Pierre Sparaco's article served as a poignant reminder of our changing aviation world. With the destruction of aircraft plants in San Diego and Los Angeles, it will be hard to imagine the booming aviation industry of the 1940-90 period in Southern California. The same has happened in the Northeast U.S., with only Sikorsky in Connecticut remaining of a proud aviation heritage.
Loss of hydraulic pressure resulted in the crash of a Russian air force Sukhoi Su-24M Fencer strike aircraft on Mar. 15 near Voronezh, while being flown on a training mission. The two crewmembers ejected safely. A Su-24MR reconnaissance variant was lost in January, after the failure of the variable-geometry wing control unit.
New research supporting a hypothesis that primitive microbial life forms existed on Mars during very recent geologic time--or may still exist--will raise new controversy about the possibility that evidence of life is preserved in Martian meteorites recovered on Earth. The findings were presented at the 37th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) by members of the team that 10 years ago garnered presidential attention when they reported evidence of microbial life in a more ancient 3.6-billion-year-old Martian meteorite (AW&ST Aug. 12, 1996, p. 24).
Directed-energy weapons, including the "weapons effects" of large active electronically scanned (AESA) radars, are a worry for researchers and planners who still don't know all the benefits and unintentional damage that such devices might produce.
Pratt & Whitney Canada has delivered the first PW615F engine to Cessna Aircraft Co. for installation on the third Cessna Citation Mustang business jet built at the manufacturer's assembly facility at Independence, Kan. P&WC last week also opened its dedicated PW600 assembly and test facility at its main plant in Longueuil, Quebec.
China Southern Airlines has signed an agreement for 10 more Airbus A330s to be powered by Rolls-Royce Trent 700 engines. The contract, which comes with a 10-year full-service support package, is worth about $600 million, Rolls-Royce says. The aircraft are to be delivered in 2007 and 2008. China Southern already operates four Trent 700-powered A330s and has opted for the Trent 900 on its A380s.
Airports Council International's preliminary 2005 results, based on data from more than 850 airports worldwide, show a "firm rebound" in traffic. Compared with 2004, passenger traffic increased 6%, with the airports handling more than 4 billion passengers. Latin America/Caribbean and Middle East regions, with 10% increase each, had the greatest growth, followed by Africa (9%), and Asia-Pacific and Europe (7% each). Meanwhile, cargo (including mail) volume rose 3% to 78.7 million metric tons; the Middle East led with 8% growth, Asia-Pacific had 5% and Europe, 3%.
Russia and Algeria have agreed to an arms deal worth $7.5 billion, including the supply of 36 MiG-29SMT variants of the Fulcrum and 28 Sukhoi Su-30MKA Flanker combat aircraft. The Yakovlev Yak-130 jet trainer is also being acquired, with 16 on order. S-300PMU2 (SA-20) surface-to-air missile systems also are included. Deliveries of the MiG-29SMT will begin this year, with the first of the Su-30MKA aircraft to follow in 2007. Aircraft account by value for just under half of the total deal.
A major reorganization of EADS's Sogerma MRO unit looks like the only hiccup in what otherwise is shaping up as a trouble-free, record-breaking year for the European aerospace and defense giant.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is moving ahead with the transfer of U.S. Marine Corps flight activities from Futenma AB in southern Okinawa to a new site at Camp Schwab near Nago, despite protests by 35,000 Okinawans. The mayor of Nago says he's willing to compromise on a different location, but Koizumi says another shift in policy will only create more problems. The transfer will take eight years, and the government has agreed to establish an advisory council to look into safety issues and possible government investments in the region.
Aerostructures company Latecoere reported a 34% surge in revenues last year, to 355.4 million euros and a 21% jump in operating earnings, to 37.7 million euros, driven by strong deliveries of Airbus, Boeing and Dassault Aviation aircraft. Net profit rose 17%, to 20.5 million euros. The company hopes to win aerostructures and cabling awards for the A350 this year.
Operating results of European legacy carriers smaller than the big three--British Airways, Air France-KLM and Lufthansa--are coming under increasing pressure, as fuel hedging contracts are beginning to expire and record fuel prices are taking a toll. Several European carriers this month reported severe declines in their operating results and cited high fuel costs as the main reason. Traffic, by contrast, continued to be strong, as many European economies experience more significant growth rates than in the past few years.
Dassault Falcon reports it sold a Falcon 7X to an Asian customer during last month's Singapore air show. It marks the second order in the region for the 6,000-naut.-mi. executive jet.
Jet Airways has received an official nod to take Air Sahara under its wing. A senior official of India's aviation ministry says the integration of the two carriers will be complete by Apr. 17.
Honoring Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta's request that everyone refrain from taking potshots at plans for ATC funding reform that haven't been proposed yet, major aviation interest groups are taking potshots at each other instead.
The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum on Mar. 8 presented the U.S.'s highest aerospace awards to the Mars Exploration Rover teams and physicist James A. Van Allen. The Spirit and Opportunity engineering and science teams were awarded the 2006 National Air and Space Museum Trophy for Current Achievement, while Van Allen, 91, from the University of Iowa, won the 2006 Trophy for Lifetime Achievement for leadership in space science since the 1940s.
Ryanair is responding to cost increases at Cork Airport in Ireland by reducing its service there and ramping up flights to Kerry, which it describes as "much cheaper." Ryanair is cutting its Liverpool-Cork service to four flights per week from seven and adding three flights to Kerry. The low-cost carrier claims Cork's "Taj Mahal-like" new terminal has led to the price hikes.
The Spanish air force will be facing a difficult choice during the next decade: either exercise its options to buy additional Eurofighter Typhoons, or take the big step and embrace unmanned combat air vehicles. With Spanish industry heavily involved in two UCAV projects, but also in Typhoon production, Spain's decision could signal to what extent UCAVs have matured. EADS CASA has 13% of production workshare on Typhoon, but is also involved heavily in the German-led Barrakuda UCAV demonstrator and the Dassault Aviation-led Neuron project.
EasyJet is adding five cities--including Split and Rijeka in Croatia--to its network as part of a 10-route expansion set for the summer. The airline's increased service into Italy and France is continuing, with Ajaccio, Corsica; Bordeaux and La Rochelle, France; and Rimini, Italy. Starring heavily in the route expansion is Bristol, in the U.K., where EasyJet Chief Executive Andrew Harrison says growth plans call for transport of almost three million passengers in the coming years.
While I agree with many of the thoughts presented in "Griffin's Mistaken Thinking" (AW&ST Feb. 27, p. 8), I'd like to present a different viewpoint on the present approach to the space exploration program.
Carl Walz, Acting Director, Advanced Capabilities Office (Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C. )
The purpose of "mining" resources at the Moon is to support lunar operations, including those that will serve as proofs of concept for eventual operations on Mars. We do not mean to imply that we would use the Moon as a refueling station for trips to Mars. In fact, although the plans are under study, our eventual trips to Mars more likely would be direct flights without stops at the Moon. The wording of the article might have been confusing.
EADS and the Netherlands Founda- tion for Research in Astronomy, Astron/Lofar, have agreed to study the feasibility of building a long-wave radio telescope that could be deployed as part of a Moon program. If found to be feasible, the partners will seek to include other countries and propose the mission as a European Space Agency initiative.
FAA MANDATES THAT REQUIRE AIRLINES TO BUY AVIONICS for safety reasons are trailing off. Clay Jones, president and CEO of Rockwell Collins, said earlier this year that one of the financial challenges the company faced last quarter and is facing early this year is a "headwind" from lower regulatory mandate activity. Honeywell officials said much the same thing in the company's quarterly conference call with financial analysts in January, and both companies also cited lower regional jet deliveries.
Kennedy Space Center and lead shuttle contractor United Space Alliance are examining the quality control ramifications of incidents that caused superficial damage to the orbiters Discovery and Endeavour. Discovery's manipulator arm is undergoing ultrasound inspections after an access platform bumped it when technicians were retrieving glass in the payload bay from a shattered ground support light bulb.
The airline sector is once again attracting investors--this time they're headed to India--to finance an estimated $25-40 billion needed over the next 5-7 years for around 450 aircraft. India's aviation sector is growing faster than its gross domestic product, a pace expected to continue during the next few years. Although this growth has made the industry exuberant, a nagging question remains: where will the money come from to fund all the aircraft Indian carriers have ordered?
