Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
There's more to real news than a news release.
Dubai Air Show: 777X, flight demos.
From our partners at AIN:
Nov. 25, 2025, © Leeham News: LNA’s partner AIN attended the Dubai Air Show and has now posted videos from the event. There are also two unrelated stories about the US Federal Aviation Administration’s efforts to modernize the Air Traffic Control system.
Videos from the Dubai Air Show, and more:
AIN Reporting
Thanks for the video links.
Sadly an Indian Fighter crashed and the pilot died.
Infinitival guess (and only that) was a stall in a odd maneuver sequence. Something about heading for the crowd and they should never do that.
We keep having crashes over here often with Warbirds, half the time its a coordination issue with other aircraft.
I love air shows but they should keep demo in sane limits
You should watch the video. Pilot error I think, but don’t take my word on it. I’m not a pilot.
I have since then. I am a pilot and those are hard for me to watch.
While Gonky and Mover do not do the best job of incident breakdowns, they are former fighter pilots.
Those severed turns, G load and unload they have experience with and I do not.
I think its correct but I also in recent months seen Juan Brown discuss how to break and airframe.
I did not think you could but he demonstrated that at the famous wedding fly by.
That stuff was not taught when I was flying. I believe it is now.
This is a Flight Global report on the A350F.
I continue to wonder about some of the tests. Airflow will be no different, AC? Kind of, its not like you have passengers to worry about. So, sometime into 2027 before Service Entry
https://archive.ph/hem7p
Hot and cold performance seems a no brainer as well.
TRANS
The ECS and Pressurization systems are really difficult in a freighter. Sticking air into the fuselage is reasonably straightforward. Air movement inside the fuselage is maddening. If you are certifying the aircraft to fly live loads, you have to prove you can keep the atmosphere in the entire tube within a setpoint tolerance from nominal in all areas of the aircraft to be occupied by live loads. Moving sufficient air through all these locations when a full load of containers is onboard, or a split load of palletized freight and containers is really difficult to design. There is far less space to move air effectively, and the air exchange rate when full of containers dictates high air velocities.
The real engineering challenge is to design the decompression venting scheme so that the mandated certification hole size can be placed anywhere on the pressure vessel, with any conceivable obstruction layout taking into account where containers may be placed and what the exit airflow to the certification hole will do with respect to the internal pressure gradients inside the tube. This gives you different values depending on where containers or bulk cargo gets loaded. when you have a hard cargo deck and lower lobe cargo bays, you have to evacuate the air from inside the tube fast enough to not collapse the floor. In the passenger airplane there are decompression vents that get this done. Historically, this distribution passenger acceptable decompression vents is insufficient to protect the aircraft in freighter load configurations. A large proportion of the freighter engineering analysis work done is to verify positive decompression venting margins compared to the Passenger floor structures not subjected to these airflow extremes. If you don’t build the freighter certifiable floor day one with the passenger airplane, P2F exercises get really difficult. One of the things that came up elsewhere recently was the statement that Boeing protects the passenger airplane for freighter conversions. One key item is that at Boeing, floor beam caps, stanchion structures and the decompression vents between the floor and lower lobe are sized to survive a calculated worst case decomp event with the certification hole in the worst possible place. This means the airplane is a bit heavier than needed to meet the passenger decomp event certification target. Boeing looks ahead and adds the P2F-ability to the passenger fleet in many places, calling the process protecting for the freighter.
Fascinating, thank you!
As an aside, we had a Chinese Y-12 land on the West Coast of Alaska in a small village aka Teller up around Nome (terminal of the Iditarod Sled Dog Race)
It came in from Russia, was supposed to land in Nome but really severe snowstorm and they had to divert after going down to 500 ft and Nome advised them to divert.
The direct reports they say they were told to but Nome tower would not do that. I suspect they notified them they were at minimums or below and advised the to abort and that Teller was open.
Aircraft was headed to Chile of all places, lots of short hops!
Its an older design Y-12, not the newest and very different F model. Its almost a clone of a Twin Otter (older design).
Looking it up, yes its certified in the US and EU. Part of that effort back in the 90s of the US trying to get China aircraft built to the International cert standards.
I had not known they succeeded with the General Aviation aircraft though a Y-12 would be a commercial endeavor Part 23.
Following is a quote from Wiki:
“Harbin Aircraft Manufacturing Corporation (HAMC) and the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) applied for Part 23 certification of the Y-12 in September 1992. Modifications are made to the Y-12 (II) to meet US requirements, including a larger, reshaped, wing with wing-lets and landing gear reinforced with stronger struts.”
Clearly the for full China cert was on in that time period
> U.S. officials contacted by Reuters were surprised by Trump’s announcement and unaware of any ongoing U.S. military operations to enforce a closure of Venezuelan airspace.
https://x.com/idreesali114/status/1994886152067977329
Keep in mind you are on auto ignore.
You should also keep in mind you have zero credibility with me (along with Bryce and sometimes Vincent).
If you told me the sun was going to rise int he East I would channel Hawkins and ask him if it was true (maybe Sagan)
SnoOZe.
Pretty clear there’s a community member who treat this as their own blog post.
Careful, Pedro.
Reuters Dec 1
Exclusive: Airbus confirms new quality problem on ‘limited’ number of A320 jets
“”The source of the issue has been identified, contained and all newly produced panels conform to all requirements,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added that it was a supplier issue but declined to name them. Airbus has both internal and external suppliers for its aerostructures.”
wonder who the fuselage panel supplier is?
Update
* Avianca
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G7HpI-bXUAA7dzd?format=jpg&name=large
* JetBlue resumes regular operations after completing A320 updates