Latvian airline Air Baltic continues to grow traffic in spite of a long-standing dispute among its shareholders. The airline saw traffic increase by 7% in the first seven months of the year. In the same period, the load factor improved by six points to 73%, albeit lower than industry average.
Israel will build a new international airport at Timna near the Red Sea resort of Eilat to boost tourism in the southern region of the country. The airport will be named after the late Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon.
NEW DELHI — India is likely to receive the final batch of five MiG-29K/KUB fighters from Russia by December, a defense ministry official says. “With this, Russia will complete the delivery of 16 carrier-borne MiG-29K/KUB fighters to the Indian navy,” the official said over the weekend. India and Russia signed a contract in January 2004 for 12 single-seat MiG-29Ks and four two-seat MiG-29KUBs.
Air Lease Corp. is in talks with Boeing about the re-engining plan for the 737NG, but has questions about whether the aircraft can be competitive with the rival Airbus A320NEO (new engine option).
MCLEAN, Va. — U.S. intelligence officials say the country needs to be careful about where it makes any additional budget cuts in cyber-protection and space-related programs. “There are ways to find efficiencies in the budget,” said U.S. Rep. Michael Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and a former Army officer as well as the former FBI special agent in the Chicago bureau’s organized crime unit investigating public corruption.
Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) will continue to churn out the U.S. Navy’s next LPD San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ships at its Avondale shipyard in Louisiana even as the company winds down operations there, according to HII executives. The closure should continue as planned, operationally and financially, the executives say.
SAND DRAGON: Northrop Grumman has been awarded a $26.2 million U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory contract for the Sand Dragon B program to deploy Bat-12 long-endurance, heavy-payload small unmanned aircraft to Afghanistan to counter improvised explosive devices. AeroMech Engineering has a previous Sand Dragon contract supplying its Fury-B flying-wing UAV. The 12-ft. wingspan Bat-12, also a flying wing, is rail-launched and net-recovered and has a 10-hr. endurance carrying a 30-lb. multisensor payload.
ARMY General Dynamics Land Systems, Sterling Heights, Mich., was awarded a $12,586,165 cost-no-fee contract. The award will provide for the procurement of material items and associated labor supporting production and conversion of 42 M1A2 tanks to a M1A2S configuration for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The work will be performed in Lima, Ohio, with an estimated completion date of Sept. 30, 2012. One bid was solicited, with one bid received. The U.S. Army TACOM, Contracting Center, Warren, Mich., is the contracting activity (W56HZV-11-C-0005).
Efforts to establish the first carbon dioxide certification standard for aircraft are proving difficult, and the recent failure to agree on a metric for CO2 emissions risks delaying completion of the standard. Any delay could empower environmental groups already putting pressure on governments to regulate aircraft CO2 emissions in the absence of a global standard.
SAN FRANCISCO — Ames Research Center, NASA’s lead for small/low-cost satellite development, is tapping Swedish experts in space plug-and-play avionics (SPA) to further its design of cubesats. The 10-year partnership between NASA and the Swedish National Space Board will harness the miniaturization work of AAC Microtec of Uppsala, Sweden, which the board has funded. SPA technology includes interfaces, onboard computers and power subsystems that Ames will test in June 2012.
As the U.S. Navy tries to get its arms around the service’s daunting surface-ship maintenance problems, the respective tales of two different ships show how pervasive and pernicious those issues are — and how the service can overcome them. What’s also clear from both stories is that it’s going to take no small measure of money or time for the Navy to get back on course — and the service needs to revamp its shipbuilding plans accordingly to account for the extra maintenance funding and other resources it is going to need (Aerospace DAILY, Aug. 10).
Jay Pierce, chairman of Continental Airlines’ Air Line Pilots Association chapter, is applauding moves to implement a new fatigue risk management system for the work group. The lack of a fatigue plan has for some time been a major concern for Pierce, and he again raised the issue late last month when United Continental Holdings complained about the cancellation of Continental Boeing 737 services at its Newark Liberty International hub because of an apparent sick-out (Aviation Daily, July 29).
US Airways is citing the Justice Department’s investigation into possible antitrust violations by global distribution system providers as one of many reasons why the airline’s antitrust lawsuit against Sabre should be allowed to proceed.
The U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR) is testing a new warhead casing material that could increase the lethality of air-to-air, air-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles. Arena tests of the high-density reactive material (HDRM) against aircraft, missile and small boat targets are planned this month as a step toward transitioning the technology to a weapon system.
Australia’s Tiger Airways is preparing to resume flying on a second route following the lifting of the carrier’s operating suspension last week. Tiger is restoring its Melbourne-Brisbane route beginning Aug. 18 after reintroducing its Sydney-Melbourne service on Aug. 12. The carrier is “resuming Australian domestic services gradually,” and regulators are only allowing it 18 sectors per day during August.
TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan’s Aerospace Industrial Development Corp. (AIDC) is pushing to do more work for Sikorsky in light of the fact that Taiwan has 60 UH-60s on order, according to an AIDC executive. An-Cheng Yen, a senior manager for AIDC’s Taiwan Advanced Composite Center, says the additional work that Sikorsky has offered it recently is small in dollar terms, so AIDC is trying for more.
TAIPEI, TAIWAN — Taiwan’s latest upgrade program for its indigenous fighter has left many western defense industry executives unimpressed. “It still doesn’t address the main issue with the IDF [Indigenous Defense Fighter], which is that it’s under-powered,” says one industry executive, echoing the sentiments of many in the industry.
BEIJING — The South Korean air force rates all of the Western competitors for its F-X Phase 3 fighter program, including the F-35 Lightning, as capable of meeting the in-service date of 2016, an assessment that appears to raise the chances of the Lockheed Martin aircraft. The air force does not express the same view on the fourth and most recent competitor for the planned 60-aircraft order, the Sukhoi PAK FA.
