Airbus

Cockpit automation increases planned for clean sheet narrowbodies

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Airbus and Boeing are both planning to hit the marketplace with completely new narrobodied aircraft in the mid to late 2030s, but what will they look like? Will they have pilots?

Nothing is set in stone, but it appears most likely that airframes will still be variants of the wing-and-tube format. And, at present, power unit technology is still predicted to be hydrocarbon-fuelled, but using 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) at service entry, driving higher-bypass rotors, whether ducted or unducted, with a promised 20%-30% increase in fuel efficiency. Both manufacturers still promise net-zero emissions by 2050.

Airbus’ NGSA (Next Generation Single Aisle) aircraft is expected to feature long, slender wings with folding wingtips (above), whereas Boeing, working with NASA, is trialling the “transonic truss-braced wing” (see below), also with a very high aspect ratio and folding wingtips

Surprisingly, no-one is talking specifically about artificial intelligence (AI). That may be because, by then, it will be impossible to tell, in integrated aircraft management systems, where AI ends and passive software begins. Meanwhile Airbus and Boeing both say they plan to keep pilots “in the loop”, and in an executive role. At this point a two-pilot crew is the model they are working with, but how long that will remain the status quo is not clear.

France-based Thales, which supplies the integrated modular avionics on the Airbus A320NEO, sees the NGSA offering the flightcrew a high degree of integral assistance.

“That aircraft will incorporate a lot more help for the pilots through automation, or recommendation, so they are assisted at any moment of the flight – whether it is a normal phase or if there are issues,” according to Yannick Assouad, executive VP of the avionics division. Flight management systems will assist pilot decision-making, going further than today’s Airbus Electronic Centralised Aircraft Monitor (ECAM) system or Boeing’s Engine Indicating and Crew Alerting System (EICAS), by proposing solutions with supporting information, but leaving the decision to the pilots.

If there is a difference between the two manufacturers’ approaches to future flight deck systems human/machine interface, it is subtle. Boeing emphasises pilot-assist technologies designed to keep the pilot central while improving training, and “human-machine teaming”, whereas Airbus focuses on automation and autonomy to reduce workload and improve safety through use of assistance systems. Airbus talks of “making the aircraft the pilot’s smart assistant”, one that can anticipate and act.

Technology advances include more efficient, higher bypass engines, including open fan designs; long, high aspect-ratio foldable wings enabling significant aerodynamic efficiency gains while maintaining manoeuvrability during taxiing and docking at high density airports; also, next-generation batteries to enable hybrid architectures where electricity is increasingly used to support propulsive and non-propulsive functions aboard the aircraft, and increased use of advanced lightweight materials and integrated systems.

Boeing 737: the beginning of the end.

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It hasn’t surprised anyone in the industry to hear rumours – via the pages of the Wall Street Journal – that Boeing is working on the design of a new narrowbody jet, because it’s what everyone – including Boeing – knows the manufacturer should have done instead of launching the 737 Max.

The confidence in that statement is completely un-influenced by hindsight.

Now the Max has been purged of the ghastly design mistake that was MCAS (manoeuvring characteristics augmentation system), and Boeing has radically overhauled its corporate safety culture under a new leader – former Rockwell Collins engineer CEO Kelly Ortberg – the 737 series can once again trade on the lazy confidence that comes from the fact that – with all its faults and its antique technology – it’s a known quantity.

As a result the 737 is selling well, but nothing like as well as its competitor the Airbus A320 series.

The first 737-100 entered service in 1968, initially to fly the routes that the larger 727 series trijet was too big for. Its basic control technology was – and still is – just-post-war, except that in the latest versions the power-assisted cranks and pulleys are overlaid with electronic flight instrument systems and flight management computers to the extent that the pilots could almost believe the aircraft is fly-by-wire. They know, however, that they themselves are the flight envelope protection.

The industry needs a new-technology narrowbody competitor to the A320, and if Boeing doesn’t supply it, perhaps a development of China’s Comac C919, Russia’s Sukhoi Superjet 100, or a new product from Brazil’s Embraer will fill the gap.

Boeing’s first fly-by-wire airliner was its highly successful 777 widebody, which entered service in 1995 with virtually no birthing pains.

In 2011 it launched the 787 Dreamliner series, also highly commercially successful, but suffering from multiple early problems, some of them still being worked on.

Right now Boeing is struggling to re-launch the 777 as the 777X. The fact that it had a planned 2019 in-service date, but now its launch customer – Lufthansa – will not receive it until 2026, suggests how difficult a task bringing an entirely new narrowbody (the 797?) to service readiness may yet be.

The challenge is always to deliver a safe, trouble-free product, but the staggeringly advanced, fully-integrated electronic technology by which the aircraft and all its systems will be managed and controlled, plus the fact that there must be fallback systems that the pilots can access easily if it all goes wrong, mean its service entry will not be quick.

Look beyond this to the fact that the new systems will inevitably employ artificial intelligence, which makes passengers – and even engineers – nervous when it comes to managing safety-critical systems, and the size of the challenge becomes clear.

So the venerable 737 series will be with us for many years yet.

Contrail cure? Nearly…

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Having recently revealed in Learmount.com that air travel could easily be rendered less of a global-warmer than it is (see previous article Airline climate harm can be halved), another significant discovery enabling further advances on that front has just been chalked up.

Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), if used at 100% concentration rather than a mix of about 50% with fossil-derived aviation fuel, appears to be able to reduce – by more than half – the global warming effects of high level cirrus cloud formed from persistent aircraft contrails.

Use of SAF is, at present, the most tangible action airlines can take to reduce their global warming effect, although its production is nowhere near sufficient to power the entire world fleet. Deriving from waste vegetable oil and production processes that consume global warming gases, its sustainability is its most obvious benefit. It is turning out, however, also to have unpredicted advantages, like a higher energy output per unit weight as well as a much cleaner burn.

This clean-burn effect has come to light as a result of trials conducted by Airbus, using one of its A350-900s, fueled with 100% SAF and cruising at 35,000ft over the Mediterranean Sea, trailed by a Dassault Falcon 20 chase aircraft carrying out contrail sampling. The trial has found that burning 100% SAF produces 35% fewer soot particles per unit burned than normal aviation kerosene, and an even higher reduction in ice particle formation, at 56% less. Visible contrails result from the water produced by fuel combustion condensing on soot or other particles in the atmosphere, and it is when high level aircraft contrails consist of ice particles that they persist longest in the upper atmosphere, creating cirrus cloud that would otherwise not exist.

Air travel has recovered vigorously from the dip experienced as a result of the Covid 19 pandemic. Indeed the pandemic lock-downs seem to have heightened travellers’ desire to fly, so any progress the industry can make toward reducing its climate change effects is more than just desirable, it is essential.

For greater detail on the Airbus trials, and more on the science of contrails, see David Kaminsky Morrow’s article on FlightGlobal.com and the Learmount.com article immediately preceding this one.

Dodging the verdict

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Hundreds of airline pilots and cabin crew who have had their health permanently damaged by neurotoxins in aircraft cabin air joined a three-day multinational conference in late June to hear about the latest technical and legal solutions to the problems they face.

Hosted in London, England, the online Aircraft Cabin Air Conference drew in speakers and delegates from all time zones. Developments revealed at the event include a new blood test that scientifically confirms exposure to the specific organophosphates in jet engine oils that cause the harm by leaking into the engine bleed air that ventilates the cabin.

Also revealed was a new regulation to aid exposed crews and passengers: the US Cabin Air Safety Act. The purpose of the Act is to “improve the safety of the air supply on aircraft”, and it requires that all flight crew, maintenance technicians and airport first responders are to be given training – at least annually – on how to respond to “incidents onboard involving smoke or fumes”.

Meanwhile, in recent years, many medically harmed crew-members have – individually – been financially compensated by their employers for consequential health damage, but the air transport industry as a whole is still able to turn a blind eye to this fully understood phenomenon.

The reason the industry – the airlines themselves and the aircraft and engine manufacturers – appear to get away with tolerating such a recurring phenomenon is simple. Whenever they are challenged in the courts over cases of human health damage caused by contaminated cabin air, the companies settle out of court with the plaintiffs, who desperately need the compensation money because their career – as well as their health – is in ruins. So, the court does not get as far as delivering an actual verdict on the harm, the cause, or the blame.

Meanwhile a US law company, Littlepage Booth and Athea, has assembled a formidable body of technical and medical evidence on the effects of contaminated cabin air while representing harmed individual clients. The specific evidence these lawyers have gathered implicates only Boeing. That is purely because – they say – Airbus is a more complex legal task to take on in the USA.

Ironically, the only modern airliner in service today that does not use engine bleed air for air conditioning and pressurization is Boeing’s own 787, the most recent entirely new aircraft off its production line. The company explains it has abandoned the bleed air system in the 787 for fuel consumption reasons. But the 787 – also uniquely – does not use bleed air from its auxiliary power unit (APU) for cabin air ventilation, although there is no fuel consumption advantage in so doing. Law company partner Zoe Littlepage confirmed that the body of evidence against the manufacturer may be extensive, but until a trial has gone all the way through the courts and a verdict is reached, the status quo will remain.

The organophosphate contamination of cabin air is caused when aero-engine oil and/or hydraulic fluid leaks into the cabin air conditioning system, the air supply for which is drawn from the jet engine compressors. This contamination is not supposed to happen, but from time to time “fume events” occur when an engine bearing fails and the vaporized synthetic lubricants are “pyrolized” – partially burned – by the hot compressed air – and mixed into the cabin air that the pilots, cabin crew and passengers breathe. There is no filtration of this “bleed air” supply, and no detection systems to warn those on board when contamination is present. There is, however, usually an unpleasant smell, and sometimes visible smoke.

Pilots and cabin crew are more at risk than passengers, because even undamaged oil seals are not perfect, and there is constant leakage of the heated oil vapors in the bleed air into the cabin air at a very low rate. In some individual crew, the inherent toxins can slowly build up in their metabolism through repeated exposure, and because “aerotoxic syndrome” is still not legally recognized by the authorities, non-specialist medical doctors are unlikely to make a correct diagnosis of the resulting symptoms.

The authorities claim these very low rates of leaked fumes are acceptable, but that cannot be so because there is no designated rate or dose of these organophosphate-based neurotoxins that is defined as acceptable.

Fume events, on the other hand, are potentially dangerous to all. Passengers, however, are not generally warned of the risks when an event has occurred, and frequently the occurrence is not reported. And if – later – passengers suffer symptoms like persistent excessive tiredness, dizziness or “brain fog”, they may not connect their problems to their flight, and their doctor is unlikely to diagnose the problem accurately.

And so it goes on.

The RAF goes green

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With a 90min Airbus Voyager test flight out of its Brize Norton base, it seems the Royal Air Force has chalked up a world first.

On 16 November the Voyager, the military tanker/transport version of the A330-200, took off with its Rolls-Royce Trent 772B turbofans burning pure, 100% sustainable aviation fuel. Many airlines have operated different types with a mix of standard aviation fuel and SAF – usually less than 50% – but no-one is believed to have used pure SAF before.

On board were an RAF crew supplemented by representatives from the SAF manufacturer BP, Airbus Defence & Space, and engine manufacturer R-R. FlightGlobal has reported a statement by Airbus experimental test pilot Jesus Ruiz, who was the aircraft commander for the test: “From the crew perspective, the SAF operation was ‘transparent’, meaning that no differences were observed operationally. The test plan was exhaustive and robust and has allowed us to compare SAF with JET [A]1.”

RAF Voyager tanker/transport (Crown Copyright)

BP crafted the SAF from used cooking oil. This being a flight operated in British airspace by my alma mater, the RAF, I have an unaccountably earnest desire to learn that the cooking oil came from the deep-fryers of English Fish & Chip bars. Given that Capt Ruiz confirms the flight went without a hitch, it seems BP successfully ensured the fuel was not contaminated with salt and vinegar!

Joking aside, this is a very welcome achievement, as is the RAF’s stated objective for sustainable flight. Chief of the air staff Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston says the RAF is committed to achieving net-zero air operations by 2040, a decade ahead of the present global aviation target.

How to infuriate a traditional Boeing pilot

David Learmount Uncategorized , , , , , , ,

Today I was replying to a message from a good friend in Maryland, and found that I’d written to him what I have wanted to put up here for a while.

He had picked up on something I wrote in FlightGlobal/Flight International a month or so ago about Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun’s thoughts on the kind of control interface that would be best for pilots flying Boeing’s next clean-sheet-of-paper aeroplane in tomorrow’s skies.

This is what I suggested to him:

“I don’t actually know what Boeing will do with the pilot’s “joystick” or yoke equivalent in its next-generation aircraft. My observation that you picked up on was based entirely on the musings of Boeing’s new boss Dave Calhoun when he suggested they might need to have to do a complete re-think of how to tomorrow’s pilots should interface with tomorrow’s aeroplanes.

The thing about the airline piloting job now is that it has drastically changed. Even aircraft originally designed in the 1960s, like the 737 series, in their latest versions put just as many computers between the pilots and the flying control surfaces as Airbus does with its FBW fleet. So any remaining efforts to fool the pilots into believing that the control feedback they feel is the real thing is just artifice. And like any part of the system, the artificial feedback can fail and thus mislead.

The only aeroplanes in which Bob-Hoover type stick-and-rudder skills were ever really needed is manually controlled aerobatic machines flown in perfect VMC during a display. Modern combat aircraft, built for aerodynamic instability so as to be manoeuvrable, have had FBW sidesticks for decades, and the pilot’s main task is to direct the mission and its defence, not to use finely-honed skills to keep it flying. The stick is just a device for pointing such an aircraft where you want it to go.

In an airliner you were never supposed to handle it as if you were Bob Hoover flying a display. Nowadays, if you have to fly it manually at all – and 99% of the time you are told not to – your job is ABSOLUTELY NOT to fly it by the seat of your pants, it’s to select the attitude/power combination you need to get you elegantly from where you are to where your passengers wish to go. I can tell you from experience, a spring-loaded sidestick is an easier device than a yoke for selecting an attitude, and as for selecting power, throttle levers do the same everywhere, back-driven or not.

So I’d guess Boeing probably will go down that track. Pilots who still need to be flattered by being presented with controls that look like the old fashioned ones but do not work like them are no longer in the right job!”

No pilot/aeroplane interface is perfect. But choosing the best one for the next Boeing is going to be an interesting job for Calhoun.

Egyptair MS804: significance of ACARS messages clarified

David Learmount Uncategorized , , , , , ,

Airbus is not, at present, able to give specific advice to A320 operators based on information available from the Egyptair MS804 investigation, according to a report by Flightglobal senior journalist David Kaminski-Morrow.

Data transmitted by the aircraft’s ACARS messaging unit to the Egyptair operations centre is insufficient to point to a cause, he reports, explaining: “Airbus has already informed operators, via two accident information bulletins, that the available data is limited and that the analysis of the transmissions does not contain enough data to determine the accident sequence, Flightglobal has established.”

The Flightglobal report continues: “With the inquiry unable to conclude whether a technical flaw contributed to the crash, the airframer has been unable to provide any immediate advisory to operators.

“Although seven ACARS maintenance messages transmitted in the space of 3min – between 02:26 and 02:29 Egyptian time – hint at the possibility of smoke and heat in the forward fuselage, there is no confirmation that the time-stamp of the messages correlates with the order of the trigger event and no clear indication of the precise time interval between them.”

The unknown factor is the “trigger event” referred to. The ACARS messages (see earlier blog entries) and the circumstances of the crew’s loss of control over the aircraft do not provide specific evidence to indicate either sabotage or a fault as the trigger event.  But whichever it was, it appears to have generated fire that caused progressive electrical failures, and the crew’s loss of control over the aircraft ensued soon after that.

Floating wreckage and body parts recovered from the water where the aircraft crashed into the Mediterranean Sea north of Alexandria, Egypt, so far provide no clue as to whether sabotage or another cause brought the aircraft down. And the search coordinators have released no information about how widely the wreckage field is spread. This can be an indicator of whether the aircraft came down in one piece or had broken up in the sky, but after time the clues can be lost because the floating wreckage can be spread by sea currents and wind.

All this makes the recovery of the main wreckage and the flight data and cockpit voice recorders from the sea bed vital for the understanding of what caused the loss.

 

Missing Egyptair flight MS804

David Learmount Uncategorized , , , , ,

It’s tempting to speculate that the loss of Egyptair MS804, an A320, was caused by sabotage because that’s what happened to the Metrojet flight out of Sharm el-Sheikh last year.

But, in the last decade, several aircraft have quietly gone missing during cruising flight without being brought down by explosives or in-flight break-up. The most obvious example was an Air France A330 that went missing in the south Atlantic in 2009, but there are others. And there is no information yet which would rule in or rule out either of those scenarios.

Greece’s Defence Minister Panos Kammenos has told a news conference that soon after entering Egyptian airspace, the A320 had turned “90 degrees left and 360 degrees to the right” before descending and disappearing off radar at 15,000ft. If that information is confirmed – and I have no reason to doubt it – the flight had clearly been destabilised, but the cause of the destabilisation is not known.

The aircraft’s last known position is over the Mediterranean south-east of Crete and south-west of Cyprus, but still more than 100nm off Egypt’s northern coast. Fairly soon some useful information is likely to become available because several military units – ships and aircraft – have been committed to a search of the area.

If, for example, there is a floating wreckage field and it is very widely dispersed, it will suggest an in-flight break-up.

But breakup can happen for reasons other than an explosion – although history and modern experience says that’s highly unlikely.

The aircraft and its “black box” recorders are almost certain to be found because, after other aircraft losses in the sea, recorders have been recovered in working condition from deeper waters than this.