Air New Zealand’s debuted a spiffy in-flight safety video, and it’s exactly what I’d want to watch right before takeoff – because nothing inspires calm and connotes stability like the spastic antics of glittery reanimated dance-corpse Richard Simmons. More »
When you’re flying 90 odd hours just to get to Auckland from the States, you’d be wanting to charge your iPod or laptop at least once. Air New Zealand’s done a major overhaul of its Boeing 777 plane, with sockets and USB ports galore. More »
Remember back in June how Air New Zealand announced it was going to be trialling a biofuel mix in a 747 aircraft based on the jatropha plant? Well, they did it, and according to The Register, everything went off without a hitch. The plane used a 50-50 mixture of the biofuel and regular fuel in one engine, while the other three all had regular fuel running through them. They tested out a series of mid-air manoeuvres like engines stops, restarts, and got full power from the biofuel mix.
OK, OK, so the weed in question is actually the jatropha plant, a weed indigenous to India and Africa. But still! Air New Zealand is planning to fill one of the four engines of a 747 with the weed and the remaining three engines with normal jet fuel to test the potential of using jatropha as a biofuel.
