GE Aviation has begun producing blade dampers and seals for CF6 and CF34 engines at its 250,000-sq.-ft. Singapore service center. The production is the first of new high- and low-pressure engine parts and uses a 50,000-sq.-ft. expansion completed late last year. The expansion also will accommodate introduction of GE’s GEnx engine for the Boeing 787 and 747-8.
Lockheed Martin and Kaman have demonstrated the cargo resupply mission using an unmanned version of the K-Max helicopter, with the U.S. Marine Corps hoping to deploy the capability to Afghanistan. Boeing is scheduled to demonstrate its A160T Hummingbird unmanned helicopter this week .
The Pentagon’s Fiscal 2011 funding request continues—with far less drama than last year’s bloodletting—to rebalance defenses from high-end conventional systems to those suitable for fighting today’s wars abroad. The request signals a hard reality for industry regarding contract performance but contains a soft edge in the form of much-needed industrial base relief not seen in the first Obama administration budget last spring.
While CH-53 helicopters were unloading Marines from Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment in the Now Zad valley in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province during the early morning of Dec. 4, history was being made a short distance away.
ICO Global Communications has announced a rights offering intended to raise around $30 million in new capital. Three ICO shareholders—Eagle River Partners, Highland Capital Management and Harbinger Capital Partners—agreed to acquire any Class A common stock not purchased by other stockholders, up to a predetermined limit. Harbinger has holdings in other mobile satellite service (MSS) providers, including Inmarsat, TerreStar and SkyTerra.
Critical human-factors safety issues laid bare during the NTSB’s probe of a regional airline crash near Buffalo, N.Y., are mobilizing the aviation community to overhaul the way pilots qualify and train for a seat on the flight deck. At the final hearing last week on Continental Connection/Colgan Air Flight 3407, the NTSB said pilot error—specifically, the captain’s improper response to stickshaker activation—was the probable cause of the Feb. 12, 2009, accident that killed 50 people.
Feb. 16-18—Air Africa 2010. Gallagher Convention Center, Midrand, South Africa. Call +27 (11) 788-9562, fax +27 (11) 442-8546 or see www.airafricaexpo.com/ Feb. 17-18—Grey Owl Aviation’s Human Factors Maintenance Workshop (Phase I). Also, Feb. 19—Recurrent Human Factors Maintenance Workshop (Phase II). And, Feb. 20—Safety Management Systems Workshop. All at George R. Brown Convention Center, Houston. Call +1 (204) 848-7353, fax +1 (204) 848-4605 or see www.greyowl.com
Afghanistan is sprouting a series of boom towns with new airfields, prefabricated quarters, rapidly expanding transportation routes, the latest all-terrain vehicles and an equivalent of a detective agency looking for highway bandits, scam artists, counterfeiters and other agents of fraud. The Pentagon’s top logistician says improvements include: •Building more forward operating bases (FOBs).
The Air Transport Assn. wants money from a proposed “infrastructure bank” to be used to help airlines equip their fleets to be ready for the NextGen air-traffic control modernization plan. The Obama administration’s Fiscal 2011 budget includes a proposal for a $4-billion National Infrastructure Innovation and Finance Fund, and ATA stresses that aviation projects would be eligible for this money. “An appropriate share of these dollars should be spent on the critical element of NextGen equipage,” says ATA President James May.
EADS expects the Asia-Pacific region to account for 30% of its global revenues by 2015, up from the current 25%. Revenue shares are expected to remain stable among EADS’s defense and civil product groups, with Airbus accounting for about 70% of the total, says Corporate Vice President Christian Duhain. The conglomerate outsourced €400 million ($556 million) in work to regional suppliers in 2008 . “We believe this number will grow very fast,” he says.
President Barack Obama’s $708-billion Fiscal 2011 Defense Dept. budget request has good news for the world’s largest military contractor, Lockheed Martin Corp. The budget is $100 billion more than the placeholder document and is expected to grow by 3% per year through 2015.
Rolls-Royce bought the remaining 49% shares in Europea Microfusioni Aerospaziali (EMA) from Finmeccanica, making it the 100% shareholder in EMA. The Italian company was established in 1990 and manufactures precision advanced micro-castings for aero engines, including those on Airbus A380s and that will power Boeing 787s.
A Belgian-led technology satellite will provide vital data on space weather while validating critical hardware for upcoming European science missions. Proba-2, launched on Nov. 2, 2009, along with the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity earth science spacecraft, is the second in the European Space Agency’s Project for Onboard Autonomy (Proba) initiative. Proba is intended to provide inexpensive, short-lead-time opportunities to demonstrate novel technologies in orbit while piggybacking science experiments that might otherwise not find their way into space.
On Feb. 19, India is set to commission another four of a MiG-29K maritime jet order for 16. Six of the fighters have already arrived at the Goa naval air base. On top of this order, India and Russia are set to sign a $1.2-billion contract for an additional 29 MiG-29Ks. The fighters will operate from both the oft-delayed 44,570-ton aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov, now set to be inducted in 2013, and from a 40,000-ton indigenous carrier that is expected to be ready in 2012-15.
Sukhoi Civil Aircraft Co. has begun flying the fourth Superjet 100 prototype. The aircraft, in final standard configuration, will be used to evaluate onboard equipment and avionics, and support type certification. Three existing prototypes have accumulated more than 1,300 flight hours in over 500 flights. The Superjet 100 could receive its airworthiness certificate in July, but Sukhoi sources insist the date will depend on production and certification of the Superjet 100’s SaM146 engine.
There are several ongoing efforts industry-wide to provide enhanced pilot training initiatives to address Loss of Control (LOC), which your articles identify as the leading cause of accidents (AW&ST Nov. 30, 2009, pp. 52-56).
Launch of the Swedish-led Prisma formation-flying mission could be delayed because of concerns over possible down-range damage from rockets launched from Russia’s Yasny Cosmodrome. Prisma is slated to lift off from Yasny on Mar. 23 or Apr. 6 on a Kosmotras Dnepr booster, but the launch status may still be in a state of flux. A Dnepr flight from Yasny in 2008 carrying Thailand’s Theos surveillance satellite was delayed for months because of overflight issues with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. If the Apr.
The U.S. Navy has awarded the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory of Cambridge, Mass., a $131-million cost-plus-incentive-fee contract for long-lead items and circuit cards for 20 MK6 Life Extension guidance systems for the Trident II D5 submarine-launched nuclear missile. This life-extension program is designed to improve the guidance system’s reliability and reduce life-cycle cost for the weapons.
Evergreen Unmanned Systems and Elbit Systems teamed to donate surveys of rural orphanages in Haiti via Elbit’s Skylark I LE UAV ( see photos). Missions were flown from mountainous regions at 5,200 ft. in the vicinity of Port-au-Prince. Evergreen Helicopters provided the airlift support to position the U.S. and Israeli surveying teams . The 12.1-lb. Skylark, which can operate up to 3 hr., can launch without a runway and document infrastructure damage. Almost immediately after the devastating earthquake struck the island nation on Jan. 12, the U.S.
David P. Steiner has been named to the board of directors of the FedEx Corp. , Memphis, Tenn. He is CEO of Waste Management Inc. Fred Schardt has been named president/CEO of FedEx Trade Networks. He was executive vice president/chief operating officer. Schardt succeeds Ed Clark, who has retired.
Beginning Feb. 1, NASA will add streaming video from inside the International Space Station to the exterior views that have been available on the Internet since March 2009. The interior views will show station crewmembers working, and audio of communications with controllers on the ground when available. A test pattern will be displayed when the station is out of range of NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System. The material will be available at www.nasa.gov/station
Carol Huegel has become vice president-business development of the Advanced Research and Engineering Services Div. and Greg Feldman has been appointed vice president-systems engineering of Metron Aviation , Dulles, Va. Huegel was senior director of business development for the Sensis Corp., while Feldman was vice president-engineering for Flatirons Solutions. Honors and Elections
An industry team has received $5 million from the National Institute of Standard and Technology to develop lighter-weight metal castings. The Technology Innovation Program (TIP) is set to run for five years, with team members providing in-kind engineering resources, which will bring the total value of the project to approximately $10 million. The aim of the program is to come up with lightweight metal casting of aluminum and magnesium that will have the strength of cast-steel, with defense and commercial truck manufacturers to be the immediate recipients.
Eutelsat will lease 20 Ku-band transponders on its W7 satellite to Multichoice Africa, a leading multi-channel pay-TV operator serving sub-Saharan Africa. The lease agreement—one of Eutelsat’s largest ever—will last for the life of the spacecraft, which was launched to 36 deg. E. Long in November alongside W4. Multichoice serves more than 800,000 homes via 14 transponders on W4 and an older satellite, Sesat 1. The deal follows a 14-transponder lease on W7 with Intersputnik concluded this month (AW&ST Jan. 25, p. 18).
The FAA and Congress are aggressively pursuing new rules and new laws aimed at creating the fail-safe airline pilot —one who must meet more rigorous training and hiring requirements. No one is arguing the safety benefits, and no one yet knows the impact on operations—and ledgers.
