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.
Did I misunderstand this? Boeing decides to build an airplane having performance not previously achieved, using engines not yet built claiming fuel specifics not yet attained, and constructed out of materials never before used for a similar purpose. It specifies a barrel-fuselage structure never before used on a large plastic airplane. It uses vendors not familiar with the material and designs using computer models that aren’t verified. It outsources nearly all work using vendors inexperienced with them and their processes.
Four decades and seven years ago, nine new astronauts arrived in Houston, answering the call for volunteers to fly to the Moon. Their predecessors, the Mercury Seven, the original seven, the magnificent seven, had made a remarkable contribution. They had converted “man in a can” to a genuine manned spacecraft program.
International Launch Services will orbit QuetzSat-1, a Ku-band spacecraft to be launched in 2011 to serve Mexico and the U.S. QuetzSat, a joint venture of SES and Mexican companies, earlier concluded a deal to supply direct-to-home TV capacity to Dish Mexico, an affiliate of EchoStar, and is expected to supply EchoStar’s U.S. DTH unit.
Japan’s new space law mandates that the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) begin discussing a future human spaceflight program this year, aimed at launching a piloted Japanese space vehicle by 2020. JAXA’s H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV), scheduled for its first launch to the International Space Station in September, is currently designed to burn up on reentry. But the agency is exploring ways to backfit the vehicle with a thermal protection system (TPS), says Shigeki Kamigaichi, program manager for JAXA’s manned space flight division.
The U.K. Defense Ministry has cleared £128 million ($210 million) to fund the fitting all of its Chinook helicopters with the T55-714 improved version of their Honeywell T55 engines. Fifteen of the Royal Air Force Chinooks already have the engines, and the remainder will be upgraded from 2012-14.
Boeing and IFAD TS A/S, a Danish provider of aviation simulation and networked training products, last week signed a memorandum of understanding to explore F/A-18E/F Super Hornet training systems facility opportunities. Engineering teams from both companies will combine to enhance local area network and wide area network computer technology within Denmark’s Super Hornet training facility if the Super Hornet is selected in that country’s new combat aircraft competition. The companies have shared a decade of partnership.
