Growth of Indian airlines this year has been the second slowest after the U.S. According to the International Air Transport Assn., India’s aviation growth slowed from 33% in 2007 to 7.5% in the first half of this year, and went negative in the last two months. This July, the growth was 1.9% compared with 7.3% in July 2007. Giovanni Bisignani, IATA director general and CEO, says Indian airlines could post $1.5 billion in losses in 2008, the largest outside the U.S. IATA says there is an urgent need to reduce costs, improve infrastructure and implement global standards.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is nearing the end of a research program spurred by a concept advanced by The Aerospace Corp. more than a decade ago. The idea of developing and qualifying computer chips to fly in space using commercial microelectronic foundries for chip fabrication has some urgency attached to it because military and civil space projects always need radiation-hardened computer chips.
Peter P. Papadakos, Gyrodyne Foundation (Reno, Nev.)
Regarding Robert Vanderzee’s letter on how the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency would deal with suicide bombers (AW&ST Sept. 15, p. 9), the Navy was concerned about mines and improvised explosive devices back in 2000 when a captain came to talk to me and an associate about flying a HyperSpectral Imaging System from our unmanned aerial vehicle.
Boeing Capital Corp., the company’s “lender of last resort,” hasn’t had to finance a sale for more than two years. Outside banks were eager to lend money to buyers and lessors of commercial aircraft on generous terms. But with the markets now paralyzed by the greatest credit crisis since the Great Depression, the company is preparing to finance select deliveries within the next 18 months for buyers whose financing has fallen through or become unaffordable.
Russia’s Proton Breeze M launch vehicle underscored its return to service with a Sept. 20 launch of Nimiq 4 for Telesat, hard on the heels of Inmarsat 4F3 on Aug. 19. That mission ended a five-month shutdown following a mid-March mishap that left SES Americom’s AMC-14 stranded in useless orbit (AW&ST Sept. 1, p. 18).
By next month, NASA’s Fermi Space Telescope will have the ability to re-point itself quickly for closer study of the unpredictable cosmic explosions known as gamma-ray bursts. Formerly the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (Glast), Fermi was launched in June and released its first-light image of the ever-changing gamma-ray sky in August (AW&ST Sept. 1, p. 14). The observatory features two primary instruments: the Large Area Telescope (LAT), which can survey the entire sky in 3 hr., and the Glast Burst Monitor (GBM).
Kevin Little (see photos) and Brent Abbott have been named to head business development and account management for U.K.-based Surrey Satellite Technology in the U.S. Little was senior director of business development and government relations for Intermap Technologies, while Abbott was a business development executive with Honeywell Defense and Space.
U.S. Army Lt. Gen. (ret.) Stanley E. Green (see photo) has been appointed vice president-joint operations and integration for Raytheon Network Centric Systems , McKinney, Tex. He was inspector general of the Army.
Investigators walk from the wreckage of a Learjet 60 that preliminary flight recorder readouts indicate sustained a burst tire before overruning the runway and crashing Sept. 19 at Columbia (S.C.) Metropolitan Airport. Four of the six people on board were killed.
NASA managers have pushed back the next two space shuttle missions by four days each to regain time lost while Johnson Space Center in Houston recovered from Hurricane Ike, and crews at Kennedy Space Center in Florida cleaned up a mission payload that was accidentally contaminated. The shuttle Atlantis is now scheduled to lift off on the STS-125 mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope at 10:19 p.m. EDT Oct. 14, instead of on Oct. 10. The change will also push back the STS-126 mission to resupply the International Space Station to Nov. 16.
The U.S. military services are increasingly buying computer chips from offshore suppliers for use in weapon systems. Now the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency wants to know whether the chips can be trusted to do only what they’re designed for. The Darpa effort, which has been underway for more than a year, follows a 2005 Defense Science Board (DSB) study on the same question.
The VH-71 presidential helicopter program logged a major milestone last week with the completion of the first flight of the initial operational pilot production aircraft (PP-1) at AgustaWestland’s facility in Yeovil, England. Stephen C. Moss, CEO of AgustaWestland North America, noted that the helicopter “performed exceptionally during its 40-min. flight.” The first of five VH-71 production aircraft to complete the initial phase, PP-1 will be transported by a U.S. Air Force crew on a C-17 to the Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., in early October.
AgustaWestland believes its Italian home market is ripe for explosive growth in rotorcraft operations, if only the requisite infrastructure can be put in place. With that goal in mind, the company has asked the Ambrosetti consultancy to study the feasibility of setting up a network of heliports and other takeoff-and-landing surfaces across Italy. The facilities would be used by corporate or private helicopters, as well as by civil protection, emergency services and the police forces. The assessment is to be completed next summer.
USAF Col. (ret.) Gary A. McAlum has joined Deloitte & Touche ’s Federal Government Services Practice in Washington. He was chief of staff/operations director for the Joint Task Force Global Network Operations at U.S. Strategic Command.
These models, along with the A318, make up Airbus’s A320 family of twin-turbofan, narrow-body airliners. The initial model was the A320, which made its first flight in February 1987. A320 deliveries began in 1988. Initial deliveries of the stretched A321 occurred in 1994. Deliveries of the shortened A319 began in 1996. All models are available with either CFM International CFM56 or International Aero Engines V2500 engines. The A319 typically seats 124 passengers, the A320 carries 150, and the A321 seats 186.
Buoyed by its agreement covering part of Airbus’s U.K. assets, GKN intends to reshuffle workload at the site and rapidly broaden its business base. The acquisition of Airbus’s wing component and assemblies unit—described as “compelling” by Kevin Smith, GKN chief executive—is also politically significant. Government funding is being provided to support the deal and to position the U.K. for core elements of Airbus’s next-generation narrow-body passenger aircraft, which will replace the A320 family.
The U.S. and Europe are taking the lead in transforming their air traffic systems, but it’s not yet clear whether the two versions will match up enough and create a template that the rest of the world can follow.
Pratt & Whitney Global Services and Singapore Airlines Cargo have signed a 10-year, $500-million fleet management program pact that covers 13 Boeing 747-400Fs powered by Pratt’s PW4000-94 engines and six spares.
Mitre Corp.’s Center for Advanced Aviation Systems Development will be using an All Weather Inc. MetObserver Automated Weather Observing System to create a weather profile for Chapelco Airport in Patagonia, Argentina, as part of a program to develop instrument approach procedures. The system will provide up-to-the-minute weather data to pilots via ground-to-air radio communications and to air traffic control personnel via interactive displays in control towers.
Bombardier is taking back responsibility for development of the all-composite airframe for its Learjet 85 from insolvent Grob Aerospace, to protect the timeline for its new midsize business jet. The Canadian company says it terminated the agreement, signed in January, because of the uncertainty surrounding Grob. Bombardier had decided to build the composite airframes at its Mexico plant.
Mitsubishi formally launched the Mitsubishi Regional Jet (MRJ) family in March 2008. Two basic models are planned: the 70-80-passenger MRJ70 and 86-96-passenger MRJ90. Extended-and long-range versions of each basic model are also envisioned. Service entry is targeted for 2013.
Spirit and Southwest are North American low-cost carriers that in many respects are flying in opposite directions—exemplifying the varied paths the continent’s LCCs are taking to succeed in a mature market, slumping economy and high-fuel-price environment. Southwest is running ads blasting other carriers for all of the fees they’re adding, going full-bore to promote itself as the airline that doesn’t charge for items such as the first or second checked bag or reservations made by phone.
BAE Systems has begun final assembly of the first British two-seat Typhoon from the Tranche 2 production batch. The aircraft is due to be delivered to the Royal Air Force in late 2009.
NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) is set to reopen this week after a 10-day shutdown in the wake of Hurricane Ike, with managers predicting there will be no storm-related impact to the Oct. 10 launch of the next space shuttle mission. The Mission Control Center in Houston shut down along with the rest of JSC as Ike approached on Sept. 11, and it remained off-line when Russia’s Progress M-65/P30 resupply spacecraft docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on Sept. 17, five days later than planned because of the storm.
