Apparently money can’t buy everything, as news broke that Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s personal Airbus A380 “Flying Palace” will not feature an onboard swimming pool. An Airbus executive recently told jet trade publication Aviation International News, “You can forget about the swimming pool,” and that doing a few laps at 35,000 feet “can’t happen and won’t happen.”
Engine power loss appears to have been the cause of an accident at the UK’s London Heathrow airport, in which a British Airways Boeing 777 landed just inside the airfield boundary some 500m (1,640ft) short of the runway 27L threshold. The 136 passengers were evacuated via all eight slides, with three people suffering minor injuries, according to a statement by the airline’s chief executive Willie Walsh.
Boeing has delayed the first test flight of the 787 Dreamliner by about three months to almost July and said it won’t start deliveries until early 2009, the second setback for the planemaker’s most successful new jetliner based on orders.
Airbus secured net orders for 1,341 aircraft during 2007, giving the European manufacturer a 48.7% share of the market.
Airbus’s year-end gross order tally will remain a closely guarded secret until 16 January, it looks likely to exceed the Boeing record and could feasibly be as high as 1,700 aircraft.
The Boeing Company recorded 1,413 net commercial airplane orders during 2007, reaching more than 1,000 orders for an unprecedented third consecutive year, and setting a Boeing record for total orders in a single year.
Boeing also set new order records for the 787 Dreamliner, the 737, and for Boeing freighters.
Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner passenger jet may have a serious security vulnerability in its onboard computer networks that could allow passengers to access the plane’s control systems, according to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.
The computer network in the Dreamliner’s passenger compartment, designed to give passengers in-flight internet access, is connected to the plane’s control, navigation [...]
