ITT INC. WILL ANALYZE BACKUP SATELLITE NAVIGATION technology for the Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) under a contract issued by the Next-Generation Air Transportation System (Ngats) Institute. Ngats is an Aerospace Industries Assn. (AIA)-formed group, backed by the FAA, that was established to help JPDO access the private sector for research tasks. This is the first task request issued by the group which was set up in 2005. The ITT team on this project includes Aerospace Engineering and Research Associates, Qinetiq and Ohio University.
The NTSB is determined to reduce the hazards associated with flight into icing conditions--and it is urging safety improvements from pilot training to the design and certification of aircraft. The move is a result of the board's investigation of the Feb.16, 2005, crash of a Cessna Citation 560 (N500AT) near Pueblo (Colo.) Memorial Airport that killed the two pilots and six passengers who were employees of Circuit City Stores.
A Washington Outlook item on a Congressional Budget Office space radar options study (AW&ST Jan. 8, p. 21) referred to 40 or 100 sq. mi. of ground coverage. Instead, 40 and 100 should have been described as the sizes, in square meters, of radar arrays under consideration.
Letters 6 Who's Where 8 Industry Outlook 13 Airline Outlook 15 In Orbit 17 News Breaks 18-21 Washington Outlook 23 A European Perspective 50 Inside Avionics 62 Contrails 66 In Review 70 Classified 71 Contact Us 72 Aerospace Calendar 73
Boeing 737-300F is equipped with an "Advanced Cockpit" from Universal Avionics. The four LCDs (left to right) show a synthetic vision view of the terrain ahead from the pilot's perspective, a terrain awareness warning profile view, a second synthetic vision perspective (from behind the right wing of the plane) and an attitude director indicator with additional data. Many avionics companies are now offering complete flat-panel retrofits for airline and business jets and for general aviation aircraft (see p. 58). ARC Avionics photo by Jay Salazar.
Certain airlines operating out of Los Angeles International Airport will see their fees almost triple now that the City Council has approved the increase initiated by Los Angeles World Airports. (Lawas is a four-airport system owned by the City of Los Angeles.) The move targets carriers operating out of Terminals 1, 3 and 6, including US Airways, Southwest, Frontier and AirTran. The Air Transport Assn. expressed disappointment over the fee hike and questioned the legality of Lawas's action, and said it would seek administrative relief from the U.S. Transportation Dept.
As the U.S. follows a deliberate pace in modernizing its air traffic system by 2025, two of the world's largest aerospace companies are joining hands, in part, to encourage faster progress. Boeing has a huge stake in this major endeavor because it wants to sell new commercial aircraft without having congestion and delays crimp sales. Lockheed Martin--supplier of ground-based ATC systems to 12 nations handling 60% of the world's air traffic--has an interest in seeing all this talk about modernizing the U.S. ATC system turned into action.
And branching out in the security realm, U.K.'s Qinetiq Group will acquire Analex Corp. for approximately $173 million. The Fairfax, Va.-based company provides high-technology professional services principally to U.S. government agencies. The company employs 1,100 at 11 sites in the U.S. The sale should be complete in March, barring any regulatory glitches.
Meanwhile, Singapore Airlines is in talks with Wipro--India's third-biggest software company--to outsource its reservation call center operations in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the U.S. Beginning in July, SIA plans to lay off 56 employees in Perth and Sydney, and 84 in Auckland, Los Angeles and Vancouver. In a related move, starting Feb. 9, Qantas and British Airways will close their joint call center in Singapore, with inquiries to be diverted to their centers in Australia and New Delhi, respectively.
The U.S. Navy will begin deliveries of a modified weapon designed to provide close air support to ground troops in urban areas in Iraq no later than March. Its arrival will coincide with the small escalation in U.S. presence planned by President Bush and as soldiers turn their focus to securing the streets of Baghdad. The BLU-126/B, also called the Low Collateral Damage Bomb (LCDB), was a response to an urgent need from U.S. Central Command.
Scientists from the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) will get to analyze two different sets of samples from space following the Jan. 22 retrieval by India's navy and coast guard of the Space-capsule Recovery Experiment (SRE-1) from the Bay of Bengal. The 550-kg. (1,213-lb.) spacecraft was launched Jan. 9 on a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) from the Satish Dhawan Space Center on Sriharikota Island in the Bay of Bengal, and returned to a nominal splashdown and recovery about 140 km. (7 mi.) east of the launch site. Following a 10-min.
Ralph G. D'Ambrosio has been promoted to chief financial officer from vice president-finance/ principal accounting officer of New York-based L-3 Communications. He succeeds Michael T. Strianese, who is now president/CEO.
Your editorial board bemoans the fact that our representatives in Congress cater to their faithful rather than write blank checks for exploration (AW&ST Jan. 8, p. 58). Good for Congress! You forget that it is our money that Congress spends and, therefore, we should have a strong say as to where it goes. A lot of the pressure to modernize our air traffic control system comes from backers of very light jets, which will be flown by/for a very elite group, not by/for the average taxpayer. Perhaps it is the aerospace industry that is dysfunctional.
Russia and India were planning late last week to sign a bilateral agreement to jointly expand and modernize Russia's Glonass satellite navigation system. The countries are expected to launch two Glonass satellites using GSLV boosters, and to share development and construction of a new-generation Glonass-K satellite system (AW&ST Sept. 15, 2006, p. 61).
USAF is fielding similar unmanned aircraft, as the 820th Security Forces Group was selected to deploy the Ground Situational Awareness Toolkit. GSAT includes Boeing's ScanEagle unmanned aircraft and the ShotSpotter gunfire acquisition system that allows identification of enemy positions by tracking the sources of firing using acoustic sensors. The ScanEagle uses its cameras to provide pictures of the identified locations. The 10-ft.-wingspan, 20-hr.-endurance aircraft is launched by a catapult.
Nalini Ranjan Mohanty has been named chairman/managing director of Textron India Pvt. Ltd. He is the retired chairman/CEO of Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd.
U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne is planning to waive the need for General Electric to comply with the Berry Amendment, which requires domestic sourcing for specialty metals, with its new CF6-80C2 engines for the C-5 strategic airlifter. Program officials say compliance with the law "would be extremely expensive and have cost and schedule impacts." The new engines are needed to dramatically improve the C-5's low dispatch reliability, which is around 50%.
Eurocopter expects sharp growth again this year as it continues to consolidate its leading position in the helicopter market. New products are also on the agenda, but the emphasis will be on cutting costs and lifting earnings. Eurocopter predicts 2007 deliveries will rise at least 20% over the record 381 units handed over to customers in 2006, says Lutz Bertling, who took over the CEO position from Fabrice Bregier late last year. Another 20% increase is likely in 2008. Order intake last year, 615 units, was also a record.
Jon Buccola (see photos) has been appointed chairman of Greenpoint Technologies Inc., Kirkland, Wash. He was president/CEO. He has been succeeded as president by Scott Goodey, who was vice president-program management. Sloan Ponomarchuk has been named executive vice president. She was vice president-sales and contracts.
Jack Harris has been appointed general manager of PDES Inc., Charleston, S.C. He will serve as an executive on loan while continuing as director of advanced manufacturing technology at Rockwell Collins.
Eurocontrol says its Central Flow Management Unit played a key role in keeping delays from growing in 2006 when traffic in European airspace increased 4.1% to a record 9.6 million flights. Delays per flight remained steady at 1.9 min. Eurocontrol also notes there have been no air traffic management-related accidents since 2002 and that a focus on environmental issues is reducing CO 2 emissions from aircraft by 400,000 metric tons per year.
Prof. Gerard Medioni, who is chairman of the Computer Science Dept. at the University of Southern California, has been appointed to the board of advisers of New York-based Agent Video Intelligence Inc.
The U.S. Army's Communications Electronics Command (Cecom) Rapid Response program (CR 2) could be recompeted with an initial announcement as early as this summer, according to Input, a market analysis company. At stake may be as much as $23 billion in mostly information technology spending in an eight-year period, according to the report released this month by the Reston, Va.-based company.
Just a routine test flight, . . . but I think I'll wear my own parachute today, I thought. I would be flying that sleek ultralight sailplane parked on our ramp at the Raspet Flight Research Laboratory, an aeronautical research unit associated with Mississippi State University, continuing a series of fairly innocuous aileron-roll tests. Yes, the airplane had a built-in ballistic recovery system (BRS)--a parachute packed into a compartment just aft of the cockpit--that could be deployed during an emergency to save the aircraft and me.
Boeing says its decision to abandon WiFi technology to distribute inflight entertainment (IFE) has turned out to be a net plus in terms of weight savings and scheduling for its 787 program.
