Robert Wall (London), Frances Fiorino (Washington DC)
The airline industry will be studying the impact that the April 14 eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokul volcano had on already hard-hit revenues. Meanwhile, much of Europe’s airspace remained closed late last week as air traffic control providers waited for signs that the ash cloud that drifted over Europe would lift enough to allow limited operations.
Concerns are once again surfacing at U.S. Strategic Command about a potential gap in the critical mission area of space-based missile warning. Last December, U.S. Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, Stratcom commander, issued an urgent-need request to the Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) office for alternatives to augment the mission, according to Lt. Cmdr. Steve Curry, a Stratcom official.
Griffon Aerospace has rolled out the first production MQM-171A BroadSword UAV target for the U.S. Army. The Madison, Ala.-based company is producing an initial 20 BroadSwords, plus launchers and control stations. The 500-lb.-class aircraft will represent a generic tactical UAV for training and weapon-system testing and as a platform for sensor development.
BAE Systems was No. 1 in arms sales, ahead of Lockheed Martin and displacing Boeing, which dropped to third place in the latest rankings produced by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri). The data reflect 2008 sales. It is the first time a non-U.S. company leads the pack. But BAE Systems’ time at the top may be short-lived. The company’s $32.4 billion in sales that year largely was driven by strong activity in the land and armaments business—in particular with mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles—owing to operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
April 28-30—Phoenix Sky Harbor International Aviation Symposium. May 10-13—Special Operations Forces Exhibition and Conference. Amman, Jordan May 19-21—NextGen Conference and Exhibition. Washington. June 8-13—ILA-Berlin Air Show. July 19-25—Farnborough 2010. Sept. 27-Oct. 1—International Astronautical Congress. Prague. Sept. 28-30—MRO Europe. London. Nov. 1-3—A&D Programs Conference. Phoenix. Nov. 2-3—A&D Supply Chain Conference. Phoenix.
Mitsubishi Aircraft plans to bring outside training and maintenance specialists into its MRJ program as part of an effort to assure prospective customers that it can fully support the regional jet in service. Adhering to the time line is the biggest challenge for the Japanese manufacturer, which says there is no particular aspect of the aircraft’s development and integration that it regards as unusually difficult, even though the MRJ is its first attempt at building a commercial jet.
Republic Airways has chosen Frontier Airlines to be the unified brand name for the Frontier Airlines and Midwest Airlines subsidiaries it acquired last year, but expects the work of integrating the carriers to continue for as long as 18 months. Republic said customer surveys show both brands retained hometown loyalty, but that customers prefer the Frontier brand and identify it more with lower fares. Republic already has been melding the carriers’ route systems and has implemented network-wide code sharing for Denver-based Frontier and Milwaukee-based Midwest.
China Eastern’s entry into the SkyTeam alliance will bring closer cooperation between two of the biggest airlines in China, lifting the chances of industry consolidation there while eliminating Oneworld’s hope of embracing a top-three mainland carrier.
The European Space Agency’s Cryo-Sat-2 ice-monitoring mission began delivering data last week, just days after an April 8 launch. The early orbit phase was completed on the morning of April 11 and the synthetic aperture interferometric radar altimeter, CryoSat-2’s principal instrument, was switched on later the same day. First data showing Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf was acquired by the European Space Agency’s Kiruna, Sweden, ground station on April 13. The spacecraft is expected to be commissioned in about three months.
Though wind farms are generally considered to be a green mine of energy conservation and renewable resources, military personnel are increasingly concerned about a dark side—the disruption or blocking of radar designed to detect threats. Both the FAA and U.S. military have sounded alarms, and the North American Aerospace Defense Command is organizing a radar obstruction evaluation team. Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, the U.K., which has extensive offshore wind energy resources in place, also is aggressively working on solutions.
The long-awaited transformation of air-breathing hypersonic technology from research to practical operational use could become a reality under Riptide, a newly unveiled fast-reaction missile project being studied by the U.S. Air Force.
Engineers hope analysis of telemetry data from India’s first attempt to fly its own cryogenic upper stage will reveal whether the new engine ignited before the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV-D3) it was to power tumbled out of control and crashed into the Bay of Bengal.
April 25-27—Reed Exhibitions’ Middle East Airport Expo 2010. Dubai World Trade Center. Call +97 (12) 409-0403 or see www.theairportshow.com April 26-29—Institute for Defense and Government Advancement’s UAV Summit “Achieving Maximum Unmanned Capabilities.” Sheraton Premiere at Tysons Corner Hotel. Vienna, Va. Call +1 (800) 882-8684, fax +1 (646) 378-6025 or see www.uavevent.com
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano provided another sign that the political sport of bashing private jets has run its course in Washington. “This is a tough job . . . but there are some things that come with it, and one of them is a plane,” Napolitano told a National Press Club audience last week.
Plans to begin technology development for a reusable booster system to replace its existing expendable launch vehicles beyond 2025 are being finalized by the U.S. Air Force.
International Lease Finance Corp., continuing its restructuring efforts, has agreed to dispose of 53 aircraft in its portfolio. Macquarie Bank is the buyer in the $2 billion deal, a discount to their $2.3-billion net book value. The result is that the average age of the ILFC fleet increases to 7.6 from 7.4 years.
President Barack Obama’s cancellation of Constellation will most likely speed up the return to the Moon. Constellation would have involved years of redevelopment of obsolete technology.
While governments have been building and launching military and intelligence satellites for more than 50 years, a growing reliance on satellite services is heightening the importance of questions about how to better fund and procure these expensive systems.
A sense of inevitability accompanies the latest set of merger talks between United Airlines and US Airways, but some serious questions from previous attempts to consolidate the two carriers remain unanswered. Add new concerns, including US Airways’ slot-swap agreement with Delta Air Lines and recent antitrust immunizations, and prospects for this proposed marriage become very bleak.
After completing an 80-flight test phase that proved a tailless flying-wing aircraft could be controlled safely at low airspeed, NASA expects to fly a modified version of Boeing’s X-48B blended wing-body demonstrator in about a year to test a revised configuration and additional capabilities.
Construction has begun on the 1.2-million-sq.-ft. factory Boeing is building in Charleston, S.C., as a second final assembly line for the 787. The factory is expected to open in July 2011 and see its first airplane roll out in the first quarter of 2012. The manufacturer also has plans to refurbish parts of its Everett, Wash., wide-body aircraft factory to include a surge line for the program, which means that when the South Carolina factory is ready the company will be able to produce from three lines, if necessary.
Airbus order intake in March brought this year’s total to 60 aircraft with no cancellations. It was unusual that all the orders were for widebodies, A330s and A350s. Industry officials had indicated Airbus’s deliberations over a possible A320-family reengining could crimp near-term prospects for single-aisle sales. Airbus also once again saw a shift from smaller narrowbodies to larger ones, with A319 orders declining a net 34 units. The A320 order book increased by 31 aircraft and A321 orders by three.
Commercial airline and air cargo pilots caught in an Age 60 time gap are trying another tactic to recoup back wages after failing in an earlier federal lawsuit. This time, plaintiffs Mickey Oksner, 66, of Midway, Utah, and 50 others are suing in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco saying the FAA’s now-defunct Age 60 retirement rule violated anti-discrimination laws in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, New York, Tennessee, Texas and Washington state. They want back wages for the time they could have been flying had they not been forced to retire at 60.
Telesat of Canada says it has signed up an anchor customer that will enable it to purchase and launch a new direct-to-home spacecraft. The customer, Shaw Direct, will lease 16 extended Ku-band transponders for the full 15-year life of the new satellite, which will be inserted at the slot at 107.3 W. Long. To be called Anik G1, the spacecraft will be ordered in the second quarter and is expected to be lofted in the second half of 2012. Shaw Direct, already a customer of Telesat’s Anik F1 and E2 satellites, is a Canadian digital TV service provider with 870,000 subscribers.
An internal German debate over selection of a contract to supply Europe’s next meteorological satellite network shows the continuing vulnerability of the European space program to geographic-return disputes.
