Lockheed Martin hopes a demonstration flight this summer will lift the concept of high-altitude airships as persistent surveillance platforms off the drawing board and into the stratosphere. Unmanned airships are attracting attention because of their capability to stay aloft for weeks, even months, at altitudes that greatly extend sensor and communications coverage. But questions remain about the ability of lighter-than-air aircraft to remain on station in high winds and through repeated day/night cycles.
The global airline industry is increasingly at risk of seeing its growth capped or billion-dollar increases in taxes imposed at this year’s inter-governmental meeting to define a post-Kyoto policy on climate change.
Our European allies seem unable to duplicate, in about 10 years’ work, the tactical capabilities that Douglas Aircraft created in less than four years a bit more than 50 years ago. I refer to the C-133, which had bulk capacity, payload and speed similar to the Airbus A400M specification, and the first Pratt & Whitney turboprop engine. After some early losses, corrected by training and a redesigned stall warning system, the 50 aircraft carried all manner of bulky objects to Vietnam in two days instead of four weeks by ship.
Lease Corp. International is providing the launch order for the Bombardier CSeries CS300 as part of its deal to take 20 of the new narrow-body series and options for 20 more. Deliveries of three CS100s will start in the second quarter of 2014, with 17 CS300 handovers to commence a year later. All 20 aircraft should be in hand within three years.
Rolls-Royce will deliver an upgraded standard of the Trent 1000 for tests on the Boeing 787, which it says will bring the engine to within 1% of targeted fuel consumption at service entry.
Part 121 operators held the best safety record among the aviation sectors covered in the NTSB’s 2008 accident statistics report released Apr. 2. Last year, they carried 753 million passengers on more than 10.8 million scheduled and non-scheduled flights without a passenger fatality in 28 accidents. A spike in fatalities among Part 135 on-demand air charter operations is of particular concern, noted NTSB acting Chairman Mark V. Rosenker. This sector, which includes air medical, air taxi and air tour flights, logged more than 3.6 million flight hours in 2008.
FAA Administrator-nominee Randy Babbitt will not have the luxury of a quiet settling-in period in his new role, as he will quickly have to grapple with major challenges ranging from air traffic control modernization to thorny labor disputes.
NASA will soon begin conducting seaworthiness tests of a full-size mockup of the Orion capsule in the Atlantic Ocean to give engineers a feel for recovering the spacecraft and the kind of conditions the crew can expect. The mockup can simulate normal splashdown conditions as well as what could happen if the capsule takes on water. It is rigged to accommodate ballast from 18,000-33,000 lb.—the latter is what Orion would weigh in the event of a launch abort.
A first flight test for the vehicle intended to deliver U.S. astronauts to space after the shuttle fleet retires next year has slipped by about a month, to late summer at the earliest. Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39B will be occupied too long by the space shuttle Endeavour, which NASA managers have decided to position there when sister ship Atlantis lifts off from Pad 39A to service the Hubble Space Telescope, to support an earlier test-flight date.
Last-minute political maneuvering could yet thwart the ambitions of senior Royal Air Force officers to acquire the U.S. RC-135 Rivet Joint as a replacement for the Nimrod R1 electronic intelligence aircraft.
The FAA and European Aviation Safety Agency have approved the technology to provide synthetic vision on the Daher-Socata TBM850 turboprop. Garmin’s SVT will be integrated in the company’s TBM 850 Garmin 1000 integrated flight display.
An integrated approach using flight controls, sensors and synthetic vision to defeat the brownout landing threat could be extended to provide en route obstacle avoidance for helicopters following recent trials. The Sandblaster system, developed by a Sikorsky-led team for the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, was flight-tested on a Black Hawk helicopter at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California in mid-January.
Faced, as is almost everyone, with a nearly global recession or worse, Malaysian Airlines Engineering and Maintenance is expanding its offerings and its customer base to include some services that are more common outside Asia.
Tony Cervone (see photos) has been named senior vice president-corporate communications/chief communications officer for United Airlines ; Michael Quiello vice president-corporate safety, security, quality and environment for the UAL Corp.; and Mark Mounsey vice president-base maintenance for United Services. Cervone was communications vice president-global strategy and operations for General Motors, while Mounsey was general manager of Pratt & Whitney’s engine overhaul center in Cheshire, Conn. Quiello was vice president-safety for Delta Air Lines.
The Herschel infrared telescope, built by Thales Alenia Space with a cryostat and 3.5-meter mirror supplied by Astrium, will allow astronomers to survey the cold regions of the universe, which cannot be seen using conventional telescopes such as Hubble. Herschel is scheduled to be launched this spring together with a cosmic background explorer, Planck, atop an Ariane 5 ECA rocket (see p. 38). European Space Agency photo.
The new “safety of life” GPS civil signal for emergency and rescue calls is expected to become operational on the USAF/Lockheed Martin GPS Block IIR-20(M) satellite that was launched Mar. 24. The satellite, which incorporates an ITT-provided navigation payload, is the first developed to provide an on-orbit demonstration of a third civil signal located on the L5 frequency (1176.45MHz).
Aldo Basile has been appointed London-based vice president-sales for Europe, Russia and Central Asia for Boeing Commercial Airplanes . He succeeds Marlin Dailey, who is now vice president-sales. Basile was vice president-sales for several European countries.
China is accelerating reform of its military aircraft sector by bringing forward the establishment of a company that will be its national defense champion. Government and industry leaders have dropped plans to initially restrict the new business—a maker of fighters, trainers, drones and missiles—to the status of a division of national aeronautics conglomerate Avic (AW&ST Mar. 30, p. 40).
Southeast Asia’s largest budget airline group, AirAsia, is stepping up its assault on the Singapore home territory of rivals Tiger Airways and Jetstar Asia with plans to operate 50 daily flights from the city-state by 2011. The group, comprised of three affiliates from Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia flying under the same brand, is also seeking to raise its regional profile by getting approval to paint the flag of the Assn. of South East Asian Nations on its aircraft. CEO Tony Fernandes has said AirAsia’s future lies in Southeast Asia, not farther abroad.
A team led by Sierra Nevada Corp. has won a $2-million follow-on Defense Dept. Operationally Responsive Space contract to study a modular tool kit of spacecraft buses and payloads for rapid deployment of low-cost space vehicles. The four-month effort, due for completion in August 2009, follows an initial Phase 2 study which also included General Dynamics and ITT.
British Airways will sell 11 of its Boeing 757s for cargo conversion as the airline eliminates the aircraft type from its fleet between 2010 and 2012 in favor of Airbus single-aisles. BA subsidiary OpenSkies will retain four 757s.
The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is poised to issue a request for information to industry seeking technology that could form the basis for a responsive space launch X-plane demonstrator.
Singapore state investment fund Temasek is selling out of Jetstar Asia and Valuair, budget airline partners it has owned in association with Qantas. It will now hold 49% of the airlines, while Singaporean Dennis Choo owns the rest, ensuring that they retain that nationality under international air traffic agreements.
Of all the uncertainties that bewilder astronomers, none is more puzzling than what transpired in the first millionth of a second after the Big Bang. Understanding what occurred then will help unravel some of the best-kept secrets in the universe—including the density and nature of matter, the existence of “dark energy,” and the origins of stars and galaxies. That will be the objective of a €1.3-billion ($1.7-billion) twin-telescope mission due to lift off from the European spaceport at Kourou, French Guiana, at the end of April.
Draft language of a new climate-change bill circulating in the House would require the Environmental Protection Agency to set greenhouse gas emissions standards for aircraft and aircraft engines by the end of 2012. The legislation, sponsored by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), calls for a U.S. cap-and-trade system that critics say would indirectly tax airlines. Oil companies would have to buy credits for any fuel they produce, and those costs are likely to be passed on to airlines. The International Air Transport Assn.
