Tag: flights
Final UK evacuation flights from Sudan take off as airlift bid comes to close
THE UK’s last evacuation flights have left Sudan, the Government has said.
Two final aircraft took off from Port Sudan on Wednesday night and in the early hours of yesterday morning, local time, heading for Cyprus.
Evacuation flights had been due to end last Monday before the extra planes were announced.
The Foreign Office said there would be no further extensions.
On Tuesday, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said 2,341 people had left on 28 flights.
Some 1,195 were British nationals, with others including their Sudanese dependants also helped to leave.
Mr Cleverly tweeted: “We’ve coordinated the largest evacuation of any Western country.
“But the hard work in Sudan has not finished.”
Sudan has descended into chaos and violence amid a power struggle within the country’s military leadership.
United Nations under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs Martin Griffiths arrived in Port Sudan on Wednesday, seeking guarantee for safe passage of aid deliveries.
He said: “It’s not as if we’re asking for the moon.
“We’re asking for the movement of humanitarian supplies and people.
“We do this in every other country, even without ceasefires.”
Sudan: Final UK evacuation flights depart
Electric airplane towing concept could mean longer zero-emission flights
Magpie Aviation announced a novel new approach to electric airplanes on Monday. Today’s battery technology (including CATL’s new, more efficient one) severely limits the practicality of zero-emission aircraft, leaving clean-energy innovators with two incomplete options: flying a plane full of batteries or one full of people — but not both. So the California-based startup wants to tie them together, extending the rear plane’s range by hundreds of miles.
Towing planes isn’t a new concept, with military use going back to World War II when aerial tows would pull smaller aircraft carrying troops and supplies. But applying it to the world of green transportation is new. Magpie Aviation’s concept uses one or more electric aircraft to act as a tractor plane towing a passenger (or cargo) aircraft using a long cable. The towed plane would have enough battery power for takeoff, landing and flying to alternate airports but not enough to fly the full distance on its own, as reported byAeroTime.
The lead plane would take on the bulk of the traction, and when its battery is depleted, it could hand off towing duties to another electric towing aircraft to extend the rear plane’s range. Magpie CEO Damon Vander Lind summarized toAviation Week, “You get towed until you’ve depleted down to your reserve in the lead aircraft, and then you swap in another tow aircraft.” Although it’s still a regional solution impractical for cross-country or international flights, Vander Lind says it could allow for a trip from San Francisco to Seattle — far beyond the sub-regional distances battery-powered passenger flights can travel on their own.
Magpie says it’s conducted successful small-scale tests using a synthetic fiber rope around 330 ft. long; the company envisions a later commercial version to use nearly mile-long cables. The startup plans to scale up its testing gradually and believes it could be implemented commercially by 2030. It expects advances in battery tech to allow it to tow single-aisle airliners eventually. Magpie suggests that the concept, mainly targeting electric planes, could also work with hybrid, hydrogen and standard aircraft in low-power modes. Additionally, the company says it’s working with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) with an eye toward certification.
“It sounds kind of crazy, but we kept coming back to it because we couldn’t find any reason why we couldn’t do it,” said Vander Lind. “While our modeling shows that there is an advantage to doing a custom tow aircraft like this, we get a big advantage because the more expensive and critical passenger- and cargo-carrying ‘main aircraft’ has similar requirements to today’s aircraft and so adapts well to existing in-operation and already-in-development platforms. Remember that if we want to hit a zero-carbon 2050 goal, an airliner has a 30-year life, so we’re already at the point where airlines have to think hard about the operating life of the assets that they are buying today.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/electric-airplane-towing-concept-could-mean-longer-zero-emission-flights-205023296.html?src=rss
Greener flights will cost more, says industry
Google Now Pays You Back if It’s Wrong About the Cheapest Flights – CNET
This new Google Flights tool will help you buy the cheapest plane tickets
New Google Flights feature guarantees the lowest price, pays you back if it’s wrong
A new Google Flights feature tells you when to go ahead and book that flight, because it won’t get any cheaper.
Google announced new travel features on Monday, including a price guarantee badge for booking flights. The badge, which has launched as a pilot program in the U.S., “means we’re confident that the price you see today won’t get any lower before takeoff,” said VP of Travel Products Richard Holden in the blog post. If you see the “Price Guarantee” badge on a flight, that means the cost is likely the lowest it will go, so you can confidently book the flight without worrying it will get cheaper later. When you book, Google will keep monitoring the price and pay you back the difference through Google Pay.
Google Flights harnesses Google’s search engine to find the best deals. With the new Price Guarantee feature, it takes that a step further by claiming to reliably predict when the price of a flight might go up or down.
With summer around the corner, it’s suddenly time to start thinking about travel plans. Price Guarantee might take some of the guesswork out of the planning, so you won’t have to worry about overpaying for a flight.
Now for the fine print. The feature is only available for airlines that use “Book on Google.” That means you’re most likely to see deals for Alaska, Spirit, and Hawaiian airlines, a spokesperson said.
The feature is currently only available for flights departing from the U.S. The price difference must be greater than five dollars, and the maximum amount of money you can receive is 500 bucks per year for a maximum of three bookings using Price Guarantee. In order to get money back, you must download the Google Pay app. Travelers will receive updates via email and Google Pay app notifications.
If all that sounds good to you, book away with the most powerful search engine on your side.