The British Defense Ministry is admitting it was a mistake not to initially equip Lockheed Martin C-130 Hercules aircraft deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan with explosive-suppressant foam (ESF) systems for their fuel tanks. A British coroner last week said there was a “systemic failure” that led to the decision not to fit the system, the lack of which he said contributed to the loss of 10 people when a C-130K was shot down in Iraq in January 2005.
Annual membership fees for the Clear registered traveler program have risen to $199 a year from $128, while renewals rose to $159 a year. Expansion at the top U.S. airports—including those at Atlanta, Denver, Oakland, Calif., Washington Dulles and National, and Salt Lake City—was the reason given by Clear CEO Steven Brill to justify the price hike.
Thirty years after Congress jolted U.S. airlines out of their regulated cocoon, aviation leaders are still debating whether this process went too far—or not far enough. While nobody wants the clock wound back to 1978, serious questions are being raised about what level of government involvement is needed to protect consumers and ensure a healthy industry.
House and Senate defense appropriators have thrown a wrench in the Pentagon’s plans to field two commercial-class imaging satellites as soon as 2012. They pulled nearly $1 billion of funding for the Broad-Area Space-Based Imagery Collection (Basic) system, confirms Michael Birmingham, an official working for the director of national intelligence. Basic is a two-satellite program designed to fill a gap in overhead imaging capacity left after the collapse of the Future Imagery Architecture.
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is terminating service from its Amsterdam hub to Hyderabad, owing to economic conditions in India and poor returns on the route. The move follows a decision by partner Air France to eliminate its London-Los Angeles route, signaling Air France-KLM’s efforts to cut unprofitable operations from its network. The Hyderabad service will cease in February. Mumbai and New Delhi services will be retained.
The first of the Royal Saudi Air Force’s Tranche 2 Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft made its maiden flight Oct. 20 from BAE Systems Warton facility in the north of England. Saudi Arabia has 72 Typhoons on order, with formal delivery to the RSAF expected in June or July 2009. London and Riyadh are also continuing to discuss the acquisition of additional Typhoons. These could be drawn from the U.K.’s Tranche 3 commitment.
Taiwan banned almost all military flying over three days last week for special aircraft inspections and crew safety briefings after crashes of an air force two-seat AIDC F-CK-1 fighter and navy Sikorsky S-70C anti-submarine helicopter on consecutive days.
Alfred E. Kahn, the Robert Julius Thorne Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at Cornell University, remains, at 91 years old, a keen observer of the airline industry. Kahn chaired the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), where he led the movement to deregulate U.S. airlines back in 1978. He brought his unique perspective to an interview with Aviation Daily Senior Editor Benet J.
Karen J. Berg (see photos) and Jonathan Soesman have been named vice presidents-sales for North America and Southern Europe, respectively, for Air France Industries-KLM Engineering and Maintenance . Berg was director of maintenance and modifications for the KLM fleet and succeeds Soesman.
Alexis Livanos, who is corporate vice president/president of the Northrop Grumman Corp. ’s Redondo Beach, Calif.-based Space Technology Sector, has received the International von Karman Wings Award from the California Institute of Technology . The award was presented by the Aerospace Historical Society , in recognition of Livanos’s achievements in space science and technology. He has more than 30 years’ experience in research and applications in microelectronics, solid-state physics, electro-optics and signal processing.
For the first time in recent memory, U.S. airlines appear well-placed to weather an economic downturn. While carriers admit the worst of the expected demand slump is yet to hit, a combination of plummeting oil prices and drastic capacity cuts are causing a rare outbreak of optimism.
Keya Bhattacharyya has been named six sigma manager at Axiom Electronics , Beaverton, Ore. She was a quality/reliability contractor for celerity, planar and flextronics.
Elbit Systems Ltd. has signed military communications systems contracts for $50 million with an army in South America, $38 million with an Asian army and $10 million with a European army. The systems will be from Elbit subsidiary Tadiran Communications Ltd.: CNR-9000 VHF/FM and HF 6000 high-frequency radios as well as PRC 710 handheld VHF/FM radios.
Three of the world’s largest aerospace companies are joining forces with the PlanetSpace commercial venture to develop the 2.8-million-lb.-thrust shuttle-derived Athena III space station resupply booster. The critical factor in the program’s ability to proceed in the face of the global financial crisis is Boeing’s decision just this month to join the venture with Lockheed Martin and Alliant Techsystems (ATK). The project has been underway for a year but, until now, had not included Boeing (AW&ST Jan. 21, p. 30).
Indonesia’s PTDI will build airframes for Eurocopter’s Super Puma Mk.IIs under a deal valued at $42 million over 10 years. The work, to take place in Bandung, will rely on a Eurocopter team for a three-year stand-up period that should lead to turning out airframes at production rates in 2011.
In U.S. presidential election campaigns, it is common to ask whether voters are better off than they were four years earlier. This kind of question sometimes arises, too, on anniversaries of seminal events. And so it is that we ask, as we observe the 30th anniversary of aviation deregulation in the U.S. (see the special report beginning on p. 48), whether the country’s aviation system and travelers are better off now than they were in the 1970s.
The movement toward digital cockpits is speeding up with the adoption of Class 3 electronic flight bags (EFBs) at Boeing and Airbus and the growing installation of Class 2 EFBs on operating fleets of passenger and cargo jets and on a wide range of business aircraft. On flight decks where most real estate is claimed by existing primary flight, navigation and multifunction displays, the addition of side-cockpit-mounted or yoke-mounted EFBs is providing a rare avenue for new software applications.
The British space-science and industry community is growing increasingly alarmed over signs the level of U.K. government funding for Copernicus will be less than half of what was anticipated.
India’s goal is for its defense industry to provide 70% of its weapons production by 2010, but confusion and frustration with the government bureaucracy is making that target hard to hit.
Although French legislators agree that adhering to the budget plan will be difficult in the face of the global financial crisis, they are convinced most of its main elements will be approved, including an unconditional return to the NATO unified military command.
One of Wall Street’s longest-serving A&D analysts has been sidelined. George Shapiro was among the Citigroup Investment Research analysts who were laid off last week, victims of the global financial crisis that has battered the banking industry. He had covered the industry for the firm since 1981. Shapiro’s bearish views on Boeing emerged in 2005 when he began warning that an uptick in commercial aircraft orders was a “bubble” and urged his clients to sell.
Eight years ago, as Boeing Commercial Airplanes was initiating its research and development of the Sonic Cruiser, the effort generated a lot of cynicism because the company had so many false starts related to how it would update the venerable 747.
A Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI)-led team is developing a wide-band local positioning system that will track soldiers at 1-sec. intervals during training exercises, inside or outside of buildings. Each transmitter will emit signals at 915 MHz. and 5.49 GHz. to help instructors monitor activity within structures. The 915-MHz. signal operates at a significantly higher power than the 5.49 GHz., which is limited by the FCC to only 0.1 milliwatts, and can penetrate walls, according to GTRI.
