Aviation Week reports that Wizz Air “said an average of 45 of its Airbus A320neo-family aircraft will be grounded due to Pratt & Whitney GTF engine issues as of mid-January 2024.” The carrier’s update “on the GTF groundings comes after it received a service bulletin Nov. 3; a grounding plan is being finalized.”
Full Story (Aviation Week – Subscription publication)
Tag: November 2023
Joshua Dobbs Highlighted
The Star Tribune spotlights Joshua Dobbs, the Vikings new quarterback, who majored in aerospace engineering at the University of Tennessee and was involved with AIAA’s Design/Build/Fly competition.
Full Story (The Star Tribune)
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Josh Dobbs receives congratulations from coaches and teammates following his comeback win, days after being traded to the Minnesota Vikings
(Bleacher Report; YouTube)
Rocket Scientist Moonlights as Professional Quarterback
Forbes reports that Joshua Dobbs started a game at quarterback for a new team the same week he arrived. For his new team, he had to learn cadences including numbers, colors, and other codes all quarterbacks call out to communicate with his offensive teammates in order to effectively combat the defensive tactics and succeed in moving the ball down the field. His team, the Minnesota Vikings, “use five cadences to run hundreds of offensive plays, which takes days, weeks and even months for quarterbacks to learn cold.” A quarterback usually has months to learn this information specific to his team, but Dobbs was just traded to the Vikings on Tuesday, and the starter ahead of him was injured with a torn Achilles, forcing him into his first game for the team on Sunday. If one of his teammates or coaches yelled out to him, “Hey Josh, don’t worry, it’s not rocket science!” then that would have been appropriate, “because Dobbs studied aerospace engineering at the University of Tennessee and competed on the Engineers team at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Design/Build/Fly competition while playing football.” Dobbs entered the game in the first quarter following his predecessor’s injury “and went 20-for-30 with 158 yards and two touchdowns, while scrambling for 66 yards on seven carries.” The Vikings won 31-28.
Full Story (Forbes)
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Josh Dobbs receives congratulations from coaches and teammates following his comeback win, days after being traded to the Minnesota Vikings
(Bleacher Report; YouTube)
Virgin Galactic Launches 5th Commercial Flight
Spaceflight Now reported that the first of two Falcon 9 missions SpaceX “is planning for Sunday carried into orbit the largest batch of second-generation Starlink satellites to be launched from the West Coast.” The Falcon 9 “lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 2 a.m. PDT (5 a.m. EDT / 0900 UTC) with 22 satellites aboard.” The California launch “will be followed on Sunday by another Starlink delivery mission carrying 23 satellites, which will launch from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 7:45 p.m. EDT (2345 UTC).” The Starlink 7-6 mission “was the first time a Falcon 9 has carried 22 of the so-called V2 Mini satellites from the West Coast.” Previously, missions from there “had been limited to 15 or 21 Starlinks, depending on the orbit.” On the East Coast, a Falcon 9 “launched 23 V2 Minis a week ago on Oct. 21, one more than the previous maximum load for a mission from the Cape.”
Full Story (Spaceflight Now)
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Virgin Galactic-05
(NASASpaceflight; YouTube)
Joby CEO Announces 84% Completion of Stage 3 FAA Certification Work for EVTOL Aircraft
Aviation Today reports that Joby Aviation CEO JoeBen Bevirt says the company’s eVTOL aircraft is 84% on its way to completing FAA Stage 3 certification requirements. The company “checked off several milestones in the past three months that bring it ever closer to launching commercial passenger flights in 2025.” Joby is “ramping up production at its pilot manufacturing facility in Merina, Calif., with one aircraft in final assembly and two more in production.” It also has “chosen Dayton, Ohio, as the site for the first scaled manufacturing facility, after receiving promises for $325 million in state and local incentives and benefits, Bevirt said.”
Full Story (Aviation Today)