Dassault Aviation says Falcon business jet deliveries will not increase in the fourth quarter, as expected, due to deferrals to the first quarter of 2009. This will result in a 10% drop in 2008 consolidated sales compared to last year.
“There may be no better time to buy Boeing Co. stock.” As I reflect on the 49 Market Focus columns we published this year, that’s the one line I’d like most to take back. It was written in March, after Boeing’s shocking (and now overturned) loss of the U.S. Air Force tanker contract to an EADS NV-Northrop Grumman Corp. team. Boeing shares had declined from a peak of $107 five months earlier to less than $80. “You’d better believe this is not going to be an $80 stock,” one bullish analyst was quoted as saying.
Selex Galileo has successfully tested its Falco unmanned aircraft using a new catapult launch system. The first flight was conducted at the Cheshnegirovo air base in Bulgaria, using a pneumatic catapult. The regular launch mode is short takeoff from a runway, but the catapult option has always been part of the design. Nevertheless, Selex Galileo undertook preliminary integration tests in Finland using Falco models to ensure there were no aircraft-balance or center-of-gravity problems when the UAV comes off the rail.
The National Transportation Safety Board on Dec. 18 announced it is investigating what caused the Nov. 26 uncommanded rollback of a Rolls-Royce Trent 895 engine on board a Delta Air Lines Boeing 777-200ER. The incident was the second in 2008 involving the same engine and aircraft types. Delta Flight 18 was in cruise at 39,000 ft. near Great Falls, Mont., when the No. 2 (right) Trent 895 lost power. After the aircraft descended to 31,000 ft., the engine recovered and responded normally, according to the NTSB.
The French government is aiming part of a multibillion-euro recovery plan at accelerating the deployment of urgently needed weapon systems and to keep beleaguered sectors of its defense industry afloat.
U.S. Marine Corps Gen. (ret.) James L. Jones, whom President-elect Barack Obama has named national security adviser, resigned last week from the Boeing board of directors.
Lockheed Martin and Thales Alenia Space have formed a partnership to develop and deliver a new family of low-cost, highly responsive, agile space radar systems for the U.S. and international market. The deal, which is based on a framework agreement concluded in 2007, aims to draw on Thales’s strengths in turnkey radar imaging systems and Lockheed’s small satellite know-how. The two companies say an integrated design is nearly complete, and the team has answered a recent USAF request for information.
Meanwhile, Air New Zealand expects to be the first carrier to test second-generation fuels in an Rolls-Royce RB211-powered Boeing 747-400 on Dec. 30. ANZ, which is relying on jatropha, postponed the flight from Dec. 3. Continental Airlines expects to use an algae biofuels mix in a CFM56-7B-powered 737 on Jan. 7 out of Houston.
Several Aviation Week editors recently assumed new and expanded duties. Robert Wall, formerly Paris bureau chief, was named international editor, responsible for coordinating news coverage globally. Washington-based Amy Butler was promoted to senior Pentagon editor, and Madhu Unnikrishnan, also based in Washington, was appointed business editor, reporting to Senior Business Editor Joseph C. Anselmo. In addition, Benet Wilson, who had been a member of the commercial aviation reporting team, was named online managing editor for our business aviation team.
In your inspirational victory speech on Nov. 4, you proclaimed that “change has come to America.” Without a doubt, our nation will experience unprecedented and far-reaching change as we work together through the current economic crisis, and a litany of other challenges. Yet times of great change also bring great opportunities.
The U.K. National Audit Office’s annual review of military procurement continues to make uncomfortable reading for the British Defense Ministry. The Major Projects Report 2008, published Dec. 18, highlights a number of program delays and budget increases among the 30 procurement projects examined. The report covers the 12-month period ending Mar. 31, 2008.
Tickets for the Jan. 20 inauguration of Barack Obama as 44th president of the U.S. are precious commodities, so it may be hard to imagine that those who can get them haven’t thought of how they will get to Washington. But for those who are troubled by such problems, Spectrum Air, a new boutique luxury airline that normally flies New York-Los Angeles routes, is offering round-trip, 10-passenger accommodations for $12,000 on a Gulfstream IV. Limousines will provide transportation at both ends of the flight from Van Nuys airport in California to Dulles International.
Congress and the Obama administration should agree to a two-year “strategic pause” in committing money to new and experimental weapons systems—including manned, long-range bombers, suggests a new report by a national security think tank. The Center for National Policy also calls for rebuilding and increasing the size of the Army and Marine Corps, building more Navy submarines and resizing the Air Force with a greater reliance on unmanned aerial vehicles.
The Malaysian government’s public accounts committee is backing the purchase of 12 Eurocopter EC725 helicopters, which the country this year decided to order and then defer. The value of the deal is estimated at 1.6 billion ringgit ($464 million).
Photographer, author and archivist, DANA BELL has retired after a 30-year career with the U.S. government. Starting as a photo researcher with the Air Force in 1976, he moved to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington in 1982. Bell has written 22 books on aviation history, and is now a full-time author. This year marked his 13th as a photo contest judge.
The pilots of the ExcelAire Embraer Legacy 600 business jet that collided with a Gol Airlines Boeing 737-800 on Sept. 29, 2006, over Brazilian rain forest will face a Brazilian court criminal trial in 2009, according to their attorney. On Dec. 10, the Brazil accident investigation authority Cenipa found the business jet pilots responsible for the accident (AW&ST Dec. 15, p. 15). The date for resumption of the trial—which started in September 2007, but was delayed by motions and appeals—is undetermined. But the pilots will be able to provide testimony from the U.S.
Jessica Ambats of Santa Monica, Calif., won the Best of the Best prize in AW&ST’s annual photo contest with this image of Collaborators aerobatics team members Sean Tucker in the Oracle Challenger and Bill Stein in the Edge 540 flying over a lake in Oshkosh, Wis.
Broadcasting Satellite System Corp. and Sky Perfect JSAT Corp. of Japan have awarded construction of a new telecommunications satellite to Lockheed Martin. The twin 12-transponder Ku-band payloads on the satellite, BSAT-3c/JCSAT-110R, are intended to ensure spare and growth capacity to meet high demand for direct-to-home broadcasting and telecom services in Japan. It will be launched to 110 deg. E. Long on an Arianespace Ariane 5 ECA rocket in the second quarter of 2011.
NASA and its International Space Station contractors don’t want to, but they’re planning to remove an 80,000-lb. stretch of ISS structure—with two 240-ft. solar arrays attached—and put it back together again in orbit to repair a broken power-generating system. The 10-spacewalk job on the starboard solar alpha rotary joint (SARJ) would cost about $50 million. All pressurized onboard oxygen now budgeted for emergency ISS spacewalks would be consumed, plus parts of the final two space shuttle missions on the manifest.
Two more contestants—Euroluna and Team Selene—have joined the race to win $30 million in the Google Lunar X Prize competition for entrepreneurs to land a rover on the Moon by Dec. 31, 2012. Euroluna is a European-based team of scientists while Team Selene combines work by German and Chinese entrants. Meanwhile, a “mystery contestant” has revealed itself to be a U.S. team called the Next Giant Leap. There are now 16 teams in the competition.
