Dubai Airshow
The Test Pilot: Heather Ross Is Helping Boeing Get Its Newest Jet Ready For Service
Heather Ross flew Air Force jets in the Gulf War and piloted passenger planes for a major U.S. airline. But nothing compares to the aircraft she’s flying now. In mid-November, she brought to the Dubai Airshow the Boeing 777X, the plane-maker’s latest widebody jet, for its much-anticipated public debut. As deputy chief pilot for the 777X program, Ross is part of the team making sure the jet will be ready to enter service.
Aerospace
For the Long Haul: This Huge Engine Helped Shrink The World. It Just Hit 25 Years In Service
Time was, it took four engines to power an aircraft on a long-distance flight — but the GE90 helped change all that. Introduced in the 1990s, the iconic engine allowed large Boeing 777 passenger jets to travel with just two engines, lowering fuel and maintenance costs and ushering in a reinvention of the logistics, economy and aesthetics of jet travel.
Aerospace
New Planes, Cool Tricks: Navy’s Storied Blue Angels Will Fly On Fresh Wings — But Still Powered By GE Engines
The U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels flight demonstration team was established with a big goal in mind: to put on a good show. The year was 1946 and, with World War II over, Chief of Naval Operations Chester Nimitz was looking for ways to maintain public interest in naval aviation. He envisioned a corps of expert pilots performing deft combat maneuvers while admiring crowds watched from the ground.
Aerospace
Metamorphosis: A Versatile Jet Engine Is Ready For Its Next Act
Speaking at a Pentagon news conference in 1988, Assistant Secretary of Defense J. Daniel Howard famously held up a single grainy photo of a stealthy aircraft. The picture officially confirmed the existence of Lockheed Martin’s F-117A Nighthawk, a jet that was until then the subject of widespread speculation
Aerospace
The X-Factor: 22,000 Pounds Of Thrust Just Got Quieter
The Concorde completed its last transatlantic flight in 2003, but commercial aviation has been pining for a chance to rekindle the romance of flying at the speed of sound. That chance just got one step closer to reality.
In August, NASA took delivery of the first F414-GE-100 engine for its X-59 QueSST plane, a one-of-a-kind experimental aircraft that will fly faster than Mach 1 and higher than most high-performance aircraft at 55,000 feet.
Aerospace
Air Cover: Fighting Forest Fires With Souped-Up Jetliners
Forest fires have ravaged the western United States this year and no state has had it worse than California. With hundreds of thousands of acres of forestland up in smoke and population centers from Napa Valley to Los Angeles threatened with flames, the state has been forced to call in reinforcements. 10 Tanker, an air carrier company based in New Mexico that specializes in aerial firefighting, has four DC-10 airliners in its fleet, powered by GE’s CF6 engines. The DC-10 was originally designed as a passenger jet and became a frequent sight in the sky in the 1970s and the 1980s.