Hasta La Gadget!

Nervous flyer? If so, it’s probably best you weren’t heading from Addis Ababa to Nairobi on business recently. If you were, you might have found yourself onboard the first commercial 787 Dreamliner flight since the global fleet was grounded due to concerns over battery failures. The flight comes just days after the FAA approved Boeing’s fix, prompting deliveries of the new craft to resume. With Japan already having cleared the 787 for takeoff, we can expect to see a few more of them in our skies soon. We’re more interested in joining the mile-high Android club.

Filed under: Transportation

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Source: Reuters

Are you currently waiting at the airport ready to board your American Airlines flight? Not anymore you’re not. American Airlines has announced that they have grounded all of their flights until 4pm CT due to a massive nationwide computer system outage that affects the airline’s reservation system.

The airline announced on Twitter that they’re having issues with their computer system. Originally, the airline thought that there were issues with the Sabre booking tool, but it seems to only involve the airline’s reservation system. The latest report is that all American Airlines flights are grounded until 4pm CT.

It’s said that American Airlines runs over 3,300 flights per day, and that somewhere around 100,000 people are being affected by the ground delay. It’s also worth pointing out that American Airlines operates over 600 aircrafts that travel to around 260 countries, so based on that information, that’s certainly a lot of flights being grounded.

American Airlines stopped dispatching new flights, stopped boarding new flights, and stopped allowing people to check in starting at around 11 am CT, so the delay will last around six hours, according to when the airline first tweeted the issue. We’re not sure how they’ll manage to get everything back on track, but we’re guessing that employees will be working overtime for the next few days in order to get caught up.

UPDATE: American Airlines says that their “systems have been fully restored,” but as expected, there will be “continued flight delays and cancellations throughout the remainder of the day.”

[via CNBC]

American Airlines grounds all flights due to system outage [UPDATE] is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

When NASA aims to hit a volcano to study its fabulous plumes of heated debris, they do it in style: with a set of Dragon Eye unmanned aerial vehicles. The mission NASA rolled with three Aerovironment RQ-14 Dragon Eye UAVs from the United States Marine Corps (USMC), these vehicles issued via the General Services Administration’s San Francisco office. It was NASA’s Ames Research Center, at Moffett Field, California that negotiated the transfer, and the Turrialba Volcano, near San Jose, Costa Rica, that they’ve flown over.

Each of these lovely little flyers is a 5.9-pound aircraft with twin electric engines and a 3.75-foot wingspan. They’re each able to carry a one-pound payload that NASA chooses to fill with instrumentation that’ll allow them to study the volcano. Each of these planes is able to carry this payload for up to one hour inside a volcanic plume – important to keep in mind as this mission acts as another example of how military might can be used for civilian science purposes – a definite positive!

The full study had 10 total flights between March 11th and March 14th (of this year, 2013), each of them reaching above approximately 10,500 feet above sea level along the rim of the Torrialba summit crater. Flights reached up to 12,500 feet ASL, more than 2,000 feet above the Turrialba summit – hot stuff!

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, California’s own David Pieri, this project’s principal investigator and a research scientist, noted the dangers of missions such as these.

““It is very difficult to gather data from within volcanic eruption columns and plumes because updraft wind speeds are very high and high ash concentrations can quickly destroy aircraft engines. Such flight environments can be very dangerous to manned aircraft. Volcanic eruption plumes may stretch for miles from a summit vent, and detached ash clouds can drift hundreds to thousands of miles from an eruption site.” – Pieri

It’s important to note that each of these flying craft are retired military tools, and that they’re being used here to improve NASA satellite data as well as aviation safety in the end. Instrumentation aboard the craft included the following:

• USMC visible and infrared video cameras
• Sulfur dioxide and particle sensors
• Automatic atmospheric sampling bottles keyed to measure sulfur dioxide concentration

This same research center (Ames) will be working on this project with larger SIERRA unmanned aircraft as well, each of them working with what they characterize as a more sophisticated mass spectrometer so they’ll be able to measure a whole new set of gasses pluming forth from Turrialba. These larger craft weigh in at around 400 pounds (takeoff weight) and have the ability to carry a 100-pound payload.

[via NASA]

NASA taps US Marines for Dragon Eye volcano flight is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Getting the cheapest flights is often a concern, especially if you’re traveling internationally. Google Flight Search is a quick and helpful tool for locating the best prices for flyers, but when the service was launched, it was available only for US-based travelers. Google just recently expanded the service to cover more countries.

Google has now launched the service for five additional countries in Europe, including France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK.

The service was launched by Google in 2012 and one of its most important features is the easy-to-use visual flight pricing it offers. At a glance, you can see what it costs to fly into different airports from your home location. This allows you to figure out flexible flights that are near your intended location for less money. The Flight Explorer allows users to see when it’s less expensive to fly, by month or by the day of the week, or to a particular destination.

Hopefully, this is just a first step in a comprehensive launch to cover even more countries.

JetBlue first announced that it would be bringing in-flight WiFi to its fleet of aircrafts back in 2011, but we have yet to see anything from the airline at this point, although they announced back in September that free in-flight WiFi would be available soon. The project is still making progress, though, as the company has announced the name of their WiFi service, as well as a few other details.

During an analyst event, JetBlue announced that they will be calling their in-flight WiFi service “Fly-Fi,” a clever play on words with “Fly” and “WiFi.” The service will be powered by Exede Internet, which is owned by ViaSat. JetBlue hasn’t given a launch date yet, but they hope to have their first WiFi-enabled flight take off sometime later this year.

JetBlue also teased the new service, by releasing a video that demonstrates the speed of their new WiFi service compared to other top WiFi providers like Gogo, Row 44, and Panasonic’s own service. Of course, JetBlue boasts that their Fly-Fi option surfs the web at a much quicker rate than the other three providers.

The airline says that there’s still a lot of testing to be done, and the FAA still needs to come in and do a series of certification tests before the service can be put to public use. Currently, a large number of airlines have WiFi available, but you usually have to pay a small fee in order to get it. JetBlue will be one of the few airlines to offer free WiFi on board.

JetBlue names its WiFi service “Fly-Fi”, coming later this year is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.