Drive from Europe to the U.S.? Russia proposes world's greatest superhighway

Route as roughly interpreted by CNN. The proposed plan for a massive trans-Siberian highway would link Russia's eastern border with the U.S. state of Alaska.

It could happen if the head of Russian Railways has his way.

According to a March 23 report in The Siberian Times, Russian Railways president Vladimir Yakunin has proposed a plan for a massive trans-Siberian highway that would link his country's eastern border with the U.S. state of Alaska, crossing a narrow stretch of the Bering Sea that separates Asia and North America.

The scheme was unveiled at a meeting of the Moscow-based Russian Academy of Science.

Dubbed the Trans-Eurasian Belt Development (TEPR), the project calls for a major roadway to be constructed alongside the existing Trans-Siberian Railway, along with a new train network and oil and gas pipelines.

"This is an inter-state, inter-civilization, project," the Siberian Times quoted Yakunin. "The project should be turned into a world 'future zone,' and it must be based on leading, not catching, technologies."

"Are we there yet?"

The road would run across the entirety of Russia, linking with existing road systems in Western Europe and Asia.

The distance between Russia's western and eastern borders is roughly 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles).

Yakunin said the road would connect Russia with North America via Russia's far eastern Chukotka region, across the Bering Strait and into Alaska's Seward Peninsula.

The road would likely enter Alaska some distance north of the town of Nome, where the famed Iditarod sled dog race ends.

How would drivers span the ocean gap between Siberia and Alaska? Ferry? Tunnel? Bridges?

The report didn't offer specifics on the route across the sea.

The shortest distance between mainland Russia and mainland Alaska is approximately 88 kilometers (55 miles), according to the Alaska Public Lands Information Centers.

The main route of the Trans-Siberian railway runs from Moscow to Vladivostok and covers 9,258 kilometers.

A theoretical drive (as fancifully calculated by CNN) from London to Alaska via Moscow might cover about 12,978 kilometers (8,064 miles).

Relatively isolated even by Alaska standards, no road connects Nome with the rest of the state's road system.

About 836 road-less kilometers (520 miles) across desolate terrain separates Nome from the closest major city and road network in Fairbanks, the unofficial northern terminus of the Alaska Highway.

From Fairbanks, Canada and the 48 contiguous U.S. states can be reached by road.

Assuming a road to Nome were ever built (the idea has been studied by the state of Alaska), a fantasy road trip from London to New York might cover a grueling but presumably photo-op-laden 20,777 kilometers (12,910 miles).

Facebook posts from forlorn Siberian rest stops might alone make the trip worthwhile, though the journey would also easily establish irritating new records for "Are we there yet?" gripes from the kids.

Who's gonna pay for this thing?

Yakunin has been described as a close friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Some sources have speculated that he could be Putin's likely successor as president.

TEPR would reportedly cost "trillions of dollars."

According to Yakunin, however, massive economic returns would more than make up for the massive cash outlay -- about which the report also included no details.

Aviation Technology Debuts AltAlert Personal Cabin Pressure Monitor

Aviation Technology’s AltAlert provides audible and visual alerts when cabin altitude climbs to dangerous levels. The device can fit in a pocket or be mounted on the aircraft window.

While aircraft that fly in the flight levels have pressurization-failure warning systems, accidents involving apparently hypoxic pilots keep happening. Stacy Pappas Sawaya, president and CEO of Carlsbad, Calif.-based Aviation Technology, researched these types of accident and invented a new portable warning device–the AltAlert “personal cabin pressure monitor”–that pilots can use to help detect a pressurization failure well before it causes hypoxia. AltAlert can also help remind pilots flying unpressurized high-altitude aircraft that it’s time to don oxygen masks.

The AltAlert device is easy to carry into any aircraft and can either clip onto a shirt pocket or be suction-cupped to a window near the pilot’s field of view. Both aural and LED visual alarms warn the pilot that the cabin altitude is climbing above specific thresholds. AltAlert is available from many pilot shops and retails for $399.95.

The AltAlert is based on a NASA patent, but what Sawaya and her engineering team did was develop algorithms that make the device work reliably and consistently with a long battery life of 18 months. “It took about four years from the concept to getting it completely developed and bringing it to market,” she said.

“I started researching the number of accidents logged with the NTSB related to pressurization,” Sawaya explained. “The Payne Stewart accident was the most highly publicized, but the total number is enormous. It was really just a coincidence that the TBM 900 went down last September; we were finishing up by then. It was yet another example of the need for this device and its lifesaving capabilities.”

AURAL AND VISUAL WARNINGS

AltAlert is built around a pressure sensor. The algorithm drives six alarm modes, from nothing until 10,000 feet to combinations of a flashing LED and audible chirps at various higher altitudes. Above 10,000 feet, the red light flashes every 15 seconds along with a single “courtesy” chirp. Above 11,500 feet, the light flashes every five seconds and two chirps warn the pilot that cabin altitude has reached that level. Above 12,500 feet, the light flashes every second and there is a triple chirp. At this point the AltAlert also starts a 30-minute timer and if the aircraft’s altitude is between 12,500 and 14,999 feet after that interval, it switches to the above-15,000-foot alarm (the highest alarm). The above-14,000-foot alarm is flashes a red LED every second, but adds a constant double chirp. Above 15,000 feet, the LED and the chirp both remain on constantly. The first four modes can be muted, but once above 14,000 feet, the device cannot be muted.

I tested the AltAlert in a Cessna 172 with another pilot. We both used a pulse oximeter to measure our oxygen saturation as we climbed to 12,500 feet west of Van Nuys, Calif. We were going to go higher, but the 172 would have taken too long to climb the remaining 1,500 feet and we had no supplemental oxygen. Also, we felt that our oxygen saturation numbers precluded remaining at high altitudes any longer.

The AltAlert worked as advertised, and the LED was clearly visible and the chirps audible even with my passive headset on. It’s difficult to say whether the AltAlert would capture a pilot’s attention during a cabin pressurization problem, but it would certainly be useful to have as a backup device and it should increase the chances that pilots or even a passenger flying in the other seat might notice that there is a cabin-altitude problem. Where it seems AltAlert could really help is during a slow decompression, especially in an airplane without an automatic emergency-descent autopilot mode.

“We’re really excited about it,” said Sawaya. “It’s been lot of hard work and a lot of sacrifice.” One pilot bought an AltAlert after experiencing a slow leak caused by a failing door seal. “He was getting hypoxic,” she said, “and was able to recognize it and do an emergency landing before any tragic consequences. He said, ‘I wish I had this a year ago. I’m one of the lucky ones.’ To be able to put something like this on the market for a reasonable price is something we’re really proud of.”

Here's Why Airliners Still Don't Have Real-Time Tracking Tech

It's been one year since Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished into thin air. So why aren't we doing a better job of tracking planes yet?

From the moment MH370 disappeared more than one year ago, the world has been asking how a jumbo jet carrying 239 people could vanish. Now, the aviation industry is grappling with another question: Where are the promised flight tracking systems that would prevent this from ever happening again?

The technology would transmit in real time a multidimensional picture of an aircraft's position, measured by longitude, latitude, altitude, and the local time as provided by satellites. This is the same data that is captured by the flight data recorders (the black boxes), which, in the case of MH370, are presumed to be somewhere in the depths of the Indian Ocean. However, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said it might not be possible to meet its goal of making all aircraft traceable within a year—something that had seemed a reasonable deadline in the aftermath of MH370.

Tony Tyler, the former Cathay Pacific executive who heads the 250-member airline trade group, said that while the group is taking the issue "seriously," it's not clear whether all carriers are on board with the timetable.

"There is no silver bullet solution on tracking," he said at a briefing in Geneva. "The industry is working to improve, but some issues…. will take time to address and implement," he added, noting that the sealing of cockpit doors after the Sept. 11 attacks took several years to complete.

So what's the problem? The IATA just released a study from its Aircraft Tracking Task Force, which, after the disappearance of MH370, was charged with developing tracking options for planes. The study's main focus is how to track planes in areas that have no radar coverage, such as remote areas over water. Thanks to the modernization of air traffic control systems, that tracking is already improving, but that alone won't be enough to track all planes if airlines don't make their own upgrades.

The IATA report is supposed to contain information about how many airlines are already equipped for real-time tracking, but the details have not yet been made public. We do know the authors conclude that some may not be able to meet the new standards by target date of the end of 2015.

Plus, there's the question of authority: The IATA can't make the airlines fall in line and add new tracking tech. Any governmental action to require such tracking must come via the U.N.'s International Civil Aviation Organization, which could put pressure on individual countries to act if it sees fit. The issue next goes before them at a summit in February.

The study also raised the prospect of requiring carriers to acquire tamper-proof transponders within three years. A criminal investigation under way in Malaysia is examining the possibility that someone on the plane intentionally disabled the transponder of the 777, which effectively made it untraceable and allowed it to fly undetected for hours. But IATA stopped short of saying that the new transponders should be mandated.

There's also disagreement on how much it will cost. The upgrades could cost tens of thousands of dollars per aircraft, and many airlines have expressed concern about the high cost given how rare it is for an aircraft to disappear.

Of course, those same arguments were made after Air France 447 crashed into the South Atlantic in 2009, when the industry had an opportunity to make the changes that might have prevented MH370's disappearance.

Facebook is building a fleet of giant solar-powered drones

Facebook is building a fleet of V-shaped unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, to help the company with its Internet.org project that aims to beam Internet access to the 5 billion people that don't have it yet.

According to а report from The New York Times,, Facebook has a codename for its drone: Aquila, which is also the name of the eagle in Greek mythology that carries Zeus's thunderbolts for him.

 Aquila can reportedly stay in the air for up to three months at a time, and beam high-speed internet from between 60,000 and 90,000 feet in the air. They'll be lighter than a small car, but as long as a Boeing 767.

 The first flights will reportedly begin this summer, although "commercial deployment may take years," the Times notes. Facebook executives are not sure how much the final version of Aquila will cost the company.

Aquila was accomplished via Facebook's acquisition of the drone maker Ascenta in 2014, according to the Times. But now that this project is under Facebook's wing, the company is also looking for partners to help get the project off the ground, in return for allowing those companies to use their data and technology.

The Internet.org initiative, which was created in August 2013, is one of the main ways Facebook looks to spread its influence. By partnering up with mobile companies like Samsung, Qualcomm, and Microsoft, Facebook hopes to eventually offer universal affordable internet access, similar to Google's Project Loon, where high flying balloons beam down WiFi to areas without internet.

Putting Drone Videos on YouTube Is Illegal, Feds Say

The Federal Aviation Administration is still scrambling to decide how to regulate drones in American airspace, but there's at least one thing we know for sure: You're not supposed to use drones to make money. Well, even that isn't as clear as we thought.

This week, Motherboard says, the FAA sent a scary letter to drone lover Jason Hanes, telling him to stop posting his drone videos to his website or he'd be subject to fines. The reason: Those videos are on YouTube, and YouTube has ads, therefore he's using drones to make money.

It's a strange case. Clearly the FAA rules are targeted at business that would use UAVs for a specific commercial purpose, such as Amazon's proposed fleet of delivery drones, or drones that would carry banner ads behind them as they fly over a crowded beach. Hanes would appear to fall into the hobbyist category that the FAA has mostly left alone (as long as those hobbyists keep their aircraft away from football stadia, bridges, and the White House).

Yet his case could have repercussions for all kinds of hobbyist drone pilots who like to share their videos, many of which you've seen right here at PM. Says Motherboard:

Where, exactly, does commercial use begin and hobby use end, for instance? If you fly for fun, but happen to sell your footage later, were you flying for a "commercial purpose?" What if you give it to a news organization that runs it on a television station that has ads on it? What if you upload it to YouTube and Google happens to put an ad on it? What if you decide to put an ad on it?

Legally, it looks like FAA just opened a big ol' can of drones.

Source: Motherboard

XF8U-1 Crusader Rollout at Museum of Flight on March 25th

The Vought XF8U-1 Crusader prototype will be unveiled at the Museum of Flight in Seattle following decades-long restoration. (photo via MOF)

This coming Wednesday (25th March, 2015) the Museum of Flight will be holding a celebration for the 60th anniversary of the first flight of the mighty Vought F8U Crusader at the museum’s restoration center in Everett, Washington. The ceremony will begin at 11am as they publicly unveil their XF8U-1 prototype for the first time following a decades-long restoration effort. Many US Navy and Marine Corps Crusader veterans will be on hand for the event. Among the other speakers will be Dan Hagedorn, the Museum’s curator, Tom Cathcart, Director of Aircraft Collections & Restoration. The restoration team will also be well represented at the ceremony as well. Of course, the event is open to the public, with free admission to the Restoration Center for the day.

Another view of the XF8U-1. (photo via MOF)

The museum’s XF8U-1 is Bu.No.138899, the very aircraft which made the type’s first flight six decades ago with pilot John Konrad at the helm. This inaugural flight saw the aircraft break the sound barrier, something never before attempted successfully on a jet’s maiden mission. The type had a relatively trouble-free development, with the second prototype XF8U-1 and the production prototype F8U-1 first flying on the same day in September, 1955. The Crusader was already in carrier trials by early April, 1956 aboard the USS Forrestal, and operational the following year. From first flight to first fleet use in just two years seems incredible in today’s climate, where modern combat aircraft take well over a decade to become operational.

The Crusader was fast as well, setting a national air speed record in level flight of 1,015.428 mph on August 21st, 1956, during its victory in the Thompson Trophy race. The following July, with John Glenn at the controls, the Crusader made the first supersonic transcontinental crossing; bridging the distance between Los Alamitos, California and Floyd Bennet Field, New York in just over three hours, twenty three minutes. Chance Vought and the US Navy received the prestigious Collier Trophy for the Crusader, “for concept, design and development of the first carrier-based fighter capable of speeds exceeding 1,000 mph.” It won the Thompson Trophy in 1956 for setting a national and world speed record of 1,015.428 miles an hour.

The Crusader received the moniker “Last of the Gunfighters” when introduced due to its internal cannon armament at a time when all other types were moving exclusively to air-to-air missiles. The Crusader was a versatile aircraft though, and got stacked with all sorts of offensive weaponry during its time in the Viet Nam War. It was also a highly effective tactical reconnaissance platform, and this was the role it was perhaps most famous for due to the remarkably dangerous but vitally important photo-recon missions flown low and fast over Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The reconnaissance role gave the type longevity as well, with the last US Navy RF-8′s retiring in 1987; more than a decade after the service’s fighter/strike variants. Amazingly though, the French Navy was still fielding Crusaders in front line units on its aircraft carriers until finally replaced by the Dassault Rafale in 2000. Forty five years as a front line aircraft is not a bad run by any measure.

A close up of the Crusader cockpit showing the intense level of detail the museum has gone to to refurbish the aircraft. Note also the variable angle of attack wing, a unique feature on a production aircraft. (photo via MOF)

The Museum of Flight’s XF8U-1 served for about five years in the test role before its retirement. The Navy gifted it to the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum, but since there was no room to display it, the Crusader sat in storage at NASM’s Garber Facility, the museum loaned it to the Museum of Flight in Seattle. The loan became a gift in 2004, by which point NASM had gained a preferred operational variant. Restoration began in 1996, and the team has slowly returned her to the condition she was in back in 1955, complete with the same livery the aircraft wore. They have done a magnificent job too, and have much to be proud of!

Get an Edge on Others in Today's World

I recently spoke to reporters at our annual media day where I talked about some of the major trends that are impacting our world and how Lockheed Martin is working to address those challenges.

Since then, I've been thinking about how individuals -- at any point in their careers -- can prepare themselves personally and professionally for success in such a dynamic business environment. I'd suggest three things of particular value today:

1) Adaptability: In a rapidly changing environment, I seek out people who are flexible and able to adjust quickly to evolving circumstances. I want to enlist the help of those who see change coming and prepare for it -- always looking for opportunities to address the challenges that come with periods of transition. These are people who are energized by the opportunities that come from solving problems in a dynamic business environment -- a huge asset to any organization. 

2) Global Perspective: As we all become increasingly connected, I look for people who are curious about the world around them. I want those who enjoy the challenge of constantly learning about new cultures, new perspectives, and new ways of thinking. The most successful people will be able to serve the needs and priorities of an increasingly international customer base. 

3) Commitment to Sustainability: In the face of resource scarcity, climate change and increasing energy demand, I need people who are committed to sustainability. I want those who are excited by the opportunity to rise to that challenge and shape the world for the better. I seek out people who see sustainability as a business imperative and an incredible opportunity to make a difference. 

To thrive in today's evolving global environment, you need to be able to see the big picture and prepare yourself to stay ahead of the curve. In the current environment, those who are able to adapt, understand the world around them and view sustainability as an opportunity will be the most successful. 

What skills do you think are needed to be successful as we address the megatrends shaping our world? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Airware Preps Launch Of Its Commercial Drone Operating System With $25M From Kleiner

Building a drone’s hardware and software from scratch is tough and expensive, but open source drone kits are inflexible. So to power businesses looking to customize drones for commercial uses from agriculture to industrial inspections, Airware has raised a $25 million Series B led by Kleiner Perkins. The money will fund the launch of Airware’s drone operating system later this year, including autopilot hardware, navigation, software, and cloud infrastructure for storing and analyzing data from a drone’s sensors.

Kleiner’s Mike Abbott will join the board, and previous investors Andreessen Horowitz andFirst Round Capital are also in on the raise that brings Airware to $40 million in funding. That gives it plenty of money to hire sales, marketing, support, and engineers in anticipation of Airware’s drone OS coming out of beta and into the market.

When I visited Airware’s office at laboratory this week, the company’s rapid ascent took me by surprise, until I realized founder Jonathan Downey‘s parents were both pilots.

Getting Off The Ground

Airware Founder and CEO Jonathan Downey

Downey was literally born to change the skies. Grandpa flew planes. Uncle and cousin did too. Dad was mom’s flight instructor. “Pilots who begat pilots who begat pilots”, Jonathan laughs. He learned to man a cockpit while young and even flew commercial airliners.

At MIT he started a student club to build a drone for an intercollegiate competition, where he realized that open source drone frameworks were too rigid for repurposing to specific functions. Downey went on to build autonomous helicopters for Boeing, discovering the intense monetary and engineering resources necessary to build drones. He figured that if he could build a safe, reliable, flexible drone platform, other companies would pay to avoid worrying about the basics and concentrate on the customizations they need.

And so Airware was born. After running the company by himself for a while, in 2012 he started poaching Boeing hardware, software, and flight control engineers. Airware joined the Winter 2013 Y Combinator class and picked up a $3 million seed led by Google Ventures, though at the time Airware seemed like it might be ahead of its time. Soon enough, though, interest in drones took off, so Airware raised a $12.2 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz and added its partner Chris Dixon to the board.

Airware then focused on proving that drones can be more than war machines. It sent a team out to the Ol Pejeta black rhino sanctuary in Kenya to test how drones could be used to monitor wildlife populations and intrusions by poachers. Airware wrote how “The drone, equipped with Airware’s autopilot platform and control software, acts as both a deterrent and a surveillance tool, sending real-time digital video and thermal imaging feeds of animals – and poachers – to rangers on the ground using both fixed and gimbal-mounted cameras.”

Ready To Fly

The last six months have been centered on working with drone manufacturer beta partners Delta Drone and Cyber Technology to get the final kinks out of its commercial platform. When drone software crashes, it really crashes, so reliability is top of mind for Downey’s team as it gets ready to sell its vertically integrated platform to the 600 drone manufacturers out there.

Downey tells me that Delta was one of many companies that tried to develop full-stack drones in-house after getting frustrated with open source options. But he says they soon found building every aspect of a drone was “hard, expensive, and a distraction from customer needs”.

Airware will take on that engineering challenge for other companies. Having Mike Abbott from Kleiner on the board should be a big help. Downey tells me he was especially excited about Abbott joining Chris Dixon and him on the board because “He was the VP of engineering at Twitter who grew it from 80 to 350 engineers in 18 months” and brought the company out of its failwhale phase. Abbott had also been in the trenches running startups building products as platforms.

After the commercial launch in 2014, Downey tells me Airware will continue to expand the capabilities of its platform, though most of that will be in added compatibility and partnerships with third-party drone manufacturers. “We’re really enabling an ecosystem. We believe that with such a variety of use cases and manufacturers, it really needs an ecosystem of companies to provide all the value.”

Director Of Customer Implementation shows me the UASUSA Tempest in the Airware integration room

Airware’s doing everything it can in its own laboratory though. Beneath its office in San Francisco’s SOMA district, Director of customer implementation John Kolaczynski showed me around “the integration room”. The garage featured several of the drones Airware works with, from the parachute-landing Delta Y model to the UASUSA Tempest, a bigger winged drone you launch from a bungee cord and that lands on its belly.

To test Airware’s flightcores, the company has a giant machine called an Ideal Aerosmith. A horizontally rotated platter inside a vertically spun chassis pumped full of liquid nitrogen lets Airware test its hardware in any temperature or flight angle. Inside a caged enclosure, Airware keeps more drones, including some from its competitors. Supposedly the fence is to keep track of the drones and make sure no one steals them, but Kolaczynski joked “if they ever become sentient, we know they’re in the cage.”

Drones locked inside the security cage in Airware’s integration room

More Than War Machines

Airware is eagerly anticipating the release of new drone regulations later this year about where drones can be flown, at what altitudes, what sizes of vehicles, and what standards the operators and aircraft have to meet.

Downey tells me “Sometimes people ask me what are my worries about regulations from the FAA. My worries are really about there being no regulations at all because otherwise there will be a lot of bad actors operating in ways that are not reliable and safe.” He knows that it will only take one commercial drone crash that hurts or kills a human to trigger a backlash against the industry. The public is already a bit iffy on drones, which is why “reliable and safe” was the phrase Downey used most during our interview. He peppered it into most sentences where he mentioned the word drones.

Alternatively, Downey fears that if there is stringent regulation that is too focused on paperwork, it could favor giant conglomerates of the aerospace industry and make it tough for startups like Airware to thrive. He tells me “if the regulations are too restrictive, people will either ignore them to an extent, or use the technology internationally, which will apply pressure to go back and make sure the regulations are reasonable.” Since so many of Airware’s customers are overseas anyways, he says the FAA can’t keep it down.

Drones aren’t inherently killing machines. It’s all about how you use them, Downey explains. “I think this is a technology similar to GPS, which was originally developed by the military largely for weapons guidance. If you asked 15 years ago if [people would be] willing to carry a GPS tracking device in their pocket they would have said ‘absolutely not’.” Now we all have them.

Downey concludes, “The more that drones are being used for anti-wildlife poaching, increasing crop yields, and decreasing the use of fertilizers and pesticides, I think people will grow increasingly comfortable with this technology coexisting with them in their everyday lives.”

Центр Нью-Йорка наводнили полуобнаженные любительницы книг

С приходом весны улицы и парки Нью-Йорка наполняются полуобнаженными любительницами чтения. Девушки отнюдь не банальные эксгибиционистки, они активистки движения OCTPFAS.

Созданное 5 лет назад сообщество Outdoor Co-ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society (OCTPFAS) за эти годы разрослось с 6 человек до нескольких тысяч регулярных участниц. Оно объединяет тех, кто любит совмещать любовь к раздеванию по пояс в общественных местах с чтением литературы.

Все началось с того, что в 1992 года власти Нью-Йорка отменили закон, запрещающий разгуливать топлесс, однако до 2011 года желающих воспользоваться правом ходить с обнаженной грудью не находилось. Все изменилось 17 августа 2011 года, именно тогда небольшая компания обнаженных по пояс юных девушек впервые прошлась по Центральному парку. Тот день стал точкой отсчет для движения OCTPFAS, численность которого увеличивается год от года.

Next stop not New York

There's lies, damned lies, and Ryanair press releases

ON MARCH 16th, Ryanair announced to the world that it was planning to offer transatlantic flights. In a statement it revealed:

The board of Ryanair have approved the business plans for future growth, including transatlantic. We are talking to manufacturers about long-haul aircraft but cannot comment further on this. European consumers want lower-cost travel to the USA and the same for Americans coming to Europe. We see it as a logical development in the European market.

That seemed pretty unequivocal. And reporters, including this one, duly mulled over what such a move might mean—particularly given that the world's largest airline by international passengers has frequently boasted that it wants to shake up the market between Europe and North America by, for example, offering flights for €10 ($11).
Alas someone at the airline seems to have jumped the gun. In a brief statement released to the London Stock Exchange yesterday, the carrier rapidly backtracked:

In the light of recent press coverage, the Board of Ryanair Holdings Plc wishes to clarify that it has not considered or approved any transatlantic project and does not intend to do so.

We are all used to taking statements by the carrier with a pinch of salt. Michael O'Leary, the airline's abrasive boss, often makes wild pronouncements—that he plans to make passengers pay to use the toilets on his aircraft, say, or introduce a standing section. Mostly these tend to be about publicity-seeking rather than firm planning. Even so, this latest climbdown seems very strange.

One theory, as we noted in our earlier article, is that while Ryanair is indeed keen to start flying the Atlantic, it is reluctant to do so under its own brand because of the antipathy with which it is held by many European travellers. The Irish Independent suggests that it therefore might prefer to take a majority stake in a new enterprise, or perhaps launch a subsidiary. Hence the confusion in the earlier statement. If there is a lesson, it is that, despite the good copy that Ryanair affords travel commentators, nothing it says should ever be taken as gospel.