Phoenix’s downtown airport looks toward a bright future under the searing desert sun except for one huge obstacle. Vehicles jam the main roadway serving a linear stretch of terminals sandwiched between north and south runways. “It’s our Achilles’ heel,” says Jane Morris, assistant aviation director.
TAM Airlines, Brazil’s largest carrier, joined the Star Alliance last week, substantially improving the group’s market reach in South America. TAM is filling a void created when Star expelled bankrupt Varig in 2007. TAM’s admission to the largest airline alliance is the first sign that Star’s efforts to sign up new Latin American members have been successful. With TAM, Star gains access to 36 additional destinations in South America.
A Frost & Sullivan survey of consumers’ ordering habits notes that air travelers start their selection process on travel websites but switch to airlines’ sites to purchase tickets. Frost & Sullivan customer research team leader Tonya Fowler says it may be emotional aspects, such as trust and loyalty, that prompt this pattern, but this cannot be confirmed without more study. However, perhaps trust and loyalty should have its limits.
The potentially devastating oil well leak in the Gulf of Mexico is demonstrating the value of satellites in mitigating natural disasters, giving emergency-response managers a clear idea of where the oil is at any given time. That includes the hours of darkness, as in this image collected during the night of May 1-2 by the advanced synthetic aperture radar on the European Space Agency’s Envisat Earth-observation spacecraft.
The U.S. military and intelligence community’s space launch manifest is ramping up to an unusually high pace to deploy several first-of-fleet spacecraft that will modernize the nation’s communications, missile warning, surveillance and navigation infrastructures. But uncertainties are clouding the outlook of the liquid- and solid-fueled booster industrial base following a White House decision to terminate NASA’s Constellation program.
Meanwhile, Lufthansa Private Jet, which Swiss Private Jet manages, is looking to expand its market footprint, which has been limited to Europe and the Russian Federation. Sabine Doerflinger, Lufthansa’s global premium customer management director, says the company is actively canvassing operators who would be interested in backing services in North America and Asia, in particular China. A decision is expected next year, with North American operations likely to be the first step, Doerflinger says.
Two years ago, Rockwell Collins Inc. Chairman and CEO Clay Jones could barely contain his fury at Wall Street. The company was generating record sales and profits, yet its share price kept declining, ending 2008 down 47%. The selloff was a harbinger of a global economic downturn that would choke off demand for passenger and business jets—and their Rockwell Collins-supplied communication, navigation and flight control systems. “The market had it right,” Jones admits. “I didn’t see what the market saw.”
Regarding Gayle Berry’s letter “The Wrong Aircraft, Maybe” (AW&ST April 19, p. 9), in 1962 the U.S. Defense Department redesignated many military aircraft, to end the confusion caused by separate services designating the same aircraft type differently. Most USAF aircraft retained their designations while most Navy aircraft received new ones. Operational AD Skyraiders became A-1s: AD-5s became the A-1Es; AD-7s became the A-1Js.
Energia Overseas Ltd. has taken over debtor-in-possession financing for Sea Launch Co. from Space Launch Services, an entity established to finance the launch service provider. Energia Overseas will provide $30 million to Sea Launch, of which $19 million will be used to repay Space Launch Services, Sea Launch said.
OHB System has signed a subcontract agreement with Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. for design and production of 14 payloads for the Galileo satellite navigation system’s full operational capability (FOC) phase. The €230-million ($300-million) contract provides for development, construction and delivery of the first payloads for integration at OHB’s Bremen, Germany, plant by mid-2011. OHB is responsible for supply of the bus and integration of the 14 FOC satellites under a €566-million award decided in January.
Thales Alenia Space has delivered a prototype mobile robotic arm intended to support extravehicular activities. The Eurobot Ground Prototype, funded by the European Space Agency, is fully autonomous and mobile. And, unlike the initial Eurobot concept, which was aimed exclusively at the International Space Station, it could support future manned missions to the Moon or Mars. The architecture features a mobile platform that transports a manlike robot equipped with two articulated arms, force and torque sensors, and vision systems. The prototype can carry a 150-kg.
In yet another sign that the global air cargo market is recovering, Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings reported record first-quarter adjusted net income of $27.5 million, up 86.2% from the same period in 2009. Strong demand growth in Asia is leading air cargo demand back to its 2008 peak levels, says CEO William Flynn. Atlas’s large presence in the surging Asian and Latin American markets suggests “there are no near-term signs of a slowdown,” says Morgan Stanley analyst William Greene.
LaserMotive, which won a NASA prize for beaming power to a climber in a space-elevator competition, is targeting UAVs as an initial application of its laser-based technology. The company says laser-power beaming could extend the endurance of electrically powered UAVs, and plans to fly a small internally funded demonstrator by year-end.
APT Satellite Holding says Thales Alenia Space will supply the Hong Kong-based operator with a new communications spacecraft to be launched in the second or third quarter of 2012 atop a Chinese Long March LM-3B launch vehicle. The $148.7-million deal, financed through China Satellite Communications, includes supply of a new ground station. The spacecraft, Apstar 7B, is intended to ensure service continuity in case of a failure of Apstar 7, which is due for launch on an LM-3B in the first half of 2012 to replace Apstar 2R.
World passenger and freight traffic showed steady improvement in March, according to Airports Council International (ACI). Compared with 2009, passenger traffic increased 7.6% for the month, with international traffic rising 10.1% and domestic, 5.6%. In the first quarter, total passenger traffic rose 6.1%. Freight traffic for March increased 25.6%, with domestic cargo reflecting 14.6% growth, and international freight—which appears on track to full recovery, notes ACI—shot up by 32.4%. In the first quarter, total cargo traffic grew 24.1%.
Ebace 2010, the 10th annual European Business Aviation Association Convention and Exposition, seemed destined to become among the event’s best showings even before the turnstiles began spinning. On May 3, association President and CEO Brian Humphries said the hall stands had sold out with 436 exhibitors, and the static display area was at capacity with 65 aircraft. Attendance by noon on May 4 had reached 10,485, almost even with last year’s total of 10,917, which was the third-best tally in the event’s history.
The upshot of closed-door talks between top NASA officials and various congressional and academic leaders will get a public airing this week in a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on human spaceflight. But so far, it does not appear the Obama administration’s plan is winning many hearts and minds. A session with a range of space organizations produced a few tidbits, like word that NASA plans to issue a slew of “requests for information” in the next couple of weeks to get industry input as a Houston-based NASA study panel prepares road maps for human space exploration.
Looking over the next decade, the U.S. military maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) market faces the greatest growth spurt ever experienced—and also the greatest change, including a fundamental reshaping of industry’s relationship with government.
ITT Defense & Information Systems is proposing to play the same systems integration role for automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) radar in India that it is fulfilling in the U.S., but even as the Indians recognize ADS-B’s superior ability to track and control aircraft, they worry about its costs.
New products traditionally help stimulate the market, but a supersonic business jet will not be a contributor, at least not soon. Aerion, the project being funded by financier Robert Bass, remains stalled, still in search of an established manufacturer to help develop, certify and produce it. Unveiled in 2004, the concept aircraft is intended to bypass prohibitions to flying supersonic over the U.S. and many other countries by transiting those places at near Mach speeds, and accelerating to Mach 1.5 over the oceans and remote areas where permitted.
Malaysia’s budget carrier Air Asia is relentless in its pursuit of the Indian market. On April 28, it became the only carrier to fly the Chennai-Penang route. On May 6, its long-haul arm, AirAsia X, will start four-times-weekly service with an Airbus A330 to Mumbai and, beginning Aug. 1, will offer daily service to New Delhi. Meanwhile, the Indian government has cleared the Air Operators Certificate for AirAsia subsidiary Thai AirAsia.
Dassault and its Swiss partners are close to wrapping up an analysis of a potent human-rated suborbital vehicle, the so-called VSH. The study into VSH, a nominal six-passenger, 11-metric-ton (12.13-ton) air-launched vehicle have been underway since 2004. Two years ago Dassault partnered with Ruag, ETHZ and the Lausanne Polytechnic (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) to further refine the concept under the K-1000 project. Dassault now says the fact-finding report from that effort is nearing its conclusion.
The new Phenom 100 and Phenom 300 jets are spearheading Embraer’s bold push into the business aircraft market. But the Brazilian company’s position as the leading manufacturer of smaller passenger jets is facing challenges as competitors move to introduce next-generation technologies and a new group of passenger aircraft builders rises in China, Russia and Japan. Embraer knows it has to respond, but how? A report that begins on p. 52 looks at the strategies that Embraer is considering and how a chief competitor, Bombardier, already has made its bet on the future.
The FAA has begun operational use of wide-area multilateration (WAM) to track aircraft on approach at Alaska’s Juneau International Airport. The WAM system, made by Sensis Corp., uses a network of sensors that receive signals from aircraft transponders. The new system should improve safety and efficiency at Juneau, since the mountainous terrain makes radar coverage difficult.
Airbus and Air France are contributing €1.5 million ($1.9 million) to extend the third search effort for Air France Flight 447 wreckage to May 25. The French air accident investigation office (BEA) says it will act on the request of French transport state secretary Dominique Bussereau to extend the third, and likely final, search, which otherwise would have concluded. Although months of scouring the ocean area where the Airbus A330 presumably crashed nearly a year ago failed to identify more wreckage, the BEA says it believes that a successful result is still possible.
