Final assembly of the PW810C engine for Cessna’s Citation Columbus business jet and the PW1524G geared turbofan for Bombardier’s CSeries airliner will be at a new Pratt & Whitney Canada facility to be established at Montreal’s Mirabel airport. More than C$575 million ($477 million) will be invested in the center and Pratt’s other Montreal-area facilities, with the Quebec government to invest almost C$142 million in infrastructure and equipment. The center will also house Pratt’s integrated flight-test operations, including two Boeing 747SP engine testbeds.
Sukhoi is nearing a critical stage of flight trials for its Superjet 100 regional jet, but faces an ambitious schedule to meet its target of first customer deliveries set for next year. In the first phase of flight trials, initial engineering data indicate that the aircraft is meeting such key design parameters as fuel burn, and that inflight performance is matching what the models predicted. The only flight-test aircraft operating so far has accumulated 120 flight-test hours.
Aurora Flight Sciences is preparing to fly a prototype vertical-takeoff-and-landing unmanned aircraft with hybrid turbine-electric propulsion, an approach the company believes could find wider application in aviation. A subscale aircraft designed to prove the principle behind Aurora’s Excalibur concept for a small high-speed armed unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) is nearing completion and is expected to begin hover tests in December.
Honeywell’s Runway Awareness and Advisory System now has an additional type of warning to alert pilots that an aircraft’s approach is outside the safe envelope for speed and glidepath. Aircraft that are too high or too fast on an approach are in a situation that can result in a hard landing or a runway overrun. Honeywell decided to add this warning to its voice advisory system after reviewing data that suggest runway excursions account for 96% of all runway accidents.
ATR is holding talks with engine makers about a 90-seat turboprop, and early indications are some of the stretch performance targets can be met. Those include the ability to climb to 20,000 ft. within 13 min., 8 min. faster than the existing model and a cruise at 320-330 kt., while reducing specific fuel consumption by around 20% from current aircraft. At least one engine supplier has indicated it can deliver that the required performance around 2013-14. ATR also sees composite content on the aircraft growing to 30%.
The conviction of a University of Tennessee professor on charges that he passed military technical data on UAVs to China was one of more than 100 export-related cases handled by the Justice Dept. in a two-year period. China was involved in 23, Iran in 29.
A consolidating airline customer base, mounting pressure to cut fees, and increasing capital and information technology costs are driving two of Europe’s biggest airport authorities—Aeroports de Paris and the Schiphol Group—to create a long-term partnership to keep pace.
Myles D. Crandall has been appointed president of Lockheed Martin subsidiary Savi Group , Mountain View, Calif. He was vice president-strategic planning at the Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co.
Craig Covault (Cape Canaveral), James Ott (Cincinnati)
The FBI, in conjunction with other U.S. counter-espionage and weapons-proliferation enforcement agencies, in a nationwide coordinated effort, is sweeping up dozens of managers and engineers allegedly involved with clandestine aerospace technology transfer and weapons proliferation with Iran and China. Nearly 150 people and companies have been tagged in the sweep, with some charges directly related to benefiting China’s surging space program and Iran’s ballistic missile buildup.
Nov. 11-13—Society of Experimental Test Pilots’ Flight Test Safety Workshop. Netherlands National Aerospace Laboratory, Amsterdam. See www.setp.org/HTML/Symposia/SafetyWorkshop/FTSW_information.htm Nov. 12-14—World Airline Forum. Intercontinental Paris Le Grand Hotel. Call +33 (15) 377-1345, fax +33 (15) 377- 1303 or see www.waf2008.com Nov. 13-14—Aegean Free Zone Development & Operating Co.’s Izmir Global Aerospace Conference. ESBA Technology Center Conference Hall, Izmir, Turkey. See www.izmiraerospace.com
Robert Blaha has been promoted to director of original equipment manufacturer and international sales from Western U.S. sales manager for Aspen Avionics Inc. , Albuquerque, N.M.
Indian controllers are continuing orbit-raising maneuvers with the Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter as it moves toward a Nov. 8 rendezvous with Earth’s natural satellite. A 3-min. burn of the probe’s 99-lb.-thrust Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) on Oct. 29 pushed it into a new elliptical six-day Earth orbit with an apogee of 267,000 km. (165,910 mi.) and a perigee of 465 km.
Dennis Cary has been appointed senior vice president/chief marketing and customer officer for United Airlines , and Graham Atkinson president of its Mileage Plus program. Cary was senior vice president-marketing, while Atkinson was chief customer officer.
Customers and suppliers should achieve more stability in their dealings with Boeing with ratification of a four-year contract with machinists. The strike, which began Sept. 6, ended as Boeing started formal negotiations with the 20,300 engineers and technical workers represented by the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (Speea), whose three-year contract expires in early December. Speea says it’s willing to sign a four-year agreement as well, noting that both unions signed them in 1995.
Delays in receiving its Boeing 787s and the wish to expand its long-haul fleet are prompting Royal Air Maroc to look for leased wide-body capacity. The airline does not expect to see the first of five 787s before March or April 2010, says CEO Driss Benhima. Deliveries had been scheduled to start last month. As a bridge, the carrier is looking to lease two 767s, with the first to be added to the fleet in April. But Benhima stresses that the extra capacity ‘”is not just a transient situation,” and aircraft will be used for some time even after the 787s start arriving.
Brian Colamosca has received the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Laurel Award for contributions to the work of its Air Navigation Commission in the field of Reduced Vertical Separation Minimum (RVSM). Colamosca is an employee of Washington-based CSSI who works at the FAA’s William J. Hughes Technical Center in New Jersey. The award honors contributions to furthering the safety, regularity and efficiency of international civil aviation through commission panels, study groups or worldwide meetings. According to the award citation, the U.S.
British Airways’ fledgling subsidiary OpenSkies is being forced to shelve its growth plans just four months after its launch, as it struggles with the wider malaise affecting the transatlantic business travel market. Together with BA subsidiary L’Avion, OpenSkies operates four Boeing 757s between New York and Amsterdam and Paris. It was planning to add two more 757s and new routes next year, but further expansion is being deferred until the economic environment improves.
Michael McDonnell has been appointed executive vice president/chief financial officer of Intelsat Ltd. , Pembroke, Bermuda, effective Nov. 17. He has been executive vice president/CFO/chief operating officer of the MCG Capital Corp.
Terrence C. Morgan, who is director of network-centric strategy for the Global Government Solutions Group at Cisco Systems, has been elected chairman of the Washington-based Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) . He succeeds USN Rear Adm. (ret.) Robert C. Williamson of the Raytheon Co, who becomes chairman emeritus. Michael Curtis and Edgar Buckley have been elected vice chairmen. Curtis is executive consultant for IBM Global Business Services. Edgar Buckley is France-based senior vice president-European business development at Thales.
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Lockheed Martin and a host of other industry partners are about to demonstrate to the FAA how NextGen air traffic control techniques can help controllers anticipate convective weather and reroute aircraft early to avoid massive delays.
The U.S. Defense Dept. is crafting a policy that will allow the Navy and Boeing to begin talks with allies on the potential sale of the Harpoon Block III air- and ship-launched anti-ship missile, says Capt. Mat Winter, program manager at Naval Air Systems Command. Clearance could come as soon as December. Harpoon Block III will include the addition of a new Rockwell Collins data link designed for inflight targeting updates. Recently, 28 Harpoon-owning nations attended an annual partners meeting in Seville, Spain.
A modified Zefiro 9 third-stage motor earmarked for the European Space Agency’s new Vega light launcher has been successfully fired, improving chances that the three-stage solid fuel rocket can make its maiden flight from ESA’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, by the end of next year. The Zefiro 9 failed in a test in March 2007, contributing to a six-month delay in the inaugural mission (AW&ST Aug. 4, p. 34).
The Naval Air Systems Command is upgrading the Navy Reserve’s F-5N Adversary aircraft with a new inertial navigation system to replace the aging, expensive-to-maintain units. The $6.1-million upgrade uses Northrop Grumman’s LN-260INS with a small touch-screen display suitable for the F-5N cockpit. The display is provided by Interface Display and Controls (see photo). The new inertial system features a fiber-optic gyro and an embedded GPS. The Navy plans to purchase 44 systems plus spares.
Continental Airlines, seeing strong demand for daily nonstop service between oil markets, last week filed an application with the U.S. Transportation Dept. to operate a daily flight to Rio de Janeiro from Houston Bush Intercontinental Airport via New Orleans beginning June 2009. Pending approval, the carrier plans to operate a Boeing 767-200 configured with 25 seats in business class and 149 in economy. Continental now operates daily nonstop services to Sao Paulo from Newark (N.J.) Liberty International Airport and Houston.
Chengdu celebrated its 50th anniversary by sticking a two-seat version of it J-10 fighter on display in front of its main building, and the aircraft should—at last—make its debut at this year’s Airshow China.
