lot of customers are sitting back, but they'll have to move at some point. We're very confident this aircraft really is a game-changer and everybody will have to play by the new rules.”
If that is right, the prospects for the A380 may be rather brighter than either Boeing or Airbus's critics would like to think. Boeing's emotional investment in the 747 and the difficulty it has in coming to terms with the end of its long reign as the flagship of long-haul travel is understandable. But so far, Boeing has only received 20 orders for the passenger variant of its 747-8—all from Germany's Lufthansa, which is also buying 15 A380s and has options on more. Between an aircraft that is at the end of a 40-year evolution and one at the beginning of what is likely to be a similarly long career, there is no contest. The debate about hubs versus point-to-point flying is also a largely sterile one: one doesn't exclude the other and it will be horses for courses.
But it is harder to say whether the A380 will ever match the 747's commercial prowess. Its firm order tally of 185 aircraft to date from 15 airlines is respectable. But there are only seven more established 747 operators to sell to and existing A380 customers may take a long time to come back for more. Airbus now reckons the market for very large aircraft to be 1,665 by 2025, with 55% of the demand coming from the Asia Pacific region, some of it from new carriers. Cautiously, it predicts taking only 50% of the market, but it is reluctant these days to say how many aircraft it needs to sell to break even. Recently, Louis Gallois, EADS chief executive, admitted that the number is higher than a previous figure of 420 because of the slower build-up in production and the effect of a weak dollar.
However, even if the market turns out to be smaller than Airbus is hoping for, the A380 looks likely to dominate, if not monopolise, long high-density routes for years to come. And with time on its side, it might even produce a return on the money it has cost to put into service—nudging €20 billion according to some estimates. For airlines and passengers, the A380 should be nothing but good news. But for Airbus it will have been a long, bumpy and, at times, perilous ride.
The giant on the runway
Oct 11th 2007 | TOULOUSE
From The Economist print edition
Despite its difficult birth, Airbus's new super-jumbo is about to enter service. So begins the next stage in the battle for the future of air travel
AFP
FLYING from Changi Airport to Sydney, in the blue and gold livery of Singapore Airlines, the Airbus A380 will at long last enter commercial service on October 25th. On board the giant double-decker plane will be about 470 passengers, many of whom will have bought their seats in an eBay auction, raising $1.9m for charities. For both the airline and the manufacturer, the day will be one of celebration, when delays, spiralling development costs and financial controversy can be put to one side. But it will also mark the next stage of a commercial saga in which fortunes are wagered on the way the world will fly.
Few industries are more given to self-dramatisation than the aviation business. The decision to build an important new plane invariably means “betting the company”, while the aircraft itself is usually referred to by its messianic (or blinkered) maker as a “game-changer”. Both were true of the first Boeing 747, which the A380 has been designed to replace. The original jumbo jet entered service nearly 38 years ago and the financial strain of developing it almost brought mighty Boeing to its knees. But the huge leap in capacity offered by the 375-seat 747-100 compared with the next biggest plane then available, the 250-seat McDonnell Douglas DC-8, transformed both the experience and the economics of long-haul flying.
Boeing's 747 gamble eventually reaped rich rewards. Without a direct competitor and with nearly 1,400 sold over its long life, the 747 has been a matchless earner. Apart from that beautiful flop, the Concorde, no other aircraft is as recognisable or as loved. With the A380, Airbus has now risked everything; not only to kill off its rival's greatest cash cow, but also to create a similarly enduring icon to capture the imagination of the world's travellers.
Its success will depend not only on the quality of the aircraft, but on whether there is demand for a plane that can fly more than 500 passengers in a conventional three-class configuration or more than 800 in a single-class layout. Airbus is in no doubt that there is; Boeing, explaining its decision to offer only a mildly updated jumbo—the 747-8—in competition to the A380, says that the market has changed and Airbus has got its sums wrong.
A long time coming
The design of any new airliner begins years before its first flight. Appropriately for a super-jumbo, the A380 has had a long gestation. Airbus began looking at the possibility of building a 600-800 seat aircraft in 1990. But two years later Daimler-Benz and British Aerospace, two of the partners in the Airbus consortium as it then was, pushed for co-operation with Boeing on what prosaically came to be known as a new Very Large Commercial Transport (VLCT). Both companies knew the risk of competing head-on over such a big new aircraft. An earlier battle between the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 and Lockheed's L-1011 had weakened both firms and pushed Lockheed out of the commercial-aviation business entirely.
Jürgen Thomas, a veteran German engineer appointed to lead the project and who became known as the father of the A380, remains convinced that Boeing was serious about the partnership. Others were less sure. The view that came to prevail within Airbus, particularly with its French chief executive at the time, Jean Pierson, was that the Americans wanted to string the talks out for as long as possible.
For one thing, Boeing was insistent on producing a plane substantially bigger than the 747, which would complement rather than replace it. For another, as long as there was no agreement on how to build the VLCT, Boeing could continue to milk its 747 monopoly. It is said to have used its estimated $30m profit per 747 to cut the price of its other jets, like the 737, which face direct competition from Airbus.
The Europeans eventually plucked up the courage to go it alone in 1995. A year later they created a self-contained Large Aircraft Division, under Mr Thomas. After a series of meetings with prospective customers, Airbus became convinced that there was indeed a large market for a modern plane capable of carrying between 550 and 650 passengers up to 9,000 miles (15,000km). Airbus forecast that if air travel continued to grow by about 5% a year (see chart), there would be a need for 1,235 such aircraft by 2020. In April 2000, seven weeks before its official launch, one of those potential customers, the fast-growing Dubai-based airline Emirates, showed its faith in the project by declaring that it would buy ten A380s. By the end of the year Airbus had five more customers: ILFC, an influential aircraft-leasing operator, Air France, Singapore Airlines, Qantas and Virgin Atlantic.
As well as offering the range the airlines said they were looking for it also had the room: by placing one cabin on top of another, the A380 has 50% more floor area than a 747-400. Airbus also promised operating costs would be at least 15% per passenger less than those of its Boeing rival. It committed itself to much lower noise levels for passengers and people living near airports and to lower emissions.
But amid the excitement stoked by Airbus and its customers—there was talk of bars, shops, casinos (from Virgin's Sir Richard Branson) and showers in first class—it intensified a furious debate between Boeing and Airbus over the future of aviation. That debate rages on even as the A380 enters service.
Boeing argues that the market for very large, long-haul planes has been fragmented by the increasing popularity and capability of so-called “heavy twins”—big, twin-aisle planes with only two engines—and that aircraft like its own 747 and the A380 are now no more than “niche products”. Boeing began the trend with the 777. Known as the “Triple Seven”, it can carry more than 350 passengers in three classes and its longest-range version can fly more than 10,000 miles. When the Triple Seven entered service in 1995, airlines were worried that passengers would not relish the idea of flying across oceans on only two engines (even though such aircraft can manage on just one in an emergency). But such is the reliability and power of modern high-bypass turbofan engines that it has ceased to be a worry.
Airbus competes in the heavy-twin market with the slightly smaller A330 and, after several false starts, is developing the A350 XWB (extra-wide body) for entry into service in 2013. But it is Boeing that has set the pace with its 787 Dreamliner, a plane with a revolutionary all-composite fuselage made out of several single-barrel sections rather than a conventional frame with panels. The 787 should have flown by now, but is running late because of a shortage of aluminium fasteners and problems with its flight-control software. On October 10th Boeing said first deliveries of the 210-330-passenger plane will be delayed by six months to late November or December 2008. It is a blow, but with more than 800 firm orders and commitments Boeing will still have the most successful launch in the history of commercial aviation.
Bypassing hubs
Boeing believes that a combination of airline deregulation and the popularity of heavy-twin aircraft have changed long-haul flying for good. Instead of the hub-and-spoke system, in which passengers flew in 747s to big hub airports and then took short-haul flights to their final destination, Boeing says that passengers now want the convenience of flying point-to-point and that smaller long-haul planes make it both possible and economical for them to do so. As evidence, Boeing points to the drying-up of orders for passenger versions of the 747.
Airbus has some equally persuasive counter-arguments. John Leahy, an American who is the top salesman at Airbus, dismisses the Boeing claims as not just wrong but irresponsible. “It's ridiculous,” he says. “Boeing's answer means burning more fuel per passenger, putting more strain on overloaded air-traffic control systems and creating more congestion at airports that are already finding it difficult to cope.”
Given the expected tripling of air-passenger traffic over the next 20 years, Airbus predicts that very large aircraft will reach some 3,400 flights a day out of 200 airports around the world. About 70% of those flights, however, will emanate from just 25 airports, many in Asia (see map). Today, 80% of 747 flights connect 37 airports. Airbus also points out that half the world's 100 fastest-growing long-haul routes connect two big hubs, such as Hong Kong-London and New York-Tokyo. The point is that many hub airports are also the origin and destination for more and more passengers.
Many of these big city airports are under enormous capacity and environmental strain. Significant expansion at London's Heathrow, for example, will be impossible without the construction of a third runway—and few believe it will ever be built because of restrictive planning rules and local political opposition. A recent order by British Airways (BA), the world's biggest 747-400 operator, for 12 A380s with options on a further seven has bolstered the Airbus case.
Willie Walsh, BA's chief executive, said that the A380's superior capacity would allow it to grow from its creaking Heathrow base, while its quietness—it spreads noise over only half the area that a 747-400 does on take-off and less than a third on landing—was also important. As one Airbus executive put it: “Willie would have had trouble explaining to the neighbours why he'd bought a noisier, dirtier aircraft [the 747-8] even if was a bit cheaper.” Likely destinations for BA's A380s include Johannesburg, Hong Kong and points in India and America's west coast, but not, for now, New York. And as Boeing quickly pointed out, at the same time as BA announced the A380 order, it also said it would buy 24 787s. Honours even.
Perhaps more worrying for Airbus, the BA order was the A380's first from a new, as opposed to existing, customer for the best part of two years. Airbus says that it is usual for orders to slow in the year or so before an aircraft enters service, as more cautious airlines wait to see how it performs. It also says that the 46 orders it has taken in the past year, bringing the total to 185, compares well with other aircraft at similar stages in their lives.
Delays on the line
The question that nobody can answer is how deeply the production problems that have assailed the A380 have affected confidence in the aircraft and its maker. The first delay was announced in June 2005, when Airbus confessed that delivery would be six months later than promised. Almost exactly a year on, another delay of up to seven months was announced.
Airbus
A greener footprintNews of the second delay knocked 26% off the value of shares in EADS, the parent company of Airbus, and led to the resignations of Noël Forgeard, its joint chief executive, Gustav Humbert, chief executive of Airbus, and Charles Champion, then in charge of the A380. The company's failure to provide more timely information about the scale of its problems also triggered investigations into the share dealings of executives and EADS board members. A report by the French stockmarket regulator has been sent to prosecutors.
The mood at Airbus's base in Toulouse is one of frustration rather than fear. But those senior managers who have so far survived both the resignations and a big overhaul of the once dysfunctional relationship between Airbus and EADS face an unwelcome distraction at the very least.
Part of the explanation for the catastrophe was the sheer complexity of the A380. The cabin wiring—more than 330 miles of it and over 40,000 connectors in each aircraft—caused problems because two incompatible versions of computer-aided design software were used. The Germans in Hamburg had one system, the French in Toulouse another. When the electrical harnesses came to be fitted in the forward and aft fuselage sections, many didn't connect with each other. Despite efforts to resolve this, it was decided in October last year that only by updating the computer-design tools would Airbus get on top of the problem. That meant a third delay.
John Leahy recalls that when airlines were told that not only would Singapore's first aircraft be delivered late, but that everyone else's orders would slip again, “they were stunned, speechless.” The reason was the need to deal with the work on two tracks. Although a new system for installing the harnesses was being developed, the first 26 aircraft would all need difficult and time-consuming rectification work. It will be another three to four years before production reaches its intended rate of four planes a month. Another consequence was that a freighter version would be delayed until at least 2014, which lost Airbus orders from both Fedex and UPS and raised its expected earnings shortfall up to 2010 to €4.8 billion ($6.8 billion).
Despite the setbacks, all due to the poor execution of industrial processes rather than design, it has not all been bad news for the A380. Despite rumours that it was overweight and struggling to meet performance targets, the indications are that Airbus has delivered a remarkable plane that, as long as they can fill it, will provide airlines with the step-change in operating economics they were hoping for. With reduced fuel burn from its Rolls-Royce Trent 900 or Engine Alliance 7200 turbofans, lower maintenance costs from its 25% composite airframe and its advanced avionics, Airbus claims the A380's cost per seat has come out at 20% below that of the 747-400.
Back at the gate
Another achievement is that despite the aircraft's size and weight, the A380 can take off and land on the same runways as the big Boeing, thanks to the efficiency of its wings. There is no need to build longer runways, although airports have had to spend heavily to make space for the plane's wingspan at departure and arrival gates—which must also be modified to allow upper-deck passengers on and off.
Above all, passengers stand to gain most. Stephen Forshaw, of Singapore Airlines, says that while meeting or exceeding noise and emissions targets was extremely important, the catalyst for ordering 19 A380s was the opportunity to provide its customers with more comfort and a better environment. “Keep it in mind that this is an aircraft—it has physical limitations and must meet economic considerations,” he says. “But we have been able to bring about a revolution in business class with four-abreast seating and much more personal space and privacy. Even in economy, there are two inches more legroom, extra seat width and larger TV screens. There will be 12 suites on the main deck which, with its straight walls, has a unique feeling of space. The plane is also remarkably quiet inside.”
Singapore believes that life for 747 operators, such as All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines, faced with direct competition from airlines flying the A380 will be hard. Mr Forshaw adds: “A lot of customers are sitting back, but they'll have to move at some point. We're very confident this aircraft really is a game-changer and everybody will have to play by the new rules.”
If that is right, the prospects for the A380 may be rather brighter than either Boeing or Airbus's critics would like to think. Boeing's emotional investment in the 747 and the difficulty it has in coming to terms with the end of its long reign as the flagship of long-haul travel is understandable. But so far, Boeing has only received 20 orders for the passenger variant of its 747-8—all from Germany's Lufthansa, which is also buying 15 A380s and has options on more. Between an aircraft that is at the end of a 40-year evolution and one at the beginning of what is likely to be a similarly long career, there is no contest. The debate about hubs versus point-to-point flying is also a largely sterile one: one doesn't exclude the other and it will be horses for courses.
But it is harder to say whether the A380 will ever match the 747's commercial prowess. Its firm order tally of 185 aircraft to date from 15 airlines is respectable. But there are only seven more established 747 operators to sell to and existing A380 customers may take a long time to come back for more. Airbus now reckons the market for very large aircraft to be 1,665 by 2025, with 55% of the demand coming from the Asia Pacific region, some of it from new carriers. Cautiously, it predicts taking only 50% of the market, but it is reluctant these days to say how many aircraft it needs to sell to break even. Recently, Louis Gallois, EADS chief executive, admitted that the number is higher than a previous figure of 420 because of the slower build-up in production and the effect of a weak dollar.
However, even if the market turns out to be smaller than Airbus is hoping for, the A380 looks likely to dominate, if not monopolise, long high-density routes for years to come. And with time on its side, it might even produce a return on the money it has cost to put into service—nudging €20 billion according to some estimates. For airlines and passengers, the A380 should be nothing but good news. But for Airbus it will have been a long, bumpy and, at times, perilous ride.
Flying from a different perspective
Flying from a different perspective
Travelling by plane is often seen as the quickest and easiest way for people to get to their destinations abroad, but after his trip in a Zeppelin, Anthony Smith wonders whether the humble airship may provide an alternative.
When was the last time you actually enjoyed flying?
Whether you were off to Paris, Spain or California did you settle into your seat with happiness, apart from the thought of reaching somewhere else?
Or were you cramped, almost from the start?
Restricted space on aircraft is a fact of life for most passengers
Loathing the person in front who jerks his seat back into your lap, and even resenting that lightweight girl who twists her legs into some kind of knot and actually sleeps, dammit, for most of the journey?
Ok, so I am talking about economy class, which also means I am talking about the flights most of us endure.
And queue for. And pay for, plus all the taxes. And have to go on if we wish to get practically anywhere else, such as all those places investigated for this slot by all our own correspondents.
Well, it does not have to be like that.
Flying heyday
Last week I flew in a Zeppelin.
And from the spot, Friedrichshafen by Lake Constance in southern Germany, where the very first Zeppelin ascended back in 1900.
What a flight, with meals in the dining room, cabins to sleep in
We just cruised for 40 minutes, but could open the windows, speak without effort, enjoy watching the world go by 1,000 ft (300m) below, and tell ourselves what it must have been like when far bigger airships were having their heyday. Such as the Graf Zeppelin which went around the world in 1929 in four hops, starting from the US, touching down in Germany, then in Japan, and then in California.
What a flight, with meals in the dining room, cabins to sleep in, and our beautiful planet not six miles down and invisible but usually a mere 1,500 ft (450m) below.
Think of all such trips.
Perhaps down to Rio in one hop, dancing if you felt like it, walking about, and not just to a doll's-house loo.
And then stopping above your destination, watching the sun come up, shouting at the locals and then disembarking without the used-rag feeling which modern aircraft induce but refreshed, invigorated, well-fed, well-slept and delighted to be alive, instead of merely grateful that the long-haul, as they call it, has finally been concluded.
Safer travel
The one thing everyone knows about airships is that the Hindenburg spectacularly caught fire in May 1937 when landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey after a flight from Germany.
The Hindenburg crashed along with the airship industry in 1937
What is less well known is that two-thirds of those on board, 62 out of the 97 passengers and crew, survived the disaster.
Of course hydrogen catches fire - just as petrol or aviation spirit do given the incentive of an accident, but no airship uses hydrogen these days, however much airlines use their combustible fuel.
Helium is now used as buoyancy for airships, this is sometimes called non-flammable helium as if there is another kind. There is not.
And this light gas is more inert than water. It certainly cannot catch fire.
Leisurely pace
So let us dream a bit.
Imagine taking off in an airship from Heathrow, ascending far more quietly and steeply than everything else, before setting off for, say, Rome at the entrancing height of 1,500ft .
Imagine a leisurely airship journey with time to enjoy the city sights
Watch Kent and its orchards go by, then Dover's white cliffs, and the busy English Channel.
Cruise over French chateaux, admire their vineyards, and then repair - as they say - to the dining area.
Meet France's contours towards the south, and then drop down to the famous Cote d'Azur, have a look at all those Anglais on their promenade, perhaps speaking with them through an open window after halting in mid-air with the engines no more than idling.
Then out, lower still, over the Mediterranean - say at 500ft above the waves - until it is time for supper, for a final drink at the bar, and then to bed.
That single accident 70 years ago should not blind us to the fact that airship flying is total joy from beginning to end and in between
Wake up east of Corsica and cruise down Italy's coast, past Elba, past Orbetello and Civitavecchia while you breakfast before touching down at Rome, not with a solid thump plus a flurry of brakes and reverse thrust, but gently and perhaps even unnoticeably as a ground-crew catch hold of the landing lines.
Yes, it has taken 24 hours from London rather than two or three, but the holiday and joy and wonder began at Heathrow instead of when your aircraft's wheels yelp on meeting ground again.
Glory days
On my German flight there were 14 on board, one pilot, one stewardess, and 12 punters.
Yes, it cost 250 euros (£174) per person, and London to Rome would be rather more, but what joy would be possible, perhaps only once in a lifetime.
The trip would certainly remind us that flight does not have to be foul, cramped, undignified and an easy way to get a DVT (Deep Vein Thrombosis).
It could actually be glorious just as it was in the old days when, starting in 1910, airship passenger flights were frequent - and without mishap - until 27 years later when the Hindenburg caught fire.
That single accident 70 years ago should not blind us to the fact that airship flying is total joy from beginning to end and in between.
Like every other economy sardine, I long for the alternative of actually enjoying a flight.
Travelling by plane is often seen as the quickest and easiest way for people to get to their destinations abroad, but after his trip in a Zeppelin, Anthony Smith wonders whether the humble airship may provide an alternative.
When was the last time you actually enjoyed flying?
Whether you were off to Paris, Spain or California did you settle into your seat with happiness, apart from the thought of reaching somewhere else?
Or were you cramped, almost from the start?
Restricted space on aircraft is a fact of life for most passengers
Loathing the person in front who jerks his seat back into your lap, and even resenting that lightweight girl who twists her legs into some kind of knot and actually sleeps, dammit, for most of the journey?
Ok, so I am talking about economy class, which also means I am talking about the flights most of us endure.
And queue for. And pay for, plus all the taxes. And have to go on if we wish to get practically anywhere else, such as all those places investigated for this slot by all our own correspondents.
Well, it does not have to be like that.
Flying heyday
Last week I flew in a Zeppelin.
And from the spot, Friedrichshafen by Lake Constance in southern Germany, where the very first Zeppelin ascended back in 1900.
What a flight, with meals in the dining room, cabins to sleep in
We just cruised for 40 minutes, but could open the windows, speak without effort, enjoy watching the world go by 1,000 ft (300m) below, and tell ourselves what it must have been like when far bigger airships were having their heyday. Such as the Graf Zeppelin which went around the world in 1929 in four hops, starting from the US, touching down in Germany, then in Japan, and then in California.
What a flight, with meals in the dining room, cabins to sleep in, and our beautiful planet not six miles down and invisible but usually a mere 1,500 ft (450m) below.
Think of all such trips.
Perhaps down to Rio in one hop, dancing if you felt like it, walking about, and not just to a doll's-house loo.
And then stopping above your destination, watching the sun come up, shouting at the locals and then disembarking without the used-rag feeling which modern aircraft induce but refreshed, invigorated, well-fed, well-slept and delighted to be alive, instead of merely grateful that the long-haul, as they call it, has finally been concluded.
Safer travel
The one thing everyone knows about airships is that the Hindenburg spectacularly caught fire in May 1937 when landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey after a flight from Germany.
The Hindenburg crashed along with the airship industry in 1937
What is less well known is that two-thirds of those on board, 62 out of the 97 passengers and crew, survived the disaster.
Of course hydrogen catches fire - just as petrol or aviation spirit do given the incentive of an accident, but no airship uses hydrogen these days, however much airlines use their combustible fuel.
Helium is now used as buoyancy for airships, this is sometimes called non-flammable helium as if there is another kind. There is not.
And this light gas is more inert than water. It certainly cannot catch fire.
Leisurely pace
So let us dream a bit.
Imagine taking off in an airship from Heathrow, ascending far more quietly and steeply than everything else, before setting off for, say, Rome at the entrancing height of 1,500ft .
Imagine a leisurely airship journey with time to enjoy the city sights
Watch Kent and its orchards go by, then Dover's white cliffs, and the busy English Channel.
Cruise over French chateaux, admire their vineyards, and then repair - as they say - to the dining area.
Meet France's contours towards the south, and then drop down to the famous Cote d'Azur, have a look at all those Anglais on their promenade, perhaps speaking with them through an open window after halting in mid-air with the engines no more than idling.
Then out, lower still, over the Mediterranean - say at 500ft above the waves - until it is time for supper, for a final drink at the bar, and then to bed.
That single accident 70 years ago should not blind us to the fact that airship flying is total joy from beginning to end and in between
Wake up east of Corsica and cruise down Italy's coast, past Elba, past Orbetello and Civitavecchia while you breakfast before touching down at Rome, not with a solid thump plus a flurry of brakes and reverse thrust, but gently and perhaps even unnoticeably as a ground-crew catch hold of the landing lines.
Yes, it has taken 24 hours from London rather than two or three, but the holiday and joy and wonder began at Heathrow instead of when your aircraft's wheels yelp on meeting ground again.
Glory days
On my German flight there were 14 on board, one pilot, one stewardess, and 12 punters.
Yes, it cost 250 euros (£174) per person, and London to Rome would be rather more, but what joy would be possible, perhaps only once in a lifetime.
The trip would certainly remind us that flight does not have to be foul, cramped, undignified and an easy way to get a DVT (Deep Vein Thrombosis).
It could actually be glorious just as it was in the old days when, starting in 1910, airship passenger flights were frequent - and without mishap - until 27 years later when the Hindenburg caught fire.
That single accident 70 years ago should not blind us to the fact that airship flying is total joy from beginning to end and in between.
Like every other economy sardine, I long for the alternative of actually enjoying a flight.
Skies to be swept for alien life
Skies to be swept for alien life
The array will be able to image large sections of the sky at once
The switch has been thrown on a telescope specifically designed to seek out alien life.
Funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, the finished array will have 350 six-metre antennas and will be one of the world's largest.
The Allen Telescope Array (ATA) will be able to sweep more than one million star systems for radio signals generated by intelligent beings.
Its creators hope it will help spot definite signs of alien life by 2025.
First light
The ATA is being run by the Seti Institute and the Radio Astronomy Laboratory from the University of California, Berkeley, US
"For Seti, the ATA's technical capabilities exponentially increase our ability to search for intelligent signals, and may lead to the discovery of thinking beings elsewhere in the Universe," said Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the Seti Institute in a statement.
On 11 October, the first 42 dishes of the array started gathering data that will be analysed for signs of alien life and help with conventional radio astronomy.
The first test images produced by the array are radio maps of the Andromeda Galaxy and the Triangulum Galaxy.
Mr Allen provided the funding for the first stages of the array
The ATA is pioneering a novel design.
Rather than being hand built, each six-metre antenna is made of a mass-produced dish and off-the-shelf components. Behind the scenes, digital signal processing software is used to analyse data and clean out man-made interference that would otherwise make the captured information useless.
The layout of the array has also been carefully plotted so the instruments work in unison to take a single snapshot of huge swathes of the sky.
The ATA's creators claim that even with only 42 antennas on-stream, the instrument already rivals larger instruments in its ability to carry out brightness, temperature and point source surveys.
When all 350 dishes are gathering data, the ATA's creators say it will allow the gathering of data on an "unprecedented" scale.
The finished instrument will be able to study an area of the sky 17 times larger than that possible with the Very Large Array in New Mexico.
Mr Allen has provided Seti and Berkeley with a $25m grant to fund the initial construction work on the instrument. Other sponsors are being sought for the other $25m needed to complete the project.
It is expected to help improve understanding of such phenomena as supernovas, black holes, and exotic astronomical objects that have been predicted but never observed.
The array is situated in Hat Creek, California, and lies about 290 miles (470 km) north of San Francisco.
The array will be able to image large sections of the sky at once
The switch has been thrown on a telescope specifically designed to seek out alien life.
Funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, the finished array will have 350 six-metre antennas and will be one of the world's largest.
The Allen Telescope Array (ATA) will be able to sweep more than one million star systems for radio signals generated by intelligent beings.
Its creators hope it will help spot definite signs of alien life by 2025.
First light
The ATA is being run by the Seti Institute and the Radio Astronomy Laboratory from the University of California, Berkeley, US
"For Seti, the ATA's technical capabilities exponentially increase our ability to search for intelligent signals, and may lead to the discovery of thinking beings elsewhere in the Universe," said Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the Seti Institute in a statement.
On 11 October, the first 42 dishes of the array started gathering data that will be analysed for signs of alien life and help with conventional radio astronomy.
The first test images produced by the array are radio maps of the Andromeda Galaxy and the Triangulum Galaxy.
Mr Allen provided the funding for the first stages of the array
The ATA is pioneering a novel design.
Rather than being hand built, each six-metre antenna is made of a mass-produced dish and off-the-shelf components. Behind the scenes, digital signal processing software is used to analyse data and clean out man-made interference that would otherwise make the captured information useless.
The layout of the array has also been carefully plotted so the instruments work in unison to take a single snapshot of huge swathes of the sky.
The ATA's creators claim that even with only 42 antennas on-stream, the instrument already rivals larger instruments in its ability to carry out brightness, temperature and point source surveys.
When all 350 dishes are gathering data, the ATA's creators say it will allow the gathering of data on an "unprecedented" scale.
The finished instrument will be able to study an area of the sky 17 times larger than that possible with the Very Large Array in New Mexico.
Mr Allen has provided Seti and Berkeley with a $25m grant to fund the initial construction work on the instrument. Other sponsors are being sought for the other $25m needed to complete the project.
It is expected to help improve understanding of such phenomena as supernovas, black holes, and exotic astronomical objects that have been predicted but never observed.
The array is situated in Hat Creek, California, and lies about 290 miles (470 km) north of San Francisco.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Friday, October 5, 2007
Mitsubishi Picks Pratt & Whitney Engine to Power New Japanese Built Jets
October 5, 2007
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Japan's largest machinery maker, has picked US firm Pratt & Whitney to supply engines for the passenger jet it expects to launch in 2012, the Nikkei newspaper said on Friday.
The firm will also increase its development budget for the jet by a quarter, to JPY150 billion yen (USD$1.3 billion), the Nikkei said.
A Mitsubishi Heavy spokesman declined to comment.
The company said in June that Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies, and Rolls-Royce were possible candidates to supply the engines.
Mitsubishi Heavy plans to start taking orders for the jet next week, when it will also release a detailed business plan, the Nikkei said.
The jet, which will become the first Japanese-made passenger jet, will come in 72-seat and 92-seat versions and is part of a larger effort by Japan to develop aircraft that are more fuel efficient and make less noise.
(Reuters)
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Japan's largest machinery maker, has picked US firm Pratt & Whitney to supply engines for the passenger jet it expects to launch in 2012, the Nikkei newspaper said on Friday.
The firm will also increase its development budget for the jet by a quarter, to JPY150 billion yen (USD$1.3 billion), the Nikkei said.
A Mitsubishi Heavy spokesman declined to comment.
The company said in June that Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies, and Rolls-Royce were possible candidates to supply the engines.
Mitsubishi Heavy plans to start taking orders for the jet next week, when it will also release a detailed business plan, the Nikkei said.
The jet, which will become the first Japanese-made passenger jet, will come in 72-seat and 92-seat versions and is part of a larger effort by Japan to develop aircraft that are more fuel efficient and make less noise.
(Reuters)
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Ryanair cofounder Tony Ryan dies at age 71
Ryanair cofounder Tony Ryan dies at age 71
Tony Ryan, a co-founder of European discounter Ryanair, died in his home Wednesday at the age of 71, AFP reports. His death came after a long and undisclosed illness, according to media reports. Ryan founded an aircraft sales and leasing outfit called Guiness Peat, which The Associated Press says during the 1980s "became the largest aircraft-leasing operation in the world." A Bloomberg News report in The New York Times (free registration) says "although Guinness Peat (ultimately) went on to amass debt after a failed share sale in 1992, it provided Mr. Ryan with the money to start Ryanair, replicating the low-cost model pioneered in the United States by Southwest Airlines."
As for Ryanair, its first flight came in 1985 with the company flying a single 15-seat aircraft between London Gatwick and Waterford in southeastern Ireland. Today, the airline has become one of Europe's top carriers, flying more than 500 routes with a market value of about $11.3 billion, "almost matching that of its full-service rival, British Airways," according to Bloomberg. Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary, described by AP as "a Ryan protege," says "it was a privilege to work for him and to learn from him. … We are all determined that Ryanair will continue to carry his name with pride and distinction." Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern adds that Ryanair's "rise to become one of the leading carriers in Europe is one of the greatest Irish economic success stories and will be rightly regarded as perhaps his greatest legacy."
Tony Ryan, a co-founder of European discounter Ryanair, died in his home Wednesday at the age of 71, AFP reports. His death came after a long and undisclosed illness, according to media reports. Ryan founded an aircraft sales and leasing outfit called Guiness Peat, which The Associated Press says during the 1980s "became the largest aircraft-leasing operation in the world." A Bloomberg News report in The New York Times (free registration) says "although Guinness Peat (ultimately) went on to amass debt after a failed share sale in 1992, it provided Mr. Ryan with the money to start Ryanair, replicating the low-cost model pioneered in the United States by Southwest Airlines."
As for Ryanair, its first flight came in 1985 with the company flying a single 15-seat aircraft between London Gatwick and Waterford in southeastern Ireland. Today, the airline has become one of Europe's top carriers, flying more than 500 routes with a market value of about $11.3 billion, "almost matching that of its full-service rival, British Airways," according to Bloomberg. Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary, described by AP as "a Ryan protege," says "it was a privilege to work for him and to learn from him. … We are all determined that Ryanair will continue to carry his name with pride and distinction." Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern adds that Ryanair's "rise to become one of the leading carriers in Europe is one of the greatest Irish economic success stories and will be rightly regarded as perhaps his greatest legacy."
To boldly stay home
To boldly stay home
Sputnik’s scary launch became the Mission to Planet Earth
Updated: 10/04/07 6:58 AM
It was no more than the size of a pumpkin and the only intelligence information it relayed was the beep, beep, beep of its own startling existence. While many Americans looked up in terror — which was the point — Sputnik, the Soviet satellite launched 50 years ago today, had no cameras for looking down at Earth.
Today, much to the benefit of all humanity, the view is reversed. Some 900 satellites look down on us, while another 5,000 or more have gone dark, fallen to Earth or slipped the bonds of terrestrial gravity for voyages into the cosmos. But most earthlings today don’t find them worth craning our necks for, and we hold no more interest in them than we do in the occasional pronouncements of how we should again fly human beings to the moon, or Mars.
All the fear and resolve that propelled the Space Race up through the moon landings from 1969 through 1972 have given way to a world in which people are less fearful of the military uses of rocketry than they are reliant on the satellites that bring us the inestimable benefits of weather forecasts, environmental data and global communications.
When films such as “2001: A Space Odyssey” come into our homes over the many movie channels now available, they are bounced off a satellite that is not, as was predicted in the wake of Sputnik, in the neighborhood of space stations run by Hilton or shuttles operated by Pan Am.
The fear at the time, of course, was that the Soviet designers who could launch Sputnik could just as easily have hurled an atomic bomb into orbit, or onto our heads. That remains a risk, perhaps. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, space has become less a garrison than a switchboard. Even the military focus is on communications and data collection — sometimes better known as spying.
Despite the initial belittling it received from some American officials — “a useless hunk of iron,” the defense secretary called it — others quickly came to see it as a great threat to national security. A sort of technological Pearl Harbor, according to atomic scientist Edward Teller.
The results, if unplanned, were mostly to the good. The United States ramped up its support for public education and, on the way to inventing moon rockets and spy satellites, created weather satellites, communications satellites, fuel cells, microcircuits and a useful little toy called the Internet.
Rather than racing off into space, we send up new generations of Sputniks to help us better understand and thrive on our home world. The Mission to Planet Earth, it’s called. And we are all the better for it.
Sputnik’s scary launch became the Mission to Planet Earth
Updated: 10/04/07 6:58 AM
It was no more than the size of a pumpkin and the only intelligence information it relayed was the beep, beep, beep of its own startling existence. While many Americans looked up in terror — which was the point — Sputnik, the Soviet satellite launched 50 years ago today, had no cameras for looking down at Earth.
Today, much to the benefit of all humanity, the view is reversed. Some 900 satellites look down on us, while another 5,000 or more have gone dark, fallen to Earth or slipped the bonds of terrestrial gravity for voyages into the cosmos. But most earthlings today don’t find them worth craning our necks for, and we hold no more interest in them than we do in the occasional pronouncements of how we should again fly human beings to the moon, or Mars.
All the fear and resolve that propelled the Space Race up through the moon landings from 1969 through 1972 have given way to a world in which people are less fearful of the military uses of rocketry than they are reliant on the satellites that bring us the inestimable benefits of weather forecasts, environmental data and global communications.
When films such as “2001: A Space Odyssey” come into our homes over the many movie channels now available, they are bounced off a satellite that is not, as was predicted in the wake of Sputnik, in the neighborhood of space stations run by Hilton or shuttles operated by Pan Am.
The fear at the time, of course, was that the Soviet designers who could launch Sputnik could just as easily have hurled an atomic bomb into orbit, or onto our heads. That remains a risk, perhaps. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, space has become less a garrison than a switchboard. Even the military focus is on communications and data collection — sometimes better known as spying.
Despite the initial belittling it received from some American officials — “a useless hunk of iron,” the defense secretary called it — others quickly came to see it as a great threat to national security. A sort of technological Pearl Harbor, according to atomic scientist Edward Teller.
The results, if unplanned, were mostly to the good. The United States ramped up its support for public education and, on the way to inventing moon rockets and spy satellites, created weather satellites, communications satellites, fuel cells, microcircuits and a useful little toy called the Internet.
Rather than racing off into space, we send up new generations of Sputniks to help us better understand and thrive on our home world. The Mission to Planet Earth, it’s called. And we are all the better for it.
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