Posted by John Patrick on Sep 17, 2011 in
Aviation,
Travels 
There are quite a few stories here in patrickWeb about my travel woes (see travel category). There are many things people complain about including security, paying to check bags, late departures and arrivals, and grumpy service. My report from this past week is much more sanguine. I left Connecticut last Saturday for Dublin, Ohio to attend a board meeting at OCLC. On Sunday night, it was down to Orlando, FLorida to give a keynote speech at the opening of Data Center World. That afternoon took me to Minneapolis, Minnesota and then on to San Jose, California for the Demo conference and finally on Wednesday from San Jose to Salt Lake City, Utah to JFK in New York, and on home to Connecticut.
I have more than a million miles with Delta, but I am sure the attendants I encountered did not know that. Service was friendly and efficient. Things are more spartan that in the past, but they seem to have the processes working pretty well. All the flights were on time. They were all full also, which bodes well for them from a business perspective. The web site has come a l
ong long way from the early days. It is easy to checkin from home or a hotel and they are exploiting the quick response (QR) code for use on your mobile phone for checkin. Nice to not have to have scrunched up boarding passes in your pocket. More on QR codes another time. They are becoming ubiquitous. That is mine there on the left. You can scan it with an iPhone app.
The next big thing for aviation is the FAA plan for NextGen. NextGen is a comprehensive overhaul of our National Airspace System to make air travel more convenient, dependable, safe, secure and hassle-free. The heart of NextGen is replacing radar tracking with GPS that can guide and track air traffic more precisely and efficiently to save fuel (more than a billion gallons over the next seven years), reduce noise and pollution, more predictability, fewer delays, less time sitting on the ground and holding in the air, and more flexibility to get around weather problems. The only thing standing in the way is–you guessed it–congress. There doesn’t seem to be much they can agree on.
Tags: delta airlines, faa, national airspce system, nextgen, qr, quick response code, travel
The months of March and April were busy ones at IBM with the usual flurry of announcements in hardware, software, services, acquisitions, and strategic alliances. See the list of the current press releases and also an index for prior months here. The major focus of the company remains on a “smarter planet” and the dimensions of this thrust continue to expand. An area of personal interest to me is aviation so I was pleased to learn about a joint project between IBM and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) working on a Research and Development project to protect the nation’s civilian aviation system from the ever-growing threat of cyber attacks.
Faa.gov is the official website for the Federal Aviation Administration. The site deals with many vital aviation topics including flights, airports, policies, news and events affecting aviation, pilot resources, weather, a wealth of safety information, regulations and guidelines, air traffic data, research, licenses and certificates, training and testing, alerts about specific airports, and medical and aircraft certification. The site has approximately a half-million monthly visitors who view an average of two million web pages. Needless to say faa.gov is a vital national resource. It is also a potential target for those who would like to harm it.
The joint project is part of IBM’s First-of-a-Kind (FOAK) program which engages scientists from IBM Research with clients to explore and pilot emerging technologies that address real world problems. In the case of faa.gov the IBM researchers and cyber security experts will design and build a prototype security system capable to accommodate the FAA’s high-speed networks. Building on IBM’s vast experience with analytics, the project will introduce first-of-a-kind security technologies and entirely new approaches to protecting large digital and physical infrastructures from hacking, botnets, malware and other forms of cyber attacks.
The prototype system will go beyond traditional security approaches of encryption, firewalls, intrusion-detection devices and anti-virus software. A flexible model is being designed to look retrospectively at event occurrences and system compromises. It will be able to correlate historical traffic patterns with dynamic data from monitors, sensors and other devices which capture information about network traffic and user activity in real time. Using “streaming analytics” and customized executive-level dashboards, the system will enable the FAA to continually analyze the massive amounts of data flowing through its networks and get instant and accurate insights about possible network threats and anomalies suggesting a possible attack in time to take action. The FAA will also be able to store real-time results in a data warehouse for later analysis and training.
“Cyber attacks have become a global pandemic and no system is immune,” said Todd Ramsey, general manager for IBM’s government business. “Through this collaboration with the FAA, as well as others underway in government and the private sector, we hope to develop comprehensive solutions for protecting the digital and physical infrastructures of critical national networks and enterprise systems.” IBM has also established the IBM Institute for Advanced Security in Washington, D.C., to help government agencies and other institutions gain access to tools, resources and expertise to address cyber security issues.
Complete index of IBM Happenings for 2004-2010
Tags: analytics, Aviation, cyber attack, faa, IBM, IBM Research
Posted by John Patrick on Oct 27, 2009 in
Aviation,
People,
Travels 
I did not really have to go to Brazil for the delivery of the Embraer Phenom 100 — JetQuik demonstrated that they could have done it very professionally on their own — but it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. No doubt about it, this was an educational experience. Although a somewhat experienced pilot with 500+ hours of flying, that was a drop in the bucket compared to what I learned over the course of nearly ten days with Bill and Mark and the Embraer team. Reading a great deal about the Phenom was informative but nothing compared to spending a week in the hangar and 15+ hours in flight. It is an incredibly well engineered airplane and I will have more comments on the technology aspects of it in future posts.
After arriving in Connecticut from Ft. Lauderdale, Bill and Mark took the Phenom to Stevens Aviation in Dayton, Ohio where it is undergoing some enhancements. Embraer had thought of just about everything but not quite everything, especially in the areas of collision avoidance systems, air-to-ground communications, and audio/video. The interior walls of the plane have to be removed and a half-dozen wiring harnesses have to be installed. The FAA has to inspect and approve every minute detail. The plane will return to Connecticut before the middle of November. Just so happens I will be in Ohio at that time for a board meeting and will return with the Phenom.
After yet another FAA inspection, the Phenom will be put into “service” with Diamond Air Charters, Inc., a charter aviation company in Danbury. The plane will be made available to anyone through flyDiamond.com. Federal Aviation Regulation Part 135 provides stringent standards — above and beyond what private ownership requires — to insure excellent safety, properly trained and experienced pilots, and regular inspections of all operational aspects of the aircraft and the business. Will the demand be there? Remains to be seen but I believe it will. The VLJ — very light jet or “microjet” — fills a niche that is getting harder and harder to fill by normal commercial aviation. The market segment I am referring to is traveling between small and medium sized towns and cities.
If you need to fly between San Francisco and New York City, you can not beat commercial airlines — as of this writing $242 round trip with one stop. On the other hand if you want to go from Danbury, Connecticut to Roanoke, Virginia is costs $904 and takes seven and a half hours plus the time to drive to Laguardia and be there in time to park and get through security. In other words it takes a whole day to get there. The Phenom can go direct from Danbury to Roanoke in 80 minutes. Admittedly it is much more expensive, so it comes down to how much is your time worth. For many busy business executives their time is worth a lot. Being able to be in Roanoke in time for coffee, make a presentation, close a deal, and be home for dinner is very good from both a business and personal point of view. Roanoke is a random example — there are more than 5,000 general aviation airports, most of which are not accessible to commercial aviation but are accessible to very light jets. The U.S. Congress put a wet towel on aviation temporarily but there is another side to the story. See No Plane No Gain.
t was a pleasure to share the Brazilian Adventure in JetBrief and patrickWeb. Below you can find links to each of the stories and a printable document that includes all the stories.
Day 1 – Flight to Brazil
Day 2 – Intro to Sao Jose dos Campos
Day 3 – Test flight and barbecue
Day 4 – Squawks and the FAA
Day 5 – FAA Redux
Day 6 – Campos do Jordao
Day 7 – Geocaching
Day 8 – Departure and fuel
Day 9 – Caribbean islands
Day 10 – Florida to Connecticut
Trip Summary
Printable version including all the stories
Tags: Aviation, brazil, embraer, faa, JetBrief, phenom
