Singapore Airlines launches the direct Airbus A380 flights between Singapore and Melbourne, Australia on 29th September 2009

Now Melbourne will be the second city in Australia and sixth city in the airline’s network to receive the Airbus 380. Sydney was the first to receive the super jumbo when Singapore Airlines began operating the A380 in October 2007. The airline consequently added London, Tokyo, Paris and Hong Kong to its list of A380 destinations.

“We are excited to fly the A380 to Melbourne, the second most famous city in Australia and a vibrant centre for commerce, arts, industry, sports and tourism. As the greenest extensive body aircraft in the sky, the 471-seat A380 will enhance the seat capacity to Melbourne by 10%, without the need for additional frequencies” said by Mr. Huang Cheng Eng, the Executive Vice President, Marketing and the Regions.

Regular A380 flights will replace an existing daily Boeing 747-400 service to Melbourne. SQ227 will depart Singapore Changi Airport at 21:00 and arrive in Melbourne at 06:10 the next day.

While returning, the SQ228 will depart Melbourne at 15:50 (16:50 from 4 October 2009) and touch down in Singapore at 21:40.

At present Singapore Airlines operates 21 weekly services between Singapore and Melbourne. And the airline also flies to four other Australian cities including Adelaide (7 times weekly), Brisbane (19 times weekly), Perth (19 times weekly) and Sydney (28 times weekly).

Morgan Ashurst had won a £71 million Airbus contract

Morgan Sindall’s assembly arm Morgan Ashurst had secured a £71 million contract to build a wing assembly factory in Broughton, Flintshire for aircraft producer Airbus.

This work will cover up the construction of the 52,300 sq m facility which will be used to assemble the carbon fibre wings.

Morgan Ashurst will be joining together with its sister company, Morgan Professional Services, which will provide architectural, civil and structural engineering design and the concept design for the mechanical and electrical services.

Morgan Sindall chief executive Paul Smith said that, “This latest contract win is further evidence of the benefit we can bring to our clients’ businesses by offering integrated design and build project services. This proves our range of industrial projects, bringing further balance to our Construction division’s project portfolio.” This project will be completed by October 2010 approximately.

Bell UH-1 Iroquois-- The most famous helicopter in the world with several unique characteristics

The most famous helicopter in the world is the Bell UH-1 Iroquois, which is referred as the "Huey". The Huey was the first one to fly in 1956 serves in front-line service in the U.S. military and the militaries of many nations and will continue to do so for many years to come. It had earned its recognition during the Vietnam War and has been featured in many war movies, including Apocalypse Now and Platoon, as well as in numerous action adventure films.

The Huey has several unique characteristics, including its rounded nose, its twin-bladed rotor, and the loud "whomp whomp" sound it makes in flight. In general it is noisy helicopter since, when in forward flight, the tip of the advancing rotor blade breaks the speed of sound, creating a small sonic boom.

The very first helicopters, such as the Sikorsky R-4 and S-51, were powered by piston engines. The Huey was the first turbine-equipped U.S. helicopter to go into manufacture. The manufacture model HU-1 as an entered service with the 101st Airborne at Fort Lewis, Washington. Even though they were intended for evaluation only, the Army quickly pushed them into operational service.

The helicopter was originally selected the HU-1A, that’s where it had received its name "Huey". The official U.S. Army designation Iroquois (Army helicopters are traditionally given Native American names) was never used for practice. The HU-1B was prepared with revised main rotor blades and could carry up to seven passengers. These versions were reselected UH-1A and UH-1B respectively, in 1962 where as a UH-1C version had followed soon with a more powerful engine.

Latest issue on Airbus--High-tech composites manufacturing site

The Welsh Assembly Government (Cardiff / UK) has dedicated GBP 28.66m (EUR 33.7m) support ability for assembly of composite aircraft wings at the Broughton / North Wales site of (Toulouse / France) Airbus. The corporation will permit the construction of an environmentally-friendly plant that will be at the top end of high-tech composites manufacturing technology.

Ieuan Wyn Jones, deputy first minister for Wales, said that it will put “Wales and the UK at the forefront of carbon fibre composites technology”.

A380 Airplane is as tall as an eight story building

The hoopla over the new Airbus 380 has been extraordinary one, and is fit for such a revolutionary and impressive aircraft. The appearance of the Airbus 380 has been keenly anticipated what appears to be ages now; but delays are only to be expected with an aircraft so complex and so new.

The engineers of the whole project went through some hard times with the well-publicized problem of the landing gear, for instance. The earth shaking pressures of landing a flying fortress is only to be expected to be an engineering nightmare, and about to happen with solutions that fit the problem will take some extra time, but now, it flies and lands victoriously.

The mind boggles at the size of the Airbus 380; quoting numbers and figures about the size of Airbus 380 could hardly sufficiently bring to anyone the magnitude of it. It would be like quoting astronomical figures i.e., no one can really understands what numbers that large mean.

Its height is compared to a tall giraffe; imagine it is standing tall and proud craning its neck skyward. This next part might take a stronger imagination, imagine four more giraffes that way one on top of another, five giraffes in all. In other way, this airplane is as tall as an eight story building.

A380 Airplane -- World biggest Aero plane

This airplane Airbus 380 is as tall as an eight story building and known as the Father of all Aeroplanes.

Pakistan military helicopter kills 26 security personnel on Friday in northwestern Pakistan crashed due to a technical fault

Pakistan's military says that, a transport helicopter has crashed due to technical fault, killing 26 security personnel on board.

Investigators are looking forward the incident, which occurred on Friday outside the Peshawar, the main city in the northwest.

Last Friday, Pakistani intelligence officials said that, a suspected U.S. drone fired missiles on a militant training center in the South Waziristan tribal region, killing at least 10 people.

Pakistani military forces and assumed U.S. drone strikes regularly target areas controlled by Baitullah Mehsud, a top Taliban leader and al-Qaida ally wanted by both Pakistan and the United States. But Pakistani troops are preparing for a ground offensive against Mehsud and his Taliban allies.

The stepped-up campaign in western Pakistan comes as troops also keep on to clear the greater Swat Valley region of militants allied with another Taliban faction. Pakistan's army says that troops in that area killed 13 suspected militants and arrested 24 people in the most recent operation.

In other news, the United Nations Children's Fund says that it is deeply concerned about the condition of hundreds of thousands of children who are along with the two million people who have been displaced in Pakistan by the violent behavior.

UNICEF says that nearly 50% of those people are believed to be children and many are in urgent need of health and educational services, nutritional support, access to clean water and sanitation, as well as protection.

Today’s issue on Air France flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic report by investigators

The pilots of the Air France aircraft that crashed off Brazil might have fought to control their stricken aircraft to the end, because it was not damaged when it hit the Atlantic Ocean, investigators indicated yesterday.

In the first report on the disaster that killed all 228 aboard, the French accident bureau said that the Airbus A330 of Air France Flight 447's had not broken up at altitude as it is reported previously by Brazil.

Neither was it in a nose or tail-down dive but the belly-first drive into the Atlantic Ocean. A study of 660 pieces of debris showed that it had crushed only when it slammed belly-first into the sea, reported the bureau.

“The plane was not destroyed while it was in flight,” said Alain Bouillard, the chief of the investigation into the disaster which happened on 1st June 2009. “It seems to strike the surface of the water in level attitude and with a strong vertical acceleration.”

This could point out that the crew had retained some control after the aircraft plummeted in little over four minutes from its cruising altitude of 35,000ft on its way from Rio to Paris, said the expert investigators. Aircraft diving fully out of control from high altitude generally break up before reaching the ground.

No passengers were wearing their life-jackets so they were not prepared for an emergency, said Mr Bouillard. There was no mean of knowing if they were conscious when the aircraft hit the water. The Brazilian authorities so far have refused the investigators access to post-mortem inspection results from the 51 bodies recovered from the ocean.

The investigators confirmed that the disaster began with faulty readings from the pitot speed sensors and caused the electronic systems to disconnect and left the crew with the task of hand-flying a handicapped airliner.

They said that it was too soon to assign a cause to the crash, but their outline confirmed the sequence of events from a data transmitter on the aircraft that has been analyzed widely by experts. Mr Bouillard said that the airliner was flying at night in a tropical storm zone that was not particularly severe. The pitot speed sensors were the faulty readings fed to the data computers. This caused the automatic pilot and automated flight system to shut down, leaving the pilots to hand-fly the aircraft.