ASAP AM Spares Blog

A monumental milestone has been reached today as the Emirates Airbus A380 jet has broken the record for the longest flight distance traveled by a commercial passenger aircraft. The record book was re-written on Wednesday after a 8,824 mile non-stop flight from Dubai that culminated in a landing in Auckland, New Zealand. The previous record was held by Qantas which saw the aircraft traveled 8,577 miles from Dallas Fort Worth to Sydney, Australia.

Airbus is enlisting support from airlines in a proposition for their A350-8000, a new 400-seat jetliner expected to compete with Boeing over the distinction of having the world’s largest two-engine Jet. With pressure mounting from Boeing’s 777 series, Airbus has launched an all-out pre-marketing offensive to lobby support for what would be their newest and largest addition to the Airbus family.

Robinson Helicopter’s new R44 Cadet will provide better training to student pilots without being too costly. The company’s R22 and R44 Raven helicopters have been the chopper of choice for most civilian flight trainers. True to their name, the 22 is a two-seater, and the 44 seat four. A balance of cost-effective training was hard to find between these two helicopters, considering the 44’s price tag and the 22’s lack of proper instrument training.

EasyJet, the British low-cost airline carrier, has recently revealed that the company plans on trialing a hydrogen fuel cell system which uses technology similar to what is used in a Formula 1 kinetic energy recovery system. This recovery system used in the F1 industry utilizes wasted energy from braking and converts it into electrical energy. EasyJet suggests that by using a hydrogen fuel cell system, they could potentially reduce carbon emissions and save around 50,000 tons of fuel per year.

A concept aircraft called the Antipode trying to change the way people travel forever, as developers are promising an eleven-minute flight from New York to London.

Dassault Aviation recently announced that there will be a production freeze and two-year delay on its manufacturing of the all-new Falcon 5X. This delay will occur as a result of ongoing issues with the Snecma Silvercrest engine, used in the Falcon 5X.

Airbus Helicopters just recently flown their H160 medium class prototype. This is considered their second prototype to be flown. Although this is the second prototype, this is considered the first H160 rotorcraft to include a Turbomeca Arrano engine. This engine has way over 1000 shp or (750 kW). According to its initial flight-test article, the Airbus H160 rotorcraft has gained over 70h by the tail end of 2015. The rotorcraft began flying during the early summer of 2015. The helicopter has a speed of over 170kt or over 300 km/h.

USA TODAY released an article on Tuesday January 26th, 2016 stating that JetBlue announced on Monday stock that the company is ready to overhaul the Airbus 320s jet’s cabins. The JetBlue carrier has been patiently awaiting a new overhaul of all of its Airbus 320s. JetBlue has over 100 Airbus 320 jets that need a total redesign. Along with the Airbus 320s, JetBlue has added some Embraer E190s as well as Airbus 321s. The Embraer E190s were added in 2005 and the Airbus 321s were added in 2013.

Today news broke of the delivery and acceptance of the very first Q400 cargo-combi aircraft. The love-child of Bombardier Commercial Aircraft and Ryukyu Air Commuter Co., Ltd (RAC) of Okinawa, Japan is one of five ordered by RAC. The airline was established in 1985 and started operations on 17 February 1985. It is owned by Japan Transocean Air (72.9%), other shareholders (22.0%) and Okinawa Prefecture (5.1%).

Airbus and Boeing have been in a production competition for all of 2015. Airbus had over 1,000 more airplane orders than Boeing, however Boeing had made and delivered more airplanes. Airbus now has control over 55% of the market with the orders customers have placed. In 2015 there were exactly 1,036 orders which netted over $1 trillion worth of jets. In doing so also secures Airbus production for a decade. Airbus was able to outsell its competitor, the Boeing 737 max, with its A320neo family fleet of planes. This plane is considered to be more fuel efficient than the Boeing 737 max. The first A320neo will be delivered this month in January with over 800 more on order. The A320neo is the dominant plane for those in the smaller short-haul aircrafts market.