The European Aviation Safety Agency this week will hold its first meeting with stakeholders on the contentious issue of crew flight time limitations, as the agency sets out to add regulation of flight operations to its roles in setting aviation rules for the European Union.
South Korea will focus on developing a Generation-4.5 fighter under a proposed program that previously aimed at an equivalent of the fifth-generation Lockheed Martin F-35. The government is due to decide in November whether to proceed with the program, called KFX, which industrialists hope will meet the air force’s distant F-XX fighter requirement for the 2020s. Lockheed Martin and Boeing are battling for another prize called F-X Phase III, under which the air force proposes to buy 60 fighters next decade.
Top Pentagon civilians are still trying to ensure that the General Electric/Rolls-Royce alternative F136 Joint Strike Fighter engine is dead. After the failure of a Pratt & Whitney F135 test engine, officials hurry to say it does not change their preference for a single engine program. Says Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s press aide, Geoff Morrell: “The mishap . . . is unfortunate, but not unexpected. [Gates] is not satisfied at this moment with how Pratt & Whitney is handling this. Reputations are at stake.
MyAir, the Italian low-fare carrier that had its air operator certificate revoked because of its weak financial position, could resume flights in December. A group of investors is considering injecting capital into the carrier, although several hurdles have to be overcome in bankruptcy proceedings. A hearing in the bankruptcy proceedings is planned for Oct. 3.
While the FAA is likely to propose new flight- and duty-time regulations for pilots by year-end, flight attendants will have to be satisfied with taking part in new field research for now. There still is no scientific data that conclusively shows passenger safety is compromised by fatigued flight attendants. The FAA’s rulemaking committee was directed by the agency not to include flight attendants, according to the Air Transport Assn.’s (ATA) vice president of communications, David Castleveter.
U.S. Cyber Command is supposed to dominate the new digital battlefield, but how it will work is still a mystery, since personnel, training and coordination are lagging. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the command must “integrate the different elements, from exploitation to defense . . . all in one place so that we have unity of effort and then work with the individual service components.” There also are concerns about coordination between the Pentagon and civil agencies.
The World Trade Organization reportedly has ruled that European government loans to Airbus are no more than partly illegal and has dismissed 70% of the U.S. trade representative’s complaints over aircraft subsidies. However, no details are yet available, as the WTO’s 1,000-page preliminary ruling has not been made public, and a final ruling is not expected until 2010.
Japan’s unmanned H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) approaches the International Space Station’s Canadarm2 Sept. 17, just before NASA astronaut Nicole Stott used it to grapple the 16.5-metric-ton cargo carrier in darkness 225 mi. above Romania. The capture and subsequent berthing of the HTV to the nadir port of the station’s Harmony pressurized node capped an almost perfect inaugural mission for the Japanese spacecraft, which was launched Sept. 10 (AW&ST Sept. 14, p. 20).
Signaling growing ambitions in commercial human spaceflight, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) will test its Dragon spacecraft earlier than expected on the first flight of its Falcon 9 launcher, while fellow NASA commercial partner Orbital Sciences begins studies of a human-rated version of its Cygnus cargo delivery spacecraft.
“Go! Flight 1002, are you having an emergency?” For 18 min., concerned air traffic controllers radioed the pilots. No response. The crew had not acknowledged instructions to proceed to an intersection in preparation for descent to Hilo, Hawaii. Radar showed the aircraft traveling at 21,000 ft. past its destination toward open ocean. The 40 passengers were unaware that their flight crew had entered the Land of Nod halfway through the 51-min. flight on Feb. 13, 2008.
Asia-Pacific carriers may have been the hardest hit by the industry downturn, but they are now poised for a more dramatic rebound than their European and North American counterparts.
South Korea will buy Elta Systems Green Pine Block-B radars for its nascent ballistic-missile defense system, planning to install them in central and northern parts of the country in 2012. The Defense Acquisition Program Administration says the Green Pine outperformed a rival system from Thales in a test in August. Thales offered the M3R radar derived from its Ground Master 400 system. The administration has said it would buy ballistic-missile defense radars by the end of this year.
L-3 Communications’ Geneva Aerospace Div. has won a potential five-year, $250-million contract to supply U.S. Special Operations Command with expeditionary unmanned aircraft systems. The Viking 400 is a 530-lb. gross-weight tactical unmanned air vehicle with an 8-10-hr. endurance carrying a 75-100-lb. payload and operating conventionally from unimproved expeditionary runways.
On June 1, an Airbus A330 went down in the Atlantic. Due to the depth of the ocean and the rough undersea terrain, the flight data recorder (FDR) will probably never be recovered. Already, calls are going out throughout government and industry to institute technology to transmit FDR data from aircraft via satellite or other uplink. Before we launch satellites and fit aircraft with costly, high-bandwidth, real-time uplink systems, let us consider another option.
Cathay Pacific Airways has bolstered its balance sheet by selling a stake in its maintenance offshoot and selling and leasing back six Boeing 777-300ERs. The carrier has raised HK$1.9 billion ($245 million) by selling 12.45% of maintenance business Haeco to Swire Pacific, a conglomerate that holds major shareholdings in both companies. Cathay’s holding in Haeco will fall to 15%, while Swire’s rises to 45.96%.
Rockwell Collins is rig-testing a full-performance active sidestick controller for civil aircraft, and hopes to launch the next-generation cockpit feature by partnering with an airframe maker to develop the initial application.
Scientists and engineers are beginning to realize that the unique microgravity environment on the International Space Station is available for them to use—free of charge—for research and testing. But getting there remains the big hurdle to full U.S. utilization of the orbiting national laboratory.
Demand for air travel could begin growing again late this year or early in 2010, enabling Boeing and Airbus to maintain their narrow-body production rates, concludes a new analysis by Jefferies & Co. Year-over-year traffic declines among a group of 13 airlines worldwide shrank to 2.5% in August, down from 8.8% in May and represent the third consecutive monthly improvement. The trend suggests that traffic growth among the group could be back in positive territory within several months.
In an unusual admission in a realm where even most lawmakers are denied basic information, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair reveals the size and budget of the intelligence community—200,000 employees and $75 billion annually. Speaking of cyber-security, he also fesses up to thievery of sorts: “We do have to be very aggressive in the areas that you cited in cyber, both protecting our own secrets and stealing those of others, because not only in the developed countries but through the world information is moving to networks.
The job of an air traffic controller is stressful and offers ample exposure to fatigue-producing conditions—rotating shifts, long hours and a demanding, heavy workload. Because mistakes can cost people’s lives, all stakeholders are working to mitigate fatigue’s insidious effects on human performance. Investigators have identified operational drivers of air traffic controller fatigue in several accidents and incidents. NTSB investigators discussed several of those events at the FAA’s Fatigue Management Symposium in June 2008.
Japan Airlines’ search for a strategic investor could lead to a shake-up of the global airline alliance system. The carrier says it wants to choose a foreign investor by the end of October. The investor would pay hundreds of millions of dollars for a stake of around 10% in the airline, which has a market capitalization of about $4.8 billion. Japan Airlines’ (JAL) value to an alliance can hardly be overstated. It is the largest carrier in Asia and the biggest in the world’s second-largest economy.
Nonproliferation wonks marvel at a transcript of the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb’s Aug. 31 appearance on TV. On Aaj News Television’s “Islamabad Tonight,” Abdul Qadeer Khan says equipment for the nuclear bomb programs in Pakistan, Libya and Iran was purchased from the same companies in Kuwait, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi and Singapore. “The same suppliers were responsible for providing the material through the same third party in Dubai . . . company run by Sri Lankan Muslims.” Another company in Dubai manufactured parts for Libya.
Lufthansa Technik has joined with Felix Airways from Yemen to provide component support services for the regional airline’s fleet of Bombardier CRJs. The carrier operates two CRJ200s and two CRJ700s and is scheduled to take delivery of more aircraft in the near future. Under terms of the seven-year contract, Lufthansa Technik will provide provisioning studies, write specifications, perform troubleshooting, and supply documentation and engineering services.
Sukhoi on Sept. 10 brought the Superjet 100 regional jet to the Shirak Airport in Gyumri, Armenia, for high-altitude trials. The airfield is at 5,000 ft., tucked between mountains and limited to takeoffs and landings from the south on the 3,220-meter-long (10,561-ft.), 45-meter-wide runway.
