Regarding the midair collision over the Amazon jungle on Sept. 29 (AW&ST Oct. 9, p. 44), if both aircraft had been flying on a westerly or easterly heading (though this was not actually the case), the even/odd flight level rule would still have allowed them to fly at the same altitude with a heading difference of 90 deg. and closing speed around 700 mph.--or nearly head-on with a closing speed around 1,000 mph. That the Embraer Legacy crew apparently were unaware that another aircraft had been involved shows how quickly things happen at such speeds.
Boeing has added 29 aircraft to its sales total from unidentified customers, including 16 commercial 787s, a 787 in a VIP configuration that's part of Boeing Business Jet sales, and 12 737s (AW&ST Nov. 13, p. 42). Air France has purchased a 777-300ER, raising its total for that model to 20 aircraft.
Few issues in Washington strike as much bipartisan support as keeping open an ongoing Defense Department program like the C/KC-130J. Fourteen Democratic and Republican senators wrote outgoing Defense Sec. Donald Rumsfeld Nov. 15 to push for acquisition funds in the Fiscal 2008 defense budget request, which Pentagon and White House officials are finalizing.
Peruvian carrier Aero Condor is seeking outside financing to develop routes to Buenos Aires, Santiago and Miami because a drop in fares has slowed those efforts. Financial institutions AIG and the U.S. Export-Import Bank are looking to loan the airline $3 million to undertake the expansion. The deal should be finalized in 2007. Moreover, talks are underway to initiate operations to London, Madrid and Rome, with potential alliances with Spanish or Italian carriers.
As the cost of major weapon systems escalates, arms-producing countries are increasingly looking to export their wares to foreign markets. Sales abroad can help keep critical production lines going decrease the costs of weapons for the military at home and strengthen the domestic defense industrial base. The U.S. and Russia remain the top two weapon-exporting countries, while Europe's main arms manufacturers-- the U.K., France and Germany--want to sustain their significant market share.
John Banbury has become vice president-business development for Scientific Monitoring Inc., Scottsdale, Ariz. He was vice president-fleet and airline support for Boeing Commercial Airplanes.
The great debate continues! Paul Johnson (AW&ST Oct. 2, p. 6) has joined the fray on recovery modes for hybrid boosters that has continued for several months. Martin Sippel, Bill Marcy, Vigil Soule, myself and others have all expressed our opinions.
Astronomers want to use the same cueing techniques for pinpointing gamma-ray bursts to monitor the Moon's surface for ongoing geological activity. Although the Moon has long been thought to have been geologically dead for more than 3 billion years, the authors of a paper in the journal Nature suggest that a heel-shaped surface feature may have been produced as recently as 1-million years ago.
Lianne Stein has been named vice president of Boeing International and president of Berlin-based Boeing Germany. She will succeed Horst Teltschik, who has retired. Stein was vice president-commercial aviation at Connexion by Boeing.
The NTSB is intensifying the battle to eliminate what is perhaps the biggest hazard to the safety of airline passengers--runway incursions. And together with the FAA, the board is seeking a near-term solution that first warns the pilot, not the controller, of an impending collision. Reducing the risk of runway incursions and ground collision has again appeared on the board's 2007 Most Wanted List of safety recommendations issued last week, as it has since the list was first compiled in October 1990.
Italy and the U.K. are preparing to commit as much as another $1 billion to the U.S. Joint Strike Fighter, without the purchase of a single airframe. Turkey is likely to receive a similar bill as well. The billion-dollar sum is roughly how much each of the three will contribute over the course of the Production Sustainment and Follow-on Development (PSFD) phase of the program.
Teamsters-represented Comair flight attendants have ratified a letter of agreement with management, voting 549-126. The ratification enables the airline to reduce flight attendant costs by $7.9 million each year of a four-year contract. The average pay cut for flight attendants will be $2,250, according to the company.
I do not want to raise the mandatory airline pilot retirement age. I am 48, and I am not a junior pilot on the seniority list. Having said that, the Age 60 rule will change sooner or later, International Civil Aviation Organization, or not. With almost every airline pension plan non-existent or frozen due to inept management, bankruptcy or both, the need to extend the retirement age exists for many pilots.
The ongoing war in Iraq continues to cast a shadow over the world's largest defense-spending market in the U.S., while the focus in Europe continues to be on cooperation among aircraft programs.
Air Transport Assn. President James C. May has no clue as to who pays for the U.S. air traffic control system and its services (AW&ST Oct. 16, p. 56). Airlines pay nothing in taxes to the federal government for this system. All taxes paid to the government are passed along to the passenger or cargo shipper. The airlines collect these taxes on behalf of our government for the safety of travelers and the people who never fly.
The 2006 Kolcum News and Com- munications Award, which honors the late Aviation Week & Space Technology Managing Editor Harry Kolcum, has been presented to Red Huber, senior photographer for the Orlando Sentinel. Huber has photographed space launches for two decades, and his work has appeared in National Geographic and Time magazines. Also receiving the award for communications was Debbie Land, general manager of the Astronaut Hall of Fame for the Delaware North Corp.
Airport executives say there are too many interpretations of what liquids passengers can and cannot carry in their hand baggage. Speaking at the recent annual meeting of Airports Council International (ACI) in Cape Town, South Africa, Director General Robert J. Aaronson said the standards recently adopted by the European Commission represent a "positive step" toward a uniform approach for Europe, but confusion remains elsewhere.
I continue to read articles and letters from people who want to repeal the long-standing Age 60 rule and wonder what career expectations airline pilots have had since 1959. Is it not true that every employed Part 121 pilot was hired with the expectation of accruing seniority as older pilots retired at Age 60? This is not about safety; it's about left-seat wide-body pay for another five years and choice selection for bidding.
Alenia Aeronautica has flown its Sky-X UAV demonstrator for the first time in a fully automatic mode, including takeoff and landing. The 30-min. mission occurred at the Swedish Vidsel air base. The next stage of flight trials is to be undertaken at the Italian air force Amendola base before year-end.
Volga-Dnepr has seen a nine-month revenue increase of 55%. Revenue for Il-76 operations was up 129%, and An-124-100 cargo hauling grew 14%. The cargo airline unit, AirBridge Cargo, saw revenue increase 134% to $158.8 million. Full-year sales for the group should top $600 million. AirBridge during the summer added a Boeing 747-200 to its operation, allowing it to double frequencies to Japan and Europe. Two more 747-200Fs are to be acquired next year, with two new-build 747-400ERFs slated for operations in late 2007 or early 2008.
The Joint Simulation System, or JSIMS, may be gone, but it is far from forgotten. JSIMS achieved notoriety after the U.S. Defense Dept. spent 10 years and $1 billion developing a joint forces training and simulation program, only to kill it in 2004 after numerous delays and cost overruns. While the formal program no longer exists, pieces of JSIMS live on in other forms. And its failure has inspired new approaches to joint training. The Pentagon completed a study in summer 2005 that recommended scaled-down expectations and a new acquisition model.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating an incident at Chicago O'Hare International Airport on Nov. 7 in which a United Airlines Airbus A320 taxiing behind a United Boeing 737-200 made winglet-to-horizontal-stabilizer contact. Pam Sullivan, the NTSB air-safety investigator looking into the incident, says "substantial damage" was done to the 737 horizontal stabilizer and elevator. There are scrapes and gouges on the underside of the stabilizer--one deep enough to cut into the rear spar. Damage to the A320 winglet was minor.
Guilty or not guilty? The question could soon rule the flight safety environment, and this is unquestioningly bad news. The good news is that the world's flight safety community in the last few days confirmed it is capable of speaking with a single voice. Such an encouraging statement of fact is based on an unprecedented cross-border resolution jointly devised by the Flight Safety Foundation (FSF), the British Royal Aeronautical Society, France's Academie Nationale de l'Air et de l'Espace and the Civil Air Navigation Services Organization.
Astrobiologists have simulated the chemistry that formed organic material in the atmospheres of Saturn's moon Titan and the early Earth, gaining insights into the processes that may have produced the organic material that fed early life here. By beaming an ultraviolet light into a gas sample made up of methane and nitrogen, as is found in the atmosphere of Saturn's moon, researchers from NASA's Astrobiology Institute produced aerosols that they were able to measure and analyze to gain a better understanding of in situ data returned by the ongoing Cassini/Huygens mission.
