Just days after formally announcing its operations, aircraft leasing company Avolon has announced a deal with Dutch counterpart AerCap to buy six Airbus A320s and form a joint venture to manage other assets. The joint venture, in which both companies are equal partners, starts out with the acquisition of three A330-200s that belonged to AerCap outright and are placed with Aeroflot on long-term lease. AerCap will continue to manage the lease. Of the six A320s Avolon is buying, two had been delivered to AerCap in 2008 and four are coming off the production line this year.
Mike Ellis (see photo) has been appointed vice president for pre-owned aircraft for the Hawker Beechcraft Corp. , Wichita, Kan. He was president of Mike Ellis & Associates and chairman of the National Aircraft Resale Association. Recent Hawker sales appointments are: Noell Michaels, vice president for the Eastern U.S.; Jim Christiansen, vice president for the Central U.S.; David Coppock, vice president for the Western U.S.; and John Meehan, vice president for Latin America.
Boeing recently announced that its ScanEagle Compressed Carriage (SECC) unmanned airborne system on May 12 underwent testing at a facility in eastern Oregon. In a 75-min. flight, the aircraft’s airworthiness and flight characteristics were evaluated in a simulated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance mission. The SECC, powered by a 6-hp., heavy-fuel engine, was launched from a ground vehicle, flew an autonomous flight plan at various altitudes and provided streaming video from its electro-optical/infrared sensor package to a nearby ground station.
Graham Warwick (Washington), Michael Bruno (Washington)
A high-stakes test of U.S. defense contractors’ willingness to defy their customer and apply political pressure to safeguard their programs is unfolding here. While key congressional votes late last week threatened to determine the fate of the alternate engine for the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the bitter battle between General Electric and Pratt & Whitney is likely to continue until Congress finalizes the Fiscal 2011 defense budget.
Engineers have given up attempts to contact NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander, after a new image of the spacecraft collected from orbit suggests a solar array has collapsed under the weight of frozen carbon dioxide at its polar landing site. Attempts to contact the spacecraft from the Mars Odyssey orbiter in 61 overflights earlier this month failed, and managers believe the lander is dead—probably after being buried by as much as a foot of carbon dioxide ice.
PowerJet, a joint venture between Snecma of France and NPO Saturn of Russia, completed its last certification test on May 26—medium bird ingestion—on the SaM146 regional jet engine that will power the Sukhoi Superjet 100. The powerplant now awaits European Aviation Safety Agency certification, which is expected this summer, perhaps in time to “break some news” at the Farnborough air show in late July, says Chairman and CEO Jean-Paul Ebanga. The contract with Sukhoi is to supply engines for the 122 firm orders already placed for the aircraft, plus 10% more for spares.
Kevin Burke, who is chairman/president/CEO of Consolidated Edison Inc. of New York, has been named to the board of directors of Honeywell International , Morris Plains, N.J.
The British coalition government is approving an independent review of the evidence into a 1994 Royal Air Force Boeing Chinook helicopter crash that killed 29 people. A board of inquiry at the time found the pilot and co-pilot guilty of negligence, though this finding has increasingly been contested.
Did anyone at NASA realize the irony of Atlantis launching on May 14, 37 years to the day—almost to the same hour—that the last Saturn V lifted off from the same Pad 39A? What a sad confluence for the endings to the U.S.’s two best accomplishments in space. Killing the current manned spaceflight programtells the world our best days are behind us.
The British Army has begun operating an upgraded variant of the AgustaWestland Lynx, the Mk9A, in Afghanistan. A total of 22 Lynx helicopters are being modified to the Mk9A standard, the main element of which is the more powerful LHTEC CTS800-4N engine providing better hot-and-high performance. The Mk9As now deployed were recently ferried into the country via a Royal Air Force Boeing C-17, which was flown from Brize Norton air base in southern England to Camp Bastion in the Helmand region of Afghanistan.
Boeing’s order book continues to give evidence of why the company is boosting 777 production rates. It posted two additional unidentified orders this week, bringing its total net 777 orders to 31 for the year. That is the highest level since 2007, when it had a whopping 58. At this time last year, the market was so sluggish—Boeing had only 10—that it pulled back on production rates, a decision recently reversed. Of this year’s orders, only FedEx’s decision to take four freighters has a customer’s name attached; 34 are for unidentified customers.
“Let’s Make A Deal” (AW&ST May 17, p. 49) read like an air service article from the 1980s. The most fundamental exercise any airport can undertake to retain or grow air service is ensuring profitability for both the airline and community. The real threat of “de-hubbing” occurs, not just at the hub but at the spoke ends in smaller communities. Airlines cutting service do so at their own peril, and the loss of air service can cause a devastating blow to the current and future economy of a city.
The German government anticipates further delays in fielding its Tiger reconnaissance and attack helicopter owing to a hiatus in deliveries as Eurocopter fixes a systems wiring problem. Because of quality shortfalls, the German defense ministry says it has not received any Tigers from Eurocopter since December. Of the 67 that should have been delivered to date, only 11 have been handed over, and none is in a production configuration, a defense ministry official laments.
At a time when airlines are furloughing flight and cabin crew staff, Emirates last week announced plans to hire 3,000 cabin crewmembers this year to meet demands of a growing fleet and route network. Vice President of Recruitment Rick Helliwell says the airline, which currently employs 11,000 flight attendants, receives more than 5,000 applications per month.
Libano Miranda Barroso has been named director-president of Brazil-based TAM Linhas Aereas . He was interim president, following David Barioni Neto, and had been vice president-finance, management and information technology.
DCNS has begun cutting metal on the first of four submarines intended for the Brazilian navy. Delivery is expected to begin in 2017. Although the vessels are conventional, they are being acquired under a technology transfer agreement. Part of a broad defense and space cooperation agreement between Paris and Brasilia, the submarine collaboration is thought to be the decisive argument pushing Brazil to acquire France’s Rafale fighter to meet an advanced combat aircraft requirement.
David D. McBride has become director of the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center , Edwards AFB, Calif. He had been acting director, succeeding Kevin L. Petersen, who has retired. McBride was deputy director.
