Torpid airports may convert into SEZs
The Centre is mulling a plan to convert unused airports in India into special economic zones (SEZ) for aircraft leasing companies to park their aircraft and showcase them to potential customers.
Leasing companies can park 50-100 aircraft. The companies can then come, take test flights and place orders. Like ship-breaking, even dismantling an aircraft could be made possible at dormant airports. The moment leasing and aircraft breaking is allowed to happen at abandoned airports, MROs (maintenance, repair and overhaul) will automatically come. The government was exploring ways to reduce the cost of leasing aircraft without which regional connectivity (scheme) may find difficulty in taking off.
Recently, the government allowed foreign investors to own up to 100 per cent stake in domestic carriers. However, the new FDI norm allows a foreign carrier to invest only up to 49 per cent to set up an airline in India. The rest can come from either local or foreign investors.
India’s domestic air travel rose 22.9 per cent in January compared with the same period a year ago, according to International Air Transport Association.
Source : The Hindu
Solar Impulse
Solar Impulse is a Swiss long-range experimental solar-powered aircraft project, and also the name of the project’s two operational aircraft. The privately financed project is led by Swiss engineer and businessman André Borschberg and Swiss psychiatrist and aeronaut Bertrand Piccard, who co-piloted Breitling Orbiter 3, the first balloon to circle the world non-stop. The Solar Impulse project intends to achieve the first circumnavigation of the Earth by a piloted fixed-wing aircraft using only solar power and to bring attention to clean technologies.
The aircraft are single-seat monoplanes powered by photovoltaic cells; they are capable of taking off under their own power. The prototype, often referred to as Solar Impulse 1, was designed to remain airborne up to 36 hours. It conducted its first test flight in December 2009. In July 2010, it flew an entire diurnal solar cycle, including nearly nine hours of night flying, in a 26-hour flight. Piccard and Borschberg completed successful solar-powered flights from Switzerland to Spain and then Morocco in 2012, and conducted a multi-stage flight across the United States in 2013.
A second aircraft, completed in 2014 and named Solar Impulse 2, carries more solar cells and more powerful motors, among other improvements. In March 2015, Piccard and Borschberg began an attempt to circumnavigate the globe with Solar Impulse 2, departing from Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. The aircraft was scheduled to return to Abu Dhabi in August 2015 after a multi-stage journey. By June 2015, the plane had traversed Asia, and in July 2015, it completed the longest leg of its journey, from Japan to Hawaii. During that leg, however, the aircraft’s batteries experienced thermal damage. Solar Impulse 2 resumed the circumnavigation in April 2016, when it flew to California. It continued across the United States until it reached New York City on 11 June 2016. On 23 June 2016, the aircraft completed its crossing of the Atlantic Ocean and landed in Seville, Spain.
Source: Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Impulse)
