Another airline has gone under, today announced the demise of AtlasGlobal which was a Turkish airline. After a long period of financial difficulties the airline has declared bankruptcy and ended all operations. The carrier actually stopped flights late last year to save money and restarted in late December. The airline operated 16 Airbus aircraft and was established in 2001. This is now the second airline to go under in two days after Air Italy yesterday.
A Venezuelan Bombardier Learjet 55 was raided by United States Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) at the Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport. Close to 90 weapons, 20,000 USD and 63,000 rounds of ammunition were seized by the CBP and the pilots arrested. The particular aircraft was on law-enforcement radar for a while it engaged in what appeared to be suspicious activities. The CBP agents raided the aircraft shortly before it was expected to depart to St. Vincent in the Caribbean and then perhaps on to Venezuela.
Camping in an old former Airbus A319? Cool, weird and interesting all at the same time. The former aircraft was built in 2003 and Etihad Airways acquired the jet in 2008 as A6-EID. Now that Etihad has gotten rid of it the jet has found use as a camping facility under the theme "Arabian Nights". The interior is rather basic as you would imagine its just for camping. Apple Camping who is behind the venture suggests that staying in this accommodation for two-nights will cost you £298 or around ($395).
Just a few days ago the Autonomous Pod Transport 70 (APT 70) vehicle flew. It is part and parcel of NASA’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems in the National Airspace System program. The flight took place on September 28. It utilized some interesting technology called detect-and-avoid (DAA) hardware and software developed by autonomous technology specialist Xwing.
An odd thing to get excited about in the midst of a pandemic, but earlier this summer we got a few visits from various Antonov aircraft... here the An-124 Ruslan.
An international team led by Airbus Defence and Space (Friedrichshafen, Germany) with scientists from Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials IFAM (Dresden, Germany), Boston University (Massachusetts, USA) and Abengoa Innovación (Seville, Spain) has successfully demonstrated the production of oxygen and metals from simulated lunar dust (regolith) with the Airbus-invented process named ROXY (Regolith to OXYgen and Metals Conversion). Airbus believes ROXY could revolutionize human space exploration. After two years’ development the breakthrough came last month, during a series of laboratory tests at Fraunhofer IFAM. Oxygen was extracted from a sample of simulated lunar dust. This is a small first step, but the way towards an operational system is now clear. Oxygen is indispensable for all human space activities, and this new ROXY production method, which directly uses Moon dust could revolutionize human activities on the lunar surface. Photo by Airbus
By now many of you would have heard about this accident where this Augusta Westland crashed on the roof of a hospital as it was delivering a heart for a transplant.