Lufthansa Cargo plans to move its Asian hub from Astana, Kazakhstan, to Krasnoyarsk, Russia, after German and Russian negotiators settled their long-standing dispute on Siberian overflight charges. CEO Carsten Spohr expects the cargo carrier to operate into Krasnoyarsk starting in the summer of 2009. The airport needs to be upgraded to Category-2 capability and equipped with a heated maintenance hangar, among other improvements, before Lufthansa Cargo will make the move. The airline plans to operate its first test flights into Krasnoyarsk this coming June.
The Homeland Security Dept. has begun testing a marinized variant of the Predator UAV over the Gulf of Mexico. Two Homeland Security agencies, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Coast Guard began flight tests last week out of Tyndall AFB, Fla. The joint concept demonstration is flying an Air Force UAV equipped with a sensor package, including maritime radar, designed to resist corrosion in the ocean environment. The UAV will be controlled by Air Force pilots until it reaches altitude, about 19,000 ft. Then CBP Air personnel will take over for 8-10-hr.
The EADS/Northrop Grumman tanker bid was solicited by USAF after some of its officials and a few Boeing executives conspired in the previous attempt to contract for tankers. Competition was required and Northrop Grumman/EADS provided this. USAF was forbidden to consider “Buy American.” Congress and USAF accommodated the consolidation of aerospace, exempting merged companies from anti-trust laws, to cause the situation we now have of one large aircraft manufacturer in the U.S. Congress then required competition.
Spacecom says its Amos-3 spacecraft has arrived at Baikonur, Kazakhstan, for a launch next month. The mission will be the first for Land Launch, a Zenit-3SLB based derivative of Sea Launch developed for small telecom payloads.
Terry Vais has been appointed vice president-customer care, Lisa Walker vice president-operational support and Kevin Wade vice president-administration and resources for SkyWest Inc. subsidiary Atlantic Southeast Airlines . Wade succeeds Sam Watts, who will be retiring. Vais was SkyWest Airlines’ hub director at Los Angeles International Airport.
Japan’s high-speed Internet satellite Kizuna, also known as Winds, has reached its geostationary orbit at 143 deg. E. Long., where controllers are continuing the checkout of all instruments in time for normal operations scheduled to begin late in June. JAXA says an electrical problem in the main Sun sensor was fixed on Mar. 8 by switching off a part of the backup attitude control system.
Iridium is lining up suppliers and funding for its second-generation system in a race to remain competitive with Inmarsat and a bevy of newcomers in the broadband era.
Finavia, the Finnish Air Traffic Service provider, has ordered a Thales MAGS1 transponder multilateration air/ground surveillance system for installation at Helsinki’s Vantaa Airport this year. The system will track all transponder equipped aircraft operating in Helsinki-Vantaa’s movement and apron areas.
Researchers at the U.S. Air Force’s Arnold Engineering Development Center have completed a high-altitude afterburner test program for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s F136 alternative engine. The GE/Rolls-Royce fighter engine team’s test also included common exhaust hardware. The engine configuration included a production-size fan and functional augmentor that allowed several run periods to full afterburner, say company officials. A second F136 engine is being tested at a GE facility to exercise both conventional and short takeoff/vertical landing controls technology.
Five U.S. companies will spend 210 days evaluating NASA’s concept for the planned Altair lunar lander under small contracts awarded last week. The lander-concept work puts the winners in the early running to build the vehicle, even though at this stage the work will fetch no more than $350,000 for each company. Selected to generate recommendations for increasing the NASA design’s technical maturity are Andrews Space, Seattle; Boeing’s Houston operation; Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver; Northrop Grumman, El Segundo, Calif.; and Odyssey Space Research, Houston.
Boeing will introduce weight-saving carbon brakes on the 737 later this year as part of an ongoing effort to enhance the twinjet ahead of a projected successor not expected to enter service before 2015.
Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly has been the envy of the airline industry, with a record 67 consecutive profitable quarters beginning in the 1990s and persevering through the aftermath of 9/11, a wave of competitors’ bankruptcies, record high fuel prices and the current economic slowdown. The airline has credited its continued success to keeping down costs and price-hedging on fuel—it will pay $51 per barrel in 2009.
The Transportation Dept. and the European Commission are launching a study to find out what effect the U.S./European Union open skies agreement and airline alliances have on competition. The study is aimed at developing a “common understanding” of competition trends, so they can work on “compatible approaches on competition issues.” This will no doubt help when the two governments consider future anti-trust immunity applications from airline partners on both sides of the Atlantic. The findings will also be used during negotiations for a second-stage U.S./EU agreement.
SkyWest Airlines ranks high in every industry insider’s estimation, a regional carrier that has attained astonishing growth in its 36-year history, renowned for its money-making power.
Japan’s Civil Aviation College will buy nine Beechcraft Baron G58 twin-engine aircraft as its next-generation trainers, for delivery by 2010, subject to approval from its owner expected in May. The aircraft will replace 20-year-old Beechcraft C90As. The college says it chose the type partly because Japan Airlines already uses it for training.
Cassini scientists, jubilant after the spacecraft’s dive through the geyser plumes of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, believe samples of gas and dust from its surface and subsurface will have a direct bearing on determining whether Enceladus could have relatively warm underground seas, providing an oasis for the possible development of life.
It’s unclear what route Delta and Northwest pilots will take after talks that began in January on seniority issues reached a stalemate last week. Chairman of Delta’s Master Executive Council, Lee Moak, says the discussions are unique in that the two pilot groups and airline management tried to reach consensus in advance of any formal airline consolidation—a reversal of the traditional merger process. Moak said in a Mar.
Boeing has formally protested USAF’s award of the $35-billion contract for tankers to the Northrop Grumman/EADS consortium. Boeing claims the selection process was “seriously flawed” and “replete with irregularities.” Might Boeing be referring to its illegal behavior over the planned leasing of refuelers for nearly $30 billion? The new competition has moved USAF toward improving the design and reducing the cost. A forward-thinking Boeing would have offered a 787 tanker in place of the dated 767 design.
Kristen Moore has become legislative affairs director of the Alexandria, Va.-based National Air Transportation Assn. She was legislative assistant for transportation and aviation issues for Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.).
The most profitable of China’s Big Three airlines, Air China, has delivered a 57% surge in 2007 net earnings to 4.2 billion yuan ($588 million) on operating revenues of 49.7 billion yuan, up 14.6%. Foreign-exchange windfalls helped the result, as has been common across the Chinese airline industry since the country began to let the yuan appreciate against the dollar in 2005.
Alenia Aeronautica has successfully completed ultimate load testing of the Boeing 787 horizontal stabilizer, marking a major milestone in the aircraft’s development program. The 20-meter-long (66-ft.) aerostructure, consisting of two monolithic co-cured side pieces and one central element made entirely of carbon fiber composites, produced using a patented Alenia process, was bent up and down and asymmetrically at maximum load to simulate three critical design conditions. The stabilizer was found to be able to withstand more than 150% the expected lifetime loading.
Mar. 31-Apr. 3—The Aerospace Corp.’s Ground System Architectures Workshop. Crowne Plaza Hotel, Redondo Beach, Calif. Also, Apr. 8-10—Aerospace Testing Seminar. Manhattan Beach (Calif.) Marriott. Call +1 (310) 336-6805, fax +1 (310) 336-8249 or see www.aero.org Apr. 6–9—AAAA Convention. Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, National Harbor, Md. E-mail: aaaa.quad-a.org
David A. Fulghum (Washington), Michael Bruno (Washington)
Operational gurus are being urged to search through the U.S. Air Force’s inventory of aircraft—including the new KC-45 tanker design—to find those that could carry the advanced, full-sized radar developed for the now-canceled E-10 multi-sensor command and control aircraft. The radar is being developed as a long-range sensor and, with future software modifications, as an electronic attack weapon.
Ken Copiak (see photo) has been appointed general manager of manufacturing at the Viking Air Ltd. facility in Calgary, Alberta. He was manufacturing manager for Kenn Borek Air Ltd., also in Calgary.
