RENO, Nev. (KOLO) High winds whipping across Washoe County continue to impact air travel. For passengers at Reno-Tahoe International Airport, that means delays, diversions and cancellations. Airport officials say more than two dozen flights have been affected.
“We’ve had more than two dozen flights canceled or delayed in the last 24 hours,” April Conway of Reno-Tahoe International Airport says. “There’s a ripple affect so flights that could get in last night weren’t able to go out on Tuesday.”
Conway says with so many delays, the airport is now playing catch-up.
“There are certainly flights that have not been able to land today that will perhaps affect flights later into tonight and even tomorrow,” she says.
Despite the delays, Conway says things are running smoothly because passengers are contacting airlines before arriving at the airport.
“That does a great service that lets people know before they leave their homes, hotels, and before they leave the ski slopes, whether flights are on time, so that’s a great way to be a savvy traveler,” she says.
Airport officials say they are well-equipped and prepared to handle whatever Mother Nature has in store next.
arc Parent learned to fly before he earned a driver’s license. As a teenager in the 1970s, he’d hitchhike 15 miles from his parents’ modest home in the Montreal suburbs to the Saint-Hubert Longueuil airport, where he took lessons in a Piper Cherokee. Before he turned 18, he’d flown a Cessna four-seater 2,800 miles to the Bahamas and back with a friend.
Now as CEO of CAE, known for decades as the world’s top maker of flight simulators, Parent is steering the $2.2 billion (revenue) Montreal-based company on a lucrative new flight path, convincing airlines and militaries to outsource pilot and crew training to CAE.
Amid an unprecedented boom in air travel, CAE has become the world’s biggest flight instructor, increasing revenue 70% in Canadian dollar terms from when Parent took over as CEO in 2009, with the proportion accounted for by civil flight simulators falling to 20% of the total. CAE’s share price has increased more than threefold in the same period on the Toronto Stock Exchange, compared to a 40% rise for the benchmark SP/TSX Composite Index.
The demand for CAE’s services is likely to keep growing. The International Air Transport Association projects that the annual number of airline passengers will double to 8.2 billion worldwide by 2037, driven in part by rising international living standards that are giving more people money to fly, with 54% of the growth coming from the Asia-Pacific region. Consequently, the world will need 790,000 new civil pilots over the next 20 years, Boeing forecasts.
Pilots from easyJet and other European airlines train at CAE’s Burgess Hill center, shown here, located close to London. It’s one of 65 CAE training centers worldwide.
Parent, 58, has been an effective salesman-in-chief for the flight-training business, in no small part because of his love for flying. Parent pilots his own Piper Meridian turboprop on business trips in North America. He qualified to fly a Boeing 737 by taking CAE classes and is working on a business jet rating. “I fly in my customers’ environment at 40,000 feet,” says Parent. “When we’re pitching airlines, they see that I understand their world.”
His sales pitch is that CAE can offer big savings by either taking over an airline’s training centers and running them more efficiently or funneling its pilots through one of the programs CAE operates in 65 centers around the globe. A large carrier with in-house instruction might train 5,000 pilots a year; CAE trains 135,000 annually, as well as 85,000 flight crew members. “You can imagine the knowledge, the scale, the process we build to perfect that,” he says.
Flying airliners can be boring — the vast majority of flights go without a hitch. Pilots keep themselves ready for the worst through sessions in full flight simulators, 13-ton machines on telescoping legs that buck and roll through six degrees of freedom. In recurring training, typically two-day courses that airline pilots are required to take every six to nine months, they confront a gamut of rare disaster scenarios inside “the sweat box”: failure of engines on takeoff and landing, bird strikes, fires, sudden shifts in wind, midair near-collisions. They practice diagnosing and dealing with malfunctions as warning lights flash and bells and buzzers sound while the machine convincingly simulates the vertigo-inducing lurches and the view out the windshield that pilots see in the real cockpit. After a practice session or two, pilots step into the simulator with an examiner. If they fail and then fail again on a second try, depending on the airline it could lead to a demotion or put their job in jeopardy.
Given the high cost of flight simulators — $6 million to $15 million apiece —and to keep up with the demands of recurrent training, operators generally try to run the machines 16 to 20 hours a day, seven days a week, requiring many pilots to train on the night shift. CAE promises it can operate a training program more efficiently than an airline given its deep knowledge of its own equipment and its extensive training center network.
Inside a CAE flight simulator.
CAE won’t disclose numbers, but analysts estimate the company saves airlines 20% to 30% on training. Parent has built a client roster dominated by rapidly expanding Asian airlines and low-cost carriers like AirAsia, EasyJet and Ryanair. Those customers are happy to grow their pilot corps without sinking capital into buying simulators or constructing their own training facilities.
“It’s been a great working relationship,” says Adrian Jenkins, operations chief for AirAsia, which has grown into Asia’s largest budget airline since CAE first sold the upstart Malaysia-based carrier a used Boeing 737 simulator in 2004. In 2011 they established a joint venture to train AirAsia’s pilots as well as those of other local airlines; in 2017, Air Asia cashed out its 50% stake to CAE and signed a 20-year training contract.
“Having worked with CAE for years, we trusted them with our training,” says Jenkins, so AirAsia decided, “Let’s just focus on the airline business.”
Gaining that trust has been a hurdle for CAE. Many established airlines are hesitant to outsource training, seeing it as a mission-critical way to imprint their operating procedures and culture on pilots. “It’s still not very well accepted in North America and Europe,” says Fadi Chamoun, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets.
But analysts and Parent believe the company has gained critical mass in the past few years, inking 40 long-term training deals in 2018 alone and making inroads with some bigger-name airlines. CAE launched a rookie pilot training program with American in 2018 and established a joint venture with Singapore Airlines to establish a training center. Parent sees winning business from the widely admired airline as a big get. “I take huge pride in that,” he says.
The company was founded under the name Canadian Aviation Electronics in 1947 by Ken Patrick, a World War II wing commander in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Patrick started out installing radar systems in the Canadian Arctic Circle to detect Russian bombers, then in 1952 he won a contract to build a flight simulator for the CF-100 Canuck fighter jet.
In the 1980s, CAE made the first simulators deemed realistic enough by U.S. regulators to allow pilots to train on them exclusively. The result: The first time the vast majority of pilots get behind the controls of an airliner today, it’s as co-pilot on a plane loaded with passengers.
By the 1990s, CAE was riding high with a 67% share of the commercial simulator market, but the computer revolution in Silicon Valley was about to end the good times. The increasing power of commercial software and off-the-shelf graphics processors eroded CAE’s technology edge, and a steady rise in the value of the Canadian dollar starting in 2002 made its products more expensive than the competition, tipping the company into crisis. Enter Parent, which then-CEO Robert Brown poached from the Montreal-based industrial conglomerate Bombardier to find a fix.
Parent had built a strong track record as an aerospace engineer and manager at Bombardier, belying the prediction of a high school physics teacher who had told his father, an insurance company manager, and his mother, a bank teller, that he’d never amount to anything. Brown, who ran Bombardier Aerospace in the 1990s and was promoted to CEO of the whole company in 1998, says he had been impressed by Parent’s ambition and his ability to execute under pressure. Brown parachuted him into a series of aircraft factories in Toronto; Wichita, Kansas; Tucson, Arizona; and Northern Ireland to get the production lines humming. “When there was something that needed to be delivered, I could count on him,” Brown recalls.
At CAE, Brown put Parent to work in 2005 as head of the simulator division, where Parent slashed head count and production costs, putting the business back on its feet. But the experience crystalized for Parent that CAE had to diversify, a mission he has carried out with zeal since he succeeded Brown as CEO in 2009.
One hurdle Parent had to clear: a perception that CAE was still primarily a hardware company. CAE surveys showed more than half of airline CEOs didn’t even know the company trained pilots. Internally, Parent says, he realized the company was sending an outdated message to its employees. “If you looked at our vision [statement] at the time, you would see words like, ‘best modeling simulation company,’ ” he says.
In 2015, Parent restated it clearly: going forward, the company’s mission was simply training.
That led him to zero in on CAE’s curriculum and its staff of instructors, contractors who had been such an afterthought that Parent initially couldn’t get a ready answer to the question of how many the company had. He revamped instructor hiring, training and compensation. Last year CAE acquired a 45% stake in Pelesys, a Vancouver-based courseware development company it had been working with, and rolled out Rise, an artificial intelligence system that evaluates students’ performance in simulators, picking up on little details that instructors might miss.
CAE faces formidable competitors that see the same opportunity in training. Through acquisitions, the defense contractor L3 has cobbled together a civil simulator and training business that has the second-largest market share behind CAE, and Airbus and Boeing have expanded into pilot training as part of their push into higher-margin services. In the lucrative niche of business jet pilot training, CAE is going up against Flight Safety International, owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.
But analysts say there should be room for all to thrive in a growing market. Airbus and Boeing may dwarf 9,000-employee CAE, but their rivalry naturally limits them in training: Boeing isn’t about to teach pilots how to fly an Airbus A320.
CAE has followed the same playbook in growing its defense business, which accounts for 38% of sales. Like commercial airlines, militaries are increasingly willing to outsource training and to conduct more of it on simulators. Defense revenues have risen 26% since 2015 to 1.1 billion Canadian dollars ($845 million), and Parent believes that growth will remain strong amid a global upturn in military spending to counter a more belligerent Russia and China. Like its civil training business, CAE’s military training customers sign multiyear contracts, promising CAE a smoother ride through economic downturns.
Barring a global pandemic or other disaster that clobbers airlines, Parent is upbeat about CAE’s prospects in a travel market that’s expanding 3.5% to 4% a year: “We have no ceiling on how we grow.”
An experimental carriage for the next-generation bullet train ALFA-X was shown to the media in Kudamatsu City, Yamaguchi Prefecture, at a branch of its manufacturer, Hitachi. One of the main features of the ALFA-X is the front car’s characteristic 22-meter-long nose designed to minimize pressure and noise when passing through tunnels. Another feature is that additional equipment has been installed to reduce the impact of tremors if an earthquake occurs.
The ALFA-X will have a maximum speed of 360 kilometers per hour, which is 40 kilometers faster than the fastest trains running now. The new bullet train aims to dramatically shorten the travel time between Tokyo and Sapporo.
The ALFA-X features a unique 22-meter-long nose.
Most travelers now use airplanes to travel between Tokyo and Sapporo. It’s about a 90-minute flight from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport to the New Chitose Airport near Sapporo. Around 9 million people use this route annually, which is the largest number among all domestic commercial flights. In contrast, it takes about 8 hours total to travel by train from Tokyo to Sapporo, even with the use of both bullet and express trains. This is not a realistic way to travel. The ALFA-X promises to considerably shorten travel time and to shake air travel’s unrivaled position in this route.
High-speed trains and airlines have continued to fiercely compete for passengers. The Hokkaido Shinkansen line between Hakodate in Hokkaido and Aomori that opened in March 2016 shortened train travel time from 5.5 hours to about 4. As a result, the proportion of passengers using the train to travel from Aomori to Hakodate increased from 13 percent to 35 percent, while those using airlines for this route decreased from 87 percent to 65 percent.
Likewise, the Hokuriku Shinkansen which opened in 2015 recorded a considerable increase in passengers using train services between Tokyo and Kanazawa from 42 percent to 74 percent, reversing the market shares of airlines and bullet trains. The new route shortened the travel time on the train to 2.5 hours, which is half of what it used to be.
As travel time shortens, the extra noise the trains produce must be dealt with. At present, the maximum speed for bullet trains running in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area between Tokyo and Omiya is 110 kilometers per hour. The maximum speed limit is set low in densely-populated residential areas. JR East is now advancing the construction of even higher walls along railway tracks to increase the maximum speed limit to 130 kilometers per hour after 2020. It is considering doing the same for the Morioka-Aomori route to increase the maximum speed limit from 260 kilometers per hour to 320.
The ALFA-X, which could determine the fate of the Hokkaido Shinkansen line, is expected to be completed by May 2019. Test runs will then continue for three years. Koji Asano of East Japan Railway’s Advanced Railway System Development Center says JR wants to enhance speed and convenience as well as services and passenger comfort.
Nowadays you can fly from Orlando (MCO), Fort Lauderdale (FLL), Miami (MIA), Newark (EWR), Philadelphia (PHL), Chicago (ORD), Los Angeles (LAX), Atlanta (ATL), Baltimore (BWI), Boston (BOS) and San Francisco (SFO) to San José (SJO) and Liberia (LIR) on full-service carriers like JetBlue, Delta, United and American Airlines.
Most of these flights are in the basic economy, so be prepared for some extra fees on checked luggage and seat selection, credit cards can help you get around some of these extra costs.
Packing to Travel
For more information, head to “Google Flights” and enter your origin and destination cities. Scroll through the calendar function to find dates and prices that adapt to your needs, then, click through to book directly with the airline of your choice or have the alternative of an OTA.
Don’t miss out on an excellent chance to come an enjoy all that the country of Pure Life has to offer whether it be for business or pleasure, alone, with your couple or better yet with the whole family, you will not run out of fun and excitement that is now closer than ever with these inexpensive and readily available airfares.
STOCKHOLM, Feb. 25, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — SCA is for the first time reporting the company’s impact on the climate as part of its Annual Report, to be published on February 27. At a seminar in Stockholm, SCA reported the positive effect on the climate from forest growth and substitution, as well as the climate impact of its operations. The net effect is positive and is equivalent to the total of emissions from road freight and domestic air travel in Sweden.
During a seminar at the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry on Monday, February 25, SCA reported the climate effect of its operations for some 100 seminar participants, including people in the fields of research, policymaking, government agencies and media.
“The climate is today’s key issue and the forest and forest products can provide a decisive contribution to combatting the adverse effects of climate change. SCA will as of now report the total climate impact of the company’s operations and this will become an important metric together with the financial statements when we describe the company’s performance,” said SCA’s CEO Ulf Larsson at the seminar.
The calculations are presented in detail in a report by Peter Holmgren, a consultant and former head of CIFOR, an international organization for forest research, and SCA’s Sustainability Director Katarina Kolar. The model encompasses the carbon sequestration that occurs in SCA’s growing forests, all emissions of fossil carbon dioxide from SCA’s entire value
chain and the positive climate effects of SCA’s products. When forest products, such as solid-wood products, paper and biofuels, replace material and energy with a larger carbon footprint, oil and coal can permanently remain underground and the climate burden of society as a whole is reduced.
“The net effect of SCA’s operations is positive for the climate and amounts to eight million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents. This corresponds to the total negative climate impact of all road freight in Sweden and Sweden’s domestic air travel,” said Katarina Kolar, SCA’s Sustainability Director.
Lena Ek, Chair of the forest company Södra, also took part in the seminar, and talked of this company’s ambition to become fossil-free. Södra’s Sustainable Forestry Strategist Göran Örlander explained how well-managed forests are contributing in climate work and Göran Berndes, professor at Chalmers, clarified the effects of replacing fossil-based material and fuels with renewable alternatives. Johan Kuylenstierna, Vice Chair of the Swedish Climate Policy Council, moderated the seminar.
For further information, please contact
Björn Lyngfelt, Senior Vice President, Group Communications, +46-60-19-34-98
Katarina Kolar, Sustainability Director, +46-60-19-31 05
The full report is available here.
The core of SCA’s business is the forest, Europe’s largest private forest holding. Around this unique resource, we have built a well-developed value chain based on renewable raw material from our own and others’ forests. We offer paper for packaging and print, pulp, wood products, renewable energy, services for forest owners and efficient transport solutions.
2018 the forest products company SCA had approximately 4,000 employees and sales amounted to approximately SEK 18.8bn (EUR 1.8 bn). SCA was founded in 1929 and has its headquarters in Sundsvall, Sweden. For more information, visit www.sca.com
Proposed new flights to Japan lead this week’s air travel news.
This week both American Airlines and Delta announced their intention to apply for additional flights to Tokyo’s Haneda airport. American said that the application will cover additional service from Dallas – Fort Worth, Los Angeles and Las Vegas. The airline currently operates one daily flight between Los Angeles and Haneda, a service that began in 2016. The proposal would add one additional service from Los Angeles, which American says will improve connection options for customers, as well as new flights from Dallas and Las Vegas. The new service will operate as part of American’s Pacific joint business with Japan Airlines.
Delta’s application, meanwhile, covers daily daytime service between Haneda and Seattle, Detroit, Atlanta and Portland, as well as twice-daily service out of Honolulu. The proposed routes would be the only direct service currently offered by U.S. carriers out of Seattle, Portland, Atlanta and Detroit, and they would add to the carrier’s existing service from Minneapolis – St. Paul and Los Angeles. Pending government approval, the new routes would launch in 2020.
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The two applications are the result of an agreement reached last month between the United States and Japan to expand access at Haneda, a deal that will open up to 12 additional daytime slot pairs for operations by U.S. carriers.
Also on the West Coast, this week Alaska Airlines unveiled plans for a new 8,500-square-foot, top floor lounge at San Francisco International Airport. Set to open in 2020, the new lounge will be located in Terminal 2, offering guests sights of the Bay and the runway, as well as a number of food and beverage options, including a tapas bar in the afternoon and evening. Made-to-order meals will also be available for purchase. The move is part of the airline’s ongoing investment in its lounge experience, which will also include refreshes of its lounges in Portland, Anchorage, Los Angeles and Seattle.
In other domestic travel news, this week American Airlines released its summer schedule for its Charlotte hub, which will include more than 700 daily flights by the end of this year. Notable new flights will include two daily flights to Baltimore, two to Fort Lauderdale, one to Orlando and one to Newark. The airline also plans to increase its Chicago O’Hare service to 10 daily flights, Los Angeles to eight and New York – JFK and Newark to up to 16 daily flights. The airline will also launch new long-haul international service to Munich on March 30, as well as eight additional new routes this year: to Erie, PA, in May; and to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and Traverse City, MI in June. This week also saw the reopening of the airport’s refreshed Admiral’s Club.
In Europe, this week saw low-cost carrier Norwegian report that, in 2018, it became the largest non-North American airline to serve the New York and New Jersey area, overtaking British Airways. The airline carried over 2 million passengers in 2018, falling 50,000 passengers short of being tied with Air Canada for the largest international airline to serve New York City.
Also this week Paris-based XL Airways announced it will move its flights from New York – JFK to Newark Liberty starting June 3 and combine its operations with its 100 percent business class sibling airline, La Compagnie. That airline has been operating out of Newark since 2018.
Finally, in the Caribbean, this week St. Maarten welcomed the inaugural flight on JetBlue’s new daily service from Fort Lauderdale.
The next time you need to fly to Burbank or Las Vegas, consider trying the semi-private carrier called JetSuiteX.
Here’s what you need to know if you’re thinking about booking a flight to Burbank, Las Vegas or a couple of other destinations on the semi-private airline JetSuiteX.
JetSuiteX has managed to return civility to air travel. One of its great appeals is that you don’t need to show up hours early to check in and pass through long security lines. You can arrive 20 minutes before takeoff at one of their private terminals in Oakland or Concord.
Simply step up to the counter to check in, keep on your shoes and forget about TSA rules on liquids and plastic bags. The whole process is a breeze, because there are only 30 passengers on a JetSuiteX plane. You get to check two bags for free.
From there, walk out to the tarmac and board like a rockstar.
Once onboard the sleek Embraer 135, every seat is roomy like you business class on a typical commercial airline. The leather seats have a minimum of 36 inches of legroom.
There are complimentary snacks and drink in the lounge and cabin. Plus, there’s free wifi and an electrical outlet at every seat so you can charge your phone.
JetSuiteX officials say they started the airline to bridge the gap between private and commercial aviation at competitive prices. One way fares can be as low as $59, but locking in those rates requires booking early. Even when prices are twice as high, travelers are getting the private jet experience at a great price.
You’ll find your luggage on the tarmac pronto when you step off the plane in Burbank.
One drawback is the rather limited schedule, but JetSuiteX is in expansion mode in 2019. For the first time this year, they are offering service to the big Coachella Music Festival with flights from Oakland to Thermal, southeast of Palm Springs.
A Mavic Pro drone is flown on Jan. 18 in Bridgend, Wales. The U.K. government has moved to give police further authority to tackle illegal use of drones, including powers to land, seize and search drones, following a drone incursion at Gatwick airport in December. (Photo by Matthew Horwood/Getty Images)Getty
Gatwick, Heathrow, Newark, Dubai and today, Dublin: Each of these airports has been in the news recently when flights were halted or delayed by sightings of what were believed to be drones in the area.
So how big a threat is this? Are drones a danger to manned aircraft?
With 1.3 million drones now registered with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), up from about 470,000 in 2016 when drone registration was first required, anyone can see that there are more drones in the air than ever before. While a small percentage of these drones are operated for commercial purposes by FAA-certified remote pilots, the vast majority are operated by hobbyists for fun and recreation. Hobbyist pilots are required to fly under the safety guidance of a model aircraft organization, like the Academy of Model Aeronautics(AMA), and they have to keep their drones in sight, below 400 feet, and out of airspace meant for passenger-carrying airplanes. Commercial drone pilots have to know and abide by similar rules, but unlike hobbyists, they have to take an FAA test to prove it.
Because there is currently no test for recreational drone pilots, the FAA, the AMA, and a regular alphabet soup of companies and organizations have tried to make sure that drone operators know the rules before they fly. DJI, the market leader in consumer drones, has included a knowledge quiz that pilots must take before they can unlock their new drones and fly. Predictably, the answers are on YouTube, but operators still have to read and answer the questions. But as anyone who has slowed down when seeing a police car knows, knowing the rules doesn’t mean always obeying them. Drone manufacturers are aware of this, and try to use software solutions to keep drones away from the areas they don’t belong. DJI and other companies uses ‘geofences’, which alert pilots if their drones are in areas that are off-limits. In some cases, the geofences prevent drones from flying at all. AirMap is testing a new geofence system that will provide pilots with real-time audio and visual alerts if they are closing in on airspace that is geofenced. But geofences don’t always correspond to the airspace the FAA wants to protect, and users can often override or disable them.
So despite education and technological solutions, drones are sometimes found in places they do not belong. A recent study by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University looked at drone flights over a two week period around Daytona Beach International Airport. The results showed that 7% of drone flights tracked exceeded 400 feet, and 21% exceeded the recommended maximum altitude for the area in which they were operating. In one case, a drone was detected at an altitude of 90 feet within a quarter mile of the approach path to an active runway. In total, 8 drones were detected within one mile of the center of the airport.
For perspective, in that same time period, there were about 11,500aircraft takeoffs or landings at that airport. By comparison, 8 drones isn’t much. On the other hand, that’s a lot of airplanes in the sky and a lot of potential conflicts.
How big people think the risk is depends on who you ask. Many drone operators have expressed skepticism that the Newark sightings were actually drones at all. Several cases have occurred in which objects reported as drones turned out not to be drones after all. Drone operators and airport personnel alike agree that drone sighting reports can be suspect. To be sure, drones are difficult to identify from the cockpit of an aircraft. In fact, they are difficult to detect at all. One study from Oklahoma State University found that even when they were looking for drones, the pilots of small aircraft detected drones only when they were a tenth of a mile away on average. But this might actually be cause for greater concern. Maybe it’s what pilots are not seeing that should worry us.
To find other manned aircraft, pilots no longer have to rely on just their eyeballs or air traffic control. There are automated systems that help airplanes communicate with each other and alert pilots about potential conflicts. Could something similar work for drones? Yes and no. Eventually, some form of identification and tracking will be required, but it will have to be a different system from what aircraft use now, or we risk overwhelming pilots and air traffic controllers with information and clutter.
If a drone was in the wrong place, your pilots didn’t see it, and your aircraft hit it, what would happen? That question is not as easy to answer as you might think. Damage from a collision depends upon the mass of the object being hit and the impact velocity, but also the density of the object, the angle of impact, and the frangibility of the object, or how easily it breaks up. That’s a lot of variables, but clearly the greatest damage would occur from a 90 degree impact of a heavy drone when the aircraft is moving at high speed.
Commercial airplanes are already required to withstand impacts from another airborne hazard – birds. Specifically, transport aircraft have to be able to withstand impacts with birds weighing 4-8 pounds on the airframe at cruising speed, and ingested into the engine at takeoff power. Admittedly, 4-8 pounds isn’t much, when you can legally fly a drone up to 55 pounds without any special permissions (as long as you abide by altitude and airspace restrictions). The good news is that the vast majority of consumer drones weigh much less than that, with the most popular models weighing in below ten pounds. But a series of studies performed at Virginia Tech suggest that the concentrated mass of drones compared to birds makes impact with a drone more damaging than that with a bird of a similar weight. Given the unknowns, the best option is clearly not to hit a drone at all, but as we’ve seen, that’s not so easy to guarantee.
The ‘big sky, little airplane’ theory of keeping drones and airplanes apart breaks down when you put more and more aircraft in the sky, no matter how little they are. Whether you are a drone enthusiast who is tired of being blamed for everything, or a private citizen who is wary of the noise, nuisance, and potential privacy threats from drones, we all can agree that this technology has huge potential to improve our lives in a thousand different ways we can hardly yet imagine. Missing those opportunities because we let something tragic happen would be a loss for all.
And whatever our opinions are about drones, the truth is that in aviation, we don’t make decisions based on opinion. We make them based on facts. This data-driven, risk-based approach has created the safest transportation system the world has ever known. So what do we need? More data. We need to know where drones are operating, how they are being used, where the threats are, and how bad it is when you hit them. Only with more information can we really understand the threat from drones accidentally encountering aircraft.
As for drones that purposely want to interfere with aircraft, well, that’s another story.
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Ram Narain Agarwal, S. Srinivasan, and Kalpana Chawla all have something in common apart from being Indians who have brought glory to the country. In addition to serving as the President of India, Directors of DRDO, and an astronaut respectively, they are renowned aerospace engineers.
Aerospace engineering is a challenging and coveted branch, that includes the design, construction, testing, and maintenance of air and space crafts. The development of new technology in aeronautical and astronautical fields is also under the aegis of aerospace engineering.
Aerospace engineers work in teams to design, assemble, and test the performance of air crafts and space crafts.
Some duties of an aerospace engineer include:
Modify design to incorporate safety features and new functions.
Perform ground and in-flight tests on prototypes.
Estimate the feasibility and production time of civil and military aircraft and missiles.
Conduct reliability studies, operations research, and cost analysis.
Study impact of atmospheric stress and behaviour of loads and weights under different atmospheric conditions.
Assess the quality of materials used for the manufacture of aircrafts.
Collaborate with clients and technical team to ensure the right product specification and performance.
If you are interested and driven towards building a career in this discipline, you can start working towards it right after you pass class XII. There are Bachelor’s, Masters, and Ph.D. programmes in aerospace engineering that you can enrol in. Having a strong interest and grasp over physics and maths is an advantage as both subjects have significant applications in this field.
The academic aspect of aerospace engineering covers in-depth study of modules like fluid mathematics, thermodynamics, design optimisation, and flight testing.
Mushrooming opportunities
Some significant developments within this sector have taken place in India with the ground-breaking work of DRDO, HAL, and ISRO along with private initiatives by Airbus and Boeing, putting India in the league of global aeronautical greats. These notable achievements aside, aerospace is a still growing sector in India offering vast potential to budding engineers to build dynamic careers in this industry.
The government has supplemented this progress by implementing a number of liberal economic reforms which have sky-rocketed the scope of aerospace engineering in India. With an increase in foreign direct investment resulting in greater interest by multinationals, more engineers have the opportunity to work in collaboration with them on joint projects. The government is also investing in research and development of indigenous aerospace products thereby attracting leading companies from across the world.
The demand for aerospace engineers is high in both government and private sectors. These engineers are required in a number of roles in the air force, airlines, corporate research companies, defence ministry, aviation companies, aeronautical laboratories, aircraft manufacturers, and government-owned air services among many others. Abundant opportunities also await thermal design engineers, mechanical design engineers, aerospace technologists, aircraft production managers, consultants, assistant technical officers, and aerospace design checker.
Top recruiters in the aerospace industry include Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), Defence Research and Development Laboratories (DRDO), Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Civil Aviation Department, and Air India.
Large private and government-controlled companies are dedicating resources to develop new technologies to improve the quality of human life. Such initiatives along with the rising popularity of air travel and space exploration which require aeronautical expertise, are fuelling the demand for aerospace engineers making this the best time to launch your dream career.
The writer is Chancellor, Alliance University, Bengaluru.
