Tag: Aviation

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Boeing sees sunny skies for airlines

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Model airplanes swarm through Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner Gallery. (GeekWire photo by Alan Boyle)

LYNNWOOD, Wash. – The stock market may be caught in a downdraft, but things are looking up for the commercial airline industry – at least according to the Boeing Co.’s annual forecast.

“As we look at 2016, we see another good year,” Randy Tinseth, vice president of marketing for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, told industry executives here on Feb. 9 at the Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance’s annual conference.

The trends that are pushing stock prices down – including a slowdown in China’s economy and a drop in oil prices – aren’t dimming Tinseth’s outlook. He noted that cheap oil means it costs less to fuel up planes.

“It adds to the bottom line of our customers, which is good,” Tinseth said.

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FAA goes long with Super Bowl no-drone zone

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The FAA is spreading the word about the Super Bowl “no-drone zone.” (Credit: FAA)

No means no when it comes to the Federal Aviation Administration’s no-drone zone for Super Bowl Sunday.

Not even CBS, which is broadcasting the big football game between the Carolina Panthers and the Denver Broncos starting at 3:30 p.m. PT Sunday, will be allowed to send unmanned aerial vehicles into the red zone, the FAA says.

The red zone is unusually large this weekend: It extends across a 74-mile-wide circle centered on Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., in the heart of Silicon Valley. The FAA’s temporary flight restrictions block out the airspace to a height of 18,000 feet from 2 to 11:59 p.m. PT.

The FAA typically restricts the airspace around sporting events with a seating capacity of 30,000 spectators or more, but for the Super Bowl, the no-drone zone is bigger than usual: 37 statute miles (32 nautical miles) in radius, as opposed to the standard 3.5 statute miles. That’s because the Super Bowl is considered a “special security event.”

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‘Age of Aerospace’ recaps 100 years of flight

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“The Age of Aerospace” traces 100 years of history. (Credit: Science Channel)

This year marks the Boeing Co’s 100th anniversary, and the company is using the centennial as an opportunity not only to celebrate its own history, but the history of aerospace as well.

That celebration takes the TV spotlight starting Feb. 1, in the form of “The Age of Aerospace,” a five-part documentary series that’s airing on the Science Channel on Mondays. The series, sponsored by Boeing, will be shown on Saturdays on theDiscovery Channel. Eventually it’ll be available for online streaming as well.

Check your local listings and/or search engines, and check out a preview as well.

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Boeing’s 737 MAX jet gets ‘wow’ reviews

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Boeing’s 737 MAX jet rises into the sky after taking off from Renton. (GeekWire photo by Alan Boyle)

Boeing’s newest breed of airplane, the fuel-efficient 737 MAX, took to the air for the first time on Jan. 29– and the first pilots to fly it had nothing but glowing reviews.

“This is our first airplane of our second century, and I just have to say, wow, this is an amazing machine,” chief test pilot Craig Bomben told reporters afterward at Seattle’s Boeing Field, in a reference to the Boeing Co.’s centennial this year.

737 MAX chief pilot Ed Wilson said that the nearly three-hour flight occasionally got “a little rough up there,” due to the rainy weather, but that the plane worked like a charm. “This airplane is ready to go to test. … We are off and running,” he said.

For this first flight, the jet was limited to traveling at a speed of no more than 250 knots, and rising no higher than 25,000 feet. “We just let it cruise,” Wilson said.

The latest incarnation of the long-lived 737 line will undergo months of testing and certification, leading up to the first deliveries to customers in 2017. Southwest Airlines, which is due to receive the first planes, tweeted its congratulations during the nearly three-hour maiden flight.

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Boeing trims back 747 jet production

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A Boeing 747-8 jet is assembled at the company’s factory in Everett. (Credit: Boeing)

The Boeing Co. says it will cut back the production rate for its 747 jets to one every two months and report an $885 million pre-tax charge against earnings, due to the slower-than-expected recovery of the air cargo market.

“Global air passenger traffic growth and airplane demand remain strong, but the air cargo market recovery that began in late 2013 has stalled in recent months and slowed demand for the 747-8 Freighter,” Ray Conner, Boeing vice chairman and president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said Jan. 21 in a news release.

He voiced confidence that business would pick up for the 747-8 jet as companies replace their older 747-400 freight airplanes, but said cutting back production was a “prudent step to further align production with current market requirements.”

Some observers were less sanguine about the 747’s prospects.

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Amazon’s drone plan leaves issues up in the air

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One of the Amazon Prime Air prototypes has horizontal and vertical rotors. (Amazon photo)

How much will it cost to get a 30-minute drone delivery from Amazon Prime Air? A newly published interview with Amazon executive Paul Misener suggests that the pricing question and other key issues have yet to be figured out.

In the interview with Yahoo Tech columnist David Pogue, Amazon’s vice president for global public policy provides a detailed run-through of the Seattle-based online retailer’s plan for aerial delivery dominance.

Many of the details have been laid out before. Others appear to remain up in the air.

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Airbus and Uber plan on-demand copter rides

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Airbus says its H130 copters will be on duty for the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. (Credit: Airbus)

Independent films aren’t the only things that’ll be previewed at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah this week: Airbus Group and Uber Technologies are launching a pilot project that offers on-demand helicopter rides to the show.

But if the project gets picked up for further development, it may require some tweaks to Uber’s standard rideshare model.

Airbus Group’s CEO, Tom Enders, provided a teaser over the weekend at the Digital Life Design conference in Munich, Germany. “It’s a pilot project, we’ll see how it goes — but it’s pretty exciting,” he told The Wall Street Journal.

The Journal quoted an Airbus spokesman as saying that the flights will be provided by Airbus’ H125 and H130 helicopters, in partnership with a Utah-based helicopter operator named Air Resources. Uber would dispatch cars to pick up clients for the rides at Sundance.

Uber has been testing an on-demand helicopter service called UberChopper for about three years, primarily for vacationers or for special events where traffic gets tangled.

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Lily’s $34M boom signals age of ‘selfie drones’

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Lily’s “flying camera” is designed to be thrown into the air to take selfies. (Credit: Lily)

If you ever needed evidence that “selfie drones” are the hot thing for 2016, you can find it in last week’s reports from the International CES show that a startup named Lily Robotics has collected 60,000 pre-orders for its flying camera, amounting to a potential $34 million payoff.

Supporting evidence came in the form of other selfie drones that were shown off in Las Vegas, including the Qualcomm-backed Ying quadcopter and the crowdfunded Onagofly nano-drone. Still other selfie-copters are waiting in the wings, including the tethered Fotokite Phi, the watch-controlled Hawk and the Nixie wearable drone.

Selfie drones are designed to follow you at a standoff distance and take videos, guided by your smartphone’s signal or a homing device you can tuck in somewhere.

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Human-sized drone unveiled – but is it a drone?

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The Ehang 184 drone has been tested in China. (Credit: Ehang)

Look! Up in the air! It’s a drone, it’s a plane, it’s … Super-Quadcopter!

Droves of drones were unveiled this week at the International CES show in Las Vegas, but the one that made the biggest splash was arguably the Chinese-made Ehang 184, a remote-controlled quadcopter that’s so big it can accommodate a 220-pound passenger.

Guangzhou-based Ehang says the electric-powered, 440-pound craft can be charged up in two to four hours and fly for 23 minutes. It’s designed to fly at an altitude of about a quarter-mile at speeds of up to 62 mph, but if you push it, the vehicle can go as high as 11,000 feet.  It even has air conditioning and a reading light.

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Social-friendly Ying joins the drone parade

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Qualcomm has developed a Snapdragon Flight computing platform for drones. (Qualcomm photo)

China’s largest Internet service portal, Tencent, is teaming up with chipmaker Qualcomm and drone-maker Zerotech to field the Ying drone, a flying robot that’s optimized for online sharing.

“This drone allows you to fly around, capture video and then share it directly with social media sites,” Qualcomm CEO Steven Mollenkopf said today during a sneak peek at the International CES show in Las Vegas.

Ying is built around Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Flight control platform, which can capture and correct video in 1080p or 720p resolution, depending on the perspective. The video can be uploaded or streamed directly to Tencent’s social media platforms, Wexin (a.k.a. WeChat) and QQ, the three companies said in a news release.

Snapdragon Flight is an array of circuitry that’s designed specifically for recreational drones and robotic applications. Qualcomm says the package offers GPS and 4K video as well as robust capabilities for autonomous or smartphone-controlled flight.

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