Regarding the issue of air crew fatigue (AW&ST Sept. 21, p. 42), the FAA, NTSB, Air Line Pilots Assn. and other organizations should contact French National Railways (SNCF). It operates high-speed trains at speeds of 165-210 mph. on routes where the locomotive engineer is on duty for 5 hr. or longer with limited or no stops. These engineers do not have the luxury of en-route cruise with little to do and an additional individual to take turns at the controls. SNCF has been looking at fatigue issues and may have interesting viewpoints.
The U.S. Navy awarded Temeku Technologies an $11.7-million contract to design, build and deliver in April 2011 a production representative model of a multifunction display to aid landings on aircraft carriers. The large shipboard display will combine existing visual landing aids into one presentation with horizon reference display bar, deck status indication and pilot visual cues for the Aircraft Ship Integrated Secure and Traverse System.
Pratt & Whitney Canada says by year’s end it will lay off 250 workers across all employment categories among its more than 9,000 employees, plus another 160 when it closes a plant. The layoffs are necessary “to align with a projected decline in customer demand and weakness in the global aerospace market with no signs of a recovery in 2010,” the company states. The closure is of the Auvergne Street plant at Longueuil, Quebec, headquarters site, which will see the work consolidated with PWC facilities on Montreal’s South Shore.
ST Aerospace subsidiary ST Aviation Services has won an Airbus contract to provide heavy maintenance checks for 19 A330s leased to Singapore Airlines. The contract is part of an Airbus multi-party deal to provide support as part of leases for the aircraft. Maintenance is expected to begin in 2015 and take 18 months.
Low-cost carriers are becoming more cautious about slapping passengers with higher or new add-on charges, fearing a backlash from customers and regulators alike. If airlines do so much unbundling that travelers face untenable fees—and therefore believe they cannot fly for the fare the airline advertises—the European Union will start regulating such practices, predicts Daniel Skjeldam, chief commercial officer for Norwegian Air Shuttle.
Bidding in the aerial refueling war has become increasingly less competitive ever since the McDonnell Douglas merger with Boeing, whose response to being competitive was to eliminate the competition. Flattening Douglas Aircraft Co. did nothing but open the door for Airbus to provide planes to U.S. airlines.
Operating experience in Iraq and Afghanistan is adding urgency to demands for dramatic improvements in rotorcraft technology. Briefing industry on their needs earlier this year, the U.S. armed services said they want improvements in performance, reliability, safety and survivability. Increased speed, payload and maneuverability are high on the list, along with reduced vibration, noise and cost.
In stark contrast to the gloom that has settled over much of business aviation this past recessionary year, Gulfstream Aerospace celebrated the rollout of the G650 business jet in Savannah, Ga., on Sept. 29 and planned to reconvene the party in Tel Aviv on Oct. 6 when the G250 makes its debut.
On the eve of a House-Senate budget conference that will decide the future of the F136 alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the General Electric/Rolls-Royce fighter engine team submitted a formal fixed-price proposal for the initial batch of 21 engines to power Lot 5 low-rate initial production F-35s delivered in 2012-13.
South Africa’s Denel Dynamics delivered a captive-carry integration round of its A-Darter imaging infrared-guided short-range air-to-air missile to Saab at the end of last month, according to South African journal Engineering News. The system’s avionics test missile will be used for functional interface tests between the A-Darter and the Saab Gripen, which is being delivered to the South African Air Force (SAAF). Live firings of the A-Darter are anticipated to be carried out from the Gripen in 2010.
The International Federation of Air Line Pilots Assns. on Oct. 1 again urged the Indian government not to enact legislation that would punish and penalize individuals who violate the country’s aviation rules. IFALPA, which represents more than 100,000 pilots in 100 countries, notes that it sent a letter on Aug. 31 to India’s minister for civil aviation, Praful Patel, detailing its concerns about “the draconian approach” chosen for enforcement.
Russian national space agency Roscosmos has shifted the launch date for a new batch of three Glonass-M navigation satellites by at least a month because of a malfunction on an identical spacecraft launched on Sept. 25, 2008. The launch, on board a Proton M booster, had been set for Sept. 25, 2009. Roscosmos head Anatoly Perminov says the agency has ordered all Glonass-M spacecraft to be inspected to ensure the malfunction is not due to a systemic problem.
Giove A, the first Galileo test satellite, has been repositioned to a parking orbit after completing its planned mission. Built by Surrey Satellite Technology and launched in December 2005, Galileo A performed far beyond its two-year design life, securing international frequency filings, collecting data to characterize Galileo’s medium Earth orbit, and demonstrating atomic clocks and other key system technologies. The spacecraft remains operational and will continue broadcasting test signals from its new position, 113 km.
The Japanese government has headed off rising worries over a cash crunch at Japan Airlines with a promise to support the airline. A government task force of corporate turnaround experts will help the airline draw up a restructuring plan to be finalized by the end of November. Separately, Japan will consider abolishing a special budget account for building airports, because the account has led to the building of unneeded airports. Those airports, in turn, demand services from the country’s airlines, contributing to the financial weakness of Japan Airlines.
The final draft of the Augustine panel’s report on the future of U.S. human spaceflight will not be ready until mid-month, and it could take two or three additional weeks before the Obama administration’s way forward is set. Don’t expect the final results to change from what was discussed in public over the summer (AW&ST Sept. 14, p. 36). A bigger hang-up may lie within NASA itself. Two competing camps have developed over which Augustine option to recommend to President Barack Obama.
The final draft of the Augustine panel’s report on the future of U.S. human spaceflight will not be ready until mid-month, and it could take two or three additional weeks before the Obama administration’s way forward is set. Don’t expect the final results to change from what was discussed in public over the summer (AW&ST Sept. 14, p. 36). A bigger hang-up may lie within NASA itself. Two competing camps have developed over which Augustine option to recommend to President Barack Obama.
Sea trials of the MiG-29K/KUB Fulcrum carrier-borne fighter are underway on board the Russian navy’s Admiral Kuznetsov, prior to delivery of the first batch of aircraft to India. Russian military and company test pilots performed landings and take-offs from the carrier on Sept. 28-29 in the Barents Sea. The single-seat MiG-29K and two-seat MiG-29KUB took part in the demonstration; Indian navy representatives observed.
The Iridium mobile satellite venture is a case study on how innovative technology can be confused with market innovation. The network of 66 interconnected low-orbit satellites was a marvel in the 1990s, enabling phone calls to be placed from any point on the globe. But Iridium’s backers did not foresee the explosion in the use of low-cost terrestrial cellular telephones that occurred while their satellites were being built and orbited.
I disagree with the assertion of superior engineering efficiency of the Boeing 747 relative to the 777 and 787 that Manfred A. Runkel touted (AW&ST Aug. 10, p. 8). The claim that faster is necessarily better is clearly not true. The original 777 was vastly superior to the 747 in several ways:
Reflecting on an amazing accomplishment that took place 40 years ago, one has to wonder how much more could have been achieved in space in the intervening four decades. After being held back for so long, just a few years ago NASA was given a meaningful direction, the Vision for Space Exploration, a mission to reach out to the Moon, Mars and beyond. The task was placed into the hands of competent, capable engineers like Wernher von Braun, rather than being disastrously micromanaged by politicians.
Douglas Barrie (London), Michael A. Taverna (Paris), Robert Wall (Paris)
Afghanistan is proving to be a harsh crucible for the NATO alliance. For the European partners, one of the many lessons is the initial and, some argue, continuing, lack of rotary capability.
U.S. government officials have been assured the delayed National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (Npoess) civil/military weather satellite constellation is finally on the path to recovery.
David A. Fulghum (Washington), Douglas Barrie (London)
Talks with the U.S. and five other concerned countries are replacing Iran’s broadside of missiles and defiant words that followed discovery of its new uranium enrichment facility near the north-central holy city of Qom. The missile firings last week, part of the Great Prophet 4 exercise, included a Shahab 3 variant, a Tondar surface-to-surface design derived from the SA-2 surface-to-air missile and Zelzal short-range missiles fired from a new dual launcher.
The NTSB’s preliminary statistics on 2008 U.S. transportation fatalities indicate aviation deaths increased slightly to 572 in 2008 from 550 in the previous year, with almost 87% or 495 occurring in general aviation accidents. The resulting GA fatal accident rate is 1.25 per 100,000 flight hours.
David A. Fulghum (China Lake Naval Air Warfare Center, Calif.)
A series of air corridors radiating from China Lake gives researchers here access to most of the key UAV-friendly facilities, training ranges and weapon test sites in the western U.S.
