Airbus announced a few weeks ago some sad news: no more A340 will be built, the program is dead, the A340 is no more – well there is still a couple of hundreds of A340 that will be flying for years all around the world but the A340 won’t be sold new anymore. Beside a few business configurated A340, no [...]

We talked about the Airbus A320 NEO family a while ago, the program is already a huge success, Airbus now recorded more than a 1 000 orders for A319, A320 or A321 NEO. The summit of that recent success being the 2011 Bourget Paris Air Show, where clients like Air Asia finalized big deals. This is now obvious that the [...]

2 days ago I flew to Toulouse, 4 days ago I was in Bordeaux. Those 2 cities are Airbus’ fields – especially Toulouse. When You arrive at Toulouse Blagnac – airport – You can see on the opposite side Airbus’ hangars, with A330s, A340s and A380s which are about to be delivered and are tested. I have to say that I’ve [...]

I was talking the other day about researches which aimed to create building with skin-like walls. Well today I will talk about a “spider web” – a flexible mesh actually – which could envelop aircrafts and a tone of other facilities/machines. This is pretty simple: some researchers from Standford designed a skin – inspired by spiders’ webs – that could be [...]

For few months, the Solar Impulse made it clear: solar aircrafts are the future. The zero emission aircraft, powered by 12000 solar cells, flew during 24 hours, night and day, and gave the lead. The project aims to fly all around the world – with another prototype – but it is now focusing on making this beauty fly all around Switzerland, and showing that it [...]

Sorry for the French name/news, but the 5th “Mondial de la simulation” is coming soon, between November 26th and 28th. What is it about? Simulation! Simulation? Mostly virtual aviation, but also trains, construction, … This is taking place to the Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace in Le Bourget (close to Paris and CDG). I must admit that me and myself are [...]

I only few once aboard of a Russian manufactured aircraft – a Россия’s Ty-154M to be precise – and even if it was a pretty scary experience, I highly respect Russian aircrafts. Among those aircrafts, the Iliouchine Il-76 is beautiful. Its first flight was in 1971, more than 900 aircrafts have been produced until 2005! It’s cruising at 750 – 780 km/h, at [...]

It’s been quite a while that Airbus is thinking and talking about upgrading its A320 family. The A320 family – which includes A318, 319, 320 and 321 – is now 20 years old – the plane flew for the first time in 1987 and is operated by airlines since 1988. Even if it has been upgraded in the past, it has n’t [...]

While everyone is talking about Android on tablets – after Android on mobiles -, Android may end up in planes. The next generation of Thales’ and Panasonic’s In-Flight Entertainment and Connectivity (IFEC) systems will run Android by 2011 –  2013. Panasonic and Thales are very important companies in that business, so it is a major step for Android in the aviation sector – [...]

We don’t always call them “drones”, but unmanned aircrafts are the future for surveillance, aerial war and cartography. We know military drones, They are heavily used by the US Army in Afghanistan and – were- in Irak. Every modern army has now drones, even own made drones: the French Army even built some vehicles. Those things are getting more and more autonomous and powerful. At first, [...]