Tag Archives: transportation
Malaysia Airlines: What may have happened to MH370
Malaysia Airlines: What may have happened to MH370 AFP / 12 March 2014 We take a look at the possible scenarios being weighed up by industry experts as the world waits for clues as to the fate of the Boeing 777, which has one of the best safety records of any jet. Nearly five days since it disappeared while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, there is still no trace of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. Also read: Last words of MH370 revealed | Click here to see complete coverage Conflicting information, false alarms over debris and confusion over the focus of the search have produced more questions than answers. Here we take a look at the possible scenarios being weighed up by industry experts as the world waits for clues as to the fate of the Boeing 777, which has one of the best safety records of any jet. WHY: According to Malaysian authorities the plane was cruising at 35,000 feet (11 kilometres) above sea level when it last made contact and vanished without making a distress call, pointing to the possibility of a sudden catastrophic event. The presence on board of two suspect passengers travelling on stolen passports fuelled fears of a terrorist attack. It was revealed Tuesday they were probably just Iranian migrants, but CIA Director John Brennan said a terror link had not been ruled out. Other possibilities include a strike by a missile or military aircraft. EXPERT VIEW: “I don’t believe it is anything to do with the serviceability or the design of the aircraft,” Neil Hansford, chairman of leading Australian airline consultancy Strategic Aviation Solutions, told AFP. “The way I see it there are three scenarios. There was a bomb on board… the aircraft was hit by a military aircraft or a rogue missile; or…the captain is locked out of the cockpit and the plane is put in a dive,” he said. WHY: The sudden disappearance could also point to a technical problem that could have led to a rapid descent. Reports from the Malaysian authorities that the jet may have made a sharp turn west before it lost contact, possibly pointing to the pilots struggling to rectify a problem, have bolstered this theory. EXPERT VIEW: “To me that (the veer) suggests there was a stall,” says former Inspector General of the US Department of Transportation and aviation lawyer, Mary Schiavo. “That doesn’t mean you lose your engines. It means that you’re losing your air flow over your wings, sufficient speed to keep the plane in the air…it would lose altitude really dramatically.” She compared the possible scenario to the fate of Air France 447 — which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009 after its speed sensors malfunctioned — in an interview with Australia’s ABC television. If the plane did crash, a combination of technical difficulties and pilot error would be a likely scenario, Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific aerospace consultant Ravi Madavaram said. “There is no single factor which generally leads to an airplane crash, but a combination of technical glitches and pilot decisions. Each of these glitches and decisions taken independently are harmless and often happen. It is the combination of these factors that lead to a catastrophe.” WHY: The lack of wreckage or black box transmission has led to speculation that the plane may have disintegrated mid-air. EXPERT VIEW: While structural disintegration has been behind some previous aircraft disappearances, new planes use “better materials, technology and maintenance schedules”, Madavaram says. “This last happened to China Airlines flight 611, during its cruise at 35,000 feet in 2002. Flight 611 was a Boeing 747 aircraft and the reason for that crash was faulty repair.” He added that the technology on a Boeing 747 was 20 years older than on a 777. WHY: The absence of debris around the intended flight path, the possibility that the flight turned back, and conflicting reports over whether the plane was spotted by Malaysian military way off course have added to speculation of a hijack, which has still not been ruled out by investigators. Malaysia Airlines says that all its aircraft are equipped with the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) system — which puts out information about location and airspeed — but has so far declined to release whatever data it got from flight MH370. EXPERT VIEW: The reports of a “turn back” raised yet more questions, says Scott Hamilton, managing director of US-based aviation consultancy Leeham Co. “If it were near the Vietnam coast, why turn back when there probably would have been a closer airport in the event of an emergency?” he wrote on his company website. The larger question was whether the turn was intentional “under the command of the pilots (or hijackers),” or due to other causes such as engine problems or an explosion. But Frost & Sullivan’s Madavaram believes several factors rule out a hijack, including a lack of a credible claim of responsibility and the difficulty in evading radars and witnesses. WHY: While rare, there have been cases in the past of pilots crashing planes to take their own lives. According to the US Federal Aviation Administration, pilot suicides account for less than 0.5 percent of all fatal general aviation accidents. EXPERT VIEW: A suicide bid “is possible and if that’s the case there might not be a lot of debris because the plane would have come down in relatively structural integrity,” said Terence Fan, aviation expert at Singapore Management University. “The airplane is not meant to float and if the airplane sinks in the water, water will go inside because the door seals are not meant to seal water.” For more news from Khaleej Times, follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/khaleejtimes , and on Twitter at @khaleejtimes Continue reading
Biofuels Producers Hunting Foreign Fields
With nearly 70% of global biofuels production centered on the United States’ corn and Brazil’s sugarcane harvests, concentrated commodity feedstocks have been the common denominator in biofuels industry growth over the past decade. Advanced biofuels companies seeking to produce next-generation fuels derived from non-food feedstocks are attempting to replicate this model – without the associated social and environmental ramifications of using food-based crops. Access to land for mass feedstock production is a difficult challenge for which many innovative strategies have been proposed. Companies like SG Biofuels , Ceres , and others are squarely focused on biotechnology innovation, involving complex biological modifications at the crop’s cellular and genetic level. The central focus of these efforts is the optimization of dedicated energy crops for growth in a variety of locations where food crops are not currently grown, including poor soils and areas lacking irrigation. Among these, jatropha, camelina, energy grasses like miscanthus, and dedicated trees like eucalyptus have received the most attention. But optimizing crop strains to thrive in a variety of climates and soils is only half the battle. Recent experience has shown that the success of even miracle next-generation feedstocks like jatropha , which can produce oil-rich seeds in poor soils and without irrigation, is exaggerated. As with food crops, bountiful energy crop harvests (i.e., lots of biomass material for biofuels production) require irrigation, nutrients – and plenty of land. Land Ho! Finding suitable tracts of land with nutrient-rich soil and irrigation for which a large quantity of crops can be grown – but without diverting land otherwise dedicated to food production (see The New York Times blog on food vs. fuel ) – remains an elusive goal. Increasingly, governments and corporations are looking abroad. Since the food crisis of 2007-2008 , foreign direct investment into countries with undeveloped agricultural potential has accelerated. According to data compiled by the Oakland Institute , an estimated 56 million hectares of land (nearly the size of France) has been acquired in the developing world by international governments and investors since 2008. Last month, China announced that it will invest billions of yuan into 3 million hectares (7.5 million acres) of farmland in Ukraine, its biggest overseas agricultural project. This will more than double China’s current portfolio of 2 million hectares (5 million acres), mostly concentrated in Latin America and Southeast Asia. China is not alone in this quest. According to a policy paper published by the Woodrow Wilson International Center, “One of the largest and most notorious deals is one that ultimately collapsed: an arrangement that would have given the South Korean firm Daewoo a 99-year lease to grow corn and other crops on 1.3 million hectares of farmland in Madagascar – half of that country’s total arable land.” Government and institutional investors across other developed economies, including Japan, the United States, the European Union, and wealthy Gulf states, are all actively involved in this rush. Complicated by the checkered history of international land grabs, this trend is not without its critics. Balancing Objectives While intentions may be in the right place in most instances, the past has shown that the consolidation of cultivatable land for foreign or multinational interests can often lead to the displacement of local subsistence farmers, as well as other negative environmental impacts. In recent years, governments have, at least publicly, imposed more restrictions on biofuels investments abroad to prevent a scramble toward destructive plantation-style feedstock cultivation. The EU’s Renewable Energy Directive (RED) mandates that member states derive 10% of energy consumption within the transportation sector from renewable sources by 2020. Recently signed legislation caps the contribution of conventional food-based biofuels , calling for a rapid switch to advanced biofuels. A slew of sustainability standards , meanwhile, aim to mitigate the negative impacts of large-scale dedicated energy crop production for advanced biofuels. In Navigant Research’s recently published report, Advanced Biofuels Country Rankings , issues such as available arable land and the potential for sustainable feedstock hubs figure heavily into assessments of the potential of individual countries to support advanced biofuels commercialization. At one time regarded as an issue exclusively focused on conventional biofuels, access to land for advanced biofuels production is proving equally sensitive. Continue reading
Report Finds Biofuels Offer Economic Means To Meet GHG Goals
Taylor Scott International News Taylor Scott International Taylor Scott International, Taylor Scott Continue reading
