The Air Current

11/30/2024

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10/09/2024

The potential for optimization in a network airline schedule is practically infinite. The time available to network planning and scheduling analysts is not. This fundamental discrepancy is what Alaska Airlines and UP.Labs aim to address through Odysee, a startup revealed last week at the 2024 UP.Summit in Bentonville, Arkansas and officially launched on Oct. 8 at the World Aviation Festival in Amsterdam....

With Hawaiian and its widebodies in hand, Alaska will give AI tools the opportunity to optimize the new network.

09/29/2024

When the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration published initial vertiport design standards in 2022, the agency presented the guidance as foundational for enabling operations of electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft. On Sept. 20, 2024, the FAA released a proposed update of those standards in the form of Engineering Brief (EB) 105A, which is intended to serve as a stepping stone to a standalone vertiport design advisory circular (AC) by the end of next year....

Maybe eVTOLs and helicopters shouldn’t have separate infrastructure standards after all.

09/20/2024

A low water mark in the history of Rolls-Royce came in January 2023. Newly installed chief executive Tufan Erginbilgic called the venerable aerospace and defense giant a “burning platform” — the result of strategic missteps that left it systematically lagging its competitors. “Every investment we make, we destroy value,” he told employees. It was a rallying cry for a radical restructuring of the propulsion provider, which reduced its headcount as it rode through to a resurgent wave of long-haul widebody demand and new sales....

Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg makes first major leadership change with dismissal of defense and space CEO.

07/16/2024

The decision pushes a commercialized blended wing body into uncertain territory, and adds to a growing need for a next-gen 40,000-lb engine.

09/01/2023

Vertical Aerospace today released its own high level preliminary report on what caused its VX4 prototype to crash. The company also went into considerably more technical detail about what happened with our senior editor, Elan Head, and the big lessons for the eVTOL industry.

As with all our air safety reporting, this in-depth article from
The Air Current is available to read without a subscription. However, crucially, your subscription makes this kind of reporting possible.

Disclosure comes just weeks after flight testing mishap with the eVTOL prototype in the U.K.

05/04/2023

The latest from The Air Current put the most important industrial relationship in U.S. aerospace - the interdependent union of Boeing & Spirit AeroSystems - under the microscope, revealing a bitter previously unreported 2018 lawsuit between the two and interviewing more than a dozen current, former and retired executives and senior staff at both companies to chronicle the complex relationship.

The 2005 divestiture of Wichita to create Spirit “ranks as the highest misstep” Boeing has ever made, according to one retired Boeing commercial airplane development executive. It was a view shared unanimously across TAC’s interviews as we explored the bigger strategic question: Is it time for Boeing to bring Spirit home again?

Carving off its Kansas and Oklahoma operations was a strategic mistake, Boeing execs past and present conclude. Is buying back spirit AeroSystems in the cards?

04/24/2023

The Air Current's new digital home is here! Our goal has always been to make sure that nothing gets between you and our work and the new format doubles down on our advertising-free, distraction-free strategy.

At the end of the day our product is about fortifying your insights into the business of flying, not selling your data or chasing clicks.

We've got a host of new features built into the top-to-bottom revamp, including easier menu navigation, streamlined subscription management, dark mode for accessibility and more-comfortable reading, and now gift link sharing for individual business subscribers.

What you see today is another new starting point for TAC as we build on a flexible and modern media business platform that now allows us to implement our roadmap for new features in the weeks and months to come. We hope you enjoy the new website.

Welcome to The Air Current's new website

02/04/2023

On this week’s AvTalk podcast, The Air Current’s Jon Ostrower chats with Ian about the significance of the last 747 delivery, Boeing’s future in Everett with a new 737 MAX assembly line, and why everyone should get used to the acronym “TTBW.” https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/avtalk-episode-201-sending-the-last-747-home/

12/24/2022

(via ) Both houses of the U.S. Congress approved a $1.7 trillion year-end package of legislation that includes an exemption for Boeing’s 737 Max 7 and 10 to continue the Federal Aviation Administration’s ongoing certification process without a major overhaul of each aircraft’s crew alerting systems. The bill will go to President Joe Biden’s desk for signature.

The controversy, born from politics and good intentions by those seeking to make significant reforms to the aircraft certification process, played out over the past year with political theatrics intended to force the action taken by Congress.

Boeing’s CEO David Calhoun in July threatened to cancel the 737 Max 10 if an exemption or extension wasn’t granted. A take my marbles and go home approach to stakeholder discussions has long been part of Boeing’s and broader U.S. corporate legislative strategies.

Those directly familiar with Boeing’s internal development said that the company was extremely unlikely to cancel the Max 10 (and the Max 7 by extension) principally because it needed the Max 10’s revised design to validate and certify the new safety systems that it planned to eventually roll out on new production Max 8s, 9s, 8200s and 7s and later for retrofit.
(🔗 in bio)

11/11/2022

With no new airplane on the drawing board until at least the 2030s, certification troubles for the 737-7 & -10 that could mean billions of dollars in new required equipment and training, a 777X that will likely enter service nearly 6 years after originally scheduled, what does Boeing’s future in the commercial airplane business look like? The Air Current’s editor-in-chief Jon Ostrower joins Ian and Jason on this week’s AvTalk to shed some light on where the aircraft maker goes from here. https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/avtalk-episode-189-looking-into-boeings-future/

09/11/2022

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