In a deal worth about $300 million, Rolls-Royce Trent 700s will be outfitted on Thai Airways’ eight new Airbus A330-300s, deliveries of which are to start in 2009. The powerplants are covered under a 10-year TotalCare long-term services agreement.
Astronaut Sunita Williams’ stellar performance during a six-month stint on the International Space Station included four extremely difficult spacewalks and a world record for time spent by a woman in extravehicular activity. An Indo-American, she drew rave reviews on a post-flight goodwill tour of her father’s homeland, helping forge closer ties to a U.S. space partner.
Regarding the letter from Robert G. Ryan (AW&ST Nov. 12, 2007, p. 12), the firefighting tanker industry has fielded far more than the DC-6 in recent years. Among these aircraft have been the S-2T, P-3, C-130, PB4Y-2, P2V-5/7, DC-4, M-18T, AT-802, B206, UH-1, CH-54 and DC-10. The recent fires in California were driven by winds far in excess of safety limits for any aircraft, and were a force that no one could hope to control with any amount of retardant or number of ground troops.
Computer Sciences Corp. has won a contract to provide facility support services at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The company estimates the value of the contract—which has a two-year base period, two one-year options and six one-year performance-based award terms—to be $544 million if all options are exercised.
Airbus is still weighing a number of important design choices for the A350 that will change its look and performance. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that in recent months the aircraft has grown beyond the influences that first shaped the configuration. Among the items still on the agenda is determining the exact winglet configuration. Several designs, some involving 2-meter-high winglets with different shapes, remain under review.
Two-seat fighters, with room to carry a weapon systems officer to handle new information operations, network attack and electronic warfare missions, are gaining popularity in Pentagon. But researchers in high-tech firms are betting on computers with fast processing and advanced algorithms to drive the military back to single-seat designs. “No man is going to be able to engage in network warfare [from the cockpit],” says a top cyber warfare specialist.
International traffic is “stronger than ever,” according to the Airports Council International, which reports that November international traffic increased 9% compared with the same month in 2006. Africa, which saw a “major surge” of travelers to North Africa, led traffic growth with a 21.5% increase.
Navy Capt. Randy Mahr and the staff of the Northrop Grumman E-2D program developed the Advanced Hawkeye, a new aircraft carrying a next-generation radar that can detect fighter-size targets at very long range and very small targets at ranges long enough to attack them successfully. The E-2D will extend the fleet’s radar coverage to well beyond the horizon. The electronically scanned array component has a 60-90-deg. field of view that can look in front of the mechanical scan or behind it, thereby allowing a longer look at areas where small targets are thought to be.
Patricia Cooper (see photo) has become president of the Washington-based Satellite Industry Assn. She succeeds David Cavossa, who resigned as executive director. Cooper was senior satellite competition adviser the Federal Communication Commission’s International Bureau.
Capt. Karen Lee, UPS director of flight operations, and Bob Hilb, UPS advanced flight systems manager, have worked for more than a decade pioneering the use of Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) at their company. Paul Fontaine of the FAA’s Safe Flight 21 program has assisted in these leading-edge ADS-B efforts. At the end of last year, UPS received FAA approval to begin advanced ADS-B operations at Louisville, Ky., using novel avionics software provided by Aviation Communication and Surveillance Systems (an L-3 Communications and Thales company).
The NTSB is intensifying efforts to promote a public awareness campaign about the dangers of carrying lithium batteries on airliners (AW&ST Dec. 10, 2007, p. 47). Safety board recommendations issued Jan. 7 ask both the FAA and Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) to establish a process that would provide “wider, highly visible and continuous” guidance to travelers and flight crews on the safe carriage of rechargeable lithium batteries, or electronic devices containing these batteries.
The U.S. Army-led requirement for the future Joint Heavy Lift helicopter’s internal carriages has increased to 29 from 20 tons, a Boeing official says. The Army is in the early phases of exploring requirements for a vertical-lift transport that will shuttle vehicles around battlefields. The change was necessary to accommodate growth in Future Combat System vehicles.
Air Canada, which hopes to complete its major fleet renewal this year, is reporting a record 78.8% load factor for December for combined mainline and regional affiliate Jazz, six percentage points higher than the same month last year. The mainline flew 2.3% more revenue passenger miles (RPM), with a 1.6% capacity increase. Jazz flew 3.8% more RPM based on a 2.5% increase. The full-year consolidated load factor of 80.6% is also a record, for the fourth year in a row, according to Air Canada.
Cruise-missile defense has long been a stepchild in the Pentagon’s air-and-missile defense community, with some officials feeling the Defense Dept. is not organized properly to deal with the growing threat of a cruise-missile attack abroad or, especially, on U.S. territory. Now that may be changing. “They are beginning to talk seriously” about a new approach to the cruise-missile defense problem, says Dave Kier, Lockheed Martin vice president for missile defense.
The first two Marine One helicopters have formally entered flight test at NAS Patuxent River, Md. The two VH-71 test vehicles will undergo structural and propulsion experiments. They will also be used for early pilot training.
David Hughes (Washington ), Michael Mecham (San Francisco)
Boeing says it will be able to prove compliance with special conditions set by the FAA for the 787’s computer networks when the 250-300-seat jet’s flight-test program begins this spring. The goal is to assure that the aircraft’s network design is secure from intrusion by hackers. The review is among 10 special conditions the FAA published Jan. 2 in the Federal Register to cover the 787’s advances in design, materials and systems beyond already written certification rules.
Spain has added to its Eurocopter order book, with deals for 11 more rotorcraft to go to the defense and interior ministries. The military is buying two Cougars for its army airmobile force under a €40-million ($58.8-million) contract, while the military emergency unit has signed for three helos of the type in an award valued at €76 million. The latter arrangements also include mission and logistics support. Also, the interior ministry is procuring two EC135s and four AS355NPs for the directorate general for Traffic for an estimated €20 million.
A British Royal Navy Sea King helicopter crew that saved the life of an injured swimmer from a coastal cave has been selected as this year’s recipient of the Breitling Award for Aviation Heroism. The crew, led by Lt. Cdr. Matt Shrimpton, was scrambled on July 2, 2007, as part of a search-and-rescue effort to locate and recover two missing people: a Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) lifeguard and a female swimmer. The two individuals were thought to be trapped in a cave in the Newquay area of the Cornwall coast in southwest England.
Air China is poised to become the world’s sixth-largest airline, outranking Northwest Airlines and British Airways, as its parent prepares to bid for control of struggling China Eastern. The parent company says it plans comprehensive cooperation between the two airlines, not a full merger, but analysts note that integration of the businesses is the most logical and likely outcome, even if the separate brands survive, as is the case with Air France-KLM.
Europe’s low-fare airlines are starting to see increasing turmoil after years of speculation that their overabundance will lead to a shakeout as the contenders struggle for financial viability.
Airbus has revamped its design and program management process for the A350XWB to ensure the project doesn’t suffer the same problems that bedeviled earlier attempts (see pp. 44). One new feature is the use of a single digital mock-up (DMU). Lisa Caputo and Hans Michaud of the AW&ST Art Dept. created the cover from Airbus’s A350 concept drawings that illustrate how DMU is being employed to create the twin widebody.
The European Space Agency has tentatively scheduled three days of proximity operations at the ISS with its Automated Transfer Vehicle beginning Mar. 6 and winding up with the 20-ton space freighter docked to Russia’s Zvezda service module on Mar. 15. The whole schedule, beginning with launch from Kourou, French Guiana, no earlier than Feb. 22, will depend on getting the space shuttle fleet flying again (see previous item), but plans call for the first approach and test of the vehicle’s automatic escape maneuver on Mar. 6. On Mar.
Meanwhile, a USAF C-17 flew an 11-hr. relief mission from Christchurch, New Zealand, to drop 150 lb. of engine parts and tools to a British fishing ship, the Argos Georgia with a 25-person crew, that has been stranded off the Ross Ice Shelf at Antarctica since Christmas Eve. The ship had suffered engine failure while negotiating ice.
Astronomers are trying to figure out why a relatively hot spot in the clouds at the south pole of Saturn is duplicated at the north pole, where it’s been wintertime since 1995. Scientists measured the spot—actually a frigid 84K (‑310F)—with the Composite Infrared Spectrometer on the Cassini probe, which produced this false-color image of the north pole covering temperatures as high as 72K (‑330F). Oxford University’s Leigh Fletcher, lead author of a paper on the discovery in the Jan.
