Airline

An airline provides air transport services for passengers or freight. Airlines lease or own their aircraft with which to supply these services and may form partnerships or alliances with other airlines for reasons of mutual benefit.

Industry overview

Airlines vary from those with a single airplane carrying mail or cargo, through full-service international airlines operating many hundreds of airplanes. Airline services can be categorized as being intercontinental, intracontinental, regional or domestic and may be operated as scheduled services or charters.

Patterns

The pattern of ownership has gone from government owned or supported to independent, for-profit public companies. This occurs as regulators permit greater freedom and non-government ownership, in steps that are usually decades apart. This pattern is not seen for all airlines in all regions.
The demand for air travel services depends on: business needs for cargo shipments, business passenger demand, leisure passenger demand, all influenced by economic activity.
The overall trend of demand has been consistently increasing. In the 1950s and 1960s, annual growth rates of 15% or more were common. Annual growth of 5-6% persisted through the 1980s and 1990s. Growth rates are not consistent in all regions, but countries with a de-regulated airline industry have more competition and greater pricing freedom. This results in lower fares and sometimes dramatic spurts in traffic growth. The U.S., Australia, Japan, Brazil, Mexico,India and other markets exhibit this trend.
The industry is cyclical. Four or five years of poor performance preceed five or six years of improved performance. But profitability in the good years is generally low, in the range of 2-3% net profit after interest and tax. In times of profit, airlines lease new generations of airplanes and upgrade services in response to higher demand. Since 1980, the industry has not earned back the cost of capital during the best of times. Conversely, in bad times losses can be dramatically worse.
Warren Buffett once said that despite all the money that has been invested in all airlines, the net profit is less than zero. He believes it is one of the hardest businesses to manage.
As in many mature industries, consolidation is a trend. Airline groupings may consist of limited bilateral partnerships, long-term, multi-faceted alliances between carriers, equity arrangements, mergers, or takeovers. Since governments often restrict ownership and merger between companies in different countries, most consolidation takes place within a country. In the U.S., over 200 airlines have merged, been taken over, or gone out of business since deregulation in 1978. Many international airline managers are lobbying their governments to permit greater consolidation to achieve higher economy and efficiency.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)

My first discussion topic actually validates a concept and a technology seen in the Harry Potter series. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are aircraft, or some form of flying machine, that require only one input from a human to reach a destination. The vehicle only needs to be told its destination, and the computers onboard will do the rest of the flying.

The UAV uses onboard sensors such as radar altimeters, infrared cameras, gyroscopes, and pitot tube airspeed indicators to help the aircraft maintain controlled flight and avoid obstructions. UAVs also use preprogrammed topographical maps and GPS sensors to help it locate its position. Some UAVs have photos of their destination stored in their computer systems and reference those photos to confirm they have reached the appropriate destination.

Today UAVs take the shape of everything from the jet powered GlobalHawk to the tiny model airplane type UAVs.



While in Harry Potter magic takes the place of Radar Altimeters, Gyroscopes, and GPS, the technology exists to make objects fly to you on a single command. The brooms in Harry Potter have the ability to fly to Harry on his single command. This may seem magical, but the technology exists today for such an event to occur (assuming we could get brooms to fly)

Ever get that Sinking Feeling?

After validating a concept seen in Harry Potter in my last post about UAVs, it is now time to discuss Harry Potters amazing ability to "turn on a dime." Since Harry Porter and the rest of his friends seem to have their feet firmly planted on the ground, it is safe to assume that gravity exists in the magical world of Harry Potter.

When you are flying straight and level you experience a single g (one unit of gravity), the same amount you feel when you are standing on the ground (note: if you are at high alititude you feel a little less than one g, due to your distance from the center of the earth). However, when you peform a tight turn, or "pull up" fast, you can experience many g(s). Essentially, when you are in a really tight turn, you no longer weigh your typical 170 pounds, you now way 4 or 5 or 6 times as much. Your skeleton now has to support the equilivant of a 1,000 pound body. You can also experienc negative G(s) by making the aircraft fall faster than you do (the transition period between straight and level flight, and a steep dive).

The problem with high levels of G is that all the blood that is suppose to be going to your brain is now pushed down to your feet. Eventually, you get to a point where you black out, and if the G(s) sustain, your brain shuts down due to lack of oxygen. The way to counter act this is by tensing your muscles in your chest and lower body to squeeze the blood back up to your brain.

The manauvers conducted in the Harry Potter series easily translate into short periods of 10 to 13 G(s). Even the best fighter pilots cannot sustain this level without a pressurised flight suit (squeezes your lower body to shove blood back up to the brain). It is hard to imagine that a skinny kid would be able to do these manauvers without blaking out. If Harry Potter was truly the best broom flyer of the land, we should see him spending more time in the weight room.

For more information on the effects of G(s) on your body please visit

Flight Training

Whether J.K Rowling realized it or not, she described an accurate, albeit brief, explanation of real world flight training. In one particular chapter, Harry Potter is teaching two new friends how to fly a broom. The brooms come in a variety of difficulty levels, and performance levels. Just as a new pilot would not want to take the controls of a fighter jet, an inexperienced broom flier would not want to take control of the most high performance broom.

The first point that Rowling makes, that holds true to the real world is that it is not the pilots abilities that make flying possible, it is the aircraft's properties (magic) that makes flying possible. One of Harry's friends is worried that she will not be able to fly because she does not have the magical ability that Harry has. She is, however, able to fly like everyone else. The point is that it does not take a special person to be able to fly a plane (or a broom), anybody can do it.

Rowling also shows that landing is hardest part for Harry's new friends to learn. Landing is almost universally the hardest thing for new pilots in the real world to learn as well.

Finally, she also shows how cocky pilots can get themselves in trouble. Harry conducts a dive from 1,000 feet to just a few feet above a lake to show off his flying prowess. Harry, however, fails to notice land fast approaching and ends up clipping his feet on a few tree branches. In the real world, the only thing that flies higher than an airplane is a pilot's ego. It's the pilots responsibility to make sure his/her ego does not interfere with good judgment.

Can a broom really fly?

No, brooms can't fly. But with some slight modifications, they easily could. Jet engines are continually getting smaller, and engineers are getting better and better at creating more lift from less wing space. There may easily be a day when the lifting capabilities of the bristles of a broom and thrust vectoring may let brooms fly.

We have all seen the James Bond type jet packs.
 This same technology could be incorporated into a broom, assuming the size of jet engines continues to shrink. While there would be no point to a flying broom, other than a good halloween gag, it doesn't mean that it isn't possible.

Maybe the popularity of the Harry Potter series will lead someone to create a flying broom. People have certainly done more frivolous things with their time and money before.

The Broom

The Broom: A fixed wing aircraft?
Today my topic centers around the properties of the flying broom in Harry Potter, and whether a broom could be considered a fixed wing aircraft (a conventional airplane).

A fixed wing aircraft relies on forward thrust to create movement across a lifting surface (the wing). Because of this, any time the aircraft decrease its forward velocity, its lift decreases as well.



The flying brooms in Harry Potter are quite clearly not fixed wing aircraft. First, the brooms can fly without moving forward (they can hover). Second, the broom can stop on a dime, something no fixed aircraft can do.

Would it be possible then that the brooms in Harry Potter are more similar to Rotary wing aircraft (helicopters)? While that appears to be the case, there are many things that the broom can do, that a helicopter can't. The brooms are able to climb simply by pointing them directly towards the sky. A helicopter can sustain a climb at most a 45 degree angle towards the sky (AoA). The broom also can gain speed when placed at high levels of Angle of Attack (The number of degrees the nose of your aircraft is pointed above the horizon). A helicopter can't do this.

The best real-world representation of the broom comes in the form of a VTOL fixed wing aircraft such as the Yak-141 Freestyle (NATO Designation) or AV-8 Harrier. The broom exhibits the ability to fly like a plane, but take off and land vertically as well as accomplish manuevers only possible with "thrust-vectoring."

If you would like to know more about how an aircraft or helicopter flies

Quidditch, the future of competitive flying?

As time has passed recreational aviation has become more of a sport, and less of a hobby. The reason for this is simple. In today's world, flying around at 110mph in a cessna is no longer considered daring or exciting. People want more excitment and more competition. We see more and more competitive flying venues every year.


The most interesting of these, and the one that may be the closest to Quidditch, is the sport of extreme aerobatics competition. You are awarded points for completing certain manuevers and flying through "hoops" in the sky. While this is still a far cry from the game of quidditch (a flying game played on soccer type field with goals), it represents a growing trend in competitive flying. It may not be long before a game of aviation looks more like soccer than it does an air race.

For more information on competitive flying please visit the IAC

The Prologue

On Civil Aviation scene in India, I am reminded of this famous quotation  "It

was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it

was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of

incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was

the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us,

we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all

going direct the other way"   from Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

English novelist (1812 - 1870)

This is a classic scenario of history repeating itself. The blood bath that we

are witnessing now in India happend earlier in the United States of America

between 1978-1986 when the Airline Industry was deregulated there. An

article from the TIME MAGAZINE sums this up very well.

Alfred E. Khan, who is widely viewed as the father of Airline Deregulation

said in an interview that "Instability is the price we pay for competition". In

his seminal book on the Deregulation in the Telecommunication and

Aviation Industries in the U.S.  "Lessons from Deregulation -

Telecommunications and Airlines after the Crunch" Kahn chronicles the

history of Airline Deregulation in the U.S., its inception and aftermath

More on this .....

Singapore Changi Airport

Singapore Changi Airport

Airport Interior
Singapore Changi Airport interior