The U.S. aerospace industry is headed for another record year in 2006 based on slightly better shipments than predicted and stronger orders than expected. On Dec. 13, the Aerospace Industries Assn. will be forecasting whether this trend line is likely to continue into 2007. Prognosticators at the U.S. Aerospace Industries Assn. will only receive about 30 more days of data before they have to make this call.
Overzealous security reviewers at the Defense Dept. have helped add a new word to the bureaucratic lexicon. It happened after the Pentagon redacted some charts that then-Defense Secretary Melvin Laird used in a 1971 public report, and then reversed their decision and released unredacted versions after an administrative appeal. The charts included 35-year-old U.S. nuclear bomber and missile counts, and about a generation later, someone decided they needed reclassifying.
AT THE GLOBAL NAVIGATION SATELLITE SYSTEM conference in Fort Worth, American satnav specialists treated Galileo as a welcome addition to navigation capability for the first time, says Rainer Grohe, executive director of the Galileo Joint Undertaking. Everyone now realizes it will be a positive step to have two independent systems (Galileo and GPS) cooperating to provide improved navigation solutions, he says.
London and Washington are about to embark on the probable final mile of critical JSF negotiations. The outcome could clear the way for the British to field six front-line squadrons, 64 aircraft, but this figure would include only two squadrons to replace directly the Tornado GR4 strike aircraft.
Snecma's move into the business jet engine market is gaining strength, as the company solidifies key hardware and programmatic elements of the SM-X project.
British Defense Ministry research and technology spending is generally providing good value, although funding has fallen by almost a third in the last decade. A study commissioned by the ministry's chief scientific adviser, Roy Anderson, into its nonnuclear research suggests--for the most part--that funded aims are being met.
AN INCREASE IN GENERAL AVIATION FATAL ACCIDENTS in 2005 has led the National Transportation Safety Board to renew its commitment to make "a safe industry safer." In the next year, the board plans to closely examine issues such as very light jet operations and aging aircraft. The safety board's preliminary statistics for 2005 show that general aviation fatalities in the U.S. increased to 562 from 558 in 2004.
THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS AVIATION IN EUROPE IS BRIGHT, according to Jack J. Pelton, chairman, president and CEO of Cessna Aircraft Co. Speaking at the Aviation Club of the U.K. in London recently, Pelton said that since 2001, business aviation has "grown at twice the rate of other European air traffic" with 22% more flights in 2005 than in 2001, where as other traffic increased only 10%. In 2005, there were 630,000 business flights in Europe (6.9% of all IFR traffic), and the use of business jets rose nearly 9% last year.
David A. Micha (see photo) has been appointed director of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) Systems for L-3 Communication Systems-East, Camden, N.J.
Rolls-Royce is proposing an unducted turbofan design to power the Proactive Green Aircraft, one of three key platforms at the heart of a collaborative European effort into next-generation airframe concepts.
Congress is tightening the purse strings on the aerospace and defense industry's revenue stream with new efforts to push contracting performance, reaffirm the use of award and incentive fees and even recompete programs when they breach cost estimates. Besides having to squeeze more out of plateauing military budgets, the new standards--part of the Fiscal 2007 defense authorization measure--reflect growing congressional concern over program spending while the country is at war.
The South African military is starting to recognize the need for follow-on buys of key defense equipment, but the country's near-term funding priority will be purchases to help support security of the 2010 soccer World Cup.
Mark Fay implies in his letter (AW&ST Sept. 11, p. 7) that the blame for pilot-error accidents rests with training and certification processes. I think that no amount of training or certification oversight can eradicate pilot errors completely. Airline pilots accept responsibility for errors made each time we fly. We carefully review the events leading to an accident, discuss them in cockpits and professional forums and then hold ourselves accountable by adjusting our individual habit patterns accordingly.
UNITED STATES Editor-In-Chief: Anthony L. Velocci, Jr. [email protected] Managing Editor: James R. Asker [email protected] Assistant Managing Editor: Michael Stearns [email protected] Senior Editors: Craig Covault [email protected], David Hughes [email protected] Editor-at-Large: William Readdy NEW YORK 2 Penn Plaza, 25th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10121 Phone: +1 (212) 904-2000, Fax: +1 (212) 904-6068 Senior News Editor: Nora Titterington
RAYTHEON AIRCRAFT CO. CHARTER & MANAGEMENT has added six airplanes to its charter fleet--a Beechjet 400A based in Nashville, Tenn.; a Hawker 800A in Dallas; a Bombardier Challenger 600 located in Atlanta, and Premier IA at Van Nuys, Calif. In addition, Premier I jets are flying from Temple, Tex., and the Chicago metropolitan area. The charter and management division also operates turboprop-powered business aircraft and flies jets with intercontinental range.
AW&ST's call for establishing pilot/controller SOPs during airport ground operations is on target. However, the pressure to rush also needs careful examination. After first boarding the wrong aircraft, this crew may have been preoccupied with making up for lost time. Expediting departure could have influenced the captain's judgment as he taxied out, coloring his decision to accept an unlit surface for takeoff.
G. David Low has been promoted to senior vice president/program manager for the Dulles, Va.-based Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services from vice presi- dent/head of the Greenbelt, Md.-based Technical Services Div. Succeeding Low will be John Pullen, who has been deputy division director.
For U.S. and European security negotiators, life goes on. Talks to resurrect some sort of passenger-name-record data exchange--to replace the one thrown out in May on privacy grounds by the European Court of Justice--hinged last week on European Union interior ministers, who were reviewing talks led by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and EU Vice President Franco Frattini. In any event, European bureaucrats will let airlines keep supplying the outlawed data to the U.S. pending a new agreement, even though the court's deadline was Oct. 1.
DLR, the German air and space agency, is trying to determine the optimum takeoff and landing profile to minimize noise. The group is now using a Lufthansa Airbus A319 to fly several takeoffs and landings at the Schwerin-Parchi airport in northern Germany to measure noise with the aircraft using different approach patterns. The work follows a series of flight trials in 2004.
Industry is worried that funding constraints could derail efforts to implement the British government's Defense Industrial Strategy (DIS), according to a study by the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). Broadly positive about the strategy, industry is nonetheless concerned about the Defense Ministry's ability to deliver, and the haste with which it views some of the far-reaching proposed changes. There is also wider concern about the upcoming Comprehensive Spending Review.
Your article on Air China's RNP operations in the Himalayas (AW&ST Sept. 25, p. 52) shows the Chinese becoming effective innovators in the aerospace industry. In the 1990s when I gave an ETOPS lecture to post-graduate engineers at a U.K. university, the Chinese students asked intelligent, thought-provoking questions while the other post-grads seemed disengaged.
John Crichton, president and CEO of Ottawa-based Nav Canada, has been named the 2006 Transportation Person of the Year by the Transportation Assn. of Canada. He was recognized for "helping to forge the unique consensus among airlines, general and business aviation, employees and the federal government that was necessary for the transfer of the Air Navigation System to Nav Canada 10 short years ago this fall."
Boeing has agreed to pay SES Global $70 million for termination of a contract to serve the Connexion by Boeing inflight broadband service with use of SES's AMC 23 spacecraft effective Dec. 31. Of this amount, $49 million will be counted in SES's third-quarter revenue and the remainder in the fourth quarter.
Survivors and flight recorder data will hold the key for investigators seeking reasons for the incomprehensible: How did two brand-new aircraft--each with advanced anti-collision devices--become involved in a midair disaster that killed 155 people? On Sept. 29, at 3:35 p.m. local time, Brazilian low-cost carrier Gol Lineas Aereas Flight 1907, a Boeing 737-800, departed Manaus Eduardo Gomes International Airport with 149 passengers and six crew on a flight to Brasilia, where it was to arrive at 6:12 p.m.
North Korea's nuclear brinkmanship and the change of political leadership in Tokyo are combining to give renewed impetus to efforts to strengthen the Japanese military and arrest the slide in defense spending. A recent policy white paper issued by the Japan Defense Agency (JDA) points out that North Korea's July ballistic missile launch "is a serious challenge from the viewpoint of Japan's security." It adds that North Korea's weapons of mass destruction program "threatens the security of the entire East Asian region."
