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A post-COVID-19 Airbus

Fly High English logo with the word 'activities' beside it

Thinking about the future

Think about the following questions

  1. How do you think that the COVID-19 situation will affect OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers)?
  2. What will OEMs have to do to survive?
  3. Do you think the Boeing and Airbus will continue their operations in the usual way in the next five years?
Continue reading A post-COVID-19 Airbus
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Structure: ‘Future continuous’

Fly High English - Structure

This time in our structure help we talk about the future continuous. Let’s look at an example;

Two hours from now we will be flying over the ocean.

will be flying is the future continuous.

Let’s look at how to create the structure;

will/won’t be + verb-ing

This structure is used to talk about something which will be in progress at a future time.

Let’s look at another example.

I can’t call you at 2am, I will be sleeping.

This example again expresses the idea of an action in progress / happing at a time in the future (2am in this example).

All continuous tenses relate to actions in progress.

For example;
I was reading a manual when the captain arrived. (past continuous)
He is making a speech to the passengers. (present continuous)
They will be sleeping in an hour. (future continuous)

All of these tenses express the idea of something in progress at a specific time, in the past, the present or the future.

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Structure: ‘past perfect’

Fly High English - Structure

This time in our structure help we talk about the past perfect. Look at the example below.

Peter had a flight at 9am last Saturday morning. He woke up late and arrived at the airport at 10am. The flight had already left.

The past perfect is a verb tense. It is formed by using had + past participle. Very often we talk about the past. When we use some past simple verbs in a row, we understand that the first action happened first and that the second action happened second etc… But sometimes when we talk about the past we want to say that something happened before the previous past simple verb. We use the past perfect in these situations. Look at the following example.

Example 1: I flew on the A380 last week. It’s a fantastic plane with four engines and two floors. I hadn’t flown on it before.

We also use the past perfect to talk about actions in the way we experience them, which is sometimes not in the order that they happen. Look at the following example.

Example 2: Captain Smith boarded his plane 30 minutes before the scheduled takeoff time. When he entered the cockpit and opened the maintenance logbook, he discovered that the plane had suffered a problem with the APU.

I this situation we talk about the story in the way Captain Smith experienced it, after he arrived on the plane he discovered the problem. It’s very natural and normal to talk about our experiences in this way and the past perfect is essential in such situations.

Let’s look at one final example.

Example 3: When the plane stopped at the runway holding point, the co-pilot realised that the ground staff hadn’t loaded the catering on board.

Now try to write some of your own examples.

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