Aviation News

The Qantas Airbus A380 aircraft after a forced emergency landing in Singapore

QANTAS has fast-tracked modification of Rolls-Royce engines on its Boeing 747-400 fleet because crucial parts are failing at up to three times the rate predicted by the manufacturer.

Qantas suffered three engine failures involving high-pressure compressor (HPC) blades on Rolls-Royce RB211 engines last year and has been hit by another three so far this year.

These include an engine failure near Johannesburg on a jumbo jet carrying the South African rugby union team on Saturday and a problem near Bangkok last month.

This is significantly higher than statistical modelling by Rolls-Royce, indicating the rate should be 0.8 events a year, contained in an Australian Transport Safety Bureau report on one of last year’s incidents near Singapore, The Australian reports.

The problem is not unique to Qantas: the RB211s have an acknowledged problem with disintegrating HPC blades and in a 2009 modification Rolls-Royce introduced a redesigned blade.

The engine manufacturer discovered several years ago that distortion of the compressor case was causing the tips of fan blades to rub and, eventually, to crack and disintegrate. Blade failures seriously damage engines and in rare cases can send shrapnel ripping through the sides of engines.

Rolls-Royce issued a service bulletin in 2006 aimed at reducing the distortion but opted to redesign the fan blades after the further failures in two engines.

Qantas has followed the manufacturer’s recommendations for changing the blades during major engine overhauls since early 2009 and has so far modified 25 percent of its fleet.

The recent string of engine failures has prompted it to fast-track the process and may lead it to change the way it operates its jumbo jets.

“We are accelerating the rate at which we send RB211s for overhaul in order to fast-track this modification and others over the next 12 to 18 months,” a spokesman said.
Read more: http://www.news.com.au

Refinement, not revolution is the order of the day for Boeing’s new passenger plane, as it tries to reduce the irritations that can take the joy out of the journey.

WILL the long-overdue Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft really “change the way we fly”? It certainly gets points for trying.

If you sat down and made a list of the things you hate about flying – from jet lag to not being able to find any space in the overhead bins – you would find Boeing is a step ahead of you on most of them.

The manufacturer has addressed many common gripes in the design of its long-awaited Dreamliner, which is finally ready to take off after numerous production delays.

The first 787 has been delivered to its launch customer, the Japanese airline ANA, for final testing and Boeing claims it will represent the start of a new era of flying.

The environment will certainly benefit from significant reductions in fuel use and emissions. But there will also be noticeable changes for passengers, in a concerted bid to bring back the enjoyment of flying.

“We as human beings are fascinated by flight but we don’t like to fly today,” says the regional director of passenger satisfaction for Boeing, Kent Craver. “The big, big goal of this [Dreamliner design] philosophy is really to reconnect people to the magic of flight.”

The most noticeable change for passengers stepping into the Dreamliner will be windows that are 65 per cent larger than those in competing aircraft, giving passengers a view of the horizon from any seat on the plane and reducing the feeling of being trapped in a metal tube.

“You’re going to see outside, you’re going to have a connection to the magic of flight, regardless of where you are on the plane,” Craver says.

The larger windows have been made possible by the use of composite materials in the fuselage; materials that can handle the loads of larger cutouts.

Boeing has also taken away physical window shades, replacing them with electromagnetic shades that allow passengers to dim the windows but still see out.

The 787 will have a wider cabin, allowing for wider seats and aisles. Boeing says the Dreamliner cabin could offer the widest economy seats in the industry, depending on the individual airline’s chosen configuration.

The 787 will have the largest overhead storage compartments in the air, designed around the most common types of carry-on luggage to maximise use of the space.

What will be less noticeable, but potentially more important, is a different cabin atmosphere, which should reduce jet lag and symptoms such as throat irritation.

This has also been made possible by the introduction of composite materials, which allow cabin pressure to be set at a lower altitude level.

Rather than the typical cabin altitude of 1980 metres to 2130 metres, the cabin altitude will be below1830 metres, a level Boeing says was revealed in testing as optimum for passengers.

“A big part of jet lag is that when you’re at higher altitudes, your body is unable to absorb the same amount of oxygen into the bloodstream … jet lag is a mild form of altitude sickness,” Craver says.

Adding to this will be increased humidity and a gaseous filtration system that filters contaminants, including odours.

Craver says many passengers blame the dry air in aircraft cabins for symptoms such as eye and throat irritation but research has found that simply increasing humidity is not the answer.

A combination of increasing humidity and removing contaminants from the air best reduces many of the symptoms passengers associate with dryness, he says.

For nervous travellers or those prone to airsickness, the big news is the development of technology that is claimed to significantly reduce air turbulence.

Craver says the 787 has sensors that adjust control surfaces to counter the effects of turbulence, turning big jumps and dips into “little skips”.

An aviation consultant with CAPA Consulting, Ian Thomas, says while the arrival of the Dreamliner will undoubtedly create a lot of interest among travellers, many of the changes fall into the realm of “refinement rather than a sea change”.

“Passengers will experience the buzz of flying on a new aircraft type but it’s unlikely to present the same level of excitement as the [Airbus] A380,” Thomas says. “The benefits of the 787 are more subtle.”

Thomas says the greatest benefits of the 787 will be enjoyed by airlines, in the form of cost savings and route opportunities.

Dream efficiency

Technology ranging from lightweight composite materials to more efficient engines will allow the Boeing 787 to use 20 per cent less fuel than similar-size planes. As well as generating fewer carbon dioxide emissions, the Dreamliner will produce significantly fewer nitrogen oxides, another key emission standard for commercial aircraft.

Technological developments will allow for quieter take-offs and landings and more direct flights, limiting transit stops. Boeing is already working on plans to allow Dreamliners to be recycled when they begin to retire in 30 or 40 years.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au

Docked shuttle Atlantis appears in front of the southern lights - aurora australis - as seen from the International Space Station.

The crew of the Atlantis bade a bittersweet farewell to astronauts on the International Space Station, wrapping up the final visit by a space shuttle to the orbiting outpost.

As the shuttle age draws to a close after 37 dramatic rendezvous, their crews held a moving ceremony, exchanging embraces and kisses before shutting the hatches separating them for a final time at 1428 GMT.

Astronauts then placed an American flag seal over the passageway separating the shuttle and the space station, in a poignant gesture to symbolize the end of one era of US spaceflight and the dawn of a new one.

“When this flag returns again someday to Earth by astronauts that came up on an American spacecraft, its journey will not end there,” said shuttle commander Chris Ferguson.

“Its journey will continue, it will leave low-Earth orbit once again, perhaps to a lunar destination — perhaps to Mars. It is our honor to have brought this flag here,” he said.

“We’re closing a chapter in the history of our nation,” added astronaut Ronald Garan, a flight engineer stationed on the ISS.

Space shuttle Atlantis. Photo: AP/NASA

“In the future when another spacecraft docks to that hatch… we are going to be opening a new era and raising the flag on a new era of exploration,” Garan said, as Atlantis wrapped up its near eight-day visit.

Atlantis lifted off July 8 on the final flight of the shuttle program, STS-135, with a four-member crew, lugging the Raffaello multipurpose logistics module containing supplies and spare parts for the space station.

The Atlantis crew was to spend the remainder of the day preparing for Tuesday’s undocking. The shuttle was to fly home Thursday ahead of its retirement, which marks the end of the 30-year US space shuttle program.

The astronauts on the Atlantis – mission Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Doug Hurley, and Mission Specialists Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim – are wrapping up a 13-day mission delivering supplies to help sustain the space station in the post-shuttle era.

Astronauts bound for the ISS now have to hitch a ride on the Russian Soyuz rocket, at more than $US50 million per seat, until a new US space craft – a commercial launcher and capsule built by a private corporation in partnership with NASA – is ready to fly sometime around 2015.

NASA will rely on Russia to let them rent one of two available seats on the Soyuz, with a third seat on the space vehicle already taken up by the pilot.

The end of the shuttle program means that chances for astronauts to do the one thing they are trained for – fly into space – will become much rarer.

“Of course it’s hard, because we dedicate our lives to fly in space. We are astronauts and it’s what we do for a living,” astronaut Steve Robinson, a veteran of four shuttle missions, told AFP earlier this month.

NASA said on Monday that a welcome home ceremony is planned for Friday in Houston, Texas, heralding the end of the shuttle era and to celebrate its many accomplishments.

Over the course of the three-decade-long program, five NASA space crafts – Atlantis, Challenger, Columbia, Discovery and Endeavour – have comprised a fleet designed as the world’s first reusable space vehicles.

Only three have survived after the shuttles Columbia and Challenger were destroyed in accidents that also killed their crews.

At a time of US budget austerity, President Barack Obama has opted to end the program at a huge savings. Each of the 135 missions over the years has cost about $US450 million.

Obama also canceled Constellation, a project that aimed to put American astronauts back on the moon by 2020 at a cost of $US97 billion.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden recently told the House of Representatives Science, Space and Technology committee that there would be opportunities in commercial space flight in the near future.

“My hope is that we will have more than one American commercial-made capability to take humans to space by the 2015/16 time frame,” Bolden said.

“We are not abandoning the human space flight. We have a big job to do of operating the ISS for the next nine years at least.”

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au

A Qantas 747 jet has landed safely after a engine issues

A QANTAS flight carrying the South African rugby team was forced to turn around two hours into its journey from Johannesburg to Sydney after one of its engines malfunctioned.

Australian passenger Mark Sowerby said he was glad to be back on the ground after the incident on Friday.

”It wasn’t much fun at all, it was a pretty ordinary experience,” the Brisbane business executive said. ”I was on the exit row so I could see the engine.

”We were joking that if there were cameras at the airport we would say, ‘We were fine but the Springboks turned to water’.”

Members of the Springboks, who were on their way to Sydney for Saturday’s opening game of the Tri-Nations, made light of the incident on QF64.

Lock Alistair Hargreaves tweeted: ”One of the engines just failed and we had to turn round. Beautiful start to the trip!”

Qantas sent another plane to Johannesburg yesterday to pick up the stranded passengers.

A spokesman for the airline denied reports that the engine had exploded.

”An engine on QF64 (Boeing 747) experienced an increase in vibration and temperature this morning,” he said.

”In line with procedures the pilots shut down the engine, and as a safety precaution returned to Johannesburg.

”The aircraft had a normal landing not long afterwards and the passengers disembarked.”

Qantas engineers are investigating the cause of the incident.