Bombardier has frozen the outer mold line of its Learjet 85 business jet after completing wind-tunnel testing and the second of two proof-of-concept (POC) composite fuselages. A POC composite wing demonstrator is under construction. The airplane will feature a carbon-fiber airframe produced using out-of-autoclave processes that cures structures in low-pressure ovens. With the basic structure defined, the joint definition phase involving more than 30 suppliers is focusing on systems installation.
The British Royal Navy formally commissioned the first of its Type 45 air defense destroyers, HMS Daring, last week. The U.K. now intends to acquire six of the ships—fitted with the Sea Viper system—rather than the 12 originally planned when the program was launched in 1999.
Paul Drayson, Britain’s minister in charge of space, has confirmed the U.K.’s intention to drop its traditional opposition to involvement in manned spaceflight activities. Though he gave no indication of whether additional funding will be forthcoming, European Space Agency head Jean-Jacques Dordain welcomed the move. “At least now there’s a clear interest, and that [in itself] is already a change.” Dordain said ESA will wait to see what emerges from the Augustine committee in the U.S. before deciding on a manned exploration strategy.
NASA propulsion experts at Stennis Space Center will crank up their final space shuttle main engine test July 29, ending a 34-year test series at the Mississippi test facility with a 520-sec. run of one of the reusable cryogenic rocket engines that have powered 126 shuttle missions.
In advance of this week’s release of first-quarter financial results, Air France-KLM says revenue for the period is down 20.5% to €5.2 billion. The decline has been attributed to a a 14% decrease in revenue passenger kilometer and a 25.1% fall in cargo sales. Passenger revenue came in at €4 billion, down 18.7%, but the cargo side saw a drop of 41.5% to €544 million.
Northrop Grumman has snagged a $154-million contract from the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command to upgrade six E-2C airborne early warning systems aircraft—from Group II to Hawkeye 2000 configuration—for Taiwan via the foreign military sales program. The work is to be completed in June 2013. Taiwan has four E-2Ts and two other Hawkeyes that are already in a more advanced configuration.
Safran head Jean-Paul Herteman has been named president of French aerospace and defense industries’ assn. Gifas . He succeeds Charles Edelstenne, chairman/CEO of Dassault Aviation.
Rob Church has been appointed sales director for the Americas for Chromalloy of San Antonio. Other new appointees are: Ben Story, sales director for Europe, Africa and Middle East; Ching Mai, sales director for Asia-Pacific and Australia; Jim Diehl, military sales director; Ray Reman, sales director for small commercial engines; Nikita Babkin, program director; and Brian Waiver, sales operations director. Jimmy Ravenne has become general manager of the company’s turbine engine repair and maintenance operation near Paris.
One hundred feet above the U.S. Army’s Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, executing pre-programmed hover maneuvers, the experimental Excalibur could be providing a glimpse of future unmanned combat aircraft. And not just because of its unusual configuration.
U.S. Air Force and Defense Dept. personnel, as well as industry representatives, will be briefed on the Air Force’s long-term unmanned aircraft systems road map, the UAS Flight Plan, on July 28-30. Approved by Air Force leadership last month, the Flight Plan outlines a vision to 2047 for integration of unmanned aircraft across all the service’s operations, identifying unmanned alternatives for some manned missions.
An order for four spacecraft from Intelsat has given Boeing a big boost back into its previous line of commercial satellites and offset the prospect of further job losses at its El Segundo, Calif., factory in the face of dwindling government orders.
Aurora Flight Sciences’ Excalibur experimental vertical-takeoff-and-landing unmanned combat aircraft rises to a hover on its June 24 first flight at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Md. The 13-ft.-long subscale proof-of-concept aircraft is the testbed for a hybrid turbine-electric propulsion system comprising a tilting jet engine and battery-driven lift fans (see p. 36). Using exclusive first-flight photographs by John Tylko of Aurora Flight Sciences, the AW&ST Art Dept. created a “time-lapse” image of the aircraft lifting off.
Everyone seems to have jumped onto the NTSB’s blame-the-pilot bandwagon in the wake of the Colgan Air Flight 3407 crash. I’ve reviewed the NTSB’s crash animation and I see no evidence of pilot error or incompetence. The crew was responding appropriately to ATC commands with no extraneous conversation in the cockpit. Both pilots were doing what pilots usually do and the flight was proceeding normally. This landing would have been like any of at least 20 the pilot had in the aircraft.
Alaska Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, TUIfly and Virgin Blue have brought airline membership to 14 in the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Users Group since its launch last autumn. Members pledge to work through the Roundtable for Sustainable Biofuels to ensure that next-generation alternatives to kerosene are produced by sustainable methods—chiefly that they do not compete with human food sources and minimize water usage.
The House defense appropriations subcommittee has kept most of Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s planned cuts in missile defense—except for the Kinetic Energy Interceptor (KEI). Gates terminated the $8.7-billion program to develop the high-speed interceptor in his Fiscal 2010 budget request. But Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), the subcommittee chairman, is including $80 million for KEI in the Fiscal 2010 defense spending bill. The idea is to keep the program going until a review of KEI is completed to see if any of its technology might be useful elsewhere. But Army Lt. Gen.
Nigerian airline Arik Air will decide next month if it will offer service to New York. The Lagos-based carrier has received traffic rights to 11 international destinations and has launched flights to London and Johannesburg. In addition, Arik Air has been invited to be neighboring Niger’s national flag carrier.
Memories of hours lost to software crashes during flight testing of the F-22 are pushing the Joint Strike Fighter team to unusual lengths to establish system maturity ahead of flight testing on the F-35. These include plunging a developmental radar into the melee of a major military exercise to test its ability to counter electronic attacks.
Singapore Technologies Aerospace is racking up small airline customers for its maintenance-by-the-hour (MBH) component support for single-aisle transports. The latest is an agreement with South Korea’s Jeju Air, which has signed a $45-million, 10-year agreement for component support on an MBH, asset lease basis for its three Boeing 737-800s. A low-cost operator, Jeju flies domestic and regional routes to Japan.
Common-use check-in kiosks have been adopted by five airlines at Singapore’s Changi Airport. Passengers on Air France, KLM and Northwest Airlines flights can use any of eight kiosks in Terminal 1. Cathay Pacific and United Airlines are scheduled to inaugurate their own systems later this year. The Arinc kiosks are connected to each carrier’s check-in system to print boarding passes. After obtaining their passes, passengers without checked baggage can proceed directly to immigration for passport verification using a 2D bar code.
The first NATO-managed Strategic Airlift Capability (SAC) C-17 was expected to arrive at its new home at Papa Air Base, Hungary, on July 18, following delivery from Boeing’s Long Beach, Calif., production line via a staging stop at Charleston AFB, S.C., on July 14. Three aircraft will eventually form the Heavy Airlift Wing set up at Papa by the NATO Airlift Management Agency, which is responsible for the management, acquisition and support of the C-17 fleet on behalf of the alliance and two “partnership for peace” non-NATO members, Sweden and Finland.
The European Union’s push to have the International Civil Aviation Organization embrace its concept of an airline blacklist faces a rocky road, but could still yield some increased improvements in how aviation safety is managed at a global level.
Telesat has picked Space Systems/Loral to supply Telstar 14R, a Ku-band satellite intended to replace Telstar 14/Estrela do Sol, which was launched in 2004 but suffered a solar array failure that has limited its service life. The 46-transponder, five-beam Telstar 14R, to be orbited in the second half of 2011 to 63 deg. W. Long., will serve Brazil, the continental U.S., the Andean region, southern South America and the North and mid-Atlantic regions.
I can’t resist adding a comment to Capt. Richard S. O’Kane’s letter (AW&ST June 29, p. 8). We also have problems with messy pigeons in our hangar. We tried plastic owls, strobe lights and aluminum streamers—to no avail. One of the less-successful experiments involved a motorized horn that emitted a high-frequency tone (around 18 KHz.) to frighten the birds. This device was located in the rafters directly above the boss’s King Air. We gave up on that one when we saw a pigeon taking a joy ride on the rotating horn, bombarding the aircraft below.
Andy Nativi (Abu Dhabi ), Michael A. Taverna (Paris)
A project by United Arab Emirates sponsors to finance a satellite surveillance constellation underscores the rising space, defense and industrial ambitions of this small nation. It also illustrates the allure of the satellite imaging sector to private investors.
