airplane

Aviation Deaths Rise Worldwide in 2020 Even as Fatal Incidents, Flights Fall

More than half of all deaths were the 176 people killed in January 2020 when a Ukrainian plane was shot down in Iranian airspace.

Washington:The number of people killed in large commercial airplane crashes rose in 2020 to 299 worldwide, even as the number of crashes fell by more than 50%, a Dutch consulting firm said on Friday.

Aviation consulting firm To70 said in 2020 there were 40 accidents involving large commercial passenger planes, five of which were fatal, resulting in 299 fatalities. In 2019 there were 86 accidents, eight of which were fatal, resulting in 257 fatalities.

Large commercial airplanes had 0.27 fatal accidents per million flights in 2020, To70 said, or one fatal crash every 3.7 million flights – up from 0.18 fatal accidents per million flights in 2019.

The decline in crashes came amid a sharp decline in flights due to the coronavirus pandemic. Flightradar24 reported commercial flights it tracked worldwide in 2020 fell 42% to 24.4 million.

More than half of all deaths in the To70 review were the 176 people killed in January 2020 when a Ukrainian plane was shot down in Iranian airspace.

The second deadliest incident was the May crash of a Pakistan airliner crashed in May killing 98.

Large passenger airplanes covered by the statistics are used by nearly all travellers on airlines but exclude small commuter airplanes in service.

Over the last two decades, aviation deaths have been falling dramatically. As recently as 2005, there were 1,015 deaths aboard commercial passenger flights worldwide, the Aviation Safety Network (ASN) said.

Over the last five years, there have been an average of 14 fatal accidents for commercial passenger and cargo planes resulting in 345 deaths annually, ASN said.

In 2017, aviation had its safest year on record worldwide with only two fatal accidents involving regional turboprops that resulted in 13 deaths and no fatal crashes of passenger jets.

The United States has not had a fatal US passenger airline crash since February 2009 and one fatality due to a US passenger airline accident in that period.

(Reuters)

Flying Less Should Be a High-Priority Climate Action

Air travel is a significant – and unequally distributed – contributor to climate change, and universities and other institutions with outsized impact need to reduce.

An opinion piece at Ensia recently reported that “flying produces only 2% of total emissions today” and contended, “Even if everyone were to stop flying, the total climate mitigation impact would be negligible.” This understates the impact of aviation for three reasons.

First, the International Energy Association (IEA) reports that just the fuel burn alone for domestic and international aviation was 2.97% of global combustion emissions in 2017, the most recent year available. This percentage was 2.47% in 2009, but the correct figure is higher today.

Second, aviation involves several emissions sources beyond just the jet fuel burn of the actual flight. A life-cycle analysis, such as a 2016 article by Georgia Institute of Technology transportation systems engineering graduate research assistant Haobing Liu and colleagues, includes the transportation to the airport, the energy emissions to produce and transport jet fuel, the ground operations for airports, and the embedded emissions for everything from the aircraft themselves to the airport infrastructure.

Third, aviation is responsible for more “radiative forcing” or (roughly speaking) climate impact than one would expect from the carbon emissions alone, because the emissions take place at high altitude where they induce contrail formation. The UK uses a multiplier of 1.9, meaning that the full climate impact of aviation is almost twice as great as the statistics above would indicate. In a 2018 report, Niels Jungbluth, CEO of the sustainability consultancy ESU-Services, and environmental engineer colleague Christoph Meili found research evidence for radiative forcing factors ranging from 1.9 to 5 times the unadjusted number.

A study in the journal Atmospheric Environment led by David Lee, a professor in the Department of Health, Psychology, and Communities at Manchester Metropolitan University, attributed to aviation 4.9% of all human climate impact in 2005. As noted previously, since 2009 aviation has grown rapidly as a share of total combustion emissions. The estimates one commonly sees that describe aviation as 2% of emissions ignore recent rapid increases in aviation emissions, life-cycle effects beyond jet-fuel burn and radiative forcing due to contrail formation.

Air travel also poses an equity issue. IEA attributes to aviation fuel burn 3.67% of total combustion emissions in the US, and in Canada this statistic is 3.28% – both much higher than the global average of 2.97%. Academics tend to have higher air travel–associated climate footprints than average citizens: Researchers at the University of British Columbia recently estimated that air travel emissions are equivalent to 63%-72% of emissions from campus operations.

The good news is that we can change our flying practices while preserving our cherished personal and institutional goals.

Also read: The Carbon Footprint of Tourism Revealed (It’s Bigger Than We Thought)

The authors of the original Ensia op-ed acknowledged some role for personal flying decisions, while rightly noting that other sectors such as road travel also have large emissions. At a personal level, people who currently fly frequently may replace selected flights with train or bus travel, or combine trips to save a flight, or replace a long-distance vacation with a delightful regional adventure, or even take the #FlightFree2020 pledge and agree not to fly for a year if feasible.

At an institutional level, universities have an excellent opportunity to show leadership and demonstrate urgency. The #flyingless initiative, which I co-organise with Vassar College geography professor Joe Nevins, encourages universities and professional associations to set goals and measure progress on flying reduction, showing the way for larger economic sectors to do likewise.

Our dream is not just for emissions reduction in one sector or one country, but for the higher education sector in comparatively rich countries to make a bold and visible statement about human capacity for rational action, setting an example for other sectors and countries around the world. Far from “negligible,” the potential impact of aviation reduction is immense. If we practice what we preach, the world will take notice.

Parke Wilde is a food economist and Tufts professor. He tweets at @flyingless.

This article was originally published on Ensia.

Inspired by Sci-Fi, an Airplane With No Moving Parts and a Blue Ionic Glow

Ionic winds – charged particles flowing through the air – can move airplanes using only electricity, and no propellers or jet engines are needed. The scholar who led the project explains how it works.

Since their invention more than 100 years ago, airplanes have been moved through the air by the spinning surfaces of propellers or turbines. But watching science fiction movies like the “Star Wars”, “Star Trek” and “Back to the Future” series, I imagined that the propulsion systems of the future would be silent and still – maybe with some kind of blue glow and “whoosh” noise, but no moving parts, and no stream of pollution pouring out the back.

Science fiction inspires research and reality.

That doesn’t exist yet, but there is at least one physical principle that could be promising. About nine years ago, I started investigating using ionic winds – flows of charged particles through the air – as a means of powering flight. Building on decades of research and experimentation by academics and hobbyists, professionals and high school science students, my research group recently flew a nearly silent airplane without any moving parts.

The plane weighed about five pounds (2.45 kilograms) and had a wingspan of 15 feet (5 meters), and travelled about 180 feet (60 meters), so it’s a long way from efficiently carrying cargo or people long distances. But we have proved that it is possible to fly a heavier-than-air vehicle using ionic winds. It even has a glow you can see in the dark.

A plane powered by ionic wind takes flight.

Revisiting discarded research

The process our plane uses, formally called electroaerodynamic propulsion, was investigated as far back as the 1920s by an eccentric scientist who thought he had discovered anti-gravity – which was of course not the case. In the 1960s, aerospace engineers explored using it to power flight, but they concluded that wouldn’t be possible with the understanding of ionic winds and the technology available at the time.

Also Read: ISRO Will Work on Electric Propulsion System, Says A.S. Kiran Kumar

More recently, however, a huge number of hobbyists – and high school students doing science fair projects – have built small electroaerodynamic propulsion devices that suggested it could work after all. Their work was pivotal to the early days of my group’s work. We sought to improve on their work, most notably by conducting a large series of experiments to learn how to optimise the design of electroaerodynamic thrusters.

A homemade lifter using the same principle as the new MIT airplane.

Moving the air, not the plane parts

The underlying physics of electroaerodynamic propulsion is relatively straightforward to explain and implement, although some of the underlying physics is complex.

We use a thin filament or wire that is charged to +20,000 volts using a lightweight power converter, which in turn gets its power from a lithium-polymer battery. The thin filaments are called emitters, and are nearer the front of the plane. Around these emitters the electric field is so strong that the air gets ionized – neutral nitrogen molecules lose an electron and become positively charged nitrogen ions.

Farther back on the plane we place an airfoil – like a small wing – whose leading edge is electrically conductive and charged to -20,000 volts by the same power converter. This is called the collector. The collector attracts the positive ions toward it. As the ions stream from the emitter to the collector, they collide with uncharged air molecules, causing what is termed an ionic wind that flows between the emitters and collectors, propelling the plane forward.

How MIT’s airplane works.

This ionic wind replaces the flow of air that a jet engine or propeller would create.

Starting small

I have led research that has explored how this type of propulsion actually works, developing detailed knowledge of how efficient and powerful it can be.

Also Read: Dear Minister: An Indian Did Try to Fly But He Definitely Didn’t Invent the Aeroplane

My team and I have also worked with electrical engineers to develop the electronics necessary to convert batteries’ output to the tens of thousands of volts needed to create an ionic wind. The team was able to produce a power converter far lighter than any previously available. That device was small enough to be practical in an aircraft design, which we were ultimately able to build and fly.

Steven Barrett speaks in a ‘Nature’ mini-documentary about the first flight of an ionic-wind-driven plane.

Our first flight is, of course, a very long way from flying people. We’re already working on making this type of propulsion more efficient and capable of carrying larger loads. The first commercial applications, assuming it gets that far, could be in making silent fixed-wing drones, including for environmental monitoring and communication platforms.

Looking farther into the future, we hope that it could be used in larger aircraft to reduce noise and even allow an aircraft’s exterior skin to help produce thrust, either in place of engines or to augment their power. It’s also possible that electroaerodynamic equipment could be miniaturised, enabling a new variety of nano-drones. Many might believe these possibilities are unlikely or even impossible. But that’s what the engineers of the 1960s thought about what we’re already doing today.

Steven Barrett is Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Dear Minister: An Indian Did Try to Fly But He Definitely Didn’t Invent the Aeroplane

If the thinking of Satya Pal Singh is anything to go by, we must prepare for a long spell of darkness.

Satya Pal Singh. Credit: PTI

Success is a strange thing. It is one moment in a long and arduous journey of enterprise. It is Sachin Tendulkar’s 100th century alone but not the 99 centuries that came before. It is Thomas Edison & co.’s famous incandescent lightbulb and not the 6,000+ attempts that came before in search of the right materials. Success is a brief flaring up of the candle of perseverance before it settles back down and keeps glowing. To put it out after that moment maybe fair to the flare, but it’s not fair to the candle.

When Satya Pal Singh, the minister of state for human resource development, says that engineers must be taught the story of an Indian who flew an airplane eight years before the Wright brothers’ feat, he is blowing his nose over that candle. Singh is blinkered by his lust for Indian supremacy so much so that he is fixated on an Indian, a Mumbaikar, flying an airplane in 1895 – an event that may not have happened – and ignores the enterprise that must have come before, and the encouragement that should have come after.

The Mumbaikar in question is Shivkar Bapuji Talpade. According to some reports, Talpade built an airplane when we was an instructor at the city’s Sir J.J. School of Art. It seems he had been inspired by supposedly descriptions of airplanes in Hindu mythology in the Vaimanika Shastra, an exposition of the sage Bharadwaja, and wanted to recreate them. Anecdotal reports compiled by Pratap Velkar, an architect-historian, suggest that on the day of the flight, few were in attendance. However, another report – filed by an author named K.R.N. Swamy in the Deccan Chronicle – suggests that the then-king of Baroda was in the audience.

This contradiction is trivial compared to what came after. According to Velkar and Swamy both, Talpade’s airplane stayed airborne for a few minutes, flying over 1,500 feet before dropping down. The source of energy during this feat was allegedly a ‘mercury vortex engine’: a drum of mercury that, when exposed to sunlight, released hydrogen and buoyed the plane up.

Mercury does not react with sunlight, although it could participate in sunlight-induced chemical reactions. It reacts only moderately with oxygen, so it’s not clear where the hydrogen comes from. More importantly, Swamy claims in his article that Talpade’s airplane was able to produce enough thrust to lift a presumably 200-kg airplane into the air and propel it across 1,500 feet. Velkar disputes this. Finally, Velkar and Swamy both speak of an unmanned aircraft while Singh has said that Talpade flew the thing. It would seem the latter is not even wrong.

These descriptions, and others besides, have been thoroughly bunked – especially by those scientific traditions of the West that Satya Pal Singh is reluctant to agree with. The clincher is that if Talpade’s feat did actually happen the way chroniclers have said it did, then anyone today building an airplane with the same principles should be able to recreate it. This hasn’t been possible.

All of this also misses the point. According to Velkar, after Talpade completed his demonstration on an unmarked day in 1895, he wasn’t able to raise enough funds, neither from the king of Baroda nor from other businessmen, to build a second aircraft. State help was not forthcoming. When Velkar eventually tracked down the research papers written by Talpade to the possession of a scientist named G.H. Bedekar, Bedekar said that the papers only reveal that Talpade had failed in his efforts.

We should not teach our students that Talpade flew an airplane. In the absence of concrete evidence, we shouldn’t even teach them that Talpade succeeded because it is only a disputed moment of success. We should teach them that Talpade tried, which is more important. To build a candle in the dark of our ignorance that flares briefly, controversially, and then dies is useless. Our students must be equipped to build candles that glow and glow.

As Aparajith Ramnath, a historian of science, wrote in The Wire, “To reduce [research] to a battle for priority is to replace an intricate portrait with a gross caricature.”

The point of teaching ‘ancient technology’, if it happens, should be to inculcate the spirit of perseverance and entrepreneurship. A Shivkar Bapuji Talpade today ought to be able to try and fail, and not have the consequence of such failure bog her down for the rest of her life. Moreover, the value of good research is born out of an invaluable global contract. For example, the value of the contract between two scientists working in separate labs is born out of using the scientific method to perform their experiments just like the value of a 100-rupee bill is born out of an economic contract between the citizens of a country and the state.

Sidestepping these contracts to create our own value system will take us nowhere – neither further into knowing our past better nor shaping the future. However, it is easily possible to simultaneously acknowledge value-systems of the past, and the intellectual and socio-political contexts in which they operated. So to acknowledge that Oliver and Wilbur Wright flew an airplane for the first time in 1903 is to acknowledge a contract that scientists and engineers abide by to this day: that the plane can be recreated, that it will fly just as the brothers and other historians have described, that it will bank on scientific principles that have been validated over and over. But to suggest that it hegemonises the contracts forged by ancient Indian traditions is misguided.

It does not, and herein lies the fallacious derision of the West that a part of the modern, post-colonial India is given to. To describe ‘success’ in the form of an airplane that flew according to natural contracts described thousands of years ago and to describe ‘success’ as improving research quality in the global arena today typifies the conflict that Singh and others like him have been unable to overcome. This is the conflict that prevents India from transitioning from an erstwhile giver of knowledge to a modern taker, a conflict that a historian would simply dismiss as ‘presentism’.

We must become okay with taking so we can be givers again. We can’t give from the past to a world that has moved on.

In the same vein, improving India’s research output, both in quantity and quality, requires a state that acknowledges the environmental shift in which our contracts have operated. It requires a state that provides ample funds for research that abides by prevailing global contracts, ensures that those funds reach researchers on time and are utilised effectively – instead of letting talent descend into ignominy the way Talpade has. It requires a state that is willing to wait for research to ripen, that remains cognisant of the value of burning candles before sniffing and grumbling in the absence of a flare.

If the thinking of Satya Pal Singh is anything to go by, we must prepare for a long spell of darkness.

US Lifts Laptop Restriction On Flights From Abu Dhabi

Etihad welcomed the decision and credited a facility at Abu Dhabi International Airport where passengers clear US immigration before they land in the US for “superior security advantages” that had allowed it to satisfy US requirements.

An Etihad Airways Boeing 777-3FX aircraft takes off at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Roissy, France, August 9, 2016. Credit: Reuters/Jacky Naegelen/Files

Washington: The US on Sunday lifted a ban on laptops in cabins onflights from Abu Dhabi to the US, saying the United Arab Emirates’ Etihad Airways had put in place required tighter security measures.

US Transport Security Administration officials visually verified that the measures had been implemented correctly, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Etihad is the only airline that operates direct flights from Abu Dhabi to the US.

In March, the US banned laptops in cabins on flights to the US originating at 10 airports in eight countries – Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Turkey – to address fears that bombs could be concealed in electronic devices taken aboard aircraft.

Britain quickly followed suit with a similar set of restrictions.

Last week, the US unveiled security measures for flights to the country designed to prevent the expansion of the ban to more countries that could cause major logistical problems and deter travel.

DHS spokesman David Lapan said in a statement provided to Reuters that Etihad’s efforts to implement extra security measures were a model for foreign and domestic airlines.

Other airports and airlines in the region, such as Emirates Airlines and Qatar Airlines, remain under the restrictions, he said.

“We look forward to working with other airlines to ensure implementation of these critical measures as quickly as possible,” said Lapan.

Etihad operates 45 flights a week between Abu Dhabi and the US, the company said.

Dubai-based Emirates, the largest international airline by passenger traffic and a rival to Etihad, said in April it was cutting flights on five US routes because of reduced demand, after a travel ban imposed by President Donald Trump and the laptop ban.

(Reuters)

Three Days of Chaos, British Airways Flights Still Disrupted

On Twitter, the airline said it would run a full schedule at Gatwick and a long-haul schedule from Heathrow along with large numbers of short-haul service.

People wait with their luggage at the British Airways check in desks at Heathrow Terminal 5 in London, Britain May 28, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Neil Hall

Reuters: London’s Heathrow Airport said early on Monday that there were still some disruptions to British Airways flights from the airport following a global computer system failure at the airline.

British Airways said on Twitter it would run a full schedule at London’s Gatwick on Monday and intended to operate a full long-haul schedule from Heathrow along with a high proportion of short-haul service.

The airline resumed some flights from Britain’s two biggest airports on Sunday, but hundreds of passengers were still waiting for hours at London Heathrow.

“We have mobilised additional Heathrow colleagues to assist passengers at the terminals and give out free water and snacks,” Heathrow said in a statement on Twitter.

The airport said earlier that further delays and cancellations of British Airways flights were expected on Sunday and told passengers not to travel to the airport unless they were rebooked on other flights.

British Airways cancelled all its flights from Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport, and Gatwick on Saturday after a power supply problem disrupted its flight operations worldwide and also hit its call centres and website.

Russia’s Maiden Jet Flight Set to Compete With Airbus, Boeing

The maiden flight of Russia’s MS-21 plane is the country’s attempt to rejuvenate domestic industrial production to make it less dependent on foreign firms.

A view shows an An MC-21 medium-range passenger plane, produced by Irkut Corporation, during a flight in Irkutsk, Russia, May 28, 2017. Courtesy of PR Department of Irkut Corporation/Handout via Reuters

Moscow: Russia carried out the maiden flight of its new MS-21 medium-range passenger plane on Sunday, its first post-Soviet foray into production of a mainline commercial aircraft which it hopes will rival those of its Western competitors.

In a surprise statement, manufacturer Irkut Corporation and its state-controlled parent company United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) said an MS-21-300 model had successfully completed a 30-minute flight at a height of 1,000 metres and travelling at 300 km an hour.

Squeezed by Western sanctions over its role in the Ukraine crisis, Russia is trying to rejuvenate domestic industrial production to make the country less dependent on foreign firms.

The test flight, which was not announced to media beforehand, comes just three weeks after China staged the maiden flight of its new C919 passenger jet, highlighting the growing competition to industry heavyweights Boeing and Airbus.

Russian officials have said the MS-21 is superior to its Western-made counterparts in many respects and will be snapped up by both Russian and foreign carriers, but Western analysts say both Russia and China face a huge challenge to shatter the transatlantic airplane duopoly.

“The flight mission has been completed. The flight was fine, there were no observations which will prevent further testing,” test pilot Oleg Kononenko was quoted as saying.

Western aviation sources, however, expressed surprise at the flight‘s brevity and relatively low altitude compared with recent 3-4 hour debuts of North American and European models.

“It suggests they either have severe limitations or may have had something happen and decided to come back,” said a Western flight test engineer, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A Western jetmaking source called it a “genteel flight“.

A UAC spokesman said the flight had been long enough to test everything that needed checking in the air.

Russia has fought hard to shake off its Soviet reputation for old and creaking aircraft flown by inexperienced crews.

Flag carrier Aeroflot last year earned its fourth star from independent ratings website Skytrax, ranking it alongside major European and Middle Eastern competitors and ahead of big US carriers such as Delta and United.

Firm orders

President Vladimir Putin called Irkut general director Oleg Demchenko to congratulate him and his employees with what the Kremlin called “a significant event”.

The twin-engine MS-21 will be built in two variants: the MS-21-300 which will have 160-211 seats, and the later MS-21-200 which will have 130-165 seats. It is sometimes referred to as the MC-21 when using the Russian name and Cyrillic letters.

Production is expected to start in the next two years and state media have said numerous contracts with domestic and foreign carriers have already been agreed. Irkut said it so far had “firm orders” for 175 planes.

America’s Boeing and Europe’s Airbus remain far ahead of their Chinese and Russian rivals, with bigger sales books and more advanced technical know-how.

But the new plane could win sales in Russia and some Eastern European and Asian countries, industry analysts say, with buyers attracted by its lower running costs.

Irkut said operational costs for its new plane will be up to 15% cheaper than current generation aircraft.

With a range of up to 6,000 kilometres, the MS-21 will be competing against the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 aircraft which currently dominate the medium-range narrow-body market. Both companies recently upgraded those families to achieve comparable 15% operational savings compared to previous versions.

State defence conglomerate Rostec, which is headed by close Putin ally Sergei Chemezov, said it had agreed to purchase 85 aircraft. At least 50 of them will be leased to Aeroflot, Rostec said, which currently operates a fleet dominated by narrow-body Airbus models, including 70 A320s.

UAC President Yury Slyusar said he estimated global demand for the new MS-21 models at around 15,000 aircraft over the next 20 years. “I’m sure the airlines will appreciate our new aircraft,” he said.

(Reuters)