Freedoms of the air are a set of commercial aviation rights that grant an air operator to enter a country’s airspace. They include the following: First Freedom The right to fly over a foreign country without landing. Second Freedom The right to refuel or carry out maintenance in a foreign country without embarking or disembarking…
The Convention on International Civil Aviation, also known as the Chicago Convention, established the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), on the 7th of December 1944. ICAO’s core mandate, then as today, was to help member states achieve the highest possible degree of uniformity in civil aviation regulations, standards, procedures, and organization. In a big way it has achieved this,…
The Airbus A320 aircraft has three independent hydraulic circuits, namely Green, Yellow, and Blue. Each of these circuits delivers a constant hydraulic fluid pressure of 3000 psi (20684271.88 N/m2, 20684.27188 kPa), to power numerous aircraft components. They are all driven independently and have separate reservoirs to ensure redundancy in case of failure of one or…
SkydrolTM is a phosphate ester-based hydraulic fluid manufactured in the United States by Eastman Chemical Company based in Kingsport, Tennessee. It contains several oil additives dissolved into a phosphate ester base to make it highly corrosion resistant and fire resistant, then dyed purple mainly to help become identifiable. These excellent properties have made it among…
Standards and Recommended Practices for Aircraft Accident Inquiries were first adopted on 11th April 1951, pursuant to Article 37 of the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation (1944), and were designated as Annex 13 to the Convention. The Standards and Recommended Practices for Aircraft Accident and Incident Investigation defines an accident as an occurrence associated…
Annex 7 of the International Civil Aviation Organization highlights the minimum standards for the display of marks on aircraft to indicate nationality and registration. These standards were adopted pursuant to the provisions of Article 37 of the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation (1944) and became effective on the 1st of July 1949. Annex 7…
Ask any avgeek about Boeing, and their eyes will instantly light up! Boeing is undoubtedly one of the largest global aerospace manufacturers, a builder of commercial jetliners, fighters, bombers, rotorcrafts, autonomous aircraft, spacecrafts, and even missiles. Boeing is a name that the world has over the years become acquainted to, for all the right reasons…
Airbus largely introduced us to digital fly-by-wire technology using its A320 fleet in 1988. Fly-by-wire technology, abbreviated FBW, is a flight control system that makes use of computers to relay pilots inputs in the flight deck to the flight control surfaces. It replaces mechanical linkage, thus eliminating use of pilot force to move the control…
An airplane covered in blue and white, much like what you get when you view the flat snow-covered top of Mt Kilimanjaro against a cloudless sky background. They call it “The Wings of Kilimanjaro”. That’s Air Tanzania, popularly referred to locally as Kampuni ya Ndege ya Tanzania! To understand how Air Tanzania actually exists, we…
Uganda Airlines is the plane with a crane on its tail, hence its callsign “Crested“. It operates from its company headquarters at Entebbe International Airport (ICAO: HUEN, IATA: EBB), right on the shores of Lake Victoria. It is a very colourful company as evidenced by its livery, which mirrors the colours of the national flag…
