A year-long research project to test aircraft braking action, underway at Grand Forks International Airport with University of North Dakota supervision, will move in coming months to Boeing-owned St. Marie airfield, formerly Glasgow AFB, Mont. Researchers will use Lidar and video cameras to record braking action of ground vehicles and test certified friction measuring equipment and decelerometers from the FAA-approved list. With the data obtained, the same research plan will vet Piper, Cessna and Cirrus models along with larger Bombardier aircraft.
The Pentagon will not certify to Congress that the U.S. Army’s $942-million Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter development program is suitable to move forward, effectively terminating the troubled Bell effort. Pentagon acquisition czar John Young cites cost growth in an Oct. 16 statement announcing his decision. Per-unit cost had been estimated at $8.56 million and has risen to $14.48 million. Delivery has also slipped to 2013 from 2009. This program already went through one near termination, but was thought to have been on the right track earlier this year.
A team led by Liebherr and Thales has launched a demonstration project aimed at showing how innovative aircraft equipment and systems can reduce pollution by minimizing onboard energy consumption and optimizing aircraft mission and trajectory profiles. The €300-million ($405-million) project, conceived as an Integrated Technology Demonstration (ITD) within the European Union’s Clean Sky initiative, was formally started on Sept. 30 at a kickoff meeting in the Allgau region of southern Germany.
Thales and Sagem are moving to beef up their growing security operations. Thales has completed the acquisition of nCipher, a U.K. company specializing in encryption productions. The purchase, for £50.7 million ($88.7 million), will further reinforce Thales’s position in the information and communications system security business, building on such acquisitions as the security arm of Alcatel-Lucent. nCipher is active in application security, payment authentication/identity systems, network security and secure telephony.
In the last six years, the pace of change in aviation has been incredible. Fuel efficiency increased 19%, marketing and sales unit costs were slashed 25% and non-fuel unit costs reduced 18%. In a short 48 months, we made 100% e-ticketing a reality—saving $3 billion a year. Since 2005, the International Air Transport Assn. (IATA) fuel campaign saved 41 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide emissions and billions of dollars in fuel costs by shortening routes, improving operations and spreading best practices in fuel management.
Development on the next phase of the U.S. Air Force’s Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (Jassm) program, which until only recently was in jeopardy, is continuing with a recent flight test of an extended-range (ER) version.
Chris de Hoog (see photo) has become avionics product program manager for TrueNorth Avionics Inc. of Ottawa. Pat Gordon and Jay Faria have become regional sales managers, Gordon for the central U.S. and Faria for the Southeast U.S., Latin America and the Caribbean.
Andy Seaton (see photo) has been promoted to director of product support from manager of Midwest product support at the Universal Avionics System Corp. , Tucson, Ariz.
Boeing is continuing to examine wing pod-related buffet and boundary layer separation concerns on its KC-767A tanker aircraft for the Italian air force, with further revisions of the refueling pod and pylon configuration also explored. Buffet issues first emerged on the aircraft’s wing airborne refueling pod (WARP) design during the flight-test program in mid-2005, resulting in the redesign of the pod pylon. Further buffet flight testing was carried out in mid-2007.
Iraq’s future airborne strike capability is flying out of a civilian airport in Fort Worth. Two Cessna Grand Caravan 208Bs, each armed with a pair of AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, were photographed from Meacham Airport earlier this month. The field has no official military presence, but it is the home of an important ATK Integrated Systems major modification facility and the armed Caravan is one of its projects.
Kenya Airways, Africa’s third-largest airline, has reached a five-year, $10- million agreement with Switzerland’s SITA to upgrade its information technology network through a low-cost, VSAT satellite network. VSAT, or very small aperture terminal, uses small two-way ground stations to relay data between terminals on Earth via a communications satellite in geosynchronous orbit. The SITA VSAT network is designed to allow each of the airline’s 46 remote sites to communicate through the satellite to both corporate offices in Nairobi and the reservations host in Europe.
Airbus, in the wake of an uncommanded pitchdown event on board a Qantas A330, is alerting A330 and A340 operators to inform flight crews “without delay” of what action to take in the event of an inertial reference system failure. The Australian Transport Safety Board (ATSB) is certain of one fact: On Oct. 7 a rare flight-control system anomaly caused Qantas Flight 72 to plunge 650 ft. in 20 sec., injuring 40 of the 313 people on board. Now, ATSB and Airbus are focused on resolving the uncertainties—what exactly failed and how to stop it from happening again.
Lockheed Martin engineers working on the Orion crew exploration vehicle will use data from a test deployment by Orion subcontractor ATK as they develop the distinctive circular solar arrays that will power the next-generation U.S. human spacecraft. ATK deployed this 5.5-meter (18-ft.) version of its UltraFlex array, and demonstrated that the arrays can handle the 2.7g acceleration it would get in a departure for the Moon. “We have to deploy the arrays early in the mission so we don’t need large batteries,” says Larry Price, Lockheed Martin Orion deputy program manager.
David A. Fulghum (Washington), Graham Warwick (Washington)
The decision to build 20 more F-22s—which would push the total U.S. Air Force buy to 203 Raptors—has been punted to the next administration. But contrary to what outsiders may think, aerospace industry analysts with insight into the F-22 program contend that a Democratic administration would feel obligated to spend more on defense projects for at least the first two years of the new administration to prove itself strong on defense.
NASA/ESA Cassini spacecraft imaged Saturn’s moon Enceladus from only 26,000 mi. as Cassini climbed away after passing within only 15 mi. of Enceladus’s surface Oct. 9. The daring dive was made to sample the geysers of water and other contents that explode from fissures in the surface such as the giant canyon that cuts across half of the 330-mi.-dia. Enceladus. The resolution of this raw unprocessed image is 1,650 ft. per pixel. A second dive is planned Oct. 31.
Six U.S. teams have won contracts to develop concepts and identify technologies for future subsonic and supersonic aircraft to help NASA set its aeronautics research agenda for the next 20 years. The studies will develop advanced concepts meeting NASA’s environmental and performance goals for aircraft that could enter service in 25-30 years—so-called “N+3” designs three generations beyond today’s commercial aircraft.
I read that NASA considers the chances of a “catastrophic impact” on the space shuttle Atlantis during the Hubble mission to be one in 185 (AW&ST Sept. 15, p. 18). This would be with a time exposure of several days at the more dangerous altitude of 300 naut. mi. If so, how has Hubble survived at this altitude for decades? Wouldn’t Hubble have been impacted many times? It is smaller than the shuttle, but still presents a large target. Is it hardened enough to survive impacts that would doom the shuttle?
Eumetsat has OK’d payload definition for Europe’s third-generation geostationary orbit weather satellite system, MTG, to be submitted for approval by Eumetsat and European Space Agency member states later this year. The payload, which must still be approved by ESA, will feature imaging (MTG-I) and sounding (MTG-S) spacecraft. The MTG-I payload will include a flexible combined imaging system and a lightning imager, along with data-collection and search-and-rescue subsystems.
German researchers are getting ready to flight test a gel-fuel rocket motor technology demonstrator that could lead to safer and more versatile battlefield applications for a number of weapon systems. The demonstrator, expected to fly next year, culminates a program that kicked off in 2000 to gradually start validating the underlying technology involved in gel-fueled motors. Underlying technologies were validated in ground trials that concluded in 2006.
Pratt & Whitney has repositioned its commercial engine overhaul and after-market services organization under the leadership of its manufacturing division. “Customers want us to focus on the product line, to take a more integrated approach to selling engines throughout their lifecycle,” a company official commented. Todd Kallman, president of commercial engines, now has the broader role of heading Commercial Engines & Global Services. For Pratt, engine MRO is a big deal. Its revenues grew 30% in 2006-07 and now represent more than 50% of total revenues.
A massive Boeing 787 purchase agreement, encompassing up to 100 aircraft, represents a timely show of strength for both American Airlines and Boeing. The deal signals that growth opportunities still exist for the two industry giants despite the manufacturer’s labor turmoil and the airline’s financial struggles.
A relatively new type of air traffic control surveillance technology that is becoming a de facto standard for surface surveillance at airports worldwide is now being tapped for wide-area coverage to track aircraft in airspace far beyond the airport boundary in the Czech Republic, Austria, New Zealand, Australia, Colorado and elsewhere.
The European Commission has decided to formally request information from the Italian government about its complaince with a 2008 judgment by the European Court of Justice ordering it to cease awarding helicopter supply contracts to AgustaWestland without a competitive tendering procedure. The EC noted that illegally awarded contracts remain in force and that a new helicopter order about to be placed also will fail to comply with EC fair competition rules.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is urging Boeing to let it set up a final assembly line in Japan for the 737 replacement program, arguing that the line would help support local customers. The company does not want to take over all final assembly, says Kiyotaka Ichimaru, general manager of Mitsubishi’s civil aircraft division, clarifying other industry executives’ comments reported on AviationWeek.com Sept. 30. Instead, Mitsubishi would help carry the final-assembly burden of what would probably be a massive, high-rate production effort.
Lease of Chicago’s Midway Airport by an investment group headed by a subsidiary of the Vancouver airport authority is prompting greater interest in privatization. But legal restrictions pose obstacles to any quick change in U.S. airport ownership. Chicago and its City Council have accepted a $2.52-billion bid from Midway Investment and Development Co. (Midco) for a 99-year lease of the square-mile airport on the city’s South Side. Once the project is approved by federal agencies, it will establish the first privatized large airport in the U.S.
