Boeing picked up two 737-800 orders from Blue Air, Romania’s four-year-old low-cost carrier, which began operations with an all-Boeing fleet of 737 Classics. Asiana Airlines ordered a 777. Boeing has accumulated 65 orders so far in 2008.
General Electric’s GEnx engine for the Boeing 787 has reached the 3,500 mark of ground starts using the variable frequency starter generators from Hamilton Sundstrand. The engine has accumulated more than 3,400 hr. and 4,500 cycles in ground testing. Certification is expected late this quarter.
Honeywell has received FAA approval for its new synthetic vision system, which it sees as providing a fundamental change in business jet displays so pilots can see virtual presentations of the terrain ahead in all types of weather.
Fred Munic has been appointed vice president of F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programs at Vision Systems International , San Jose, Calif. He was director of JSF helmet-mounted display programs.
In what it notes will be the first public-private aerospace research consortium, Boeing has formed the Aerospace Network Research Consortium with the Indian Institute of Science and two Indian infotech companies—Wipro Technologies and HCL Technologies. ANRC was established as a four-year collaboration; financial terms were not disclosed. It is to develop wireless and other network technologies for aerospace applications. Boeing will be represented by its Phantom Works and Commercial Airplanes business units.
Helen Reed, head of the Aerospace Engineering Dept. at Texas A&M University in College Station, has received the J. Leland Atwood Award from the Reston, Va.-based American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) , for contributions to space systems engineering and space systems design education.
The RAF has activated the 39th U.K. Reaper Sqdn. at Creech AFB, Nev. It’s the RAF’s first UAV squadron, although RAF personnel have been part of the Joint Predator Task Force since 2004.
Army and Navy officials are joining forces to squelch a push by senior Pentagon civilians to fund two contractors in an upcoming competition to build the Joint Air-to-Ground Missile (JAGM). The small weapon—born out of the defunct Lockheed Martin-led Joint Common Missile effort—will replace existing Hellfires and Mavericks on rotary- and fixed-wing aircraft. JCM was terminated for lack of funding, but Pentagon acquisition czar John Young wants to carry two JAGM contractors through development and select a winner for production.
China expects to spend up to 60 billion yuan ($8.3 billion) on its projected 150-seat commercial aircraft. The country’s two main aircraft groups, Avic 1 and Avic 2, will have a stake in the endeavor, but the central government administration that controls state enterprises will fund most of it and hold the majority of shares. Avic 1 and 2 will contribute mainly with assets—presumably, manufacturing plants. Municipal governments and state-dominated metals companies will also take shares. The aircraft is supposed to fly around 2020.
The shuttle Atlantis and its U.S.-European crew are poised for liftoff as early as Feb. 7 to deliver Europe’s 13-ton Columbus laboratory to the International Space Station following a two-month delay to solve engine cutoff (ECO) sensor problems. After more than 20 years of development and frustration, the European Space Agency’s Columbus module is finally on the brink of its trip to the ISS (AW&ST Dec. 3, 2007, p. 45). A bent orbiter Freon line was forcing last-minute assessments, however.
Thales says it is poised to land a major helicopter retrofit award in the U.K. to go with one recently announced for French Cougars. The contract goals will be to reduce pilot workload and compensate for high airframe losses in Iraq and Afghanistan.
TNO Defense, Security and Safety of the Netherlands expects to make significant inroads into handling pilot disorientation via its newly opened six-degrees-of-freedom (DoF) moving base flight simulator at its Soesterberg facility. Known as Desdemona, the simulator was developed by Austrian-based AMST in collaboration with TNO. The cabin is suspended in a freely rotating gimbaled system (offering three DoFs through more than 360 deg.) which, as a whole, can move 3 ft. up and 3 ft.
Michael Mecham (Seattle), Michael A. Taverna (Seattle)
Realists among the travel-weary sect known as road warriors may say their “uncovered, unarticulated, emotional needs” for an airplane trip are to pass through noisy airports with their hearing intact and security lines with their clothes on. But Klaus Brauer and Blake Emery are paid by Boeing to talk to people about “the magic of flight.” Sometimes, this comes out best when passengers think back to the first time they flew.
Hong Kong Airlines has chosen Rolls-Royce Trent 700s to power 20 A330s it has on order. Rolls-Royce values the order at $1.2 billion. Deliveries will begin in 2010.
The British Royal Air Force will take delivery of its fifth Boeing C-17 this month, with a sixth aircraft to be handed over in June. The four RAF C-17s now in service are supporting operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Honeywell Aerospace has been chosen to participate in the Single European Sky ATM Research Phase 2 effort, also called the Sesar Joint Undertaking. Honeywell is the only U.S. company among the first 15 selected to be members of the undertaking, which will conduct €2.1 billion ($3.1 billion) in research over the next seven years to figure out how to modernize the European air traffic management system.
Sea Launch is preparing for the March orbiting of the Boeing DirecTV 11 satellite, following the return to service of its Zenit-3SL launcher last month. Boeing shipped the Model 702 satellite-to-home broadcast spacecraft to Sea Launch’s home port in Long Beach, Calif., on Jan. 26.
The list of major Russian airlines is out, with carriers disclosing their 2007 operational results. Aeroflot easily retained its leadership position, having transported 8.2 million passengers, or 12% more than in 2006. S7 airlines carried 5.7 million travelers, a 16% increase; with state transport company GTK Rossia in the third slot with 3.2 million passengers but a loss of 7.8% in volume over the prior year. Transaero has inched closer to Rossia, also carrying 3.2 million passengers and having benefited from 51.7% growth.
Qantas Boeing 747-400 in special livery prepares to land at Los Angeles International Airport. The Australian carrier is pushing aggressively to grow beyond its home market and position itself as a leading Asia-Pacific airline group, as early signs of regional consolidation emerge (see p. 44). Erik Simonsen photo.
Energia Space Corp. will take steps to prevent a repeat of the Oct. 21, 2007, ballistic reentry of the Soyuz TMA-10 spacecraft as it returned from the International Space Station, following a report of the Russian state commission that investigated the anomaly. Energia chief Vitaly Lopota says the problem was traced to a damaged cable behind the control panel, and already has been corrected. Expedition 15 Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin, Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov and Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor of Malaysia fell some 340 km.
Flight testing of the SpaceShipTwo suborbital tourist vehicle and its WhiteKnightTwo carrier is scheduled for this summer. The Spacecraft Co.—a joint venture between Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space-tourism subsidiary and Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites—has started assembling the first of each vehicle at its Mojave, Calif., facility. Virgin Galactic has ordered five SpaceShipTwos (shown) with options for seven more, and two of the twin-boom motherships.
Karl Sutterfield might have a point in his letter about ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast) and unmanned aerial vehicles (AW&ST Dec. 3, 2007, p. 10) by saying the matter is not “see and avoid” with or without electronic eyes. The matter falls under rules of separation and the law.
Russian controllers are checking out the new Express-AM33 telecom satellite following its Jan. 28 launch on a Proton-M booster with a Breeze M upper stage. Built by NPO PM in cooperation with Thales Alenia Space for state-owned Russian Satellite Communication Co., Express-AM33 features more output power than previous AM spacecraft.
Eurocontrol expects up to 700 very light jets to be operating in Europe by 2015—440 are on order-—with 100 VLJs being introduced into service each year for the near future. The agency is launching the European VLJ Integration Platform to address how to handle the surge of aircraft in the dense air traffic management environment.
