Brisbane-based Qantas engineers have spent the best part of the past month installing sensitive atmospheric monitoring sensors on a Hawaiian Airlines Airbus A330 in a bid to fill a major gap in global climate research.
The equipment, worth about $825,000 and weighing 107 kilograms, was installed on the A330 in Qantas's Brisbane hangar over the past month.
Hawaiian Airlines was the first US carrier to join the Brussels-based In-service Aircraft for a Global Observing System (IAGOS) network, which aimed to "fill the gap" between data available at ground level and through satellite observations.
The jet flew back to its Honolulu base on Saturday with the monitoring equipment, which would autonomously measure high-altitude greenhouse gas and radiation levels, along with icing information that could assist in aircraft safety studies.
IAGOS executive secretary Andreas Dr Volz-Thomas said the data was provided to scientists free for use in studies related to climate research and air quality, but IAGOS's reach had "particularly large gaps" in the southern hemisphere.
"The Hawaiian aircraft will greatly enhance the data coverage over the Pacific, a region which is sparse in data, particularly in the tropopause (between the troposphere and the stratosphere) region," he said.
"It will, for the first time, allow the collection of vertical profiles over the middle of the Pacific in a regular fashion, that is, every day.
"It will also greatly enhance the information density over the US west coast, thus providing important information on intercontinental transport of pollution."
Dr Volz-Thomas said the Hawaiian Airlines aircraft would bring the number of operating scanners to eight, joining Lufthansa and China Airlines (two fitted planes each) and Air France, Cathay Pacific and Iberia.
The installation was overseen by Qantas engineering production manager Andrew Howard, a process he said took about 500 working hours to undertake.
"The cut-out in the side of the fuselage has to be done very carefully; it's probably about six inches in diameter and anything where you're cutting holes in the fuselage has a lot of metal and structural work to reinforce it," he said.
"Because you're cutting a hole in the pressurised part of it, that has to be done very accurately and very carefully."
The installation occurred during the A330's six-yearly heavy maintenance check, which Qantas was contracted to carry out.
"During the heavy maintenance checks, they take the opportunity to do modifications because you've got more access and so on and in the preparation for this one, they advised us they were doing this IAGOS installation," Mr Howard said.
Hawaiian Airlines vice-president of flight operations Captain Ken Renwick said IAGOS covered all the system expenses.
"This includes the just-completed installation during our scheduled layover in Brisbane and extends to servicing, equipment certification and documentation," he said.
"In turn, Hawaiian is responsible for flying the system during normal operations."
That would come at a cost, Mr Howard said, as every kilogram mattered in aviation.
"There's a weight penalty for the aircraft, so that's something they've agreed to accept as part of participating," he said.
"It does add up over time. Everyone's into fuel management, so it's something they've assessed and accepted."
Captain Renwick said the equipment, which was placed under the cockpit, collected air samples via exterior probe near the nose of the plane.
"This happens during take-off and landing, and also at cruising altitudes as our aircraft moves throughout our destinations in the Asia-Pacific region and the United States," he said.
"The data is automatically fed after each flight to the IAGOS data centre in France, and shared with scientists and agencies worldwide."
Captain Renwick said Hawaiian Airlines' route footprint helped fill some of IAGOS's data gaps.
"The routes we fly via our Asia-Pacific and North America gateways cover vast expanses of the Pacific that are of particular interest to scientists studying air quality and pollution, so it made sense for us to use our aircraft to help collect this data," he said.
Mr Howard said, given its expertise, Qantas could join the list of IAGOS partner airlines.
"It's something we will certainly look at," he said.
