by admin on Jun 29, 2010, under Leading Edge Aviation News
Fourth of July Recipes you will love!
“This is it! I’m letting my secret out…It will be the best you have ever had!” – Mike Manclark, CEO, Leading Edge Aviation Services, Inc.
Ingredients:
Blending Instructions:
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by admin on Jun 28, 2010, under Travel News
Southwest Airlines “green plane,” a Boeing 737-700 that’s 472 lbs. lighter than a conventional model and saves 9,500 gallons of jet fuel per year.
It’s no secret that the airplanes are some of the worst polluting transportation methods available. According to Outside.com, airlines account for about two percent of “all glacier-melting, polar bear-killing emissions released into our carbon-choked friendly skies.”
That article cites Southwest as the leading U.S. airline for carbon footprint awareness, and notes that the company spent $175 million to retrofit the navigation systems on its planes to calculate tighter flight paths and thus reduce jet fuel consumption by six percent, or about 90 million gallons a year.
So it’s no surprise that Southwest is again at the forefront of an industry that, in the U.S., lags behind the world in efficiency.
To lighten the Boeing 737-700’s load, the company is installing recyclable InterfaceFLOR carpet, weight-saving seat covers and life vest pouches, lighter foam fill in the seats and aluminum (versus plastic) seat rub strips.
Here’s a rundown of the advantages, in the carrier’s own words:
The decision to go green isn’t just smart for the environment, of course; it’s also smart business. Aside from the recyclable elements, the updates will save almost five pounds per seat. That means less emissions (making the federal government happy) and less spent fuel (making shareholders happy).
by admin on Jun 24, 2010, under Travel News
By Steve Huettel, Times Staff Writer
June 27, 2010
Hours after news broke about the Nigerian man who tried to bomb a Northwest Airlines flight approaching Detroit last Christmas, Bob Lancaster got a call at home from his bosses at L-3 Communications’ corporate headquarters.
Their question: How fast could he ramp up production of airport body scanners — the high-tech machines designed to spot weapons under a traveler’s clothes — at the company’s plant at Gateway Business Park in St. Petersburg?
He was on the phone all day, talking with executives at L-3 and ordering production reports from the plant. “There was a lot going on,” said Lancaster, the facility’s operations director.
Within days, politicians such as U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., were on television demanding increased use of airport body scanners. President Barack Obama pledged that increased aviation security measures were on the way soon.
L-3 had sold just over 200 body scanners worldwide under the name ProVision by the end of 2009.
So far this year, the company landed a contract in May to deliver 202 machines, valued at $31.7 million, to the Transportation Security Administration. The Canadian government bought 44. Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, where the attempted bomber passed through a metal detector and boarded the Northwest plane with explosives in his underwear, purchased 66 machines.
L-3 CEO Michael Strianese said in a conference call with analysts that the business is set to take off as body scanners go into more airports and travelers become more comfortable with them.
“I expect there to be at least a market for 2,000 of these systems, if not more,” he said. “And you could define that market as every lane in every terminal in every airport. It’s a big market, and we are optimistic that this will start to pick up speed as we go.”
The increase in orders hasn’t set off a hiring binge at the local plant, where technicians load software, assemble and test the machines. L-3 added a handful of new technicians and recently began a night shift, Lancaster said.
But total employment remains about 230, he said, with workers shifting to ProVision orders as other product lines slow down. The whole process, from receiving an order to assembling, testing and shipping a unit, takes two weeks, the company said.
The work goes on in a 130,000-square-foot building with “L-3 Communications” in huge letters visible to 150,000 drivers whizzing by on Interstate 275 each day. For a recent tour, visitors had to show proof of U.S. citizenship and surrender cell phones to prevent unauthorized photos.
Technicians put together machines in a vast ”open plant area” with a cement floor and shelves of electronics and computer parts that nearly touch the 28-foot-high ceiling. The assembly line is a lean operation. Workers connect their components and slide the machine to the next work station.
An infant’s toy — a plastic post with colored rings — sits atop a row of X-ray machines so the next shift knows the status of each one. A blue ring indicates it’s ready for the next step, yellow means hold for more instructions, red signals a problem.
L-3 knows about cranking out a hot product. It won government certification in 1998 for a scanner that uses computed tomography (CT) to find explosives in checked airline luggage. Demand spiked after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The company now sells four TSA-certified models of the eXaminer, including one that can scan up to 1,200 bags an hour on a belt than runs continuously. (Luggage that sets off an alarm is kicked off and inspected by an officer.)
Workers at the local plant also produce X-ray scanners for inspecting carry-on bags at airport security checkpoints. The most advanced models take views from two or three directions and alert the officers watching the image by surrounding suspicious items with a red box.
But none of L-3′s products attracts anything like the public attention focused on the ProVision body scanner.
The machine, which looks like an oversized phone booth, uses high-frequency radio waves to create a 3-D image of a traveler’s body. The only other body scanner approved by the TSA, made by Rapiscan Systems of Torrance, Calif., uses backscatter X-rays to make a two-dimensional body image for screening.
Both systems can find weapons invisible to metal detectors, such as liquid, plastic or powdered explosives. It isn’t clear if the scanners would have picked up the explosive hidden on Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Government Accountability Office reported in March.
Civil liberties groups call the body scans a “digital strip search,” a phrase that makes the TSA and manufacturers livid. Some images circulated on the Web show clear outlines of breasts and genitalia. Those images came from tests of backscatter machines before recent filters were used, the TSA said.
Both the L-3 and Rapiscan machines blur out faces and private parts of passengers. “You cannot tell who the individual is,” says Thomas Ripp, president of L-3 Security & Detection Systems. “It is not graphic or pornographic.”
Images are viewed by TSA officers in rooms away from subjects being scanned. The machines can’t store or transmit images, which are deleted automatically once officers clear them, the TSA said.
An advanced model of the machine doesn’t display a body image. The ProVision ATD identifies a possible weapon and displays the location on a “generic mannequin” — Ripp calls it a Gumby — that resembles a human outline.
Besides additional privacy protection, the ADT takes fewer people to operate, Ripp said. A display appears on a screen attached to the scanner. So, the same officer directing passengers at the machine could also check for threats, eliminating the need for an officer checking images in another location.
The security and detection division is a small cog in L-3, the world’s sixth-largest defense contractor with more than 66,000 employees and worldwide revenue of $15.6 billion worldwide last year.
Despite its high-profile product, L-3 doesn’t get much recognition outside the industry. Employees say friends often think they work for Level 3 Communications, the communications and information services giant.
by admin on Jun 22, 2010, under Uncategorized
Australian Lego enthusiast Ryan McNaught, 37, also known as the “The BrickMan”, spent more than eight months constructing a 7 ft replica of a Qantas Airbus A380 that he plans to enter in the 2010 Brickworld Lego event in Chicago this June.
His red, white and grey model boasts a range of fully automated touch screen controlled functions including front landing gear, two rear landing gear doors and airbrakes on the wing. Ryan also fitted functioning landing lights, engines, air brakes on the wing and a tail fin on the rear wing.
Among his two-inch-high cast of crew and passengers are iconic characters from well-known films including Indiana Jones, Yoda, and the Samuel L. Jackson character from ‘Snakes on a Plane’.
”I used to work for an airline so had a bit of knowledge about planes, said Ryan, “but it is harder to get information these days because of the world terrorism threat. ‘Most of the designs came off the internet and I had to adapt the scale of the Airbus because your average Lego man is quite fat for his height
by admin on Jun 21, 2010, under Leading Edge Aviation News, Uncategorized
Aircraft painter leads the pack with aviation’s newest elite standard
Santa Ana, CA – Leading Edge Aviation Services is about to become the first aircraft painting company in the country to receive AS-9110 certification – significantly raising the bar for performance, quality, and customer satisfaction. The company’s corporate organization along with its Victorville, CA facility are expecting certification within the next few weeks, and its Mississippi and Texas facilities are now ramping up to follow suit.
“This certification extends the quality gap between Leading Edge and its competitors,” said Mike Manclark, CEO, Leading Edge. “We’ve been doing this for 20 years, and it’s always been quality, performance, and customer satisfaction that’s driven our growth. When customers come to Leading Edge, they expect the best. AS-9110 is just one more guarantee that what they’ll end up with meets the highest level of performance and reliability.”
Becoming AS 9110 certified is further assurance that Leading Edge meets the regulatory requirements of FAA and other civil aviation authorities when it comes to maintenance performed on any aerospace product. It’s an industry stamp of approval that signifies the company is dedicated to maintaining the highest quality of service and continual focus on improving customer satisfaction.
“Our Victorville facility works closely with Boeing on overflow and military work, and it’s in high demand from airline work as well,” added Manclark, “so we felt it was important to implement the standard there first.”
He also adds that in today’s climate, you can’t become a leader by sitting back on what you’ve done. “There’s no such thing as good enough,” said Manclark. “You have to continually aim higher if you want to grow your business. We want people to know that even though we’re the largest aircraft painting company in the world, the quality is always improving at Leading Edge.”
