Boeing is doubling down on technology, planning to open a new aircraft center in 2020 focusing on robotics and artificial intelligence.
Complexity in the cockpit, and a President raising the stakes at 35,000 feet. The investigations into two recent crashes of Boeing 737 Max 8 jets are in the early stages, but President Trump remains firmly grounded on a probable cause. “Airplanes are becoming too complex to fly. Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT,” the President tweeted.
But most aviation experts say the President’s theory isn’t consistent with the realities of modern air travel. “Some of these minor things that the computer can do for you and the computer can show you are very helpful and it can reduce the pilot’s workload,” said Denny Kelly, a former commercial airline pilot who now works as an air accident investigator. But the technology is a double-edged sword. “When you’re real busy in the cockpit and something goes wrong, you need to concentrate on the problem, not on the computer,” he added.
Kelly also thinks that while computers do make planes safer, today’s pilots are taught to rely too much on technology. “The pilots need to know how to hand-fly the airplane, take it away from the computer and fly it by hand, in an emergency, he said.”
Investigators say data from the black boxes of an Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed earlier this month and a Lion Air plane that went down near Indonesia last October show clear similarities. Authorities are eyeing the aircraft’s anti-stall system as a possible factor in both crashes. Now, the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General plans to audit the F.A.A.’s certification of the Boeing 737 Max 8. (The F.A.A. initially said the Max 8 was still airworthy before changing course, joining dozens of other nations in implementing some form of ban.)
Some experts say the President’s diagnosis on what ails aviation could undermine the public’s trust in air travel, while others insist Boeing is ultimately responsible for the crashes – and THEY need to restore public confidence – sooner rather than later. “They are missing out on an opportunity or a necessity to communicate with the flying public…to remind everybody that this is what we stand for,” said Dennis Culloton, C.E.O. of Culloton Strategies.
But that effort could be too little, too late for Boeing. “Their reputation has already been sullied,” Kelly said. “Once these airplanes are out there and they’re performing like they should perform, I think their reputation will come back. But as it stands now, their reputation is not what it should be.”
Despite the backlash, Boeing is doubling down on technology. The company is moving ahead full throttle on a new aircraft center which should open in 2020, focusing on robotics and artificial intelligence.
Steve Rappoport is a Newscast Producer for Fox News Radio. Follow him on Twitter @SteveRappoport.
The first successful airplane pilot, Wilbur Wright, flew his 1903 craft by lying on his stomach, pushing and pulling levers as the wind swept over his head. Since then, piloting a plane has become a lot less physical thanks to automation and autopilot functions that do a lot of pilots’ work for them. But there have also been serious accidents linked to this technological advancement—like in 2009, when automation technology failed on Air France Flight 447, and pilots weren’t able to take control manually.
Automating certain functions was necessary to making bigger and better planes. After all, Wright’s plane couldn’t fly as fast or far as jets today, let alone seat the number of people that a modern commercial plane can. Just nine years after Wright flew his plane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, a man named Lawrence Sperry created the first successful autopilot.
American aviation pioneer Lawrence Sperry (1892 – 1923) with his Sperry Messenger biplane, circa 1923.
Topical Press Agency/Getty Images
Sperry’s invention was known as “gyroscopic automatic pilot,” or “George,” as many pilots nicknamed it; and its innovation was to automatically balance the plane in flight so the pilot didn’t have to. Sperry’s autopilots became popular during the 1920s and ‘30s. Howard Hughes installed one on the plane he used to set a world record (he flew around the world in 3 days and 19 hours), and American World War II planes had similar devices.
After the war came the boom in commercial air travel, and more demand for automation. In the 1950s, commercial planes had five crew members in the cockpit: a flight engineer, a radio operator, a navigator and two pilots. Over the next few decades, automation and improved technology made the first three jobs unnecessary—and saved airline companies a lot of money.
During the 1970s, airline companies started exploring automation using digital technology. At the time, studies showed that most plane accidents were caused by human error rather than mechanical error, so automation seemed like a way to make air travel safer (self-driving car developers also use this argument).
Pilots let autopilot take control en route to Anchorage, Alaska, above North America circa 1977.
Bruce Dale/National Geographic/Getty Images
With these safety studies in mind, the aviation company Airbus set out to design a plane that even a bad pilot could safely fly. For this, the company developed a new “fly-by-wire system.”
“Whereas autopilot just does what a pilot tells it to do, fly-by-wire is a computer-based control system that can interpret what the pilot wants to do and then execute the command smoothly and safely,” explains Slate. “For example, if the pilot pulls back on his or her control stick, the fly-by-wire system will understand that the pilot wants to pitch the plane up, and then will do it at just the right angle and rate.”
In the late 1980s, Airbus fully introduced this technology for the first time on its A320 plane, also known as the “Electric Jet.” Other aircraft carriers like Boeing adopted these fly-by-wire systems in the 1990s. But in the 21st century, this technology drew scrutiny after a series of accidents in which automation was a factor.
In a 2009, an Air France Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris mysteriously crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 228 people aboard. Air traffic controllers lost contact with the Airbus A330-200 plane in the middle of a thunderstorm, and investigators didn’t discover the plane’s black box records for over two years. They concluded the autopilot and fly-by-wire functions had malfunctioned and turned themselves off, and the pilots were unable to take over the plane manually.
Investigators look through debris from the mid-Atlantic crash of Air France flight 447 on July 24, 2009 at the CEAT aeronautical laboratory in Toulouse, France. The Air France flight from Rio to Paris came down during the night of May 31 to June 1, 2009 during a storm, with the loss of all 228 people on board.
Eric Cabanis/AFP/Getty Images
Journalist and former pilot William Langewiesche later wrote in Vanity Fair that because flying a commercial plane had become such an automated process, the pilots on Flight 447 didn’t have the experience necessary to take over in emergency conditions.
“To put it briefly,” he wrote, “automation has made it more and more unlikely that ordinary airline pilots will ever have to face a raw crisis in flight—but also more and more unlikely that they will be able to cope with such a crisis if one arises.” This was a problem the Future Aviation Safety Team had been warning airlines about since at least 2004.
The Flight 447 crash prompted calls to retrain pilots on how to manually fly a plane, but a decade later, concerns about pilots not having enough experience to take over a plane manually persist. Investigators are still determining what caused the Lion Air Flight 610 crash in October 2018 that killed 189 people and the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crash in March 2019 that killed 157; but many suspect automation programs in the Boeing 737 Max plane may have played a role in these deadly disasters.
Electric aviation is the future but when will it become reality instead of an idea or a test?
This would save pollution from entering the air and causing problems with greenhouse gases, making the atmosphere weaker and causing global warming.
Huge companies such as Amazon and Google should look more into this, as it can help the world and make these companies more money. For example, look at how far electric cars have come since they were just an idea.
In honor of Women’s History Month, United Airlines wants to take women in the arts to new heights, literally. #HerArtHere is a campaign and contest hosted by United to “find and uplift underrepresented women artists,” according to the official press release. How will United do that? By giving women artists a canvas 3,666 times larger than the average 18″ x 24″ canvas you can buy at your local art store: a Boeing 757 plane.
“As a company, we believe in the importance of equality of women in what has historically been a male-dominated field,” United’s New York and New Jersey President Jill Kaplan said. “When we heard the statistics about how underrepresented women are when it comes to displaying their art, we thought, ‘What better way to contribute to changing this narrative than by offering the biggest canvas we have access to — an aircraft?'”
The rules to enter are simple: you must live in the United States and identify as a woman (cisgender, transgender, woman-aligned, or nonbinary) — sorry, not sorry, boys! Using the Boeing 757 plane as your 11,000-square-foot canvas, you should create a design that reflects your own personal style and that represents United’s mission of “Connecting people. Uniting the world,” specifically as it pertains to the company’s two main hubs in the New York/New Jersey area and California.
The six finalists will each have their own open gallery show, have their art displayed in United terminals and be made available for purchase, and will receive 100,000 MileagePlus award miles. The two winners will also get $10,000 each and to work with famous (and female) artist Shantell Martin, who has worked with a range of artists from members of the New York City Ballet to Kenderick Lamar, before their designs take flight in the fall.
“We are thrilled to have the opportunity through this unique contest to bring visibility to the work of these exceptional female artists. We take pride in leveraging our global presence to showcase their great work to millions of people who see our planes on the ground and in the sky,” United’s California President Janet Lamkin said.
Using innovative construction technologies and Lean practices, Mortenson has completed three major new ground facilities for United Airlines at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. The $105 million, 180,000-square-foot project was turned over in less than a year to accommodate runway construction at the busy airport.
Completion of the United project is a critical milestone in O’Hare’s massive modernization of its runways, which includes adding and extending some while closing others. The runway work complements the planned $8.5 billion investment to upgrade terminals and other amenities and add the first new gates at the airport in nearly 25 years.
Mortenson broke ground on the project in the last week of December, 2017 and the airline received its occupancy certifications in November, 2018. The project, which also included 1.2 million square feet of airside paving, was fast-tracked because United Airlines needed to vacate its previous ground facilities ahead of the O’Hare modernization.
“I am extremely proud of the Mortenson team that successfully delivered the North Airfield project,” said MacAdam Glinn, Mortenson general manager of aviation. “It is a testament to our skill and dedication that we were able to complete these high-quality facilities in such an accelerated time frame. Just as importantly, we are honored that we were chosen to partner with industry leader United Airlines on this transformational project.”
United uses the buildings for equipment maintenance and storage and to house its facility maintenance personnel, bussing operation, aircraft move team and aircraft provisioning/cleaning operations.
Adau Akui Atem Mornyang, 24, of Victoria, Australia was charged with assault and interference with flight crew. (iStock)
An Australian woman was found guilty on assault charges for slapping and yelling at a United Airlines crew member while on an international flight from Melbourne to Los Angeles International Airport on January 21 of this year.
Adau Akui Atem Mornyang, 24, of Victoria, Australia was charged with felony interference with flight crew and one count of misdemeanor assault after becoming intoxicated while on the flight and verbally and physically abusing at least one crew member and other passengers, the United States Department of Justice reported in a press release.
According to evidence shared at trial, Mornyang became disruptive several hours into the 14-hour flight, and began to flail her arms and yell obscenities including racial slurs. When approached by a flight attendant, Mornyang reportedly slapped him across his face while continuing to yell.
Mornyang was restrained by federal air marshals on board, who stayed with the woman in the rear galley of the plane until it landed safely at LAX.
Politicians love to play with trains. And your money.
In Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal,” she suggests that high speed rail should be built out across the country and used in place of air travel. But California’s “bullet” train is just one of several examples that demonstrate why tax dollars should not be wasted on these types of projects.
California’s bullet train, which was intended to run between Los Angeles and San Francisco, was originally estimated to cost $33 billion. However, the one-party state of California recently decided to pull the plug on this undertaking due to the fact that after 11 years and basically nothing to show for it, the real cost of the bullet train had climbed to $98 billion in state and federal tax dollars.
A round-trip flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco can be purchased for $149, and the flight takes 90 minutes. The bullet train was an expensive non-solution in search of a problem.
Meanwhile, some politicians in Mississippi, a predominantly Republican state, think it just might be a good idea to shovel taxpayer money to a proposed passenger train in the Southeast. As in California, this proposal — formally known as the Gulf Coast Rail Project — would soon turn into a massive taxpayer boondoggle.
Unfortunately for taxpayers in Mississippi, the Gulf Coast Rail Project is shaping up to be the same disaster. Given the California example, it is much harder to pretend ignorance.
While the total cost for this project, which calls for two daily passenger trains to run between New Orleans, Louisiana and Mobile, Alabama, is hidden, taxpayers will be on the hook for long-term operational and maintenance costs in addition to the infrastructure enhancements, including new train stations.
Estimates have shown that a one-way rail trip on these passenger trains would take more than 3 hours, and would require a subsidy of $180 per passenger. Today, a person wanting to travel between New Orleans and Mobile can get a ticket on Megabus, a 2.5-hour trip, for $14. For the $180 subsidy, the state could give 12 free bus tickets per passenger. In fact, hiring an Uber, a 2-2.5 hour trip, would often be less expensive than $180.
Recognizing the longer length of the train trip, it is reasonable to assume that it would be the least popular choice of commuters. In fact, the rail carrier’s own analysis projects the Gulf Coast Rail Project would attract just 26 riders per train. That is just two more than there are “blackbirds baked” in Mother Goose’s pie.
It gets worse. The Gulf Coast Rail Project would put jobs and potential new jobs at risk. The passenger trains would run on a line that is now being used by freight trains. Since passenger trains get preference over freight trains and the line is mostly single tracked, the Gulf Coast Rail project will interfere with freight traffic industries along the Mississippi Coast. How many companies would decide to build new factories along a hobbled freight rail line?
Mississippi lawmakers should learn from the California bullet train fiasco, as well as the lessons closer to home: similar state-supported trains that once ran between New Orleans and Mobile in the past were discontinued because they were slower, less reliable, and more expensive than other existing modes of transportation.
As Randal O’Toole, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of Romance of Rails: Why the Passenger Trains We Love Are Not the Transportation We Need, has exposed:
Today, air travel is far less expensive than train travel, with airfares averaging under 14 cents a passenger mile, barely more than a third of Amtrak fares even though Amtrak receives much bigger subsidies, per passenger mile, than the airlines.
There is no justification for wasting millions of hard-earned tax dollars on yet another expensive, inflexible and unneeded train. Today planes, buses, Uber, and Lyft do much more, much better for much less.
American fliers have weighed in on their favorite airlines, and Delta, Alaska, and Southwest Airlines rule the roost, according to a new study by ThePointsGuy (TPG). Bringing up the rear was Allegiant, Frontier, and Spirit.
Taking into account everything from on-time arrivals to the number of cities served, TPG found some benchmarks that consumers might find interesting the next time they book a flight.
Winners and losers
Overall:Delta captured first place overall with a remarkable 92.7 percent on-time arrival score, the largest network of lounges, fewest people bumped, and the largest number of cities served.
On the flip side? Discount carrier Frontier, thanks to its paltry on-time record, fell to last place. The carrier also scored low due to run-of-the-mill cabin features, a tendency to bump paying passengers, and a high rate of customer complaints.
Affordability: Combing through airline financials, websites, Department of Transportation files, fees, customer ratings, and other metrics, the formula TPG created found that Spirit Airlines had the best ratio of fare cost-per-mile. “On average, Spirit passengers only paid about $1 per mile flown in base fare for every $2.60 that Delta flyers paid,” was TPG’s analysis. “If you can avoid the plethora of fees, Spirit can be a bargain.”
Regarding ancillary fees — those nasty charges for every little thing the passenger wants to bring or do onboard — Southwest Airlines got the prize for not penny-pinching its passengers. Of course, free is hard to beat, and with Southwest allowing fliers to check two bags for free and not charging to change a flight, it was pretty much a shoo-in in that metric.
IIf fees are a turn-off, you might want to avoid Hawaiian Air. The airline charges an acceptable $30 for a checked bag but an astronomic $300 for flight changes, making it the study’s worst value for fees. You may also want to double-check your wishlist against what Delta is going to charge you for seatback screens, extra legroom, and the like.
On-Time Performance: Hawaiian Airlines had the fewest delayed flights or cancellations and Frontier had the most delays — an eye-popping 24.6 percent of its flights.
Comfort: It makes economic sense that fare price and comfort go hand-in-hand. But for fliers who concern themselves with legroom and free Wi-Fi, here’s the takeaways:
JetBlue and Southwest tied for the most generous seat pitch in coach, at 32.9 inches on average, while Spirit’s 28-inch average seat pitch is the least-giving.
Hawaiian and Frontier have the widest seats on average at 18 inches. Alaska has the narrowest seats at 17 inches.
Alaska is the only airline that has power outlets at every seat.
JetBlue wins the Wi-Fi battle with free Wi-Fi on every plane.
Customer Satisfaction: TPG took into account the number of passenger complaints against each airline filed with the DOT and the number of lost luggage complaints. The winner? Southwest Airlines.
ConsumerAffairs reviewers give Southwest positive ratings, and TPG’s survey takers seem to agree.
“Southwest has a reputation for great service and loyal customers, and it showed,” wrote TPG. “Frontier, on the other hand, racked up nearly the same number of complaints as airlines that flew 10 times as many people. If you check bags, you have the most reason to worry if flying American, while Spirit flyers can probably rest easy.”
On the opposite end of the satisfaction spectrum were Frontier with a jumbo jet-sized number of complaints. American’s baggage handling took a hit for misplacing 3.8 bags per every 1,000 passengers compared to Spirit, which only lost 1.7 bags per 1,000 passengers.
GREENVILLE, Wis. (WBAY) – Spring officially begins this week and that’s welcome news after a rough winter full of snow and cold. Many school districts in our area have spring breaks this week and next, and families are filling up planes headed to warmer destinations.
TSA workers screen flyers through Green Bay Austin Straubel International Airport (WBAY photo)
Appleton International Airport is bustling more now than any other time of the year.
According to Abe Weber, airport director at Appleton International, “It’s been our busiest spring break we’ve ever seen. We have 1,500 people a day coming through the airport and heading out to warm weather destinations.”
With the demand for air travel at an all-time high in Northeast Wisconsin, Allegiant, which usually flies twice a week to both Orlando and Arizona out of Outagamie County, has added an additional five flights a week: three more to Florida and two extra to Arizona.
“They put a big focus on spring break understanding that we had some really rough winter weather. They’re up over 30 percent in seats through our airport,” says Weber.
Other carriers at Appleton and Austin Straubel in Green Bay are either adding flights or flying larger planes to accommodate the additional travelers.
And despite the increase in demand, passengers say fares have stayed the same.
“I thought they were pretty fair, about the same as usual, so I was surprised. I thought it would be a little more expensive this time of year, but it wasn’t bad,” says traveler Jackie Quade.
Traveler Shawn Esslinger adds, “Pricing was good. And Allegiant we’ve flown them many times so, it’s direct and that’s the main consideration.”
In addition to more flights and easier access to destinations, Appleton International has sweetened the deal by adding valet parking.
“It was just very convenient, very convenient,” says Esslinger.
And that’s the goal, as airports try to appease all of those vacation-bound travelers.
Weber adds, “Our goal was really just to elevate the customer experience that much more and be the most convenient airport in Northeast Wisconsin.”
HOUSTON (CBSDFW.COM/AP) — Federal authorities say a United Airlines flight declared an emergency when an engine shut down as the plane descended at Bush Intercontinental Airport.
Flight 1168 was carrying 174 passengers and six crew members late Sunday when the engine trouble began near Houston. The Boeing 737-900 was traveling from Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey.
One passenger told Houston media outlets that he heard a loud bang, felt a strong vibration and saw a flash of light.
Another passenger says he saw flames coming from the engine, but a Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman says emergency responders found no evidence of fire or smoke.
Passengers evacuated down emergency slides and onto the tarmac and were later taken by bus to the United Club inside the airport.
FAA spokesman Lynn Lunsford says crews are investigating the aircraft Monday.
United spokeswoman Rachael Rivas says some people suffered minor injuries while evacuating the plane.
