MALAYSIAN HELICOPTER SERVICE PLANS to buy three Sikorsky S-76C++ helicopters to support its offshore oil platform operations for Exxon Mobil. According to Sikorsky, the sale marks the first time the company has supplied Exxon Mobil with a new helicopter in the Malaysian region for 14 years. The aircraft are scheduled for delivery in July 2007.
Following a test program this month, Pratt & Whitney Global Service Partners is set to offer its EcoPower engines wash services at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport. Martinair, the airline that took part in that trial run, will be the first European launch customer. South Korea's Asiana Airlines also has signed for the service, having just completed a tryout a month earlier. The engine washing process is a closed-loop, environmentally friendly system that uses atomized water.
French planners are testing a fully equipped digital bridgade in the Ivory Coast as part of a plan to introduce networked cooperative fighting system concepts into the battlefield by decade's end.
Andrew Hoehn is scheduled to become a Rand Corp. vice president and director of its Project Air Force on Oct. 1. He has been director of PAF's Strategy and Doctrine Program. Hoehn will succeed Natalie Crawford, who will become a senior adviser to President/CEO James A. Thomson.
Boeing revolutionized modern air travel with the 707 and 747, and even the 737. Nobody else did. Unfortunately, Boeing has relied too long on derivatives of its best-selling lines: the 737 and 767. Fortunately, the 777, which started as the derivative 767X ended up as a clean-sheet aircraft that became the standard of the world in the wide-body market. Boeing after its unsuccessful later 767 derivatives--especially the -400--moved ahead by launching the all-new, all-composite 787, which will lead the way for all future commercial jets.
Shephard W. Melzer and Debra Goldberg have joined the New York office of law firm Fulbright & Jaworski as specialists in aircraft and equipment leasing.
Michael A. Taverna and Alexey Komarov (Farnborough)
Russian and Italian engineers are studying the increased use of composites on the Russian Regional Jet, now rebranded with one more customer and increased Italian and French participation.
Airbus still has work to do to fully define its revised, wider-fuselage, improved-speed A350. And while the initial customer reaction is it's a step up from the previous iteration, aircraft buyers also suggest they want to see more details.
United Airlines is winning a package of incentives with the decision to move its corporate headquarters from suburban Elk Grove Township to Chicago's downtown business district at 77 W. Wacker Drive. The City of Chicago is offering $5.25 million in tax increment financing. The Illinois Commerce and Economic Opportunity Dept. is issuing $1.35 million in grants for infrastructure improvements and job training. The city and state are proposing legislation to cap jet fuel taxes for five years.
The U.S. Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) is exploring whether advances in technology, specifically the promise of large focal plane arrays, will be solid enough in the next two years to replace the existing Lockheed Martin design of missile warning satellites.
Industry, Congress and NASA continue to snipe over the direction aeronautics research is taking at the agency. Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Science space and aeronautics subcommittee, complained at a hearing on the subject that repeated shifts in NASA aeronautics strategy over the past decade have left "the appearance that the agency has no clear strategic vision" for the discipline.
NASA has assigned an astronaut crew to the STS-122 space shuttle mission, which is scheduled to deliver Europe's Columbus laboratory module to the International Space Station as early as September 2007. Commanding the mission will be Navy Cdr. Stephen N. Frick, making his second spaceflight. Pilot Alan G. Poindexter, also a Navy commander, and Mission Specialists Stanley G. Love and Leland D. Melvin all will be flying in space for the first time. Mission Specialists USAF Col. Rex J.
MD Helicopters has filed a formal protest over EADS North America's win on the Army's Light Utility Helicopter program. Now the Government Accountability Office must review the bidding and make a ruling. The company was in financial trouble prior to the competition and hoped to win the contract for 322 helicopters to solidify its future business and perhaps ignite commercial market interest in its Notar rotorless tail technology.
Per "Staying Power" (AW&ST July 3 p. 29), the Minuteman III does not address the need for more accuracy. Note later in the same article that 50 Peacekeeper ICBMs were retired last year. Why not consider replacing 167 non-upgraded Minuteman IIIs (501 RVs) with the 50 more-accurate Peacekeepers (500 RVs)?
The U.S. Air Force will soon complete a review of its long-range strike (LRS) needs and contractors and are in the meantime refining their concepts that range from modifications to existing airframes and weapons to exotic clean-slate designs. The analysis of alternatives will be briefed to top USAF leaders in March. But low-level research contracts to Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman will run out of money beginning in October, and Air Force officials are looking for funds to keep the conceptual work going.
Urban warfare is going to take a new twist with the introduction of portable, directed-energy weapons into the confined battlefields that are expected to dominate early 21st-century combat.
Shannon Engine Support, a wholly owned subsidiary of CFM Internation- al, has ordered 40 CFM56-7B spare engines for delivery between 2006-10. The order is worth $240 million.
Efforts to involve Raytheon in the U.K.'s fundamental shake-up of its guided-weapons sector are continuing, following the failure of last-minute talks prior to the Defense Ministry's unveiling of its initiative--with Raytheon absent--last week. The ministry revealed its plans for the guided-weapons sector at Farnborough 2006. A meeting with senior ministry officials and top Raytheon management prior to the announcement did not result in Raytheon joining MDBA, Roxel, Thales UK and Qinetiq as part of "Team Complex Weapons," announced July 19.
Thales was selected to supply avionics management, communications and navigation systems for 70 AgustaWestland Future Lynx helicopters. The Future Lynx is to begin flying in 2009 and enter operational service in 2014.
India's Kingfisher Airlines gave Pratt & Whitney's PW4000 program a boost, ordering 10 installed engines and one spare to power the five Airbus A330s it has on order. It is the first order for the PW4168 70,000-lb.-thrust engine, slated for certification in 2008. Kingfisher also gave a $60-million contract to Pratt & Whitney Canada to maintain the PW127F engines and spares for its 35 ATR 72-500s.
The U.S. and European Union are at loggerheads over a pair of aerospace and aviation issues--namely the rival World Trade Organization suits (and associated negotiations) brought by Airbus and Boeing, and the thus-far unsuccessful attempts at negotiating an open skies agreement for air service between the U.S. and EU countries.
THE NATIONAL BUSINESS AVIATION ASSN. and its Brazilian counterpart, the Associacao Brasileira de Aviacao Geral, have canceled this year's Latin American Business Aviation Conference & Exhibition, scheduled for August. NBAA President/CEO Ed Bolen says the cancellation was necessary because of construction work at Congonhas Airport in Sao Paulo that has made it "impossible for us to host such an event."
A new study questions whether the Bush administration's plan to sell 36 F-16 C/D Falcons to Pakistan will really deliver anticipated economic benefits. Supporters of the deal say it will keep Lockheed Martin's F-16 line, which employs 5,000 workers, open for a year past its expected 2008 closing. It also might entice India--Pakistan's regional rival--to "Buy American" when it upgrades its fighter aircraft fleet, they say.
Goodrich CEO Marshall Larsen says his company is on the lookout for acquisitions to boost growth. "I'd be very surprised if we don't do some major acquisition," Larsen said in an interview at the Farnborough air show. "I won't give you any time frame, but it's not hard to envision us as a $10-billion company." Goodrich had revenue of $5.4 billion in 2005. Larsen also reiterated that the company expects a negligible impact on net income from delays in Airbus's A380, for which it is supplying the landing gear.
