Tag: Transportation

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Startup plans charter flights at $15K an hour

Emerald jet in action
Emerald’s business model calls for customers to charter a 737 jet by the hour. (Emerald Illustration)

Seattle-based Emerald Corporate Jets is taking the wraps off a charter jet service that offers flights on 737 jets, priced at $15,000 per hour of flight time.

The startup is the brainchild of Russell Belden, who tried unsuccessfully to get Arrow Flight Club off the ground in Seattle a few years ago. Emerald unveiled its website today, effectively opening for business. Flights have yet to begin, however, and one aviation-industry expert told GeekWire that the startup is likely to face big challenges.

Belden, the company’s president, said operations would start with three planes in the Bay Area. Seattle’s Boeing Field is on the list for potential future expansion.

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Germany’s WARR team wins Hyperloop race

Elon Musk at Hyperloop pod race
SpaceX founder Elon Musk looks over to the WARR Hyperloop team as he announces the group’s winning time in the second Hyperloop pod competition. The portal to the test tunnel is to the right of Musk. (WARR Hyperloop via Facebook)

The speediest team from SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s first Hyperloop pod competition has done it again: WARR Hyperloop from Germany’s Technical University of Munich won today’s second contest by sending its magnetic-levitation pod through a nearly mile-long test tunnel at a peak speed of 201 mph.

Musk announced WARR’s victory to a crowd in the stands at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., and on Twitter as well.

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Hydroplane racer gives a nod to Blue Origin

Blue Origin logo on hydroplane boat
The black feather next to Jimmy Shane’s name on the Miss HomeStreet racing boat is used by Blue Origin to symbolize the freedom of flight.

The worlds of rocketry and hydroplane racing crashed together in Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Twitter feed today, and it’s all because of Jimmy Shane.

Shane’s workaday job title is integration engineer at Blue Origin, the rocket venture founded by Bezos and headquartered in Kent, Wash.

But Shane is also a second-generation thunderboat pilot. According to a Seattle Times profile, the Maryland native began racing boats at the tender age of 8.

Even though Shane relocated to the Seattle area, he still travels around the country as part of the H1 Unlimited Hydroplane league. This weekend, he’s the driver for Miss HomeStreet, the boat fielded by the Miss Madison Racing Team in the Albert Lee Appliance Seafair Cup competition on Lake Washington.

It just so happens that the trademark color for Miss HomeStreet, which is sponsored by Seattle-based HomeStreet Bank, is blue. So on Aug. 3, Shane showed off an artistic addition to the signature painted on his boat.

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Thunderboats get a 21st-century makeover

Hydroplane
The Miss DiJulio/J&D’s thunderboat is moved into Lake Washington for this weekend’s hydroplane races. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)

The roar of this weekend’s Seafair hydroplane races on Lake Washington reawakens a six-decade-old Seattle tradition – but it also heralds changes for a sport that’s been compared to NASCAR on water.

Seattle has been a hot spot for hydros since 1950, when a made-in-Seattle thunderboat called Slo-Mo-Shun IV set a world speed record on Lake Washingtonand brought the nation’s premier unlimited hydroplane race to Seattle the next year.

Today, the restored wood-and-metal boat rests in Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry. Its builder, Stan Sayres, would probably still recognize the streamlined, souped-up vessels that venture forth from Stan Sayres Memorial Park. But he wouldn’t recognize the technology under the hood.

“It’s quite a bit of difference in the boats, the engines,” said Tom Thompson, driver of the Miss DiJulio/J&D’s U-11.

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Air Force One discount deal goes through

Air Force One
An Air Force One 747 jet flies over the Statue of Liberty. (DOD Photo)

The U.S. Air Force says it’s getting a good deal on two Boeing 747s that were built for a now-bankrupt Russian airline and will now be converted into presidential Air Force One jets.

However, it’s not saying exactly how good the deal is, at Boeing’s insistence.

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Why pilots traced a plane across the country

787 outline
The flight path of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner traced the giant outline of a 787 during a test flight. (Flightradar24 Graphic)

It wasn’t a stunt: When Boeing’s test pilots flew a 787 Dreamliner jet for 18 hours and nearly 10,000 miles, tracing the outline of a 787 Dreamliner in the skies ranging from Michigan and Alabama to Wyoming, they were just adding a noteworthy twist to a routine requirement.

The flight, which began at Seattle’s Boeing Field on the afternoon of Aug. 2 and finished up in the same place at 9:40 a.m. today, served as an endurance test for the 787’s Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engine, which is undergoing certification.

“Rather than fly in random patterns, the test team got creative, flying a route that outlined a 787-8 in the skies over 22 states,” Boeing explained in a statement. “The nose of the Dreamliner is pointing at the Puget Sound region, home to Boeing Commercial Airplanes. The wings stretch from northern Michigan near the Canadian border to southern Texas. The tail touches Huntsville, Alabama.”

No one on the ground would have known that the pilots were part of a performance art piece, unless they happened to match up their sighting with the flight plan mapped out for BOE004 (tail number N7874) on tracking websites such as FlightAware or Flightradar24.

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Tesla looks back and looks ahead at Model 3

Tesla’s Model 3 electric car was the focus of today’s chatter in the wake of the company’s quarterly earnings report, which posted revenue that was stronger than expected ($2.79 billion vs. $2.51 billion, pre-estimated by Thomson Reuters) and a loss per share that was lower than expected ($1.33 vs. $1.82 pre-estimated). In the wake of last week’s first 30 Model 3 deliveries, Tesla said 1,800 net reservations are coming in daily. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the net backlog stands at 455,000 reservations, with 63,000 would-be buyers canceling their reservations (and getting their deposit back).

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Russian leftovers may become Air Force One

Air Force One
First lady Melania Trump and President Donald Trump wave from the top of the stairway leading to Air Force One during a trip to Brussels in May. (White House Photo)

Two Boeing 747-8 jets that were given up before delivery by Russia’s bankrupt Transaero Airlines could well end up as the next presidential Air Force One aircraft.

The arrangement, first reported by Defense One, is one of the options being discussed as a response to President Donald Trump’s demand to reduce the multibillion-dollar cost of replacing today’s aging Air Force One planes. The Air Force is negotiating with Boeing over the terms and requirements for the switchover from the two nearly 30-year-old 747-200s that are currently being used.

“We’re still working closely with the Air Force toward a deal, with our focus being to provide the best value and price to the Air Force,” Boeing spokeswoman Caroline Hutcheson told GeekWire in an email.

Transaero ordered the 747-8s in 2013. Two years later, it declared bankruptcy. Russia’s flagship Aeroflot airlines picked up most of Transaero’s planes but declined to take delivery of the 747-8s. Last year, the planes were parked for long-term storage in Victorville, Calif., where the dry climate of California’s Mojave Desert preserves mothballed jets from corrosion.

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Boeing’s avionics unit reverses outsourcing

777X flight deck
Boeing’s wide-body 777X jet will have touchscreen controls on the flight deck. (Boeing Photo)

The Boeing Co. is creating an avionics unit that will build the kinds of electronics and aircraft control systems now being provided by outside suppliers.

The shift, unveiled in an internal statement sent to employees on July 31, runs counter to the historical trend of spreading out the work that goes into building the company’s multimillion-dollar jets.

But it’s consistent with Boeing’s decision to go after the market for servicing those jets after they’re sold. A similar motivation led to the creation of Boeing’s services unit last year.

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Elon Musk kicks off Tesla Model 3 deliveries

Model 3 deliveries
Elon Musk shows off one of the first Tesla Model 3 electric cars, plus a graph showing how he expects the production rate to rise. (Tesla via YouTube)

As thousands of employees and fans cheered, Tesla CEO Elon Musk drove a red Model 3 electric car onto the stage at the company’s factory in Fremont, Calif., tonight – and then handed over the first 30 cars to customers.

The glitzy ceremony marked a milestone in Tesla’s campaign to produce an electric car targeted at a mass market, with a base price as low as $35,000. It also marked the start of what Musk called “production hell … for at least six months, maybe longer.”

“As the saying goes, ‘If you’re going through hell, keep going,’” he joked.

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