Word: aircrafting
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...airport in Tibet is challenging for planes as well as pilots. Tucked between mountain ranges on the Tibetan Plateau, Bangda's runway is the world's highest at 14,000 ft. (4,300 m) above sea level. Because the air is so thin there, the large Boeing and Airbus aircraft that comprise most of China's domestic fleet lack the power and lift to take off and land comfortably under certain conditions, especially in bad weather with a full load of passengers. So in 2002, the Beijing government came up with a surprising solution: China would build a small passenger...
...Five years later, a prototype of the jet sits in a nondescript hangar 30 minutes north of Shanghai. Dubbed the Advanced Regional Jet for the 21st Century - the ARJ21 - the aircraft is the fruit of China's first solo commercial aircraft project in nearly 40 years, and it promises to be one of the world's most technologically sophisticated when it takes off for the first time in March 2008. Onboard are the most advanced avionics, propulsion and malfunction-monitoring systems available. With room for 90 passengers (up to 105 in a stretch version), "the ARJ21 will prove China...
...almost 29,000 planes worth $2.8 trillion over the next two decades, with nearly one-third of them destined for Asian carriers, according to Boeing, the No. 1 manufacturer of commercial jets. In China alone, domestic airlines could spend as much as $340 billion for 3,400 new aircraft - nearly quadrupling the current fleet of about 1,000 - by 2026. There's also booming demand for smaller, so-called regional jets like the ARJ21, aircraft with fewer than 150 seats flown on short-haul domestic routes. At least 1,600 regional jets could be purchased between now and 2025, according...
...course, rosy projections and grand national ambitions alone aren't enough to guarantee the successful launch of a new aircraft - let alone a new commercial aerospace manufacturer. The duopoly of Airbus and Boeing own the market for large jetliners; Bombardier and Brazil's Embraer are entrenched as leaders in regional jets and turboprops. Indonesia discovered just how treacherous the market can be in the 1990s when that country's government tried to bootstrap an aircraft-manufacturing industry by building 100-seat turboprop planes. The venture failed following Asia's 1997 financial crisis when it lost government funding. During the 1960s...
...presence of U.S. forces in this corner of the Middle East is hardly a secret. About 1,800 U.S. military personnel, mostly with the Air Force, live on military bases here. And the U.A.E. Port of Jebel Ali, one of the few docks capable of handling a U.S. aircraft carrier, gets more visits from Navy ships than any other port outside the United States. Qatar signed a bilateral defense pact with the United States in 1992. Today, the sprawling al-Udeid airbase there is home to roughly 6,000 troops. Another 3,400 or so troops live at As-Sayliyah...