hankyoreh

By Lee Wan, staff reporter

Korean Air is developing a bobsleigh for the South Korean team to use at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.

World-class automakers like BMW and Ferrari have developed bobsleighs in the past, but this marks the first time an airline is making the attempt.

Korean Air announced on Mar. 24 that it is forming an industry-academia consortium composed of experts from Korea National Sport University, Sungkyunkwan University, Inha University, and the University of Southern California to produce bodies and runners for two-man and four-man bobsleighs to be used by the South Korean Olympic team.

The Korean Air consortium is to form a development team next month before launching the actual development in May, with a prototype to be completed around November. After that, testing and additional work is to continue through February 2015, with annual upgraded models to be produced every year until the Olympics in 2018.

High technology has become an important part of bobsleighing, where score differences come down to the hundredths of a second. Bobsleighs are made of light and sturdy carbon composites. Particularly critical is the use of aerodynamic technology on the body to reduce air resistance. A famous example is the sleigh developed for the US team by BMW with special lightweight carbon composites used on electric cars. The US ended up medalling in the two-man event at the Sochi Olympics earlier this year.

Now Korean Air plans to work on developing a world-class bobsleigh that improves on the BMW version with carbon composite and aerodynamic technology.

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