When the Airbus-Boeing duopoly is finally broken, as eventually it must be, the third competitor just might be called Combardier. Or Bomac. In an exercise that seems to fall not far short of forming a joint venture, Canada’s Bombardier and China’s Comac are moving ahead with a potentially far-reaching outline agreement to see how they can bring commonality to their jet airliners and help each other to sell aircraft.
Frustration with NASA at the slow start of work on a new heavy-lift launch vehicle ordered in last year’s three-year authorization act for the agency has united Democrats and Republicans who are otherwise at loggerheads over future federal spending.
Future human explorers on Earth’s Moon can plan their routes in great detail, now that the final load of exploration data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has been released. The data-dump may wind up as the most enduring legacy of the Bush administration program that sought to return humans to the Moon to practice for a trip to Mars, only to be terminated as “unsustainable” for lack of adequate funding. LRO spent a year—September 2009-September 2010—mapping the lunar surface in rich detail at a resolution of 100 meters per pixel for imagery.
Workers on this barrier-island launch site east of Chesapeake Bay are well on their way to completing a new launch pad for the commercial Taurus II rocket that is in development to take U.S. cargo to the International Space Station.
Lynn Brubaker has joined New York-based Seabury Group ’s board of advisers. She is a past member of the Wings Club board of directors and has held executive positions at Honeywell International Commercial Aerospace and McDonnell Douglas Corp.
MBDA is bolstering its research and engineering capacity in the U.S. as it refines its approach to the huge Pentagon market, an effort that could also see the European missile manufacturer make small acquisitions to expand its reach.
Russia’s Aeroflot has sold one of its subsidiaries—Nordavia Airlines—to the Norilsk Nickel mining and metallurgical company. Nordavia, based in Arkhangelsk, serves northwest Russia with a fleet of 14 Boeing 737-500s, one 737-300 and four Antonov An-24s. In 2010, it carried 1.4 million passengers to rank eighth among Russian carriers. Norilsk is likely to merge Nordavia with NordStar, which operates five 737-800s, one ATR 42-500 and 12 Mil Mi-8 helicopters. In 2010, Nordstar carried 540,000 passengers to rank 23rd among domestic airlines.
China is the big rising star when it comes to commercial aircraft, not least because of a healthy dose of state support. That said, the fearful incumbents do not have much of a moral high ground from which to complain, now that the World Trade Organization (WTO) has issued its latest report on aircraft subsidies. With its determination that Boeing also has benefited heavily from subsidies, all four major Western airframers have been judged to have run afoul of state-aid rules; Airbus, Bombardier and Embraer were implicated earlier.
Scott Severen (see photo) has been appointed director of business development for Denton, Texas-based US Aviation Group . He was a charter member of the FAA Aviation Rulemaking Committee and had been head of marketing and sales for IndUS Aviation.
The first Mitsubishi Regional Jet, whose parts are now taking shape in Nagoya, will follow a design that in key areas shows unusual features in the quest for fuel economy. Above all, program managers have bet on higher fuel prices justifying a design whose wing is much more slender than usual for a regional jet.
Flying will be cleaner, quieter and more punctual under Europe’s new vision for aerospace except for one small problem; there may be insufficient funds to enable the research needed to achieve this.
James A. MacStravic has been appointed to the Senior Executive Service and is assigned as strategic coordinator in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition, Technology and Logistics) in Washington. MacStravic was an acquisition program manager with USAF Materiel Command, Hanscom AFB, Mass.
“Signal Charlie.” Those are the two words on the radio that student naval aviators most look forward to hearing for the first time. They are about to make their first landings on an aircraft carrier, thereby joining what carrier aviators consider to be aviation’s most exclusive club: pilots who have earned carrier qualification.
“Crisis In Japan: Broken Chain” (AW&ST March 21, p. 20) states “Boeing’s Seattle facilities coped well with a magnitude 6.7 earthquake in 2001, while its South Carolina plant is built to ride out hurricanes. On the other hand, that is a reminder that production is exposed to a seismic fault line in the U.S. (Seattle area), fault lines in Japan and South Carolina’s weather.”
Rising fuel prices are squeezing airline profits and will force carriers to cut capacity and replace older aircraft. IATA recently downgraded the airline’s industry profit forecast to $8.6 billion, citing higher fuel prices. This compares to its previous forecast of $9.1 billion. The new estimate is 46% lower than the airline industry’s 2010 profit of $16 billion profit.
MISSION: STS-134 International Space Station Utilization/Logistics Flight 6 (ULF 6), the 134th launch of the space shuttle program and the 36th to the ISS. ORBITER: Endeavour (OV-5), making its 25th and final flight. Endeavour last returned from orbit on Feb. 21, 2010, after the STS-130 flight to install the Tranquility pressurized node with its seven-window cupola.
The Russian government plans to merge Moscow’s Sheremetyevo and Vnukovo airports, with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin saying the goal is to modernize and expand the capacity of the facilities and then privatize them. The combined entity will present more formidable competition for privately owned Domodedovo Airport, which is expected to remain Moscow’s largest airport. Its capacity is planned at 29.3 million passengers by 2015 and 38.5 million by 2020.
Flight trials are due to commence this year for the new light two-stage Soyuz-1 launch vehicle. The test program will last several years and include five launches. Soyuz-1 was derived from Soyuz-2-1b by removing a side booster and installing an NK-33-1 engine on the central module. The new modification will use the standard nose fairing of the Soyuz family. Soyuz-1 has a liftoff weight of 158 tons and will be able to orbit 2,800 kg (6,200 lb.) of payload. The launch of another new vehicle—Angara-1—is delayed until 2013, according to a Russian military official.
The German government’s reaction to an ongoing nuclear power station crisis in Japan following a massive earthquake and tsunami that struck March 11 caused the value of carbon credits traded in the European Union’s Emissions Trading System to jump to a two-year high. The indirect effect of the catastrophe at Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima Daiichi facility in the northern part of the country has caused a potentially game-changing, long-term shift in the dynamics of the European power market.
Cynthia Treadwell-McConnell has been named president of Air Transport International , a cargo subsidiary of ATSG, Wilmington, Ohio. She succeeds James L. Hobson, Jr., who retired after 12 years as president and CEO. McConnell was managing director of finance at Continental Airlines and has held multiple audit roles for Ernst & Young and was corporate auditor at PepsiCo.
The first new MC-130J Combat Shadow II rescue tanker—destined for the U.S. Air Force’s Special Operations Command—was rolled out at Lockheed Martin’s Marietta, Ga., facility last week. The new aircraft combines the capabilities of the Combat Shadow with upgraded sensors, greater speed and the more powerful J-model airframe.
William Calderwood has been appointed interim CEO of the Pacific Asia Travel Association in Bangkok. He is has been managing director of The Ayre Group Consulting and was head of international operations for the Australian Tourism Commission.
The first hundred years of U.S. naval aviation have seen quantum leaps in technology, including the advent of jet propulsion, helicopters and nuclear power, plus integrated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance on the battlefront, and aircraft carriers with angled decks that permit simultaneous arrested landings and catapult takeoffs. What has not changed is the mission and the people, according to carrier aviators.
