Author Archives: Javier Irastorza

August 28, 2015 · 10:50 pm

Carl Lewis, the jumper

I read earlier today an article claiming that Usain Bolt might be the best athlete ever (here, in Spanish). I do not want to dispute that with this post; by the number of olympic and world championship medals he has won and the records he has set, he might be so. However, in that article the author compared Usain Bolt (the runner) with Carl Lewis the runner. However, it happens that Carl Lewis was much more than a runner, he was a long jumper. In this blog post I just want to put into perspective the size of Carl Lewis as a jumper.

I will again base the analysis on the following terrific website with all time best performances in track and field (maintained by Peter Larsson (1)). In the following two graphics you can see the best ~2200 and the best ~180 long jumps *ever*. The red dots correspond to Carl Lewis’ jumps.

Best ever ~2200 long jumps, focus on Carl Lewis.

Best ever ~180 long jumps, focus on Carl Lewis.

Carl Lewis retired in 1997. His last great competition was the Olympic Games of Atlanta in 1996 (where, by the way, he collected a gold medal with a 8.50m jump at age 35).

Now, in 2015, 18 years later, of the best 184 long jumps ever (all those at or above 8.50m), 55 of those jumps (a 30%) correspond to Carl Lewis. I let you to qualify the feat.

The runs (100m and 200m) Carl Lewis did in the 80s would probably not win him any gold medal today; his jumps would still win him almost every gold medal today.

That was Carl Lewis the jumper.

Finally, after having highlighted the talent of Carl Lewis as a jumper, I wanted to recall that several times along the past years we have read news indicating that Usain Bolt was going to venture into either long jump (here) or 400m (here), he hasn’t done so far (not in big events, at least). This is not a criticism. Without a doubt, he is the best sprinter ever. However, athletics is much more than sprinting… (2)

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(1) I already used this magnificent source when I analyzed Rotterdam marathon times, here.

(2) Personally, I would always pick a marathoner ;-).

Edit [28/08/2015]

(3) I believe it would be interesting to share the World Championship long jump competition of 1991, when Mike Powell managed to set a new long jump world record (8.95m), 22 years after Bob Beamon had set the previous one in Mexico DF (8.90). Find the explanation from the Wikipedia here. Despite of losing it, Carl Lewis managed the following four jumps in that competition: 8.91 (wind aided, therefore it doesn’t count for world record and best ever jumps), 8.87, 8.84, 8.68 and 8.56. The first 3 jumps would have won *any* competition in history except 3, including the two world records referred. Unluckily for Lewis, these jumps got him only a silver medal.

(4) Better still, see it here:

3 Comments

Filed under Sports

Tagged as athletics, Carl Lewis, long jump, Peter Larsson, running, sprinter, track and field, Usain Bolt

August 10, 2015 · 8:00 am

Wide-body mix in 17 years of Boeing CMOs

Two years ago, I wrote a post showing the puzzling change in Boeing’s predicted mix of twin-aisle sales, between small and medium wide-bodies (“Wide-body mix in 15 years of Boeing CMOs”) (1). A few days ago I wrote a post about the publishing by Boeing of its Current Market Outlook for 2015-2034. As I noted in that post, this year’s CMO is consistent with last year’s figures, i.e., the larger share of the forecasted market corresponds to small wide-bodies (787s from Boeing’s perspective). Recall the numbers:

small wide-bodies: 4,500 a/c in CMO2015 (passenger aircraft only),
medium wide-bodies: 2,990 a/c in CMO2015 (same figure as in CMO2014).

In the sub-segment of the medium wide-bodies passenger aircraft figures for have remained constant and there is a slight increase in freighters (60 a/c); whereas for small wide-bodies the main increase is seen in the passenger aircraft (+230 a/c).

Since I keep a collection of CMOs from many years, I will include again a comparison going 17 years back…

Twin-aisle mix distribution (Boeing CMO 1998-2015, includes both passenger and freighter aircraft).

Seeing at the graphic, made using Boeing’s forecasts’ figures:

During the first 5 years (1998-2003) the trends are quite constant, seeing medium wide-bodies a slightly higher demand.
From 2003 to 2007, the mix is reverted, possibly to favour the launch of the 787.
In 2008 the CMO did not provide the split.
From 2009 to 2013, you can see that both trends in the forecasts are erratic… why? Only Boeing knows. (2)
From 2013 to 2015, it seems that the trends are stabilized again in a higher demand for 787-size aircraft.

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(1) Last year, I made an update of that post with the consolidated view of the last 16 years, find it here.

(2) A speculation: a Boeing-internal need to sell the concept of the 777X?

Review of Boeing Current Market Outlook 2015

Just ahead of Paris air show, Boeing Commercial published its yearly update of the Current Market Outlook (CMO) for the next 20 years of commercial aircraft market (2015-2034).

I have just compared the figures for passenger aircraft of the last two years’ CMOs:

CMO 2015 vs 2014 comparison.

Some comments to it:

You can see that the total number of new aircraft delivered has slightly increased from 35,930 to 37,130, a 3.3%, which is consistent with the 4.9% traffic increase (1) that Boeing predicts (2).
The volume (Bn$) increases by a larger percentage, 6% (320Bn$)… this is due mainly to the increase in:
- single-aisle aircraft expected sales in volume (8%, +210Bn$) and aircraft (+210), and
- small wide-body segment with 230 more aircraft (+5%) and an increase in volume of 100Bn$ (+9%).
Two years ago, I wrote about a sudden change between CMO 2013 and CMO 2012 of the mix in wide-bodies; in this respect, CMO 2015 is consistent with last year’s one, showing simply a slight increase in demand for both sub-segments.
Interesting to note how Boeing continues to downplay the large aircraft segment (-16% in terms of number of aircraft) at the moment when a A380neo is discussed.

This year study’s figures and presentation focus on single-aisle (737 MAX, “fuelling forecast”) and small wide-bodies (787, “re-shaping long-haul marketplace”), the products to be pushed by the sales force.

Find below the nice infographic [PDF, 2.1MB] that the guys from Boeing have put up together:

Boeing Commercial Aviation Market Forecast 2015-2034 infographic.

As always, I recommend going through the CMO, as you can learn a lot about the business: from global numbers, to growth, traffic figures, fleet distributions, forecasts, etc… You may find the presentation [PDF, 3.8 MB], a file [XLS, 0.6 MB] with all the data or the full CMO report [PDF, 6.5MB].

For a comparison between this CMO and the respective Airbus’ GMF we will have to wait until after the summer, when Airbus publishes its update. Until then, find here the comparison based on 2014 market studies.

This year together with the CMO, Boeing provides two interesting papers from a couple of years ago: “Key Findings on Airplane Economic Life“ [PDF, 0.3MB, dating from August 2013] and “A Discussion of the Capacity Supply -Demand Balance within the Global Commercial Air Transport Industry“ [PDF, 0.6MB, dating from August 2013].

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(1) Traffic increased measured in RPKS (revenue passenger kilometers) in billions.

(2) These two ratios, 3.3% fleet demand and 4.9% traffic growth, point to an implicit increase in the average size of the aircraft in fleet and / or a higher utilization of the aircraft (higher availability).

(3) Find the reviews I wrote comparing 2014 CMO with 2013 CMO and 2013 CMO with 2012 CMO.

2 Comments

Filed under Aerospace & Defence

Tagged as aircraft, aircraft market, Boeing, CMO, Current Market Outlook, forecast, Randy Tinseth

August 6, 2015 · 11:30 pm

Hiroshima & Nagasaki, Enola Gay & Bockscar, Little Boy & Fat Man… National Museum of the Air Force

Today, August 6th, in 1945 the Boeing B-29 Superfortress “Enola Gay” dropped over Hiroshima (Japan) the first nuclear bomb, “Little Boy“, used in combat. I guess you have had the chance to read about it in several places along the day. A couple of years ago I wrote a post about that story touching it from different points of view that I had experienced in the previous years: Hiroshima Peace Site, Manhattan Project, Einstein’s “The World as I see it“, Genbaku Dome, Sadako Sasaki’s origami, the “Enola Gay“, Enola Gay’s Navigator’s Log replica at Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson…

… last November, we visited the National Museum of the Air Force (1) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. That museum enables the visitor to get more close-up experiences to the story of that August 6th of 1945.

As several other aerospace museums it counts with its own B-29 Superfortress… however, if the Enola Gay is displayed at National Air & Space Museum at Dulles, this one displayed at the National Museum of the Air Force (Dayton) is “Bockscar“, the aircraft which dropped the “Fat Man” atomic bomb on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, three days after the atomic attack against Hiroshima. You can read about Bockscar in the site of the museum, here.

Bockscar, the B-29 which dropped “Fat Man” atomic bomb over Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.

At Pima Air and Space Museum (Tucson) you could see a replica of Little Boy, however at National Museum of the Air Force (Dayton) they have in display a full size (a 4.4 tonnes, 3m-long bomb) replica of it:

Full size replica of atomica bomb Little Boy, launched over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

Full size replica of atomic bomb Little Boy, launched over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

Seeing the bomber B-29 Superfortress from up close is impressive, even more if they are either the Enola Gay or Bockscar, but a completely different experience is going inside the cabin of a B-29. At the National Museum of the Air Force (Dayton) they have at the exhibit dedicated to the Korean War a B-29 walk-through fuselage in display. See here its virtual tour.

B-29 fuselage.

See below some of the pictures we took of the inside:

My brother Jaime in the cockpit of a B-29.

Flight engineer’s panel of a B-29.

Bomb bay of a B-29.

My brother Jaime walking down the bomb bay of a B-29.

Actually, you can get very close to experiencing that by going to the virtual tour at the National Museum of the Air Force (Dayton), where you can go through all sections of the bomber B-29 Superfortress Bockscar. Find the link here.

B-29 Superfortress Bockscar virtual tour.

Finally, see a map displaying US Army Air Forces operations in the Pacific at the time:

Map of US Air Force Pacific operations.

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(1) I haven’t yet written a post about that museum in this blog but my brother Jaime has, find it here; a superb piece of aeronautics information.

Switching jobs to A330neo programme

About four and half-year ago I announced in this blog that I was coming to work to France. I will use this communication channel again to inform those of you who don’t know it, that about a month ago I switched jobs within Airbus Group: I moved from Airbus Defence and Space A400M programme to Airbus Commercial A330neo programme.

Let me share a couple of pictures to depict the move:

A400M at ILA Berlin airshow in 2012.

A330neo artistic image.

Change of lanyards and key chains… a basic integration exercise…

I will nevertheless keep a close eye in A400M, a programme where I spent the last 5 years working on it…

My first flight on-board the A400M.

2 Comments

Filed under Aerospace & Defence

Tagged as A330neo, A400M, job

August 5, 2015 · 8:30 am

La corrida pedestre de Toulouse (2015)

About a month ago, on the evening of July 3rd, it took place the XVI edition of the “Corrida Pedestre de Toulouse“, arguably the most popular race in the region with a participation of about 5,000 runners among the two distances, 3 and 10km (4,089 finishers in the 10km).

In the previous post I stressed how satisfying the experience is of running a race end to end in the company of friends. In the case of this race, I was lucky enough to have my friend Jose visiting us in Toulouse (being an aerospace professor, he made a study trip to Airbus during those days). Thus, we subscribed together to the race and we ran it again end to end together (1).

The Corrida is always a nice run as it goes through all the main streets of Toulouse. This year the organization had announced a revised circuit which had been measured again (2). Strangely enough during the race itself the circuit was also different to what had been announced! [PDF, 782KB] See it below:

Announced circuit for the 2015 edition.

Real circuit we followed (note the difference in the second loop).

But the essence of the race is kept: very good atmosphere in Capitole square both before and after the race, the chance of running through the main streets of downtown Toulouse (Alsace Lorrain, Saint-Rome, Metz, Quai de Tunis, Pont Neuf, Pont Saint Pierre…) emptied of cars for the occasion.

My friend Jose and I finished in the 534th and 535th positions in ~46’19” (that is among the first 13% runners; though that is aided by the amount of casual runners who take to the streets on this day). That is about 3 minutes slower than it took me last year.

Jose and I running the last metres (right side of the photo).

Within Airbus, we also arranged a team of above 30 runners to take part in the race, with the result of winning the companies challenge with accumulated time among our first 5 runners of 3h20’27”!

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(1) To be honest, I lost him at the km 7 when he took some 10 metres of advantage that extended to some 50m by the 9th kilometre, but he then waited for me so we effectively completed the last stretch together again.

(2) In the previous years there had been complaints that the circuit was shorter than 10km. That had also been my experience (9.63km).

Madrid Marathon (MAPOMA) 2015

“Happiness only real when shared”, Christopher McCandless (1)

On April 26 (2015) I completed my 12th marathon (2) by running the Marathon of Madrid, 15 years after having completed the first in the same place. My friend Jose and my brother Jaime completed there their 1oth marathon.

We have run together several marathons: Paris, Berlin, Rome, Athens, Rotterdam, New York, Sevilla… the fact is that we have not run any of those together from the start to the end (3). For these reasons we had decided in the previous days that this time, we would run it together from the beginning to the end, no matter what happened.

After the bad experience in Sevilla, I had found it difficult to find the motivation to train. However, a couple of weeks after Sevilla, I beat my personal best in half marathon and managed to complete a good mileage prior to Madrid. I thus felt that I arrived to Madrid in a good shape. On the other hand, Madrid hasn’t got the best profile to attempt a personal best.

Madrid marathon profile.

Thus, we decided to take it rather easy. Our quick strategy was something like: run at about 5’20″/km the first climb (7km) then run 5′ till the half marathon, close to that pace till the entrance of the Casa de Campo (~26km), take it easy there, exit it and do the final 6km climb as we can… thinking we could finish in about 3h45′ doing that.

Madrid marathon route.

… and that is what we did. Give or take some seconds to the paces, and softening a bit more in the second half. Our final net time was about 4h02′, but you would have to discount about 9′ to have the time we were actually running as we had a rather long pit stop at km. 13. Discount those minutes and we would have been at some 3h53′, just a few minutes above the target.

Time splits.

My brother Jaime wrote a very detailed post here about how the race developed. I suggest you to read it.

The marathon in Madrid normally is rather hard. It was a pleasant experience this time. Running together with friends. Not being mentally pressured by the time. Running at home; knowing what would be after almost every turn, how long and how hard the climbs would be, where one could relax the legs… The rain, heavy rain at several moments, made it only better. More epic in a way. Helping each other in the last kilometres, cheering my fellow runners. And finally crossing the finish line, sprinting in the Retiro park where I have trained so often with Jaime. As he said to end his blog post,

It was an honour to run with you

: Big time in this finish line.

: Enjoying the final metres.

: Posing after receiving our deserved medals.

: Final stretch.

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(1) In a previous post, “Running in the Incles’ valley“, I described the joy of running alone in the mountains. I then compared it with what the experiences of Christopher McCandless, the man about whom the story of the movie “Into the wild” is based. I quote here one of his latest sentences.

(2) Not counting Millau in 2011 (100km) nor Sevilla 2015 (not completed).

(3) I completed Millau together with Jose in 2011, and I have completed several San Silvestre with Jaime.

5 Comments

Filed under Sports

Tagged as MAPOMA 2015, marathon, Marathon Madrid 2015, Maraton de Madrid 2015, Retiro park, running

July 17, 2015 · 8:00 am

Montech water slope (Pente d’eau) at Canal du Midi

The Canal du Midi (1) connects the Mediterranean sea with the Atlantic Ocean. It was built at the end of the XVII century under the supervision of Pierre-Paul Riquet. At the time it was one of the most remarkable civil engineering works and that has deserved its recognition as an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Along the canal there are plenty of beautiful spots and some oddities. Some weeks ago, we visited one of the latter ones: the Pente d’eau of Montech, that is, a water slope. What is a water slope?

When two water streams at different heights need to be connected we are used to see water locks (think of the Panama Canal, or Suez). In the Canal du Midi there are dozens of locks (65 to be precise). However, engineers in the 1970s employed a time-saving different approach. Instead of having the boats go through 5 such locks at Montech they constructed in parallel a water slope, thus saving 45 minutes in the route.

Canal du Midi to the right, water slope to the left.

See below the panel with the explanation of the concept at Montech:

Explanation of the water slope (in French).

See here the explanation given by the Wikipedia.

See below a couple of pictures showing the diesel locomotives and the canal.

: Two diesel locomotives from behind and gate acting as valve.

: Canal, slop and two diesel locomotives.

See here a good scheme to ease the visualization of the concept prepared by the L’Association Culture Loisirs Entente Sport (LACLES, see here their blog post with the complete explanation).

Water slope scheme (prepared by L’Association Culture Loisirs Entente Sport)

Unfortunately, the water slope is not working nowadays. Nevertheless it’s worth a visit to the place, to get a glimpse of such an engineering feat.

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(1) To be precise the Canal du Midi (originally named “Canal royal en Languedoc”) connects the Mediterranean sea with the river Garonne in Toulouse. From there, another canal, the “Canal Latéral de la Garonne” makes the connection to the Garonne itself at Bordeaux, where it is navigable down to the Atlantic Ocean. The combination of both canals is called “Canal des Deux Mers“.

3 Comments

Filed under France

Tagged as Canal de Garonne, Canal du Midi, France, Montech, Pente d'eau de Montech, Pierre-Paul Riquet, Water slope

July 16, 2015 · 8:00 am

Running in the Incles’ valley (Andorra)

Last weekend, we took the opportunity of July 14^th being a national holiday in France to make a short 4-day trip to Andorra. We selected Andorra, in the middle of the Pyrenees Mountains, in order to escape from the hot weather of Toulouse.

On Saturday and Sunday we did some activities including trekking, but with Andrea being just below 2 years it was difficult to cover any meaningful distance.

As I always do, I took my running gear in the suitcase just in case. And on Sunday evening I decided to go out for a run on Monday early morning…

Beginning of the run / trail, at 6h40am.

… I woke up at 6am, quickly dressed, ate a toast, some orange juice and took the car to go from our rented apartment in El Tarter to the beginning of the Incles river valley. From there a short 3-km route (“easy”) departs to the end of the road CS-270 where the “bar d’Antoine” is located. The previous day we had done that stretch by a touristic electric bus, and it was that hop that triggered the idea. I parked the car and just equipped with the running gear, a baseball cap (Oakland Athletics), a 400mL plastic bottle of water in one hand and a photo camera in the other, I went to complete that Incles’ valley route followed by another one “Lakes of Siscaro” (“medium”) and back.

In all it was just over 13.3km, with about 800m of positive climb (an average slope of +18% in the last 3.8 kilometres to the summit), reaching up to 2560m, leaving the Siscaro lakes (at an altitude of 2325m) behind to complete the climb up to the mountain ridge to see what was at the other side. It took me about 1h20’ to climb (the 2 routes estimated at 45’ + 1h45’) and 1h10’ to come back, in all 2h27’. I made several short stops to take pictures, videos, talk to a Frenchman who was enjoying a morning sandwich at the top of the climb and to take a refreshing bath at one of the lakes in the way back.

Climb elevation of the run.

Map of the Incles valley.

On the way up, I only saw a man waking up at the Siscaro refuge (~2140m) and the above-mentioned Frenchman at the very top. Other than that the experience was running and climbing for almost 7km alone in the mountains just listening to the water, birds and some other animal, while watching to the changing colours and lights of the dawn. It felt a little bit like the character of the movie “Into the wild”.

At some point climbing at ~7h30am.

On the way down, apart from falling twice, it was much lighter if not easier. I crossed paths with several fully-equipped mountaineers who at about 9am still had ahead of them some 3 to 6 hours of trek (if wanted to complete the same route than I did).

View at the other side of the ridge.

When I got back to the parking lot at the bottom of the valley, I changed t’shirts, drank from a bottle of water I had left in the car and felt like “when is the next such solitary mountain climb?”

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

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P.S.: Finally, I just wanted to share this video I made for a friend, Maicol, just before taking a bath at the lake.

2 Comments

Filed under Sports, Travelling

Tagged as climbing, Incles valley, running, Siscaro lakes, trekking, Vall d'Incles

June 7, 2015 · 8:00 am

Odd examples of price discounts

A quick post to share a couple of odd examples of price discounts based on quantity that I recently found:

Mugs prices at the Museum Espace Air Passion.

The advertisement clearly indicates that preferential prices are given from the 3rd mug. Let’s see: the first and second sell for 7€ each. The 3rd one comes for an extra 4€. So far, so good. Then the 4th mug is sold for another 7€… (!?) where is the preferential pricing? The fifth and subsequent mugs come for extra 5€ each. See it graphically below:

Mugs’ prices.

Think of a group of friends wanting to pool their purchase to lower the cost. If three friends had already decided to buy a mug, they would pay 18€, or 6€. If then came a fourth friend saying that she also wanted to join the group to buy a mug cheaper than the single one for 7€, the other 3 would have an incentive to reject her, as they would then have to pay 6.25€…

Let’s see this other example.

Flight prices at the Aeroclub du Sarladais.

It comes from the colleagues at the Aeroclub du Sarladais. Here there are prices for short flight excursions. They offer 3 different flight durations with different prices for 1, 2 or 3 passengers. If more than 1 passenger flies, there is a discount. As there are several options, I prefer to use a table rather than a graphic to show what caught my attention:

Flights prices.

In this case, in two of the cases, the marginal price to be paid by the 3rd passenger is more expensive than that to be paid by the 2nd passenger (I highlighted them in red). However, the oddity is not so striking as the average price to be paid by 3 passengers is always cheaper than the one to be paid by 2 passengers, thus, there is no economical incentive for 2 friends rejecting a 3rd wanting to join them in the experience of flying (good!).

I also found a more subtle issue with the pricing per minute for the 30 minute flights. Let’s see it with the flights for 1 passenger:

15′ sell for 45€, that is 3€ per minute.
20′ sell for 55€, that is 2.75€ per minute.
30′ sell for 80€, that is 2.67€ per minute.

So far, so good, however, if you look at the marginal prices of the added flight time:

20′-15′ = 5′, for 55€- 45€ = 10€, that is 2€ per minute.
30′-20′ = 10′, for 80€- 55€ = 25€, that is 2.5€ per minute. Why are these minutes more expensive? 🙂

1 Comment

Filed under Economy

Tagged as discounts, marginal price, pricing

Author Archives: Javier Irastorza

Carl Lewis, the jumper

Wide-body mix in 17 years of Boeing CMOs

Review of Boeing Current Market Outlook 2015

Hiroshima & Nagasaki, Enola Gay & Bockscar, Little Boy & Fat Man… National Museum of the Air Force

Switching jobs to A330neo programme

La corrida pedestre de Toulouse (2015)

Madrid Marathon (MAPOMA) 2015

Montech water slope (Pente d’eau) at Canal du Midi

Running in the Incles’ valley (Andorra)

Odd examples of price discounts

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