Heathrow Airport will offer hundreds of homeowners a 1,000-pound festive sweetener to participate in environmental studies vital to expediting planning for its controversial 16 billion-pound third runway. The owners of houses and farmland on which the new landing strip is due to be built will qualify for the payment in return for agreeing to a handful of visits over about two years, Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye said. The surveys are required to establish the site’s wildlife value. “Over the next 10 days we’ll be knocking on doors,” he said. “People will hopefully say that if you’re going to come to me before Christmas and give me a thousand pounds to do nothing, I’d really like to know about it.” Heathrow must sign up a proportion of affected households for studies into the runway’s likely impact on populations of creatures including bats, badgers and newts as it sets out on the development-consent process, Holland-Kaye said. Agricultural land and rivers must also be surveyed. While mitigation measures such as the re-creation of habitats are usually acceptable, even major construction projects can suffer severe delays. The new landing strip will allow Heathrow to handle 135m passengers annually, up from about 75m this year. Many local people oppose the plan because of the impact of extra aircraft noise and pollution, while residents of villages set to be swallowed up by the enlarged airport have staged protests backed by environmental groups and celebrity campaigners.<br/>
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A few years ago Japan’s ANA airline asked passengers to use the toilet before boarding their flights. The logic was that if every passenger took a comfort break in advance, the aircraft’s load would be lighter and the engines would burn less fuel. The trial only lasted a month, but it highlighted the aerospace industry’s weight obsession. Weight is one of the three most important factors, after aerodynamics and engine performance, affecting the efficiency of an aircraft. Less fuel means lower carbon dioxide emissions, as well as savings on a significant operating cost for airlines. Finding new ways to slim down the global fleet is preoccupying the aerospace industry as it prepares for the next generation of aircraft, expected to start flying before 2030. In October, governments agreed the world’s first global climate deal for the aviation industry, which accounts for 2% of all CO2 emissions. With the number of air passengers set to jump from 3.6b last year to 16b by 2050, according to Iata, the trade body, every aspect of aviation is being scrutinised to cut growing emissions. “If you take 1,000lbs [454kg] out of the weight of an engine that is worth 1% of fuel. It is a big financial saving but also good for the environment,” says Ric Parker, former director of research and technology at Rolls-Royce and now chairman of the EU’s Clean Sky initiative. “Anything you can do to reduce weight is a good thing.” The extensive use of new materials — including carbon fibre reinforced polymer — has led to huge weight savings. Composite materials were introduced in 1985 on the tail fin of aircraft such as the Airbus A310 wide-body. Today, Boeing and Airbus have broken new ground with their latest wide-body models, the 787 and A350. Roughly half of these aircraft is made of carbon fibre plastic and other composite materials. Boeing boasts that the 787 — whose smallest model weighs 161 tonnes — offers a 20% weight saving compared with the equivalent aluminium aircraft. Story has further details.<br/>
Hundreds of commercial airline pilots worldwide may be flying with untreated depression because they fear being grounded or losing their jobs, a new survey suggests. The anonymous survey of about 1,850 pilots from more than 50 countries found that 14% of pilots who had worked within the past week had symptoms of depression. Four percent of pilots reported having suicidal thoughts within the past two weeks. The survey offers one of the first snapshots of mental health among commercial pilots, who often don’t disclose this type of illness to airline officials or aviation regulators because they fear negative career repercussions, said senior study author Joseph Allen, a public health researcher at Harvard University in Boston. “It’s understandable that pilots are reluctant to fully disclose mental health issues because of the potential that they will be grounded or declared not fit for duty,” Allen said. With roughly 140,000 active pilots flying more than 3b people worldwide each year, the survey results should put the airline industry on notice that many pilots need better access to mental health screening and treatment, Allen added. The new findings come a year and a half after a Germanwings co-pilot who suffered from depression deliberately crashed a plane into the French Alps, killing 150 people. To get a better picture of mental health among airline pilots, researchers conducted an anonymous online survey between April and December of 2015. Questions touched on a range of topics related to work and health in addition to depression. Out of nearly 3,500 pilots who participated in the survey, 1,848 completed the questions about mental health. Within this group, 233 (12.6%) met the criteria for likely depression and 75 (4.1%) reported having suicidal thoughts within the previous two weeks.<br/>
An Auckland business group says a fast fix of Auckland Airport's traffic "nightmare" needs to be a project of national significance. Chamber of Commerce head Michael Barnett said the approach needed focused on the entire transport network, especially the two state highways that give access to the airport. The airport company and transport authorities have set up a taskforce to tackle worsening traffic chaos and he said problems had been apparent for years with the root cause Auckland's rapid growth success. "The twin drivers of the airport's growth success - increased passenger and thriving businesses - have become a classic example of the inability of planning authorities to respond with the infrastructure needed to support the business-led growth," said Barnett. Setting up a taskforce needs to be accompanied by a determination to dramatically lift the pace at which authorities transfer proposed improvements to the transport network that have sat on plans for years into action on the ground.<br/>
The Bombardier CS300 has gained type validation by FAA, meaning both variants of the CSeries have been certified by Transport Canada, the European Aviation Safety Agency and FAA. FAA has also granted the CS100 and the CS300 the Same Type Rating (STR), a designation that allows pilots to transfer between the two variants with minimal training, providing cost savings for airlines that operate both. “These airworthiness validations by international authorities recognize the exhaustive process and excellent work done by Bombardier, in conjunction with Transport Canada, who awarded the CSeries aircraft their original aircraft type approvals,” Bombardier VP-product development and chief engineer François Caza said in a statement. <br/>