Delivery of an A320 last week marked the 100th aircraft that China Southern Airlines has received from Airbus out of a fleet of 292. The country's largest user of the A320 family, China Southern has 75 in service. It also flies six A300B4-600Rs and four A330-200s. The rest of the fleet includes 94 Boeing 737s of both the -300/500 "classics" and the -700/800 Next Generation series, as well as a mix of 777s, 747s, MD-82/90s, Embraer ERJ-145s and ATR 72-500s.
Irvin Aerospace will design the parachutes that ease NASA's planned Orion crew exploration vehicle back into the atmosphere after trips to the ISS and eventually the Moon. The Santa Ana, Calif.-based company, which also designed the chutes that took Europe's Huygens probe to the surface of Saturn's moon Titan, will work with Jacobs Sverdrup and the Johnson Space Center as an integrated product team for the government-furnished parachutes. Testing is expected to begin next spring.
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Meteroids are hitting the surface of the Moon much more frequently than scientists originally thought, possibly adding to the need to beef up the shelter available to future lunar base crews. Over the past year, scientists at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center have recorded at least 11 impacts with enough energy to be visible as flashes of heat and light from Earth--four times more than computer models predicted.
Opening doors to new business opportunities is what corporate research spending is all about. In the case of French aerospace supplier Latecoere, it's literally about doors.
Thomas Plungis, who is director of subcontracts and supply chain management for Lockheed Martin Corporate Shared Services' Supply Chain Management Organization, has been elected president of the Supplier Excellence Alliance (SEA). He has been vice president. Plungis succeeds Kenneth Marcia, who becomes SEA past president and is vice president-supply chain management and process innovation for the Dresser-Rand Group Inc.
France and Germany have agreed to construct a ground data network that will allow those countries to independently program and access data on each other's intelligence satellites (AW&ST Oct. 2, p. 36). The network, known as E-SGA, will serve France's in-orbit Helios II optical surveillance spacecraft and Germany's SARLupe radar-imaging cluster, to be deployed starting Dec. 19.
Finmeccanica's top leadership expects to gain control over turboprop-maker ATR in its on-going talks with EADS as the two parties update their business relationship on a grander scale. Gaining the upper hand in the 50/50 ATR joint venture has long been a Finmeccanica aspiration and the company's CEO Pier Francesco Guarguaglini says that not only is it a top agenda item in talks with his EADS counterparts, he's also optimistic that he'll prevail.
In its launch of the third generation of Boeing's 747, Lufthansa has confirmed the building of a 467-seat aircraft that's a bit larger than Boeing originally planned--and larger than the German carrier will actually operate.
In a bid to attract outside interest in Alitalia and salvage the carrier, the Italian government has announced plans to quickly draw down its stake and sell the bulk of its 49.9% remaining holdings. The terms spelled out in recent days suggest more than 30% of the government shares will be floated. But there are several caveats. Italy wants a single buyer that will maintain Alitalia's network in Italy as well as its brand, and buy more than the newly floated shares.
It's official: Robert Gates will become Defense secretary Dec. 18. The Senate confirmed Gates Dec. 6 95-2 as Republicans Jim Bunning (Ky.) and Rick Santorum (Pa.) voted nay.
Southeast Asian low-cost carriers will get a lift this week when Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei agree to unlimited flight frequencies between 13 of their cities.
Douglas Barrie (London), Michael A. Taverna (Paris)
With a new class of military communications satellite poised to enter service early next year, the U.K. Defense Ministry appears ready to consider broadening the scope of the country's space program. Skynet 5A, built by EADS Astrium, will be launched atop an Ariane 5 booster early in 2007, with two follow-on satellites, 5B and 5C, to follow. London spurned the courtship of France and Germany to pursue an advanced national program for a successor system to the Skynet 4 network currently deployed.
The Romanian air force has selected the Alenia Aeronautica C-27J tactical transport aircraft as its future airlift platform. The contract for seven of the twin-turboprops is anticipated by year-end, with deliveries to start in 2008. Contract specifics are being ironed out, but the deal is expected to be worth around €220 million ($293 million). The EADS CASA C-295 was the losing bidder.
The Aerospace Industries Assn. will report a 2006 aerospace trade surplus for U.S. this week of "well over $50 billion," AIA chief John Douglass says. What's more, Douglass is optimistic about removing a long-standing thorn in the side of the industry--tight U.S. export controls on defense technologies, which can reach down, literally, to nuts and bolts. He believes the incoming Democratic majority in Congress and the lame-duck Bush administration might be more receptive to new tech-transfer rules. Douglass says AIA will craft an alternate set of rules to offer up.
There's a bit of deja vu in hearing Scott Carson, the CEO of Boeing Co.'s Commercial Airplanes unit, caution that orders will slow in 2007. A year ago Carson, then the company's top airplane salesman, issued a similar warning about 2006. He may have been technically correct, but not by much. Last week's launch order for 20 747-8 passenger jets by Lufthansa German Airlines adds to another bonanza sales year (p. 39).
As it prepares to bring the A380 to India for demonstration flights, Airbus says it will invest $1 billion in that country in the next 10 years, including $300 million for a pilot training center with CAE to house eight simulators. Also planned is a $250-million engineering center that focuses on "high-end" design and analysis of aircraft.
USAF needs another $100 billion over the next five years to recapitalize its aging fleet and cover rising fuel and personnel costs, Lt. Gen. Arthur J. Lichte, assistant vice chief of staff, told an investor audience in New York. Lichte says the average age of Air Force aircraft is now a record 24 years. His appeal echoes a public campaign by the U.S. Army for additional funding.
It has taken 45 years, but the view that first thrilled Yuri Gagarin as his Vostok 1 capsule coasted through the black sky of space will soon be available to anyone with enough moxie and money to buy a ticket.
China was due to launch a second geostationary weather satellite Dec. 8, and will send up a Sun-synchronous meteorological spacecraft in the second half of next year. The satellite scheduled for this month--Fengyun 2D--will extend the coverage of Fengyun 2C, which is already in geosynchronous orbit, and each will act as a backup for the other, the country's meteorological office says. (Fengyun means "wind and cloud.") Next year's launch will put into orbit the "second-generation" Fengyun 3 satellite, state media report.
U.S. Air Force Reserve Commander Lt. Gen. John Bradley says he's worried about the U.S.'s strategic airlift capability, given the current procurement cap on the C-17 program. "We have about the same amount of C-5s that we have had for a number of years, but we got rid of 280 C-141s," Bradley says. The Air Force has congressional approval to buy 190 C-17s, but Boeing has repeatedly threatened to shut the production line down if it doesn't receive more firm order commitments each year.
Michael A. Taverna (Paris), Douglas Barrie (London)
Britain's space industry is calling for additional funding to secure its future as the government finalizes its long-term spending plans. Although a big across-the-board increase is ruled out, space contractors want the government to boost funding across several key areas thought to be crucial to the industry's long-term survival. The aim is to inscribe the upward adjustment in the next comprehensive spending review (CSR), setting out its departmental spending from 2008-11, which is due to be published by mid-2007.
Internal squabbling at Safran over strategy, including troubled cell-phone operations, could lead to a change at the helm. In an interview in Parisian weekly La Tribune last week, French finance minister Thierry Breton said the government, which owns 30% of the aero-engine/system and defense contractor, will address the issue at a meeting of the supervisory board on Dec. 12. The long-running dispute has already cost the jobs of executive board member Gregoire Olivier and Jacques Paccard, who headed Sagem's Defense & Security Div. (AW&ST Nov. 6, p. 23).
The Air Line Pilots Assn. has won an unusual legal bout with Astar Air Cargo over whether the pilots were planning a wildcat strike. A U.S. District Court in Dayton, Ohio, has ordered Astar to pay court costs and attorney fees related to a temporary restraining order issued Nov. 15 that forced an end to picketing at the Astar/DHL hub at Wilmington, Ohio. ALPA argued that Astar wrongfully sought a restraining order on the basis of a groundless rumor that ALPA was intending to conduct a wildcat strike.
The first of four C-17 Globemasters that Australia is buying arrived in the country Dec. 4. The A$2-billion ($1.6-billion) C-17 program is the most off-the-shelf deal conceivable, in contrast to troubled procurement plans that have derailed as local contractors struggle to meet special requirements from the Australian military: the country has taken aircraft right off the U.S. Air Force production run. This allowed the RAAF to receive the first aircraft only nine months after committing to the program, with the remainder due by 2008.
