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.
In a bid to keep up with strong commercial satellite demand and an improving outlook for government business, Arianespace is looking at further launcher purchases and accelerating production ramp-up plans.
Alexander Seger has been appointed director of operations in Toulouse for Avtech , which also has major operations in Stockholm. Lars-Peter Peltomaa has become chief technical officer of Avtech-AviaQ, Capt. Anna Sundberg a quality auditor, Britt Eklund a cabin safety expert and auditor, Capt. Michael Agelii senior operational expert, Julius Sokolowski a simulation engineer, Serdar Akalinli a wind and product analyzer engineer and Sven Jakobsson a senior expert.
Indonesian budget airline Lion Air says it will set up affiliates in Australia and Thailand to develop a franchise business like that of Singapore-based rival Tiger Airways. The Australian airline will fly six Boeing 737-900ERs; the Thai operation will have four.
Commercial aviation is an indispensable component of the global economy and a major growth engine in emerging economies. Directly and indirectly, aviation constitutes 8% of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP), supports 29 million jobs and transports 40% of interregional exports of goods, by value.
Eugene Francis Kranz has received the NASA Ambassador of Exploration Award for his involvement in the U.S. space program. He worked on NASA’s Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space missions, and was lead flight director during the Apollo 13 mission. An explosion on board the spacecraft during Apollo 13 required Kranz and other team members to help resolve the crisis and bring the astronauts back to Earth.
Lockheed Martin’s Multiple Kill Vehicle (MKV) is on track for flight testing in the 2012-14 timeframe, officials said in a teleconference Jan. 9. The program is in the development phase with a focus on component testing. Lockheed officials noted several successes in testing of the Advanced Divert and Attitude Control systems and said the company will continue work on testing the additional subsystems required to make the flight test a reality.
The British government is denying any discussions between London and Washington over the possible siting of ballistic missile defense interceptors in the U.K.
Finnair will begin a share buy-back program after Feb. 5, when annual results are posted. The airline says traffic is strongly up, but yields were down in the last quarter. The purchase of up to 600,000 shares will end no later than Apr. 1. The shares are being used to support the group’s stock-incentive scheme covering 2007-09. Meanwhile, the group also has shed its last ATR 72 turboprops. Estonian subsidiary Aero sold three to Russia’s Utair, which hopes to take delivery of them in the coming months. The value of the deal was not disclosed.
Michael A. Taverna (Le Plessis-Robinson, France), Robert Wall (Le Plessis-Robinson, France)
France says it will use its turn at the helm of the European Union later this year to push for greater integration of Europe’s defense effort. Speaking at the inauguration of a new MBDA facility here last week, French Defense Minister Herve Morin reaffirmed French plans to help boost European defense, in particular by reinforcing the fledgling European Defense Agency.
Results of CFM56 engine tests of several alternative fuels, carried out last December at GE Aviation’s Peebles, Ohio, facility, are being evaluated. Virgin Atlantic Airways, Boeing and GE Aviation are sponsoring the trials, which are run-ups to flight tests using alternative fuels in a CF6. An airline representative says Virgin has committed to a biofuels test in the first half of this year, five months ahead of what had been predicted.
Ill will and open wounds are set to dominate congressional-White House relations as the Democrat-controlled 110th Congress returns to Capitol Hill over the next two weeks. It is not even clear whether President Bush’s veto of Congress’s defense authorization bill—via a calendar quirk known as a “pocket veto”—was technically legit. Backbenchers on the Armed Services Committees from both political parties say the bill should be revised or stripped of the Iraqi-funds provisions Bush finds offensive, but otherwise the measure should be enacted (AW&ST Jan. 1, p. 19).
Airbus already has booked its first 2008 aircraft order. Irish lessor AWAS has agreed to buy 75 A320-family narrowbodies. The company signed the contract in December, but Airbus didn’t receive the deposit until January so the deal will not show up in the aircraft maker’s year-end tally. Airbus and Boeing are neck-and-neck for the 2007 order intake crown (see p. 40).
The National Air Traffic Controllers Assn. (Natca) has been hammering at what it calls inadequate controller staffing for several years, but now it is saying there is a “staffing emergency” in Atlanta, Chicago, New York and Southern California. Natca says 10% of the nationwide controller work- force left last year. “A staffing emergency means that controllers do not have enough trained and experienced personnel on the ground to safely handle the volume of traffic in the air and at major airports,” Natca says.
China may be pursuing a tail and thrust-vector-control imaging infrared guided dogfight missile design to meet its requirement for a next-generation short-range air-to-air weapon. An image of the weapon, possibly designated the PL-ASR and also associated with the designation PL-10, has been circulating on Chinese military web sites. The PL-10 designation has been associated with development of a semi-active radar-guided medium range missile.
By year-end, Airbus plans to nail down the central supplier, industrial and design decisions for its A350XWB twin widebody. Not since the A300B, the first aircraft the European aircraft maker brought to market, has so much been riding on getting it right.
China’s demonstration of an anti-satellite (Asat) weapon last year highlighted the vulnerability of low-orbit military and intelligence satellites. It also renewed a long-standing debate about U.S. reliance on a relatively small number of “Battlestar Gallactica” satellites that can take as long as a decade to design and orbit and cost more than $1 billion each. Now Alliant Techsystems Inc.
As the head of science and technology for the director of national intelligence, Steve Nixon is at the apex of what he calls a “watershed” in the $43 billion-a-year U.S. intelligence community—which he says is providing more support for operations now than “any time in recent history” while grappling with the post-Cold War landscape. Key to his vision is a new Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Iarpa), which was officially funded for the first time in Fiscal 2008 for a classified sum and is now being staffed.
