FlightGlobal Focus

Asian carriers have reported their second-quarter earnings, which have included some heavy losses at China's 'Big Three' airline groups. India's airlines have also been grappling with challenges of their own, although new leadership at Air India and IndiGo is expected to usher in change.
FlightGlobal's Airlines team, including Asia-Pacific Airlines Editor Alfred Chua - who has just been out to visit Malaysia Airlines - discuss the latest news from this part of the world.

A look into some of the summer's top stories, from the FAA's effort to revive commercial supersonic flight to the approaching first flight of Airbus’s A350F and Heart Aerospace’s recent first flight of its all-electric X-1 demonstrator.

The US Navy has spent more than two decades developing its new aircraft carrier, incorporating 23 new or significantly updated technologies into major systems across the ship.

These include the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, which replaces the steam-driven catapult of the venerable Nimitz-class carriers with an electric induction motor.

The navy says the system costs less to operate and inflicts less structural fatigue on aircraft. Together with other changes to the Ford-class, the new carriers are meant to increase sortie generation by an appreciable amount.

However, US President Donald Trump has long opposed the electromagnetic catapult and over the past 10 years has repeatedly mused about ordering the navy to return to a steam-piston system.

After years of talking about it, the Trump White House in August officially directed the US Navy to begin exploring options for replacing EMALS and other electrically driven systems with conventional steam and hydraulic alternatives on future Ford-class ships.

FlightGlobal's defence editor Greg Waldron joins Ryan Finnerty to discuss the move and how it will impact carrier operations.

Fuel cost rises stemming from the Iran war really started to hit home for airlines in the second quarter.
FlightGlobal's Airlines team, fresh from covering earnings season, takes a look at how carriers in Europe and the USA fared in the April-June period, and how they're feeling as they head into the second half of the year.

Airbus is immersed in a crucial research project to examine in depth the efficiency benefits of broad and slender wings as it prepares to develop a successor to its bestselling A320neo.
While the quest for lower fuel-burn tends to centre on the engines, the UK-led Wing of Tomorrow programme is looking at the equally significant contribution from new wing structures and technologies.
But design is only part of the equation – it also needs to examine whether these future wing concepts can be built at the rates demanded by the single-aisle market.
As the programme reaches a pivotal point, with the ground-based research evolving towards flight-testing, FlightGlobal Focus explores its progress and objectives, as well as the obstacles Airbus needs to confront in this critical engineering effort.