A Continental Boeing 737-500 slid off the runway at Denver International Airport this morning. No one was killed, but 38 of the 107 passengers and 5 crew were taken to the emergency room. Looking at the picture of the plane, it is lucky that the number is not higher.
Flight 1404 on its way to Houston had the gear and engine ripped off. The fuselage filled with smoke as the plane started to burn. It is currently believed to be a braking problem that caused this accident to occur.
A very shaky start to the holiday travel season. Hope everyone stays safe and we won’t have any more of these stories!
Boeing is working to allow their jets to run off a bio fuel made from algae. Of course we all like the idea of fuel that isn’t as bad for the environment, but one of the benefits of this type of fuel is that jatropha (the image above and where the fuel is made from) is a nonfood plant (at least for us humans).
E85 Ethanol fuel has seen the ramifications of using a food plant where the prices rise dramatically as the price of corn rose.
Currently Continental Airlines is working on flying one engine of a 737-800 on a fuel mixture.
This looks promising. Goldman Sachs recently stated that, “Jatropha curcas as one of the best candidates for future biodiesel production.”
And it happens again. The lovely situation where people are left sitting in a plane that is going no where for hours and hours. Add to that they only get water and crackers (yummy).
This is just another incident that is re-sparking the debate about passenger protections.
The flight today is a little more difficult, since it is an international airline, Taca. Even is the US government had regulations about this, they would be immune.
I know the idea of a Bill of Rights for passengers, but I don’t know how it could be enforced. Normally a free market should exist, but it seems passengers quickly forget their multi-hour wait on the tarmac, when they see they can save $150 on choosing the same airline versus another.
As we covered a few months ago, China has been in the development of their aircraft.
We already talked about how this plane is hardly new in the last blog, so maybe will just talk more about how this actually happened and the Chinese are taking a real dive into the airline aircraft market.
The aircraft is designed to carry 70 to 110 passengers and have a range of about 2,000 nautical miles (2,300 mi/3680 km).
They are trying to stay on target to start the first deliveries in late 2009. They are produced 6 already and hope to be able to deliver 20 per year.
At about $27 million US Dollars per plane, it could end up being a deal for airlines, depending if the reliability and quality can be shown to be with par with the ARJ-21’s siblings, the MD-90 series.
