TOMORROWS TRANSPORTATION NEWS TODAY!
(Reuters) – Boeing Co <BA> said on Wednesday it was delaying 777X airplane’s first test flight, which was scheduled to take place on Thursday, due to bad weather.
Boeing said it was currently assessing the possibility of conducting the test flight on Friday.
(Reporting by Rama Venkat in Bengaluru and Tracy Rucinski in Chicago; Editing by Anil D’Silva)
13 daily flights between Washington’s Reagan National and Newark Liberty mostly aboard the world’s only two-cabin 50-seat regional aircraft – the Bombardier CRJ-550 starting March 29
New jet offers first class seating, Wi-Fi, more leg room and enough space for every customer’s roller bag
WASHINGTON, Jan. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — United Airlines today announced a new hourly shuttle service between Washington’s Reagan National Airport and New York/Newark Liberty International Airport. United will operate the world’s only two-cabin 50-seat regional aircraft – the Bombardier CRJ-550 on most flights. The CRJ-550 is designed for business and leisure travelers who want true-first-class seating, Wi-Fi, more leg room and enough space for every customer to bring a roller bag on board.
With this new shuttle service, United will now offer more travel opportunities between these two cities than any other airline in the world. Tickets for the 13 daily flights between New York/Newark and Washington, D.C. will be available for purchase beginning January 18 and service starts on March 29.
“Our customers who regularly travel between Washington, D.C. and New York – one of the busiest routes in the country – have told us they value convenient flights and a comfortable ride above all else,” said Sarah Murphy, United’s senior vice president of United Express. “With our new shuttle service aboard the one-of-a-kind CRJ-550, United Airlines is the only carrier to deliver both.”
The CRJ-550 is a first-of-its-kind jet boasting a wide variety of premium amenities, including:
Every customer. Every flight. Every day.
United continues to strengthen its commitment to its customers, looking at every aspect of its business to ensure that the carrier keeps customers’ best interests at the heart of its service. In addition to today’s announcement, United recently:
Britain’s most iconic train fleet is to undergo a major refurbishment that will create scores of high-skilled engineering jobs and secure hundreds more roles throughout the UK.
In a boost to the manufacturing sector, all 56 electric Pendolino trains deployed on the West Coast Mainline will be overhauled in a seven-year deal worth approximately €755 million (£642 million) signed between the route’s new operator, Avanti West Coast, and Alstom which built the fleet.[1]
As well as covering a €150 million (£127 million) upgrade programme of the Pendolinos, which is believed to be the biggest train upgrade programme ever undertaken in the UK, the deal will see Alstom maintain them until 2026 alongside a new train fleet recently ordered from Hitachi.
The first of the revolutionary tilting Pendolino trains entered service on the London to Glasgow route in January 2003. The overhaul will focus on onboard facilities, with passengers benefitting from more comfortable seating, improvements to the shop, revamped toilets, better lighting, new interiors, and the installation of at-seat chargers and improved Wi-Fi throughout. Performance will also be improved through new maintenance programmes.
The deal will create 100 high-skilled roles, mostly based at Alstom’s Transport and Technology Centre in Widnes, with hundreds more existing engineering jobs secured at key depots in Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Oxley and Wembley.
Liverpool City Region Metro Mayor, Steve Rotheram, said: “In the Liverpool City Region, we’re trying to create a fair and inclusive economy where local people benefit from investment. The Combined Authority have provided £3.4m in funding to help Alstom open their ground breaking facility in Halton. I’m really pleased that – because of this brand new facility – local people will benefit through jobs and apprenticeships for years to come through projects like this.”
Managing Director of Avanti West Coast, Phil Whittingham, said: “The Pendolino is an iconic passenger train and we’re delighted to be giving it a new lease of life. This deal will improve the experience of passengers and ensure the fleet can continue to serve communities up and down the west coast route in the years ahead.”
Nick Crossfield, Managing Director, Alstom UK & Ireland added: “Alstom are proud to have been trusted by First Trenitalia to maintain the Avanti West Coast fleet and upgrade the Pendolino trains. Over the last 15 years these trains have revolutionised travel for passengers, with faster and more frequent services.
“Passengers can now look forward to a new chapter in this story with Avanti West Coast, and with this contract in place, Alstom can look forward to investing even more in high quality jobs and apprenticeships as we deliver these improvements.”
Alan Lowe, CFO of Angel Trains which leases the fleet to Avanti West Coast, said: “The refurbishment of the Avanti West Coast fleet will dramatically improve passenger experience and create highly-skilled jobs in local communities, so we’re delighted to be supporting First Trenitalia and Alstom as this exciting project commences. Angel Trains is committed to investing in the modernisation of UK Rail and this transformative project will ensure that Pendolino trains reflect the evolving needs of today’s passengers and continue to be an iconic part of our railways.”
[1] Booked in the third quarter (Q3) of the 2019/2020 fiscal year.
Boeing [NYSE: BA] today delivered the core stage of NASA’s first Space Launch System (SLS) deep space exploration rocket, moving it out of the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans to the agency’s Pegasus barge.
The event marks the first time a completed rocket stage has shipped out of Michoud since the end of the Apollo program. SLS Core Stage 1 is the largest single rocket stage ever built by NASA and its industry partners.
The rollout follows several weeks of final testing and check-outs after NASA’s declaration of “core stage complete” during a December 9 Artemis Day celebration at Michoud.
NASA will transport the SLS core stage to its Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, in the next few days for “Green Run” hot-fire engine tests later this year. After inspection and refurbishing for launch, the stage moves to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. At Kennedy, the core stage will be integrated with the Interim Cryogenic Upper Stage (ICPS) and NASA’s Orion spacecraft for the uncrewed Artemis I mission around the moon – the first launch of a human-rated spacecraft to the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.
“The Boeing SLS team has worked shoulder-to-shoulder with NASA and our supplier partners to face multiple challenges with ingenuity and perseverance, while keeping safety and quality at the forefront,” said John Shannon, Boeing SLS vice president and program manager.
SLS is the world’s most powerful rocket, evolvable and built to carry astronauts and cargo farther and faster than any rocket in history. Its unmatched capabilities will deliver human-rated spacecraft, habitats and science missions to the moon, Mars and beyond as part of NASA’s Artemis program.
“We are applying what we’ve learned from development of the first core stage to accelerate work on core stages 2 and 3, already in production at Michoud, as well as the Exploration Upper Stage that will power NASA’s most ambitious Artemis missions,” said Shannon.
On Monday, January 6 at 9:19 p.m. EST, or 2:19 UTC on January 7, SpaceX launched its third launch of Starlink satellites from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.
Falcon 9’s first stage supported a Starlink mission in May 2019, the Iridium-8 mission in January 2019, and the Telstar 18 VANTAGE mission in September 2018. Following stage separation, SpaceX landed Falcon 9’s first stage on the “Of Course I Still Love You” droneship, which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. You can watch a replay of launch below and learn more about the mission in our press kit.
Alstom has delivered in Morocco the first Prima M4 locomotive in the frame of the contract signed in 2018 with ONCF to supply 30 electrical Prima locomotives. While the 30 locomotives will be manufactured in Alstom’s Belfort plant, the Alstom team in Morocco will ensure the testing, the warranty service and maintenance.
The 30 Prima M4 locomotives have a nominal power of 5.5 MW, a maximum operating speed of 160 km/h and operate under 3 KV DC voltage. They are equipped with ETCS level 1, require minimum maintenance and provide a high reliability level with low lifecycle cost thanks to the modular design.
“Over the past 10 years, 20 Alstom electrical locomotives have been put into commercial service by ONCF. We are proud, today, to contribute to grow up the fleet and to support ONCF in this major project to develop the railway infrastructure solutions throughout the country,” said Nourddine Rhalmi, Managing Director of Alstom Morocco.
Alstom has been manufacturing locomotives for more than 100 years with the first electric locomotive produced in 1926. To date, the company has sold more than 3,000 locomotives from its Prima range.
Six French sites are participating in the production of the locomotives: Belfort (assembling), Le Creusot (bogies), Ornans (motors), Petit-Quevilly (transformers), Tarbes (traction chain components) and Villeurbanne (on board electronics). The ETCS components are produced in Madrid.
Present in Morocco with 580 employees, Alstom has contributed to several major railway projects, such as the delivery of first Citadis trams to the cities of Rabat and Casablanca, and 12 Euroduplex VSHT for the High Speed Line which is linking Tangier to Casablanca. In its plant in Fez, Alstom produces cable bundles for rail applications and electrical switchboxes that are supplied to its European plants and mounted on trains exported around the world.
São José dos Campos, Brazil, December 30th, 2019 – Air Kiribati, the flag carrier of the Republic of Kiribati, received today its first E190-E2 jet. Embraer announced the contract with the Government of Kiribati, in partnership with its national airline, Air Kiribati, in December 2018. The airline ordered two E190-E2s and has purchase rights for two more.
“Aviation is critical for any island nation and Kiribati is no exception. Our Government has made the conscious decision to take into our hands the opportunity to unlock economic prosperity for our people and our nation through the purchase of these two aircraft,” said Hon. Willie Tokataake, Minister for Information, Communication, Transport and Tourism Development of the Kiribati Government. “The arrival of our first jet today is the culmination of three years of vision, strategic thought, government focus, research, evaluation, hard work, commitment, partnership and a good measure of problem solving.”
Air Kiribati is the launch operator for the E190-E2 in Asia Pacific. The aircraft will be configured in a dual class layout seating 92 passengers in total, with 12 seats in business class and 80 seats in economy class. Located in the central Pacific, Air Kiribati can now fly longer domestic and international routes than it currently does with its turboprop fleet.
“This is first E190-E2 delivered in the Pacific region,” said Cesar Pereira, Asia Pacific Vice President, Embraer Commercial Aviation. “We’re are honored that Air Kiribati selected the E190-E2 as the best fit for the airline’s challenging flying environment. The E190-E2 has cutting-edge technology and is the most fuel efficient and environmentally-friendly single aisle jet in the world. These attributes are extremely important for Kiribati.”
With a maximum range of up to 2,850 nautical miles, the E190-E2 can serve destinations throughout the vast expanse of Kiribati, including nonstop from Tarawa to Kiritimati (Christmas) Island, one of the most challenging routes in the Pacific. The current domestic flight from Tarawa to Kiritimati requires an international stopover in Fiji.
Spanning four time zones and comprised of more than 30 islands, Kiribati is the only country in the world to be in all four hemispheres. Embraer has been present in the Pacific since the first Bandeirante was delivered to a customer in Australia in 1978. The company continues to support operators across Oceania more than 40 years later.
The E190-E2 is the first of three new aircraft types in the E-Jets E2 family, developed to succeed the first-generation E-Jets. Compared to the first-generation E190, the E190-E2 burns 17.3% less fuel and nearly 10% less than its direct competitor. This makes it the most efficient single-aisle aircraft on the market. The E190-E2 generates significant savings for airlines in terms of maintenance costs. It has the longest maintenance intervals – 10,000 flight hours for basic checks and no calendar limit in typical E-Jets utilization. This means an additional 15 days of aircraft utilization over a period of ten years.
The E2 cockpit features advanced Honeywell Primus Epic 2 integrated avionics. Combined with closed-loop fly-by-wire controls, the systems work together to improve aircraft performance, decrease pilot workload and enhance flight safety. From a passenger perspective, the E2 cabin features a comfortable two-by-two layout. The absence of a middle seat enables passengers to have an enjoyable flight experience with more legroom and additional luggage storage space.
Embraer is the world’s leading manufacturer of commercial aircraft up to 150 seats with more than 100 customers across the world. For the E-Jets program alone, Embraer has logged more than 1,800 orders and 1,500 aircraft have been delivered. Today, E-Jets are flying in the fleets of 80 customers from 50 countries. The versatile 70 to 150-seat family is flying with low-cost airlines as well as with regional and mainline network carriers.
(Reuters) – Teams combing the wreckage of a Hawaii sightseeing helicopter that crashed on Kauai island found no sign of survivors on Friday and recovered six sets of human remains before suspending the search due to bad weather, police and fire officials said.
The grim announcement came in a news conference almost 24 hours after the aircraft, first reported missing on Thursday evening, went down in a remote area of rugged terrain near the end of a tour flight over the island’s famed Na Pali Coast.
The crash was at least the ninth, and by far the deadliest, involving sightseeing helicopters in Hawaii over the past five years, according to National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) records.
The confirmed manifest of the ill-fated aircraft, flown by Kauai-based tour operator Safari Helicopters, consisted of six passengers, two of them children, and one pilot, Kauai County fire battalion chief Solomon Kanoho told reporters.
The identities of the dead were being kept confidential until next of kin could be notified, authorities said.
“We are heartbroken by this tragedy and we continue to ask the public to consider the sensitive nature of this devastating situation,” Mayor Derek Kawakami said in a statement. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and loved ones of all victims during this extremely difficult time.”
The Kauai fire department called off its search-and-recovery efforts late Friday afternoon due to fog and poor visibility but planned to resume the operation at daybreak on Saturday, Kanoho said.
Although the remains of just six of the seven people who were aboard the ill-fated aircraft have been recovered, Kanoho added: “There are no indications of survivors.”
Kanoho previously said the passengers on board the helicopter had been in two groups – a party of two from one family and a party of four from another.
Kanoho declined to describe details of the wreckage out of respect for the victims’ loved ones.
While the cause of the crash has yet to be determined, Kanoho said the area where the helicopter went down had experienced “some very bad weather” beforehand, adding that the chopper had crashed within its prescribed flight route.
The NTSB, which said it was sending a three-member team to investigate the crash, reported in May that there had been eight accidents involving Hawaii tour helicopters over the past five years, with four deaths and 18 injuries.
The agency made that report after a tour helicopter went down in a residential neighborhood on the island of Oahu in April, killing three people.
The latest crash was in Koke’e State Park in an area called Nu’alolo, a steep-sided valley north of Waimea Canyon State Park, according to a statement posted by the Kauai police department on Facebook.
Waimea Canyon is a tourist destination known as the “Grand Canyon of the Pacific,” and police said the helicopter was last heard from at about 4:40 p.m. on Thursday, when the pilot radioed that the aircraft was just departing that area.
A search was launched a short time later, after Safari alerted authorities that the helicopter was 30 minutes overdue on its flight back to the airfield in Lihue on the island’s southeast end, officials said.
A U.S. Coast Guard cutter vessel and helicopter search crew were immediately dispatched. The search was expanded at daybreak on Friday to include air, sea and ground teams from the Coast Guard, U.S. Navy, police, fire department and other agencies.
The missing aircraft was equipped with an electronic locator beacon, but no signals were received after it disappeared, the Coast Guard said.
According to its website, Safari offers aerial sightseeing excursions to Kauai’s major attractions over the Na Pali Coast and Waimea Canyon. The Na Pali Coast, known for jagged green cliffs laced with towering waterfalls, is one of the most visited attractions on Kauai, the fourth-largest island in the Hawaiian chain.
Reporting by Maria Caspani and Peter Szekely in New York and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Leslie Adler
BEIJING (Reuters) – The sixth prototype of China’s home-built C919 narrowbody passenger plane completed its first test flight on Friday, marking a milestone in the programme’s testing schedule as China races to compete with Airbus SE and Boeing Co.
The sixth prototype is the last test plane its manufacturer, the Commercial Aircraft Corp of China Ltd (COMAC), has planned for the programme and was scheduled to fly before the year-end. Currently, there are five test planes that are conducting test flights elsewhere in the country.
The maiden flight on Friday from Shanghai lasted two hours and five minutes, COMAC said in a press release, adding that the jet will be conducting more test flights with a focus on cabin, lighting and external noises.
COMAC has already started production of aircraft parts which will be used for the first batch of aircraft deliveries, it said.
The state manufacturer is aiming to obtain Chinese certification for the C919 in 2021, but the date was subject to regulatory approval and the aircraft’s safety remains a top priority, according to COMAC officials.
He Dongfeng, the Communist Party boss of COMAC, wrote in a state-owned newspaper in December that aircraft safety is key to the survival of COMAC.
Designed to compete directly with the Airbus 320 and the Boeing 737 families in the market for jets with around 150 seats, the C919 is the speartip of China’s efforts to break a powerful decades-old Western duopoly.
The Boeing 737 MAX remains globally grounded following two fatal crashes that killed a total of 346 people.
(Reporting by Stella Qiu and Brenda Goh; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
Air Caraïbes (a member airline of Groupe Dubreuil) has taken delivery of its first A350-1000, the largest member of Airbus’ new-generation A350 XWB Family, making it the first French operator of the type. The airline plans to operate its A350-1000s alongside its three A350-900s and six A330s on routes from Paris to the French Caribbean. The new aircraft will seamlessly integrate into Air Caraïbes existing fleet thanks to Airbus’ unique fleet commonality and provide the airline with additional flexibility. In total, Groupe Dubreuil has three A350-1000s on order.
Air Caraïbes’ A350-1000 are configured in a three-class layout with 429 seats (24 “Madras” Business, 45 in “Caraïbes” Premium Economy and 360 in “Soleil” Economy). All A350 XWBs are equipped with a quiet and comfortable Airspace cabin with a new lighting system, which strengthens the sense of passenger wellbeing and relaxation on long-haul flights.
The A350 XWB features the latest aerodynamic design, a carbon fibre fuselage and wings, plus new fuel-efficient Rolls-Royce engines. Together, these features translate into unrivalled levels of operational efficiency with a 25% reduction in fuel burn and emissions. The A350 XWB’s Airspace cabin is the quietest of any twin-aisle and offers passengers and crews the most modern in-flight products for the most comfortable flying experience.
At the end of November 2019, the A350 XWB Family had received 959 firm orders from 51 customers worldwide, making it one of the most successful widebody aircraft ever.
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