Tag Archives: aviation

The new and large fly the farthest

Posted on July 23, 2014 by

British Airways and Air France mutually retired the Concorde supersonic jet in 2003. Both companies cited rising maintenance costs as being the reason, which in turn were compounded by falling demand after the Paris crash in 2000 and a general downturn in civil aviation after 9/11. Now, American and French scientists have found that Concorde was in fact an allometric outlier that stood out design-wise at the cost of its feasibility and, presumably, its maintenance. Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged aerodynamics, allometry, aviation, commercial airplanes, Concorde, constructal laws, correlation, mechanical engineering | Comments Off

The stuff we learn after a plane goes missing

Posted on March 16, 2014 by

(A version of this post, as written by me, first appeared in The Hindu science blog, The Copernican, on March 16, 2014.) It’s likely any of you knew many of or all the following, but these are things I became aware of … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged aircraft-assisted pilot suicides, aviation, Boeing 777-200ER, communications, flying hours, GPS, Malaysian Airlines flight 370, military threats, oceans, Southeast Asia | Comments Off

Airplanes can still go missing

Posted on March 12, 2014 by

Airplanes are one of our largest modes of transportation in terms of physical size. With the exception of ships, airplanes have the highest carrying capacity, are quite environmentally disruptive while in operation, and are equipped with some of the most … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Air Crash Investigation, Air France flight 447, air-traffic controllers, airplanes, aviation, Malaysian Airlines flight 370, transportation, wreckage | Comments Off