Attempted terrorist attack on Chinese flight forces emergency landing

by Aaron Hotfelder on

Air police on a flight from the western Chinese city of Urumqi to Beijing foiled a would-be terrorist attack on Friday, said Chinese officials. The flight was forced to make an emergency landing in the northwestern city of Lanzhou, after two passengers aboard the flight tried to crash the plane. Everyone aboard the flight arrived safely, and the suspects are in custody in Lanzhou.

Though details of the incident are largely unknown, the state media is calling it a terrorist attack. It’s unclear how the attackers were planning on bringing down the plane, but officials say they found flammable materials in the plane’s toilet.

Urumqi, the city in which the flight originated, is the capital of Xinjiang, a region that is “home to 8 million Muslim Uighurs, many of whom resent the growing presence and economic grip of Han Chinese,” according to Reuters.

This attempted hijacking comes less than two months after Chinese officials say they thwarted a plot to attack the Beijing Olympics– a plot hatched in that same region of Xinjiang.

An ode to supply and demand

by Grant Martin on

For the past week or so I’ve been desperately trying to get the heck out of Ann Arbor both this weekend and for the weekend of the 29th. Something about being in this cold state (that’s a noun and an adjective), makes me go crazy after being in town for more than two consecutive weekends.

As I write this from my kitchen table on this snowy Michigan Saturday morning, I blame the airlines for my dilemma. Running a series of flex searches on Kayak and NWA.com over the week, I discovered a secret sale to Germany, of sorts, where I could get from here to Düsseldorf, Germany for about 390$. That’s a pretty good, although not a phenomenal price for the four thousand mile journey.

But its only good for Easter weekend.

Leaving the prior and following weekends on the same flights yields the prices of 2,192$ and 939$ respectively.

The problem is that nobody wants to go to Europe for Easter; most of our families are in The States and we won’t be traveling that far to see them. So with the decreased demand and the same supply, airlines are forced to drop prices over that weekend.

It makes you wonder how much money they’re making on the 390$ flight and if they are profiting, how much they’re gouging on the others. It sort of makes you angry.

Looks like the Dreamliner is going to be pushed back again

by Grant Martin on

Several news depots are reporting rumors that Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner aircraft is going to be delayed by another three months. Right now the airline is “reviewing their schedule” as their stock wildly flounders on the stock market.

The story? Same old supply chain issues. Apparently the airline company, who recently lost a their bid on a hotly contested air tanker order, still can’t manage to get their suppliers in line and their aircraft put together on time.

As an analyst from Goldman Sachs puts it,

“[Boeing] continues to underestimate the amount of work required on the 787. We think Boeing will notify suppliers of new production targets shortly, motivated by the need to keep delivery commitments to airlines.”

I guess designing and building an entirely new airframe takes time. Just look at the problems with the A380 — that was pushed back even further than the 787 (so far). I guess nobody is immune to manufacturing hiccups.

Why the fuss about the EADS Boeing tanker order?

by Grant Martin on

If you’ve been following the news over the past few days, you may have learned that congress and Americans alike are up in arms about the Air Force’s recent contract with the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS), parent company to Airbus, to manufacture the next generation of their airborne tankers.

EADS recently outdesigned and outbid local favorite Boeing on the contract to win the 40 billion deal. The job is purported to create over twenty thousand jobs in Alabama and Kansas, while over forty thousand jobs would have been created (or retained, rather) at Boeing.

This is what has got so many Americans angry. But don’t be so quick to jump on the bandwagon. Here are a few points to consider before you start burning your stockpile of french fries, crepes and berets:

  • The US Airforce chose the aircraft that would work best for the armed forces. The two competing aircraft were compared based on five criteria, and in each of those categories, the EADS aircraft was superior to the Boeing. All of them.
  • The armed forces are required by law to not consider jobs created or lost in their selection process. A law called the Buy America Act also stipulates that they must hold several EU nations in the same manufacturing regard as the US. So even if they wanted to discriminate against workers in Europe or America, they couldn’t.
  • EADS, and thus Airbus, is not a French company. It’s a European conglomerate with multiple countries sharing ownership.
  • Competition is good! If we didn’t have two large airframe designers in the market, the resulting monopoly could result in poorly made, expensive machinery.

From an engineer’s standpoint, it’s simple to me: pick the product with the best price to performance ratio. In this case, it was the EADS aircraft. That’s it. I know our trade deficit will broaden, but this is not an area in which we want to pick a fight.

What irritates me is how politicians, bureaucrats and line workers paint the picture of the Air Force hating America and our troops because of this contract. As one union worker on NPR complained:
“It’s not the best. Boeing makes the best aircraft in the world. Not Airbus. Airbus makes cheap crap.”

We’re still creating jobs in the United States with this contract. We’re also finding the best, most cost-effective way to update our aging tanker fleet. Boeing, and our economy will survive.

Check out the NPR Morning edition article for more info.

FAA fines Southwest Airlines over 10 million dollars for flying unsafe planes

by Grant Martin on

In the wake of the recent news that Southwest Airlines (WN) was caught flying planes past their security checks, the FAA just slapped the airline with a ten million dollar fine.

The issue stems with an error in safety checking a section of the aircraft fuselage; several of the redundant checks missed a section of the skin, thus creating the potential for one to miss finding a crack. Mind you, there were no faults in the aircraft skin found and all aircraft are still safe. Don’t put your tickets on Ebay yet.

That error in and of itself is a pretty big deal, but its mendable. Where the crap really hits the fan is where we find that several (select) FAA and Southwest officials knew about the oversight and didn’t do anything about it. Before it was a mistake — now its criminal.

Congress, in their overreacting state of things is calling a hearing to get to the bottom of the issue. One Mr. James Oberstar went so far as to call it “one of the worst safety violations” that he has ever seen. I’d personally like to find out what those (select) schemers over at WN and the FAA were up to when they didn’t mention the error.