Flight Safety Information December 18, 2013 - No. 258 In This Issue 2 killed in NW Atlanta corporate jet crash Guidance System Shows Promise of Safer Landings for Gulf Rig Pilots Airline Safety Flight Issues Could Be Mitigated by Better User Interface Asiana Crash Probe Renews Debate Over Culture In Aviation News Analysis: Reshape of safety control system needed for Russian civil aviation FSF's Hiatt Moves to IATA, Hylander Named Interim CEO & President Virgin America flight lands safely in Omaha with engine issue Think ARGUS PROS How The Navy Might Spin Seawater Into Jet Fuel. New Conceptual Configuration For Air-breathing Hypersonic Airplanes. 2 killed in NW Atlanta corporate jet crash Two people were killed in a corporate jet crash Tuesday night in northwest Atlanta. The Federal Aviation Administration said the plane, which is registered to a Norcross-based company, went down about 7:25 p.m. in a vacant gully near Rutherford Street and Forrest Place. FAA officials said the aircraft is a Raytheon 390 Premier I multi-engine aircraft. Officials were not providing the name of the company or identifies of those in the crash until family members could be notified, said Atlanta Business Chronicle broadcast partner WXIA-TV. The flight had left Fulton County Airport and was heading for the New Orleans Lakefront Airport. The pilot is being credited with saving lives on the ground. A witness to the crash said it "looked like the pilot deliberately headed for the vacant gully to avoid the many houses in the closely packed neighborhood," WXIA reported. http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/morning_call/2013/12/2-killed-in-nw-atlanta-corporate-jet.html ********** The aircraft, a Raytheon 390 Premier I, impacted terrain in northwest Atlanta, Georgia. A post-impacted fire erupted. The airplane sustained unreported damage and two occupants onboard are confirmed deceased. Crew contacted ATC on departure stating they had a 'problem' and were returning, they declined emergency equipment - N50PM was turning right on final to runway 26 when it crashed. www.aviation-safety.net Back to Top Guidance System Shows Promise of Safer Landings for Gulf Rig Pilots Imagine zooming from 200 feet in the sky onto a small green circle in the middle of a vast, dark ocean. Louisiana helicopter pilots do it daily, carrying workers to and from offshore oil rigs. It often takes more than two hours over Gulf waters to fly to a rig, but the final minutes can be the most nerve-shredding. "You're basically maneuvering a 70-square-foot steel box next to a skyscraper," veteran oil rig helicopter pilot Ron Doeppner said. "Night landings can be very difficult; you're in complete darkness with two small lights to guide you to the landing platform," Doeppner said. "You don't willingly fly into a storm, but one can sneak up on you over the ocean so you may have to land with zero visibility in high winds." A new automated helicopter guidance system created in Lafayette makes those landings safer and easier, even in bad weather and total darkness. The system is called Rig Approach, and it got its maiden voyage in November on an S-92 helicopter flown by PHI Inc.'s Lafayette-based pilots. PHI approached Sikorsky Aircraft - the company that makes Black Hawk helicopters for the military - five years ago and asked Sikorsky to create software that helped pilots in an array of situations. As chief research and development pilot for Sikorsky, Doeppner tested every aspect of the guidance system himself, first in a simulator, then in the sky. "Rig Approach gets all of its data from the satellite constellation; there is no land-based equipment involved," PHI Operations Director Pat Attaway said. "The system can fly the helicopter until its half a mile away from the rig and 200 feet above the water." At that point, the pilot can manually land the S-92 or stay coupled with Rig Approach, helping him land. Rig Approach automatically slows the S-92 down to about 35 mph. Most importantly, Doeppner said, Rig Approach positions the helicopter in the ideal place for an approach to the rig every time. "When the pilot is manually flying the helicopter, it takes a lot of mental gymnastics to figure out the approach," Doeppner said. "Rig Approach frees the pilot to concentrate on other details like weather and responding to radio crosstalk from the home base and the rig." Sikorsky said Rig Approach can fly in 120-degree heat and at 40 degrees below zero. PHI Gulf Coast pilot Lucas Bardsley has flown workers to Arctic oil rigs and looks forward to using Rig Approach in the frozen north. "In the Arctic, ocean waves can be 40 feet high, and the rig's landing pad is about 150 feet above the sea. So there's little margin for error," Bardsley said. "The GPS system is better than relying on signals from land- based systems. From the air, you can see exactly how remote the Arctic is and how little ground infrastructure exists." Like Doeppner, Bardsley sounds laconic and confident when describing white-knuckle, in-flight situations. But both pilots noted the oil and gas industry went through a sea-change in attitude, becoming far more safety conscious about 30 years ago. Doeppner, who flew for 21 years in the Air Force before coming to Sikorsky, can remember when twin-engine planes tried to ferry workers to offshore rigs. And the Federal Aviation Administration began using technology that allowed it to track oil rig helicopters only two years ago. They said they are delighted Rig Approach is making their jobs safer. But some nonpilots still cling to the vision of a helicopter pilot's work as romantically dangerous. A National Science Foundation Antarctica helicopter Bardsley has flown is in the PHI hangar awaiting inspection. When some schoolchildren spotted two antennas jutting from the helicopter, Bardsley said they were a bit disappointed to learn the metal tubes were not machine gun barrels he could use to battle pirates and James Bond-ish bad guys. http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/southcentral/2013/12/16/314566.htm Back to Top Airline Safety Flight Issues Could Be Mitigated by Better User Interface Dec. 16, 2013 - Amid news reports on the National Transportation Safety Board hearings regarding possible causes of the Asiana plane crash at San Francisco International Airport in July, questions have been raised about pilots' over-reliance on or failure to understand cockpit automation and even whether pilots are sufficiently trained to fly without it. Eric Geiselman and colleagues propose that user interfaces that take advantage of avionics' underlying data and logic could enable pilots to better cope with extraordinary circumstances like the unavailability of an instrument landing system, as was the case in San Francisco. In Geiselman et al.'s October Ergonomics in Design article, "Flight Deck Automation: A Call for Context-Aware Logic to Improve Safety," the authors describe prototype designs that could mitigate errors leading to accidents and incidents such as the A330 Air France Flight 447 crash in 2009 and the airport overfly of Northwest 188 that same year. A Northwest 188 pilot programmed in an incorrect radio frequency early in the flight, cutting off communication with air traffic control and especially ATC's alert that the plane had missed the planned descent point by 150 miles. "Through a simple database comparison algorithm," the authors wrote, "the system can seek clarification when an erroneous frequency is selected . . . and issue an alert." In the Air France 447 tragedy, a sensor malfunction caused the autopilot and autothrust to disconnect, which unnecessarily caught the pilots off-guard and began a series of critical errors. Geiselman and colleagues also noted that invisible dual-control inputs, which enable both pilots to enter commands, basically (and by design) canceled out corrective actions attempted by the copilot. The authors developed a prototype concept for visually displaying the actions of both pilots and the aircraft so each pilot can be kept aware of all actions. The article is intended "to offer a point of departure" for discussion about improvements to cockpit avionics among the design community. http://www.sciencedaily.com/ Back to Top Asiana Crash Probe Renews Debate Over Culture In Aviation SAN FRANCISCO INT'L AIRPORT (CBS / AP) - New details about the crash of an Asiana Airlines jet have renewed questions about whether a culture of strict deference to more-senior pilots can compromise air safety. Documents and testimony from the National Transportation Safety Board this week showed there was confusion and poor communication in the cockpit of the Asiana jet as it approached San Francisco International Airport in July. Two of the pilots told investigators they opted against voicing critical concerns or grabbing the controls because they were subordinate to the instructor. The co-pilot, who was sitting in a jump seat at the back of the cockpit, told investigators that the plane seemed to be descending too quickly from a high altitude. He "prepared in his mind to recommend something" to the two more-senior pilots at the controls, "but he did not." The pilot flying the plane was an experienced flier who was being trained on the Boeing 777. But when asked whether he considered aborting the landing and circling around as they came in too low and too slow, he said such a "go-around" maneuver should be done only by the captain or an instructor pilot. NTSB Asiana Plane Crash Docket: Newly Released Photos, Video, Documents Documents Reveal Asiana Crash Victim Was Run Over Twice "That is very hard to explain; that is our culture," investigators quoted him saying. The pilot also said he was momentarily blinded by a beam of bright light. He wasn't wearing aviator sunglasses because he said that would be disrespectful in the presence of a superior like his instructor in the next seat. After cockpit culture was identified as a factor in several South Korean airliner crashes in the 1980s and '90s, procedures and hierarchies were overhauled in Korea and elsewhere, including the U.S., improving that situation. But the Asiana crash on July 6 thrust the issue back to the forefront. The plane's tail clipped a seawall, and the aircraft spun down the runway. Three Chinese teens died, including one who was run over by two fire trucks as rescuers rushed to the scene; 304 people survived, the vast majority without major injuries. The National Transportation Safety Board hasn't identified a cause of the crash yet, but during a daylong hearing Wednesday much of the testimony focused on confusion about automated speed settings and pilot training. Board Chairman Deborah Hersman said all international airlines have their cultural differences but that it wasn't an emphasis of the hearing. "Certainly in any cockpit on any airline from any country of the world, there are cultural issues that can come into play," she said. She added that investigators were trying to focus on all issues carefully and fairly and dealing only with the facts of the situation. "We have not talked a lot about cultural issues in today's hearing, and I would ask you to reserve judgment until the NTSB finishes its fact-finding in this matter," she said. An Asiana official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not permitted to talk publicly about the crash during the ongoing NTSB investigation said the airline's policy is that any pilot can call for a go-around, and requires any crew member to speak up when the situation requires it. That policy, according to the pilot's testimony, was potentially violated. After the hearing, John McGraw, a former high-ranking FAA official who is now an aviation consultant, said there are long-term issues involving cockpit hierarchies. "There is a cultural element here," McGraw said. "It's not just Asian - there are a lot of cultures around the world where people don't want to challenge their superiors." Nationality aside, pilots have a culture of their own that can create complications, McGraw said. "Pilots don't like to admit that they should do a go-around when the approach isn't going well" because it looks bad to the passengers and irritates superiors by burning more fuel, he said. Robert Francis, a former vice chairman of the safety board who is not involved in the current investigation, said evidence of deference in the Asiana cockpit points out the need for the airline and Korean aviation officials to pay more attention to "cultural issues" in pilot training. Still, Francis said the cause of the accident apparently wasn't cultural issues but the pilots' failure to realize they were making a dangerous approach. "There's nothing more basic than monitoring your airspeed, and they clearly weren't doing that," Francis said. So-called "crew-resource management" programs at many airlines stress that pilots shouldn't hesitate to raise safety concerns or correct an unsafe action, even by a more-senior captain. Those programs were prompted, in part, by a 20-year string of disasters that plagued South Korea's airlines. In 1983, a Korean Air flight that flew into Soviet air space was shot down, killing all 269 aboard. In 1987, a Seoul-bound flight exploded, killing all 115 aboard. Asiana's deadliest plane accident was in 1993 when a domestic flight crashed south of Seoul, killing 66 people. Regimented, authoritarian cockpit culture that makes junior pilots reluctant to challenge captains was highlighted in some of the crashes, including a Korean Air Boeing 747 that smashed into a hillside in Guam in 1997, killing more than 200 people. By 1999, after about 700 people had died in more than a dozen South Korea airliner accidents, the government demanded safety overhauls that included changing their cockpit culture, which had given senior pilots authority over the co-pilot, as well as improving English language standards. More foreign pilots were hired as well. The changes were deemed successful: By 2002, Delta and Air France resumed partnerships with Korea Air, and until last July, there had been no more South Korean fatal passenger jet crashes. However, in July 2011, an Asiana cargo freighter plane crashed into the ocean, killing two pilots. After the Asiana crash, South Korea's transportation ministry again demanded a safety review and revisions, but said cockpit culture had been greatly improved. "Hiring foreign pilots has helped ease the hierarchy that existed in the cockpit," Kwon Yong-bok, an aviation safety director told Bloomberg. "Communication among the pilots has improved a lot." This month, Asiana hired a longtime Japanese pilot and safety official to improve safety. http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/12/12/asiana-crash-probe-renews-debate-over-culture-in-aviation/ Back to Top News Analysis: Reshape of safety control system needed for Russian civil aviation MOSCOW (Xinhua) -- As Russia's Tatarstan republic mourns for the 50 people killed in Sunday's air crash, aviation safety experts and officials call for the adoption of "qualitatively new measures" for the safety of the country's troublesome commercial flights. The notorious "human errors," the major cause of most air crashes, do not occur from scratch but from irregularities on the ground. It is time for Russia to fully comply with international civil aviation rules and reshape its existing air safety control system as well as legislation, experts say. BLAMING HUMAN ERROR IS HISTORY With 44 passengers and six crew members aboard, the Tatarstan Airlines' Boeing 737 flying from Moscow to the regional capital of Kazan crashed during its second landing attempt. A flight recorder found by rescuers has been heavily damaged, so it will take time to find out what exactly led to the disaster, the Russian Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) said Monday in an online statement. The overwhelming majority of all air crashes are caused by the notorious "human factor," a senior official of national aviation watchdog Rosaviatsia said. "I don't mean the hardware is always sinless. Still, there are several layers of security in planes which prevent a pilot to make a wrong move. But a system of man-machine communication can only warn a pilot. It can't stop him from making a fatal decision," the official told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. It is "convenient" for aviation authorities to blame pilots for the crashes because generally they could be among the fatalities and cannot take responsibility, he added. Echoing the official's idea, Vitaly Bordunov, an expert in the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which Russia signed as a member state, said he believes that the days of blaming the human factor for all air crashes have been past. Taking effect on Nov. 14, two amendments to the Convention on International Civil Aviation, also known as the Chicago Convention, effectively end the practice of ICAO members to write off the air crashes to the human factor, Bordunov told Xinhua. "From now on, the aviation authorities must go to the roots and find out what started a chain of events which has lead a pilot, a traffic controller or any other people to the final fatal move," the expert said. RESHAPING SAFETY CONTROL IS NEEDED Sometimes, human errors result not from up in the air but from down on the ground. The Kazan tragedy is just another example. According to Marat Zaripov, first deputy head of the Tatarstan branch of the Investigative Committee, the plane's fuel tank exploded as the airliner was about to fly a second circle before landing. However, fuel should be exhausted after the one-hour flight. On the contrary, Zaripov said, the airliner was refueled in Moscow rather than in their hub airport of Kazan before taking off. "The safety rules require a pilot to get rid of excessive fuel prior to emergency landing. In emergency, situation permits, the pilot circles over an airport before the fuel is worked out below certain weight," said the anonymous official of Rosaviatsia. "The regulations also ban the pilots to take into considerations any factors, including financial ones, when making in-flight decisions," said the official, adding that these requirements might not always be observed by commercial airlines. Meanwhile, amendment 19 to the Chicago Convention envisages that member states must implement a system of air traffic safety monitoring and new safety standards in the industry. Until now, that responsibility in Russia lies in a domain of airlines themselves. "This could be hard for Russia to fully comply with new ICAO requirements. The existing system of air safety control must be reshaped as well as legislation which currently work -- or, rather, do not work," Bordunov said. According to the expert, adoption of the new amendments could lead to prohibition of some Russian airlines to serve international destinations until the country tailors its legislation and practice in accordance with the updated convention. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2013-11/19/c_125722624.htm Back to Top FSF's Hiatt Moves to IATA, Hylander Named Interim CEO & President Kevin Hiatt, will be stepping down to take on a new role as IATA's top safety executive in February 2014. FSF Chair-elect Ken Hylander will be taking on the additional role of Acting FSF CEO and President, pending an international executive search. Alexandria, VA, December 17, 2013 - The Flight Safety Foundation announced today that its current CEO and President, Kevin Hiatt, will be stepping down to take on a new role as IATA's top safety executive in February 2014. FSF Chair-elect Ken Hylander, the recently retired Senior Vice President of Safety, Security & Compliance at Delta Air Lines, will be taking on the additional role of Acting FSF CEO and President, pending an international executive search. In addition, the Foundation announced that Bill Bozin, who recently retired as Vice President of Safety and Technical Affairs at Airbus Americas, will be taking on the role of Acting Chief Operating Officer. "We're very grateful and proud of Kevin's outstanding leadership at the Foundation," noted FSF Chair David McMillan, former head of EUROCONTROL and the UK Director General of Civil Aviation. "Our loss, however, is not only IATA's gain, but a real win-win for aviation safety, given our close partnership with IATA on a host of aviation safety priorities." McMillan also expressed deep thanks and appreciation to Hylander and Bozin for agreeing to step into the CEO and COO roles, respectively, until an international search, conducted by Krauthamer & Associates, can be completed. "The Foundation is coming off a superb year of contributions to aviation safety in a wide range of areas, particularly in gathering, sharing, analyzing, and protecting both accident and occurrence reporting, and in raising basic aviation risk standards," Hylander said. "We're excited to build on this success." Prior to his safety leadership role at Delta, Hylander served as Vice President of Safety and Engineering at Northwest Airlines for 11 years, and previously worked at United Airlines in a variety of engineering roles. He served most recently as co-chair of the FAA/Industry Commercial Aviation Safety Team (CAST). "We're indebted to Kevin," stated Bozin, "and look forward to continuing our partnership with IATA, ICAO, MITRE, and others, taking the Foundation to new heights in the coming years." Bozin previously served for over eight years as V.P. Safety and Technical Affairs at Airbus Americas, V.P. Safety and Regulatory Compliance at US Airways, Senior Director, Safety, at the Air Transport Association (now A4A), and over 25 years as a US naval aviator, retiring as Captain and Air Wing Commander. Flight Safety Foundation is an independent, non-profit, international organization engaged in research, education, advocacy and publishing to improve aviation safety. The Foundation's mission is to be the leading voice of safety for the global aerospace community. http://www.aviationpros.com/press_release/11281628/fsfs-hiatt-moves-to-iata-hylander-named-interim-ceo- president Back to Top Virgin America flight lands safely in Omaha with engine issue OMAHA | A Virgin America flight headed from Boston to Los Angeles was diverted to Eppley Airfield in Omaha after have engine issues Tuesday. Virgin America spokesman Madhu Unnikrishnan said the plane with 111 passengers and five crew members landed safely at 10:01 a.m. No injuries were reported, and the nature of the engine issue was unknown. The flight was due to land in Los Angeles at 2:40 p.m. Central Time. Virgin America is working to find new flights for the passengers out of Omaha. Unnikrishnan said diverting a flight to a nearby airfield is standard procedure when there is an engine issue. http://siouxcityjournal.com/news/local/virgin-america-flight-lands-safely-in-omaha-with-engine- issue/article_ceaf0b4e-872a-52eb-bc77-07f62eb1dd67.html Back to Top Back to Top How The Navy Might Spin Seawater Into Jet Fuel The aircraft carrier USS Nimitz US Navy Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink - but maybe a drop of alternative fuel? The U.S. Navy is hoping next-generation technology will let it replace petroleum fuels with something much more accessible and abundant: seawater. "If they made fuel at sea," Naval Research Laboratory chemist Heather Willauer told NextGov this week, "they wouldn't be buying it." Hydrocarbon fuel is, as the name suggests, made up of hydrogens and carbons. The first step to powering ships and planes with seawater is extracting carbon dioxide (CO2) from seawater. There's actually a lot of CO2 dissolved in the ocean - at a concentration 140 times greater than in the air, in fact. NRL's way of capturing carbon involves a three-chambered cell that applies electricity to seawater. This cell pulls out carbon dioxide and also produces hydrogen. Next, the team uses a two-step process to combine the CO2 and hydrogen gases into a liquid soup of hydrocarbons. An iron-based catalyst converts both carbon dioxide and hydrogen gas into a type of hydrocarbon called an olefin (without the catalyst, you end up with a lot of wasteful methane production). For the second step, Navy chemists convert olefins to a jet fuel precursor through a process known as oligomerization - combining little links of molecules called monomers into a longer, more complex chain called a polymer. Challenges remain, of course. The initial part of the process does gobble up a lot of energy, and while the technique has become more efficient in recent years, NRL's carbon capture methods could still be more efficient, Willauer told NextGov. In the fiscal year of 2011 alone, Navy vessels at sea used nearly 600 million gallons of fuel, according to the NRL. The Navy has set a goal of reducing its petroleum use by half by 2015. In a 2012 analysis published in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, Willauer and her colleagues estimated that jet fuel could be made at sea for anywhere from $3 to $6 per gallon. While that's slightly more expensive than what the Navy has been paying for fuel, it may not be for long. "In nine years, the price of fuel for the Navy could be well over the price of producing a synthetic jet fuel at sea which would not incur the costs associated with logistical storage and delivery," Willauer and colleagues wrote. If the technology pans out, every Navy ship might be able to make its own fuel. Ships wouldn't have to be refueled by oil tankers - a rough proposition in stormy weather or in battle. "A ship's ability to produce any significant fraction of the battle group's fuel for operations would increase the Navy's operational flexibility and time on station by increasing the mean time between refueling," the NRL team wrote. Pulling carbon dioxide out of the ocean to make jet fuel could also have an additional environmental boon, science writer David Biello noted at Yale Environment 360: reducing the trend of ocean acidification, which is caused by increased levels of CO2 in the ocean and has a range of effects on marine life, including making it harder for shellfish and coral to build their shells. http://www.ibtimes.com/how-navy-might-spin-seawater-jet-fuel-1512712 Back to Top New Conceptual Configuration For Air-breathing Hypersonic Airplanes How to design a hypersonic airplane that travels from Beijing to New York in only two hours? Dr. Cui Kai and his group from State Key Laboratory of High Temperature Gas Dynamics, Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences set out to tackle this problem. After three years of innovative research, they presented a body-wing-blending configuration with double flanking air inlets layout to aim at design requirements of high lift-to-drag ratio as well as high volumetric efficiency of next generation hypersonic airplanes. Moreover, a novel forebody design methodology which by rotating and assembling two waverider-based surfaces is firstly introduced. Their work, entitled "Conceptual design and aerodynamic evaluation of hypersonic airplane with double flanking air inlets," was published in SCIENCE CHINA Technological Sciences 2013?8?issue. Air-breathing hypersonic vehicles has been much concerned by United States and other developed countries since the mid-20th century, and a series of research projects has been proposed since 1980s. The completely integrated design of the airframe and propulsion system is generally adopted for the air-breathing hypersonic vehicles, however, as both the aerodynamic performance for the airframe and the engine intake/exhaust requirements shall be taken into account simultaneously, the design difficulty increased dramatically. The current aerodynamic design for hypersonic vehicles is mainly for the demonstration vehicles which focused on minimizing resistance and the optimal matching between airframe and engine, and the forebody and engine inlet integrated design is the key issues for the configuration design. The current air-breathing hypersonic vehicles can be mainly divided into two categories according to the different inlet layouts, i.e. with nose inlet and with ventral inlet. The hypersonic vehicle with nose inlet layout, such as the U.S. HyFly hypersonic demonstration vehicle, can efficiently achieve uniformly distributed airflow with high total pressure recovery coefficient for the engine by decreasing the interference of airframe to the maximum extent. Moreover, the popular internal waverider inlet is also suited to the nose inlet layout. The ventral inlet layout is the most commonly used layout for hypersonic vehicles, the U.S. X-43 and X-51 etc. demonstration hypersonic vehicles are all designed with ventral inlets. It is characterized with engine mounted on the abdomen, and the forebody is designed as a waverider or lifting-body which not only provides high- quality airflow for the engine inlet but also generates great lift force to improve the lift-to-drag ratio and pitching-balance performances of the vehicle. With the progress of scramjet research, various air-breathing hypersonic vehicles are bound to gradually enter the practical stage. As the air-breathing hypersonic vehicle can be considered as a development of modern high-speed airplanes with the extended flight speed and flight altitudes, the researchers deem that the existing design ideas/experience of high speed airplanes should be retained or referred to some typical high speed airplanes. By drawing on the merits of the existing airplane configuration design philosophy, a novel forebody design methodology which by rotating and assembling two waverider-based surfaces is firstly introduced, and a body-wing-blending configuration with double flanking air inlets layout is also presented. On this basis, a conceptual hypersonic airplane powered by double symmetric scramjet is proposed. Since numerical simulation has become a powerful tool of aerodynamic performance analysis, some typical configurations of forebodies and the whole airplanes with different wing leading edges are evaluated by CFD. The results for forebodies analysis show that large air mass flow, high lift-to-drag ratio, and uniformly distributed flowfield at the inlet cross section can be assured simultaneously. The results of the whole airplanes analysis show that high lift-to-drag ratio depends on the shape of the wing leading edge to a large extent. Further work for the design of the engine inlet and the optimization design of wing leading edge will be carried out based on this study. As the forebody with double waverider-based surfaces retains advantages of the waverider, such as high mass flow, high lift-to-drag ratio, etc., the existing ventral inlet design experience can be useful for the inlet design. In addition, the optimization of the wing leading edge shall focus on the cruise flight condition, and the target shall be the reduction of wave drag and efficient capture of the high pressure caused by side compression. http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1113030133/conceptual-configuration-for-air-breathing- hypersonic-airplanes-121713/#LJusckL22Z7tPJST.99 Curt Lewis