United growth plan shows no sign of letting up in 2019

15 OCTOBER, 2018 SOURCE: FLIGHT DASHBOARD BY: EDWARD RUSSELL WASHINGTON DC

United Airlines is prepping for another year of aggressive domestic capacity growth in 2019, hot on the heels of its successful expansion this year. The Star Alliance carrier loaded the latest network additions from its Chicago O'Hare, Denver, Los Angeles, Newark, San Francisco and Washington Dulles hubs over the weekend, part of a strategy to recapture its "natural share" of the US market by growing 4-6% annually through 2020.

“With more than 40 new domestic routes added this year, we remain committed to expanding our network to offer customers even more choices in their travel destinations,” says Ankit Gupta, vice-president of domestic network planning at United. “The expansion to Hilton Head Island from three of our hub cities and the introduction of New York’s only nonstop service to… Pensacola, are just some of the ways we are responding to customer interest and demand.”

FlightGlobal.com

Skywest Plans on Flight a Large Number of 50 Passenger Jets, into the Future.

“We see a tremendous opportunity long-term to have that aircraft serve small communities,” Childs told the International Aviation Forecast Conference in Denver Aug. 20. “We have not [parked our smallest RJs], and we likely will not.”

Utah-based SkyWest Inc., which operates SkyWest Airlines and ExpressJet Airlines—both regional feeders for mainline carriers—had a 583-aircraft fleet as of June 30. More than half—298—were either Bombardier CRJ200s or Embraer ERJ135/145s. 

It plans to end the year with 585 aircraft, continuing a trend of right-sizing its fleet so it is large enough to capitalize on opportunities, but small enough to be somewhat isolated from demand fluctuations.

Since ending 2014 with 717 aircraft, SkyWest steadily has reduced its fleet, ending each year with fewer aircraft than it had at the start. It also has adjusted its ratio of smaller aircraft to dual-class models from a 70/30 split in 2014—including some turboprops—to the 51/49 split projected for year-end 2018.

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Stolen Horizon Air Q400 ATC Audio! 

How to Choose a Lens for Night Sky Photography

There is a big distinction to be made when it comes to night sky photography, which is whether or not you plan on photographing the stars in the night sky. If you do not plan on including stars in your shots, things are a lot simpler for you. That is true in a lot of ways, in that you don’t need to worry as much about the clouds and weather, the impact of the moon, or light pollution.

When it comes to lens selection, it means that you can pretty much use whatever lens you want. Therefore, if that is the type of night photography you plan to do, continue using whatever is your favorite lens at present.

Issues doing Night Sky Photography

On the other hand, if you plan on shooting the night sky and capturing the stars, things get trickier. This stems from two facts. The first is that starlight is extremely dim. It is only a tiny, tiny fraction of what you have at sunset (let alone the middle of the day). Even moonlight is many times more powerful.

The second issue is that the stars are moving across the sky (or, rather, that the earth is spinning, but it appears as though the stars are moving to your camera). This is happening more quickly than you might realize.

As a result, you need to do everything possible to maximize exposure, and you need for that to happen quickly. In other words, the dim light means that you need a lot of exposure. Exposure stems from a combination of three things: shutter speed, aperture, and ISO.

In other types of photography, you might simply open up the shutter for a long time. In night sky photography, however, you don’t have that luxury since the stars are moving. That means your shutter speed is going to be capped somewhere between 15 and 30 seconds. If you expose any longer, the camera will pick up that movement and it will show up as tails or blur in your pictures. That won’t work.

That means you’ll have to look at the other two exposure options – ISO and aperture. To deal with the dim light, you will have to crank up your ISO to at least 3200 and in many cases 6400. At present, that’s about as high as you should go. Even if your camera goes up to something like ISO 25,600, as many cameras do these days if you use an ISO that high you risk noise completely taking over your picture.

Use a Fast Lens

Because of these caps on shutter speed and ISO, the only remaining exposure control is aperture. To maximize exposure and still successfully capture the night sky, you will need a fast lens. How fast?

A lens that opens up to f/2.8 or wider is ideal. A lens with a maximum aperture of f/4.0 is acceptable. Anything less than that (meaning a higher f-number) probably won’t work. This is one situation where your kit lens might serve you well. Most kit lenses open up to f/3.5 at their widest focal length, which is actually 1/3 stop brighter than your typical f/4.0 lens.

As a side-note, you might be worried about depth of field when using these large apertures. You need not worry about that though. You will always set your focus at infinity and everything in your scene will be on that plane of focus. Even if there are objects in the foreground, at wide angles things quickly go to infinity on your lens. Unless something is very close to you (say, within 10 feet or so), it will be on the same plane of focus and depth of field will not be an issue. If you want to include anything closer than that, you’ll likely need to focus stack.

READ MORE: Digital Photography School

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New Research That Fixes Hearing Loss 

Researchers at USC and Harvard have developed a new approach to cells deep inside the ear -- a potential remedy that could restore hearing for millions of elderly people and others who suffer hearing loss.

READ MORE: Sciencedaily.com

American Airlines Orders 47 B787's

American Airlines has ordered 47 Boeing 787s as replacements for its older widebody aircraft.

The deal includes 22 787-8s and 25 787-9s with deliveries from 2020 and 2023, respectively, the Fort Worth-based carrier says. It also includes 28 options.

The order is valued at $12 billion at list prices, says Boeing.

"This was a difficult decision between the Boeing 787 and the Airbus A350 and A330neo and we thank both manufacturers for their aggressive efforts to earn more of American’s business," says Robert Isom, president of American, in a statement. "In the end, our goal to simplify our fleet made the 787 a more compelling choice.”