A380 Set to Change the Face of Airports

by Imtiaz Muqbil
Airbus Industrie, manufacturer of the new-generation 550-passenger aircraft, the A380, has begun discussions with 50 major hub airports around the world about the billions of dollars in infrastructure changes that will have to be made to accommodate the massive aircraft. Wolf Dieter Wissel, the company's director of large aircraft configuration, said the airports, including Bangkok's, were looking at additional costs of anything from a few million to up to half a billion dollars to upgrade and reconfigure their ground services and operation systems to ensure smoother turnarounds of the gigantic, double-decker airliner.
Mr Wissel made the comments at the annual conference of the International Flight Catering Association and International Flight Services Association last week in Bangkok. The event brought together about 200 senior executives in the multi-billion-dollar business of feeding global airline passengers.

The Queen Mother

by Jack Elliott
The Paris Air Show is the Queen Mother of all air shows. It was born in 1909, before anybody else ever conceived of anything like an air show. Aviation was hardly out of the cradle. You could a1most count the number of airplanes in the world on your fingers. But the 2nd Paris Automobile Show at the Grand Palais, just off the Champs-Elysees, included an aircraft exhibit.
It is now a weeklong biennial show (it now alternates with one in Farnborough, England). It may not seem possible to be all things to all people, but in the world of aviation the Paris Air Show is just that. Everything from small, personal, single-engine planes to the biggest aircraft in the world, the six-engine Russian Antonov 225, is on display. The latest airliners, business aircraft, and fighter aircraft are there, and many of them are put through flight demonstrations daily.

The Show Will Go On

by Michelle Ciarrocca
As a sign of the Bush administration's displeasure with France because of its opposition to the US-led war in Iraq, the Pentagon is scaling back its presence at this year's Paris Air Show, the global defense industry's largest and oldest international showcase. But make no mistake, the show will go on. No high-ranking US government officials or general military officers will be in attendance, and only six military aircraft - all of them being flown in from Operation Iraqi Freedom - will be on display, compared to the dozen or more usually on exhibit. And there will be no high-profile flight demonstrations of US military aircraft.
Still, officials at the show say that over 1800 companies will be on hand, similar to the record levels of companies exhibiting in 2001. However, this time around, on the heels of Gulf War II, analysts are predicting a more somber tone than in the wake of past wars.

The Paris Air Show

Gliders will be the freight trains of the air.We can visualise a locomotive plane leaving LaGuardia Field towing a train of six gliders in the very near future.By having the load thus divided it would be practical to unhitch the gliderthat must come down in Philadelphia as the train flies over that place - similarly unhitching the loaded glidersfor Washington, for Richmond, for Charleston, for Jacksonville, for Miami.During that process it has not had to make any intermediate landings, so that it has not had to slow down.

Hughes H-4 Hercules "Spruce Goose"

The Spruce Goose is the largest airplane ever built and probably the most prodigious aviation project of all time. It was conceived early in World War II to provide the means to transport troops and supplies across the submarine-infested waters of the Atlantic Ocean. It was the idea of Henry Kaiser, famous for the production of liberty ships. It was originally designated the HK-1 (Hughes/Kaiser), but when Henry Kaiser withdrew from the project, it was redesignated the H-4 Hercules. It was constructed by Howard Hughes and his staff. It was a massive task, one plagued with engineering problems. The Spruce Goose was completed too late to participate in the war. On November 2, 1947, Howard Hughes and a small engineering crew fired up the R-4360 engines for taxi tests. Howard Hughes was at the controls and began a high speed taxi. He thrilled thousands of on-lookers with an unannounced flight. The Flying Boat lifted 70 feet off the water, and flew one mile in less than a minute at a top speed of 80 miles per hour before making a perfect landing. There was no longer a need for the plane, so Hughes locked in a hanger for many years. It was on display at Long Beach, California as part of the Queen Mary Complex, but recently moved to Evergreen Aviation Museum at McMinnville, Oregon.

The Tucson Arizona Bone Yard

Taxpayers money was spent on these. Imagine if it was spent instead on human uplift. Imagine all of the workers who built these aircraft spending their time building better housing, better schools, better infrastructure, better healthcare and hospitals, better nation to nation human relations, better provisions for second and third world countries so as to make "friends" with them ... instead of all of these war machines. - Emily Spence

U.S. Airlines Put Off Buying New Planes

It’s not just flights that are being delayed. United States airlines are also putting off purchases of new planes, meaning the nation’s fleet of aircraft, on average, is aging right along with the passengers