L-3 Communications has completed work on the first of a planned 78 C-27Js for the U.S. Army/Air Force Joint Cargo Aircraft program, meeting the agreed schedule. A second aircraft is in flight testing at Alenia Aeronautica in Italy and will be delivered in November after completion by L-3 in Waco, Tex. These first two C-27Js will be used for operational testing. Six Army aircraft are already under contract, and Congress has fully funded procurement of seven more in Fiscal 2009.
Michael A. Taverna (Paris), Graham Warwick (Washington)
A project aimed at developing an advanced light twin-turboprop to replace aging utilities in the Dornier 228 class is finally moving forward, reflecting a new surge of interest in this long-neglected market segment.
The U.S. Army and Air Force are nearly finished working out plans for cooperating on operations of medium-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). In the coming weeks, Gen. William Wallace, commander of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, and USAF Gen. John Corley, commander of Air Combat Command, will brief their respective service chiefs on the arrangement. The plan could lead to common airframes, training and control schemes for medium-altitude UAVs such as the Air Force’s Predator and Army’s Sky Warrior.
Joe Del Balzo, founder/president of JDA Aviation Technology Solutions of Washington and a former acting FAA administrator, has been named to the FAA ’s Research, Engineering and Development Advisory Committee and chair of its Aircraft Safety Subcommittee.
Hungary’s national carrier, Malev, has begun using SITA software that allows passengers departing from Budapest Ferihegy Airport to check in anywhere they have access to the Internet. Airline officials plan to expand the service to other airports. Similarly, Croatia Airlines has started offering Internet check-in capability using Lufthansa Systems software that allows passengers to print boarding passes in advance as well.
Russia’s business aviation sector is poised for change. Medium and smaller aircraft are now attracting buyers and operators in a region where larger airframes have been the norm. The smaller models could also benefit from a government decision to waive a 20% import tax on aircraft seating up to 19 passengers and weighing (operational empty) 15-20 metric tons. Previously, many operators registered aircraft in other countries to avoid the steep charge.
Qantas Airways hopes delivery of its first Airbus A380 will not just kick off a major fleet renewal, but also provide a much-needed image boost following a spate of operational incidents and strikes.
European startup business jet fractional ownership company Jet Republic will begin training pilots for its Bombardier Learjet 60 XR aircraft in March. The company has 25 Learjet 60 XRs on firm order, and holds options for another 85. The company began operating last week, offering a private jet card program using European charter operators. Fractional ownership on the Learjet 60 XR will begin at 50 hr. The entry level cost will be about $900,000. Funding has been secured from Austrian private bank Euram and a group of its clients.
Airline executives continue to make financial choices that are both angering their frequent customers and offering little incentive for them to remain loyal to a particular brand. A downward spiral in the public’s perception, particularly of U.S. airlines, started when they began to charge for checked bags. Some carriers then added cost and confusion for the consumer when they revised those policies to fit what their competitors were doing.
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.
