May 26, 2011 · 8:00 am

National Air & Space Museum at Dulles

Let me quote from the Wikipedia:

“The Smithsonian Institution was founded for the “increase and diffusion of knowledge” from a bequest to the United States by the British scientist James Smithson (1765–1829), who never visited the new nation. In Smithson’s will, he stated that should his nephew, Henry James Hungerford, die without heirs, the Smithson estate would go to the government of the United States to create an “Establishment for the increase & diffusion of Knowledge among men”.

“The Smithsonian Institution is the largest museum complex in the world, and many of its buildings are historical and architectural landmarks.”

During our last trip to USA, Luca and I visited both locations of the National Air & Space Museum of the Smithsonian institution. I had already been at the one in the Mall and I already talked about it briefly in a previous post. I wanted to write about the museum at Dulles, close to DC international airport.

That museum is named after Steven F. Udvar Hazy, who is the CEO of Air Lease Corp, an airplanes leasing company. Previously he was chairman and CEO of ILFC, another leasing company, together with GECAS, one of the 2 biggest. The guy is a living legend or commercial markets: when he blessed or criticizes an aircraft it is seriously noticed by the manufacturers. He donated 65M$ to the Smithsonian to set up this museum and that’s why it carries his name. Thanks Steve! What a museum! The NASM is awesome!

The museum has dozens if not over a hundred of airplanes, satellites, rockets, helicopters, etc., in display, all tagged with small explanation of the aircraft.

On our visit we joined a free guided tour, another fabulous feature of the museum. Our guide was Bill Laux, a veteran pilot from the Navy. He was originally from Omaha where we would be going in a couple of days while he would be heading also in a couple of days to Belgium… crossing roads.

We stayed with Bill for about 2 hours, following one explanation after the other, one curiosity here, another detail there, etc. I remember visiting Ellis Island in NYC 2 years ago with a ranger who also filled the tour with stories. This is something I really like: instead of paying for a quick tour or audio-guide, they make use of the willingness of these volunteers to pass on their knowledge.

I have to admit that the session was for core aviation geeks, and I want to commend Luca for standing it. At the beginning we were a group of 10-12 people, wives and children included. The guide asked: “Who has got an aerospace background?” 4 or so of us raised hands… after 30 minutes of tour only Luca and those with aviation background continued with the tour (no sight of wives and children). After 1 hour 30 minutes, only Luca and me. After 2 hours the guide went “well, we’ve seen pretty much everything” :-). Thanks Bill!

I scanned one of the sides of the map of the museum to post it here. The map covers the Boeing hangar, but bear in mind that there is another hangar missing (James S McDonnell, which hosts a Space Shuttle), an IMAX cinema, the restoration hangar and the control tower.

I wanted to post it here so you can get a grasp of what we’re talking about. Airplanes packed side by side, one of top of the other… and not any airplane, some are unique pieces. Let me just comment on a few of them (of which below you can find the pictures):

  • The Space shuttle Enterprise: which never went to outer space as it was used only for training purposes, to let astronauts command the powerless flight after re-entry. Believe it or not, it was going to be named “Constitution”, trekkies had not stepped in.
  • A Lockheed SR-71A Blackbird: the reconnaissance aircraft which set the record as fastest aircraft back in 1976.
  • The Boeing 367-80 “Dash-80”, which as I already mentioned in a previous post, was the prototype Boeing built to test and market a new configuration for commercial jet aircraft, a configuration which all commercial aircraft have followed more or less ever since.
  • A Concorde.
  • The famous B-29 Enola Gay.
  • The Langley Aerodrome A: a model that Samuel Pierpont Langley (a manned flight pioneer and secretary of the Smithsonian institution at the time) used to try to set the first heavier-than-air flight… he didn’t, as the model crashed in the Potomac river.
  • A Junkers 52 built by the Spanish CASA.
  • A Boeing 307 Stratoliner: the first pressurized commercial aircraft.

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I would only give one point of improvement for the museum: now you cannot get into the aircraft except for simulators, if they would just change that policy it would be just perfect (in the Mall you can actually enter in some models, e.g. Spacelab).

I forgot to mention some extras: the museum is free (free as in zero dollars), it has a transport leaving every hour to and from Dulles airport which costs just 50 cents, has lockers for big luggage free of charge, has a nice souvenir shop with plenty of aviation books and even a McDonald’s to recover some strength at half way of the visit…

In future posts I will comment some of the details of some aircraft… give credit to Bill, our guide.

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May 25, 2011 · 7:00 am

Toastmasters D59 2011 Spring Conference (#tm59)

I belong to a couple of Toastmasters clubs in Madrid and Toulouse. Within the organization, clubs are gathered in areas, areas in divisions and divisions in districts. My clubs are part of District 59 which during last weekend it held the spring conference.

District 59 comprises continental Europe. It is now composed of 190 clubs, having grown from 53 in 2001! (or ~14% compounded annual growth during the last decade) and over 5,300 members. At the event we were about 300 Toastmasters (just over 5% of the population), in which had been the largest District conference in the history of the district.

The weekend was great. I started on Friday by going for a sightseeing 10km run through Lisbon as we would not have any time out of the conference. Then, I together with another ~60 members attended a wonderful workshop by Darren LaCroix which I described in a previous post.

This was followed by which it’ll be my last DECM (or District Executive Committee Meeting, as Area Governor of H2) for a while. There it was decided that in the next District Conference there will be semi-finals to shorten the Saturday speech contest (the conference itself was moved to 25-27 November, in Basel, Switzerland). The District is performing well, now ranking #2 of ~80 districts in the World, though it won’t be recognised unless more CCs and ACs are achieved (Competent and Advance Communicator awards). Then the conference itself started.

This was a special event as Pat Johnson, Toastmasters international president, was also present. She gave two keynote speeches: one about the typical Toastmaster member (to discover there isn’t such in TM diversity) and another one on leadership (“It’s amazing how much you can get done if you don’t care about who gets the credit”, H. Truman), both very good presentations, full of insight and experiences.

Toastmasters 2.0

One important thing to note is that this has been the first conference to be widely tweeted. I had attended other Toastmasters conferences in which only some members were tweeting the event, but in this one tweeting was openly encouraged by Jack Vincent, the moderator of the District account (@Toastmasters59), and proved to be a success. Check it out searching the hash tag #tm59 for everything related to the District or #tmlx11 for that particular conference related matters.

On Sunday morning there was a panel discussion about experiences of using the web in Toastmasters. I especially liked the information shared by Marina Lussich, from her club, Barcelona TM. They got to incorporate the use of the web into the Competent Leader manual by assigning roles as “blogger of the day”, etc, which are taken into account for the CL award. Great idea!

In that session it was also raised the possibility of getting sponsors to cover the costs for the streaming of the conference in the future (privacy issues of contestants should be taken into account). It could be interesting for Basel.

Contests

Finally, the most important part of the weekend: the contests. Again we had the chance of witnessing 2 fabulous contests. The Evaluation Contest results were:

  1. John Zimmer,
  2. Olivia Schofield,
  3. Dermot Greene.

The International Speech contest results were:

  1. Olivia Schofield, who will get to represent D59 at the International Convention in Las Vegas!
  2. Peter Zinn,
  3. Gerard Penalosa.

Congratulations to all contestants!

Once again: The organization of the event was superb: The venue, the rooms, the availability of free wi-fi, meals, soundtrack of the event, characterization of the conference chair as Henry the Navigator, performance of a university Tuna group, the Gala Dinner, the helpdesk, etc… Congratulations guys! After having been in 3 conferences organized by you, you rock and keep getting better!

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May 24, 2011 · 7:00 am

Stage time, stage time, stage time

Darren LaCroix is a Toastmasters member who won the World championship of public speaking in 2001. Last Friday, I attended a workshop on public speaking that he gave in Lisbon, just before our District 59 Spring conference.

The guy is impressive. The 3-hour workshop was fantastic. The deal was truly value for money.

He explained his story more or less in his winning speech from 2001, repeated at an event of the NSA in the following video:

10 years later, he is even better… but he wasn’t always like that. During the weekend he played another video of himself in the late 80´s. He was then a disaster of a public speaker. He then went on a journey of studying the best speakers and working hard to improve until being what he is today. This sounds very much as the American dream story… but having seen the video back then and seeing the dozens of shelves filled of videos and cassettes of speeches that he went through in those 10 years, there is little doubt of the truthfulness of that story. As he said “I use the tool of Toastmasters better than most”.

Some takeaways of the workshop

I will leave below some of the notes I took during the workshop, to share them with you and to have them properly stored for myself (still, if you get the chance of attending one of his workshops, do yourself the favour and book a place in it). Many of them are quotes either from him or from his coaches, sometimes I didn’t get right the source.

The most important part of a presentation: “The thought process in the audience’s mind”.

He introduced the concept of “salting” a presentation: getting your audience to want to hear your message before you deliver it (building up curiosity, tension).

The 4 most important habits to create:

  1. Never turn down stage time (he even subscribed to 4 different club to “quadruple his failure rate”).
  2. Record yourself every time (“yeah, it’s hard to listen to yourself… but guess who we have to listen to!”).
  3. Be confident enough to be humble.
  4. You must crave feedback.

“Habits are like train tracks: take a long time to put in place but once there they’ll take you anywhere”, Patricia Fripp.

On nervousness before an audience: “Did anyone come here to watch me fail?”

“Skill set without mindset will get your audience upset”.

Sometimes emphasizing is de-emphasizing (from the lyrics of some U2 song).

“Clarity and simplicity”, for the audience. Use the stage with a purpose.

“Don’t add humour, uncover humour”. Not especially in favour of adding others’ jokes, if you do that you have to say so.

If you are inauthentic and the audience senses that, they won’t follow you.

“Connect before you can educate, entertain and persuade” (he had greeted 90% of the audience individually before starting the workshop). As a curiosity he mentioned the movie “Avatar”, in which the creatures are connected through hair and ponytails, e.g. “the horse chooses the rider”, in the same way the goal of the speaker is to get the audience to like him.

For professional speakers the pay has to be a side effect.

We are not taught how to incorporate feedback.

“Toastmasters slogan should be: `The best place to make mistakes´”.

“The difference between good and great speakers is 100 speeches”, Dale Carnegie. An average Toastmaster member gives 3-4 speeches per year (it’d take 25 years to give 100). Take every opportunity you have to give speeches. He delivered his winning speech 22 times in the 3.5 months previous to the competition. “What is your stage time rate?”; join more clubs.

“Speaking as a dialogue, not a monologue”. Use pauses to give people time to reflect, especially when speaking to people of different cultures and when you ask rhetorical questions. Since pauses are uncomfortable for the speaker, give yourself something to do mentally, e.g. counting “1001, 1002, 1003…” (Internal dialogue)

Use stories

“Jesus did not use Power Point… he used parables”. Tell one to make a point; then another one to make another point. Use very clear transitions between stories. Be careful of narrating the story: not good to step in and out of the story. “Take us, don’t tell us”. A story goes directly into the subconscious.

“What can you do to tell the story without words?”. The emotion is in the eyes (“eye-motion”). Reaction tells the story.

In a story: at least one of the characters has to change the emotion from the beginning to the end. Focus on telling better stories. The audience needs to know who is speaking: the best way to achieve it is by using the name of the recipient of the message in the dialogue (no need to change position, just a heel-turn).

V.A.K.S. = Visual Auditory Kinesthetic Smell (strongest one is describing smell)

Invite the audience into the scene (use “you”). “I / you ratio”: Even when telling a personal story, use more times the pronoun “you”.

“Tap and transport”: ask a question about a personal memory of the audience and then bring them into your story (they’ll relate what you say with their story, it’ll be their story). Once telling the story is better to use present tense. Do not ask “How many of you…?”, use instead “Have you…?”, the test is that you would never ask to a friend in a 1-to-1 conversation “How many of you?”.

“It doesn’t matter what you see, it matters what the audience see when you say it”, Patricia Fripp.

Not in favour of memorizing a speech (internalize it). Never give a speech in front of a mirror. Do not memorize gestures (inauthentic).

What do you want the audience to do / think / feel after hearing your speech? You must be able to phrase that message in 10 words or less.

On the use of simple vocabulary/grammar: “the audience wants you present, not perfect”.

Hold the silence before starting the speech (shows confidence): the “Ed Tate scan”. How stable you are in the first 30 seconds tells the audience how stable the message is.

Let it go. The true story is not so important. You may have to twist some details or cut some parts.

Opening: CSI beginning, i.e. directly into the crime scene.

Do not preach. Don’t tell people what to do (“you should”), instead tell what you did, what “we” could do, etc…

Recordings of Toastmasters finals speeches can be found at: Bill Stephens Productions. Darren found out that the champions:

  • Had a coach.
  • Paused.
  • Used Word to write the speeches (counting words).
  • Had a sparkle in the eye (they owned the stage).

If there is anything we should take home from the workshop, it is: “Stage time, stage time, stage time”.

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May 13, 2011 · 7:00 am

Beluga vs. Dreamlifter

While looking at the small-scale models of aircraft at home, some days ago, I locked on the Beluga and the Dreamlifter (Airbus and Boeing transport aircraft to bring major components from one factory to another). I had become used to the sight of the Beluga but seeing then both together I realized that they are indeed bizarre.

While Airbus relied on the Beluga since years ago (and before, it used the Super Guppy; now resting at the museum by Airbus factory in Toulouse), Boeing only decided to modify 747s for this purpose to reduce transportation times in the 787 manufacturing.

In this post I didn’t want to make any technical comparison, just wanted to show this picture and ask: which one do you think is the prettiest (or the ugliest)? I haven’t made up my mind yet.

Dreamlifter vs. Beluga.

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May 11, 2011 · 7:00 am

Running while on holidays

A month ago I went running with a friend early in the morning before we attended a wedding in Granada. This gave me the idea of bringing the running shoes with me to the next holidays to Canada & USA. So did I.

In the end I went running just 4 days (2 less than planned) and I must say that I enjoyed it a lot. Here are the tracks I did in the different cities.

In Montreal I went with my friend and then host Pablo to the Mont Royale. The climb up there was tough, but running through the trees and squirrels was wonderful. The mount was full of runners in a Sunday morning.

Running track in Montreal.

In Washinton DC, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I was impressed by the hundreds of runners that you encounter in the Mall. Other than that it’s shocking to find yourself running in the middle of so many landmarks.

Running track in Washington DC.

In Chicago Luca and I went with a guide into a running city tour at 7am. The weather was horrible: cold and raining. However, the run was very enjoyable: soft and full of stories told by our guide (find the picture of Luca and me by the riverside).

Running tour track in Chicago.

Luca and I running by the riverside.

In Des Moines I went running in the surroundings of the motel we stayed in. It was looking very much like any village of American movies: small wooden houses, small green open garden, mail box on the front… it was a pity I was not carrying newspapers to deliver…

Running track in Des Moines.

It goes without saying that I recommend doing this in your holidays: take your running shoes and go out for an early run some days, you’ll see the city from a different perspective and will start the day much earlier than otherwise!

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May 9, 2011 · 7:00 am

747

I attended a course at the AirBusiness Acedemy of Airbus some weeks ago. In one of the coffee breaks I hanged around in the building’s library and I found a book that I wanted to read, so I picked it: “747”, by Joe Sutter with Jay Spencer.

Joe Sutter is the engineer who led the engineering development of the Boeing 747, the Jumbo. The book, a biography of Sutter, covers all his life but it is mainly centered in the happenings, decisions, struggles, individuals, etc., involved in the development of the 747 and other aircraft.

I particularly liked the many engineering problems that he mentioned in the book, why & when they encountered them and how they overcame them: e.g. how they debugged the B 377 Stratocruiser, the decision of placing 737 engines under the wing, going for 4 main landing gears in the 747, etc., and the innovations that they introduced in commercial aviation with different aircraft: first pressurized aircraft (B 307 Stratoliner, with the issue they had with the vertical stabilizer), the jet engine mounted in pylons under the wings (with the B 367-80 prototype –now resting at the Air & Space museum at Dulles, DC- which evolved in the 707; configuration mainly used until today), the first wide-body aircraft (B 747), etc.

He also described many details about dealings with customers (e.g. Juan Trippe in Pan Am, Iraqi customers), competitors (including Russian delegations during Cold War), and colleagues at Boeing (with some heated discussions and internal politics, where he doesn’t save any detail).

As a curiosity, I finished the book while flying from Chicago to Frankfurt some days ago aboard a B 747, the first time I flew in one. I was sitting by the wing and took some pictures of the wing (first with a triple-slotted flaps) at different moments of the flight.

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The book is a very interesting read which I recommend to anyone with passion for aircraft (engineer or not).

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April 29, 2011 · 8:00 pm

Woodstock for Capitalists

Right now, while this is being published and if everything is going as planned, Luca and I are in Omaha, Nebraska. By now we should be already registered to attend tomorrow the annual shareholders meeting of Berkshire Hathaway, company famous for its CEO and Chairman, Warren Buffett.

While studying an MBA at EOI business school in Seville some 5 years ago, I developed a special interest in investing. I started reading some books and this led me to the bible of them all, Benjamin Graham’s “Intelligent Investor”, which I have referred to in this blog a number of times.

Warren Buffett, of World fame, was one of Graham’s disciples. He started very early setting up small businesses and investing in stocks. Decades later, he is known as the “oracle of Omaha” and considered to be on of the best investors ever.

About 2 years ago, Luca and I decided to invest in Berkshire Hathaway, mainly to acquire the right to attend this weekend’s party (you may call us freaks, right). Sure, we have arranged a nice holiday trip around it passing by Montreal, DC, Chicago and even Des Moines (!). But the end of this trip, was attending the shareholders’ meeting (others travel to attend a concert of U2!).

If you want to grasp what the experience may feel like, start by reading one of his letters to the shareholders of BRK, e.g. this year’s letter [PDF]. It’s 26 pages, ok, but it won’t take you more than 1 or 2 hours, and who knows, it may change your view of saving, investing, managing businesses, doing you a great favour. Apart from that, you’ll have a great fun reading it, as it is a very entertaining and humorous piece.

Finally, a positive note from an extract of the letter to reflect on, in today’s times:

“Don’t let that reality spook you. Throughout my lifetime, politicians and pundits have constantly moaned about terrifying problems facing America. Yet our citizens now live an astonishing six times better than when I was born. The prophets of doom have overlooked the all-important factor that is certain: Human potential is far from exhausted, and the American system for unleashing that potential – a system that has worked wonders for over two centuries despite frequent interruptions for recessions and even a Civil War – remains alive and effective.”

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April 26, 2011 · 8:00 am

A day in DC

Two years ago, in December 2008, I came for the 1st time to Washington DC. That was the first time I came to the USA and even though it was on a business trip, I managed to take some 4 hours in 2 days to do some sightseeing. I loved it.

Yesterday we arrived again to DC. This time Luca and me, on holidays, again just for 2 days. We checked in our hotel, The Quincy, in L Street NW, not very far from the White House… though I acknowledge that distances are misleading in this city: why wouldn’t you walk from Lincoln memorial to Washington memorial if “it’s just over there”, and from that to that other museum in The Mall, and for that matter to the Capitol. In the end you walk many kilometres. The hotel was a success. For just 100 dollars a night, we’ve got a room of rank of the best ones I get in business trips with the company, so the start of this stay was promising.

Today has been a long but entertaining day. I woke up without alarms at 5:30am. I checked the time and enjoyed the fact of having 45 more minutes of sleep. At 6:15am I got up, dressed in running gear and went out for a morning run. Only to discover that it was way hotter and more humid than I expected and dressed for. I didn’t come back to leave the sweater and paid for it later on. I was amazed by the dozens even hundreds of people I saw running before 7am around the city, especially in the Mall. I knew Americans love to run and do wake up early. Still, what I saw was beyond expectations. I went from the hotel to the Washington memorial passing by the White House (2 km), then to Capitol (other 2km) and back rounding the Washington memorial. In total 8.6 km. The plan was to round the capitol from behind and pass by the Jefferson memorial (4 more km) but I was way too overheated for that.                            

Back in the hotel I did some stretching, took a shower, washed clothes and got dressed to continue hitting the streets of DC. We went for breakfast at a cafeteria close to the hotel, then to a store to buy a new photo camera and at 9am we were at the Lincoln memorial ready to start a day of reflections (though the reflecting pool was empty and under construction).

We then headed to the World War II and the Washington memorials. Then to the American History museum. This one is one of the 19 museums of the Smithsonian. All of them admission-free, all of them wonderfully arranged. It is almost impossible to overstate the quality of those museums. In each one you could spend a week if you had it for each. There are hundreds of materials to read, to watch, to listen to… in each room. In this one we paid special attention to the rooms dedicated to the flag and the song that would become the American anthem, to the gowns of the First Ladies, to the presidents and Abraham Lincoln. By 11:45 we had to leave for the next appointment in the day.

This time we had booked a guided tour through The Capitol, which houses the Senate and the House of Representatives. We had to wait rather long as expected long queues weren’t such, so we took the extra 30 minutes we had in the schedule to have lunch in the restaurant within the building. The visit was funny and the guide entertaining, but I expected more of it. With that visit you don’t get to actually see the chambers. I guess that deal in Spain is better. However, as we were about to exit, Luca saw a sign for the Library of the Congress and there we went.

The visit of the LoC is wonderful as well. You get to see two bibles from the XV century, one made by Gutenberg, what is left from Jefferson’s library (a third from the original, but still over 6,000 books – including some from Cervantes) bought by the Congress, and one of the reading rooms, which anyone could access provided the she would get the card by filling a form and paying 2 bucks (that‘s not so easy in Madrid with the national library).

Afterward, we headed for the American Indian museum. Another one from the Smithsonian institution. By then I was exhausted and overloaded by information, so I paid attention to one of each 10 signs to read, but still enjoyed the museum.

As we went out it was already 17:20, time for museums to close… but as we passed by the Air and Space museum I saw a sign saying that that particular museum would open today till 19:30. There we went. We needed something relaxing so we bought a couple of tickets for the 3D movie “Legends of the Sky”, a splendid documentary of 50’ which has the 787 program as the main theme and covers some basic principles of flight such as propulsion, materials, structures, etc. It also reviews a b it of aviation history from the Lockheed Constellation to the A380. I especially liked the final line telling children that everything is not yet invented in aviation, we’ve just started. Then we entered the replica of the Spacelab, the gallery of the Apollo programme and the room dedicated to interactive explanations and games of the principles of flight: wonderful again. This was the second time I visited this museum… it won’t be the last.

By the time we left the museum, Luca and I were completely worn out by the rhythm of the day, with just some strength to walk back to the hotel and take some pictures in front of the White House on the way. We stopped at the Irish terrace close to the hotel to enjoy an American dinner composed of buffalo rings, hamburgers and 4 large beers to call it for the day.

Two years later, I continue to be more than delighted with DC.

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April 21, 2011 · 8:00 am

Historias del Fútbol Mundial

Tengo la costumbre de, siempre que paso por un aeropuerto, visitar la tienda de libros y revistas, a ver si encuentro algún libro. Siempre que vuelo ya llevo algo de lectura conmigo y estas visitas a la tienda de turno las hago por si encuentro algo interesante. A veces lo encuentro.

El año pasado antes de emprender un viaje a Holanda, cuando se estaba jugando la Copa del Mundo en Sudáfrica, encontré en Barajas el libro “366 Historias del Fútbol Mundial”, de Alfredo Relaño. Tras ojearlo un poco, lo compré pensando que estaría bien como complemento al evento futbolístico del momento que tan bien acabó para España. Digamos que para imbuirme un poco más del espíritu futbolístico.

El libro no tiene un hilo argumental, sino que está estructurado a modo de calendario. Ordenadas según los meses del año, el libro tiene una historia por cada uno de los días del mismo. Cada historia una hoja, dos páginas. Perfecto para tener en la mesilla y leer unas pocas historias de vez en cuando.

Muchas de las historias son muy conocidas, algunas casi contemporáneas, y otras tantas no tanto. Por ejemplo, en estas semanas de abril y principios de mayo, cuando se van a vivir tantos partidos entre Real Madrid y Barcelona, en el libro aparece una historia con bronca entre ambos equipos en las semifinales de copa de 1916 tras la cual estarían hasta 10 años sin volver a enfrentarse. ¿Qué diría la prensa durante 10 años sin un partido del siglo cada semana?

Otras historias de estas semanas:

  • El plante del Barcelona en la vuelta de la semifinal de Copa del Rey contra el Atlético de Madrid en el año 2000.
  • La victoria de España en la Copa del Mundo Sub-20 en Nigeria, con Xavi y Casillas. Preludio de lo que ocurriría 10 años después un poco más al sur.
  • El nacimiento de la expresión del “miedo escénico” del Bernabéu en la final a doble partido de la UEFA contra el Colonia en 1986.
  • El accidente que acabó con el Torino en el monte de Superga en 1949.
  • El nacimiento de la Copa en 1902, cuya primera edición duró 3 días y ganó un equipo conjunto formado por jugadores del Athletic y el Vizcaya de Bilbao (que más tarde se fusionarían); o del Scudetto en Italia, cuya primera edición duró 1 día y ganó el Génova.
  • La derrota del Barcelona en la final de la Copa de Europa en Sevilla frente al Steaua de Bucarest.
  • La aparición de las tarjetas amarillas.

Y así hasta 366…

Todavía no he terminado de leer todas las historias del libro, pero las que llevo leídas (algunas releídas) ya me permiten recomendar el libro sin miedo a equivocarme.

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April 19, 2011 · 8:00 am

Turboprops market different dynamic

In the last post I discussed about the dynamics of commercial aircraft orders and its correlation with air traffic growth and GDP growth.

In the previous post, I had discussed about turboprops. Today, I want to connect the two dots in a particular way.

I want to show how civil turboprop market is unrelated to the larger and more known turbofan civil aircraft market and how its dynamics are completely unrelated to World GDP growth and thus world air traffic growth.

For this purpose I studied the numbers of ATR (using the info available in its website from yearly news releases discussing results).  I proceeded in the same way as before, analysing the correlation between the different variables.

In order to take a larger time span, I used ATR deliveries instead of orders, as I found a larger data set for deliveries (obviously aircraft delivered were previously ordered, lag in between is not that obvious, today’s backlog is about 3 years production).

In the following graphic I plotted ATR deliveries, GDP growth and oil price:

ATR deliveries vs. GDP growth and oil price.

When calculating correlation between the different variables, I discovered that the correlation between GDP and deliveries is rather low, despite of the time lag applied (be it 2, 3, 4 years…). However I found that the oil prices and deliveries did correlate very well with a lag of 5-6 years, yielding coefficients of 0.55-.65, which are rather high.

This different behaviour of the turboprop market compared to the bigger turbofan market could be explained by the oil price forecasts that airlines shall make each time the oil price goes up.

Again, I can imagine some C-suite executive of a regional airline demanding an oil price forecast/report with which to substantiate his gut-feeling that prices will continue to go up and thus turboprops,  which are more fuel-efficient than turbofans, will be best suited for their short-haul routes.

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