Actually, here at Belly Ache Central, we love this clever idea – both for its creativity and its environmental friendliness. And it comes courtesy of Air France – who could really use a bit of extra income right about now. Air France, we give you a 9 out of 10 on the Belly Ache respect scale (we’re not quite sure what it takes to get a 10, but we suspect it involves complimentary swag, freebies and other bribe-a-licious goodies).

It must be said, we tend towards the cynical around here, especially in terms of the reams of press releases – some of them printed on nice bleached white paper, inserted into equally nice white envelopes and mailed to us (good job FedOops!) – touting the impeccable green credentials of the particular company in question…but this one caught our attention from a slow day in the office trolling the net.

So what are we rambling on about? In essence it is a tie-up between Air France and bilum – which in case you don’t know (and neither did we until we Googled it), is a traditional string bag made by hand in Papua New Guinea. Wait a minute! Oops, wrong Google definition. The other Bilum is a French company (that clearly had no reservations about appropriating a traditional cultural reference) that makes bags and accessories using recycled materials like heavy outdoor advertising banners and car seat belts etc.

Bilum describes its products as “eco-ethical fashion”… ‘eco’ because it involves recycling materials that would be otherwise thrown away, burned or destroyed in some unpleasant manner and ‘ethical’ because they are made in special centres around Paris by disabled individuals or individuals with social problems in a bid to provide them employment and enable self-sufficiency.

While certainly great stuff, we have to stop extolling the virtues of this before we get the urge to run out and volunteer or something! Basically, bilum has created a collection of travel cases made from recycled life vests! How cool is that we ask you!?! Essentially those life vests under the seats in the aircraft – you would know what we are talking about if only you had paid attention to the onboard safety demonstration – have a limited life span (about 7-10 years Google tells us). And rather than destroy them, Air France turned to bilum to give them a new lease on life.

Bilum refers to this as ‘upcycling’, not ‘recycling’ – “transforming redundant recyclable materials, or products into new objects of a higher value”. Wow, even we are impressed with that bit of PR spin! And at €19 for the flat case and €24 for the padded case, we would certainly agree about the ‘UP’ part of the equation.

But still, we do love the idea and they are pretty cool – each one nearly unique because they are all cut from the life vests differently. Now after that sales pitch we’ll be watching the post box everyday for our own little bit of swag… if ya know what we mean…*wink wink, nudge, nudge!*

Origami airplanes. With Boeing set to announce in the near future the next variants of the popular 777, dubbed for now the 777X, we thought we would share our thoughts so that the clever engineering types up in Seattle can incorporate our feedback into their final decision. Of course possessing advanced aeronautical engineering degrees, as the Belly Achers do, we will try to give a simple explanation of what Boeing is likely planning for the next iteration of the 777. They are going to take the current model 777 and S-T-R-E-T-C-H it! Brilliant aren’t we? But there’s the rub: The plane will naturally need larger wings and these oversized wings will be a problem for existing airport infrastructure. Fear not as those same clever engineering types have come up with a seemingly simple solution – actually they came up with it in 1995 but for some reason never actually implemented it – folding wings! We don’t know about you, but the very idea of a wing that folds in half just doesn’t seem like a great idea – what if it decides to fold up, flap or break off in the middle of a flight (we’re guessing you don’t believe our aeronautical engineering credentials now). And ok… it’s really only 2-3 metres of the wing that folds, but still! And as the keen news hounds that we are, we are proud to bring you an EXCLUSIVE, never seen before, photo of the prototype 777X (it will be a bit bigger than the prototype pictured above however, in order to actually seat more than just the pilot). Remember, you saw it here first!