Fairhaven, The River

RNP (Airline Energy Efficiency)

Southwest Airlines announced their plans for using RNP to improve efficiency (this presentation has nice graphical illustrations) a while ago.  They just announced their vendor selection.  Southwest is not the first to use RNP.  Alaska Airlines has been using it very effectively in Alaska for several years.  The primary motivation there was dealing with the mountains and bad weather.  The reduction in flight cancellations and flight diversions justified the high capital investment.  RNP has also been prototyped in the US by Delta and in Australia to improve flight operations at congested airports (while also reducing fuel use).

The big deal with Southwest is that this will be system wide for them, with every airplane upgraded to RNP navigational equipment and every airport that they use having RNP approaches designed.  This is a big dollar investment.  The FAA portion of the investment in approach designs and ATC procedural changes is not called out.  Much of this is being designed by Southwest's vendor so that it is ready now for the Southwest routes and aircraft, instead of waiting for the FAA funding schedule.  The FAA needs to review, approve, and integrate the procedural changes.  Southwest is spending $175 million over six years to do this and upgrade their avionics, and expects to get a return of about $25 million/yr in fuel use savings.  They will also get a non-dollar savings from reducing flight times by 1-2 minutes per flight, and from using continual glide descents.  The FAA expects to reduce load on ATC and increase airport capacity slightly, based on preliminary experience with RNP.

Delta, American, and other airlines have been rolling out RNP support within the US and internationally to deal with difficult airports, where congestion or terrain give a special advantage to RNP.  Southwest is the first to announce that it will be system wide.

An unusual fish farm

I didn't understand the Homer fishing hole until I was there recently.  It made no sense that a little tidal bay would attract salmon.  But in this case, the salmon are raised to fingerlings there in the hole.  So they return to the hole in their return to spawn.   It's never going to happen, so they return to be caught and eaten (aside for a steady selection of a few for collection of eggs for the next crop).

The rush of fish and water when the incoming tide crosses the bar is quite a sight to see.  From the perspective of world fish farming this is just one more farm.  But it is an interesting way to harvest the open ocean.

Decent food at a conference

I regularly complain about the terrible things that travel does to my diet. For the first time that I can recall, I'm getting suitable food at a conference. The HL7 conference lunches are genuinely suitable food. There is a salad that is tastey components, not just an excuse for fat laden dressings. The fruit is large quantities that are expected to be eaten, fresh and tasty. This is not the fruit display that is expected to last all week. Then they have good fresh vegetables without a sauce and meat in it's own juice. The only traditional carbs and fat offering is the potatoes side dish.

This is a great improvement over the usual carbs (bagels, pastry, more pastry, more carbs)and coffee, with fat laden carbs and meats for the meals. It is much easier to eat properly when the food is suitable.

Tonight's dinner was with relatives. Fish and lean beef on an electric grill at the table, eaten wrapped in lettuce leaves.

This is the first trip in a long time that is not a dietary disaster. Being in San Diego does make a difference.

Ohare, and why muni wifi may fail

Friday was terrible for travel. The weather at Ohare was awful. From 2PM to 11PM I watched standby flights leave iwthout me, themselves later and later due to bad weather and intermittent airport closings. Mine left many hours late. Numerous flights to secondary fields were cancelled, filling the open seats with standbys.

When I arrived at my home airport, the offsite parking shuttle was no longer running, and only an answering machine answered their phone. So I checked into the airport hotel for a few hours sleep. I caught a morning shuttle and got home for breakfast.

It's the first time I've seen the new Boston skyline from harborside in the early morning light. It really is as beutiful as the tourism posters.

The WiFi at Ohare was useless. A little network monitoring revealed that it was melting under the intense load of a packed house of people trying to use it. Municipal WiFi plans and others will need to face the reality that there is no magic free lunch. Shannon's law still applies despite all claims to the contrary and there is a finite capacity for WiFi.

As an accused "old man afraid of change" I must admit wasting almost a half hour before I remembered that I also have GPRS service on my cell phone. It was also suffering from heavy utilization by the thronging masses, but I was able to track the incoming flight (my airplane to be), check radar, and get some work done. Bandwidth was poor, so I didn't take the risk of trying to synchronize or move large files.

More BWB

Yet another blended wing system, this one making press at Farnborough. The work at Cambridge MIT research is the latestt. The target of 215 passengers makes it look like a serious proposal. This time they are focussing on silencing the noise. Again, it looks like about 2020 for the introduction of these airplanes.

Future Airplanes

My impending trip to Europe reminds me that there was another anouncement a couple months ago that wind tunnel testing will proceed on another of the experimental evaluations of the blended wing body (BWB) aircraft. There are a few sites with good summaries and illustrations.

This technology is decades away. Boeing or Airbus could have gambled on it for their latest round of new aircraft, but instead we have the 777 and the 380. They continue the solid tradition of tube with wings aircraft. That was a good decision. BWB has lots of promise but not enough experience.

I expect BWB to emerge first in the freight market. The wide cargo area and direct tail loading are very attractive for cargo. You see this in all the military cargo airplanes. BWB would be an obvious C-5 replacement first.

People are uncomfortable with non-traditional airplanes. The BWB has no good places for side windows, although skylights is a real possibility. That would be an interesting alternative. Would air travel be better if there was good natural lighting throughout the cabin? A BWB passenger load would be more like an auditorium than an airplane. It would also suffer the inverse problem from freight. Passengers do not like tail loading from a ramp. So there will need to be a long period of visual acceptance and some other motivations for acceptance.

The real potential motivator is price and capacity. On routes where the 380 is being considered, a BWB would carry more people, with less ATC interference, probably less wake turbulence aircraft separation problems, and lower fuel burn. That will be a motivator.