As an experienced airline pilot I disagree with Lakshmi Kantha's letter "Airbus Has Good Case" (AW&ST Feb. 20, p. 10). I question the source and validity of Kantha's data and disagree with his risk assessment logic. He cites increases in wake vortex percentages for the A380 in comparison to the Boeing 747-400--14% at cruise and 9% on approach.
Nav Canada is on a parallel path with the FAA in adopting automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) as the system of the future, and the installation of ground stations in Canada could begin in the Hudson Bay region in about a year.
The airline industry's drive to reduce engine operating and life-cycle costs has prompted General Electric to reexamine the materials that it uses to make powerplants. The need to further reduce emissions has led the company to rely heavily on computer modeling in studying fuel mixtures inside combustion chambers. All this technology has come together in GE's newest engine, the GEnx, now under test (see p. 48). GE Aviation photo by OMS Photography.
Your article on wind tunnel testing of NASA's Crew Exploration Vehicle appears off the mark on the need for maneuvering capability (AW&ST Mar. 13, p. 30). A direct return from a lunar polar site would require an inclined entry, but not so steep as to fly over the Earth's poles. Since spacecraft returning from the International Space Station (ISS) reenter at a 56-deg. inclination, the need for a "skip entry with a 90-deg. turn" to avoid a high-inclination entry seems an unnecessary use of fuel.
Contributing Editor Neelam Mathews (left) and Senior Editor David Hughes visited the air traffic control tower at New Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport to see the new Sensis Advanced Surface Movement Guidance and Control System being installed there (see p. 46). The equipment racks feed fused sensor data on all aircraft and specially instrumented vehicles moving on the airport surface to a flat panel display in the tower, so controllers can monitor traffic on the ground even in fog and haze.
Gerard Schkolnik has been appointed director of supersonic technology programs at Gulfstream Aerospace, Savannah, Ga. He was a manager of flight test programs at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center.
The Civil Air Patrol will take delivery of 18 additional Cessna Skylane 182Ts, bringing to 58 the total number in the fleet. Plans call for CAP to buy more of the single-engine airplanes later this year, according to Cessna Aircraft Co. The new Skylanes are equipped with the fully integrated Garmin G1000 avionics package.
Japan has demonstrated an ability to aim a laser beam continuously for communications from a fast-moving satellite in a low Earth orbit to a ground station.
Pulling the Air Force's older C-130Es out of a $5-billion Boeing program to overhaul the Hercules' avionics is one of a few options under review as service bean counters look for ways to trim fat in the Fiscal 2008 budget. Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael (Buzz) Moseley says he is considering that among other changes. Also up in the air is whether C-5As will get new engines. By contrast, USAF is hunting for money to buy an additional seven C-17s through a supplemental appropriation this year.
Pilots and management of Delta Air Lines are picking daisies beside a ticking time bomb. If it detonates, look for some big changes in the U.S. industry, perhaps in the airline business across the world. Yet it is not clear whether there will be an explosion at all.
Michael A. Taverna (Darmstadt, Germany, and Paris)
European space and defense officials--worried about expanded concentration in the satellite sector beyond the recently announced Alcatel-Thales deal--are now trying to determine its full implications, and how to deal with them.
Russian ground personnel help NASA's Bill McArthur from the Soyuz TMA-7 entry module after a safe return from the International Space Station Apr. 8. McArthur, the ISS Expedition 12 commander, and flight engineer Valery Tokarev landed in Kazakhstan after 190 days on the station. They were accompanied by Brazil's Marcos Pontes, who rode in the Soyuz "taxi seat" with Expedition 13 to become the first of his countrymen to travel in space. NASA said all three men were in good shape after their 3-hr. 20-min. ride from the station to the surface.
Dassault Aviation has completed mandatory cold-weather trials for its Falcon 7X business jet on the path to aircraft certification, which is slated for early next year. Testing took place Apr. 6-10 at Iqaluit and Resolute Bay in northern Canada, where temperatures dropped to as low as -33 deg. C. "Despite the brutal weather conditions that included a blizzard during the third day of testing, the Falcon 7X performed very well," says Bill Kerherve, senior chief test pilot for Dassault Aviation.
Qatar Airways is expanding it flights to Manila as part of a planned 2006 expansion in the region, but it is also boosting traffic to the U.K. Two new weekly flights to Manila increase the number of flights to the Philippines to nine, using Airbus A330-200s. The airline serves 12 destinations in the East Asia. "We are focusing a lot of our efforts on boosting our Far East network this year, whether it is through additional frequencies on existing routes, or introducing new services, such as Hong Kong," says CEO Akbar Al Baker.
Bill Ashworth has been appointed president of the Aviation Technical Services Div. of the Goodrich Corp., Everett, Wash. He was vice president-operations. Ashworth succeeds Eric Schulz, who has been named president of the Actuation Systems Div.
Rose Gottemoeller has been named director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. She had been a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace with a joint appointment in the Russian and Eurasian Program and the Nonproliferation Project.
Sharon L. Pinkerton has been appointed vice president-government affairs of the Washington-based Air Transport Assn. She was assistant FAA administrator for aviation policy, planning and environment.
Thales UK, Smiths Aerospace and Selex Sensors & Airborne Systems have entered into a Total Support Services (TSS) alliance as a means for future provision of military support contracting and through-life back-up. The companies will provide avionics support service to the primes for Defense Ministry rotary- and fixed-wing aircraft. TSS offerings will include integrated through-life support services for avionics and electrical systems.
The Pentagon is rethinking what is now being called a premature plan to retire the U-2 fleet in 2011 and push the date for a handoff to the young Global Hawk as the sole airborne provider of high-altitude imagery and signals intelligence back until the unmanned aerial vehicle reaches some key milestones.
Safran recorded 13.7% growth in first-quarter sales, with the defense and security business the strongest performer with 31.2% growth. The numbers were aided by the fact that last year's first-quarter results were seen as weak. Aerospace propulsion booked the largest amount of sales at 1.2 billion euros ($1.45 billion).
Mesa Air is looking to diversify its regional business outside the U.S., and CEO Jonathan Ornstein revealed an interest in forming a joint-venture operation with one or more Chinese airlines. Moving across the Pacific into a much different regulatory and operating environment would be a huge jump for Mesa, but Ornstein says "nothing is on the table" in the short term, and some sort of Chinese venture is a more long-term project.
Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer is undergoing a form of Americanization. Its recent capital restructuring, which extends voting rights to all shareholders--not to just a few--has built in additional transparency and opens up opportunities for obtaining fresh funding. The company is listed on the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange and its American Depositary Shares are sold on the New York Stock Exchange.
Barbara Barrett (see photo) has been named to the board of trustees of The Aerospace Corp., El Segundo, Calif. She also serves on the corporate boards of the Raytheon Co. and Exponent Inc., and on the Pentagon's Defense Business Board. Barrett was founding chair of the Valley Bank of Arizona.
NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Eumetsat and French space agency CNES have signed a final agreement to build a new altimetry satellite, Jason-2, to ensure the continuity of weather and climate data, and permit a transition from experimental to operational oceanographic forecasting. The first satellite in the series, Topex-Poseidon, was taken out of service in December, after 13 years of operation. Jason-1 will reach the end of its nominal life in 2006, and forecasters hope it will remain operational until Jason-2 is available in 2008.
As unmanned aerial vehicles grow more numerous and more capable, issues regarding their operation within the U.S. National Airspace System (NAS) are coming to the fore. Nick Sabatini, the FAA's associate administrator for safety, recently testified on the matter before the House of Representatives' aviation subcommittee. This article is adapted from his testimony.
