Etihad Airways, Abu Dhabi's national carrier, has launched its first transatlantic service: thrice-weekly flights to Toronto via Brussels. Etihad Airways Chairman Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saif Al Nahyan said the Toronto service heralds further growth for the two-year- old carrier, which plans flights to the U.S. beginning in the summer of 2006.
Rolls-Royce this will week will start assembly of the first Trent 1000 engine in the hope of keeping the program on track for a first run of the Boeing 787 engine by mid-February. The engine maker is currently undergoing major component tests to validate emissions and other performance parameters for the 53,000-75,000-lb.-thrust engine. There is little schedule margin, with 787 lead-customer ANA slated to introduce the aircraft into service in 2008.
Bombardier is getting ready to suspend production of its CRJ200 regional jet, but its assembly line in Montreal will keep on humming, thanks to demand for the Challenger 850, a business jet that is based on the CRJ. "All the manufacturers, including us, now have large backlogs in business aircraft," says Bombardier Aerospace President Pierre Beaudoin.
NASA's new aeronautics chief, Lisa Porter, has set up a "Foundational Technology" shop that will concentrate on basic aeronautics research. Administrator Michael Griffin tells the House Science Committee that if NASA had been funding more state-of-the-art aero research, it probably could have figured out whether the gap-fillers that edged out from between thermal protection tiles on the belly of the shuttle Discovery during last summer's return-to-flight mission posed a boundary-layer threat.
The U.S. is to announce by Nov. 22 whether it will offer APG-79 AESA (active electronically scanned array) radar to India. It's the only major sub-system yet to be cleared by the Bush administration for sale to that country as part of the 126 medium-range combat aircraft procurement bid. If cleared, India will be the first country to be offered the radar.
The Czech government may be willing to wrap up the assets of aerospace contractor Aero Vodochody if a planned public tender for the state-owned company fails--perhaps a sign that the long-awaited shakeout of Eastern Europe's overbuilt aerospace sector may finally be at hand. The tender was ordered in midyear to save troubled Aero from bankruptcy. The sell-off is planned in two stages, with the winning bidder to be selected by April and a deal finalized by the middle of next year.
Air Canada ends its first year as a low-cost carrier with strong performance--and begins its second eager for growth and ready to conclude a firm order for 32 Boeing wide-body aircraft. The carrier's parent company, ACE Aviation Holdings, reported a third-quarter operating income of C$320 million ($270 million), a C$77-million increase compared with the same period in 2004. Air Canada had a net operating income of C$270 million (including C$128 million income tax), compared with a net loss of C$81 million last year.
Leon Kaufman, Professor of Physics, Emeritus (Department of Radiology, University of California, San Francisco)
I see that you have bought into the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) smoke screen about the "only" problem with X-ray backscatter screening is that of "naked" images of the body (AW&ST Oct. 17, p. 46).
Triumph Group's year-over-year operating income rose 34% to $13.2 million in the quarter ended Sept. 30. Quarterly sales increased 8% to $183.6 million, pushing backlog to $756.7 million, up 35% from a year earlier.
Italo Poli, who was an executive with Swissair for 30 years before retiring, has received the World Airline Entertainment Assn.'s 2005 Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to the airline inflight entertainment and communications industry. Poli began his career in airline inflight entertainment in 1964 as manager of audio-visual for Swissair. In 1969, he led a group of airlines--Swissair, SAS, KLM and UTA--in setting a new standard for inflight entertainment among European carriers.
A pair of satellite telecom missions is getting underway after months of delays due to satellite and launcher unavailability. Arianespace has set Nov. 10-11 for launching Spaceway 2. The six-ton Boeing 702 spacecraft was initially targeted for broadband applications, but redirected to high-definition television service when the Spaceway system was acquired by DirecTV. Together with Spaceway 1, launched on Apr. 26, the new unit is expected to handle 500 local HDTV channels to major U.S. markets.
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Richard A. Kravit has become director of contracts/general counsel of the Mooney Airplane Co., Kerrville, Tex. He was director of contracts/in-house counsel for M7 Aerospace, which purchased the U.S. assets of Fairchild Dornier.
Europe's aerospace and defense industries' association ASD has expressed concern over a decision by the European Parliament to trim the 2006 budget bill for homeland security research from 24 million euros ($29 million)--the figure proposed by the European Commission--to 15 million euros. ASD said the move, which follows a similar reduction in the 2005 budget, will hamper work on network design, interoperability, system integration and other areas that are ground work for a full-fledged homeland security program starting in 2007.
Eurocopter has established a subsidiary in Japan to help boost sales in that country, particularly in the defense arena. Eurocopter holds more than 50% of the civil and government market there, but a much smaller share of defense orders.
The National Research Council of Canada Institute for Aerospace Research has agreed to work with Transport Canada to gather data on emissions from commercial aircraft cruising over Canada. Canadian officials are concerned about the possible negative impact of such emissions on the nation's sensitive environment in high latitudes. NRC will instrument its T-33 research aircraft to collect emissions data while flying behind commercial transports, with the first proof-of-concept flights set for next year over St.
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AirBridge Cargo airline, a subsidiary of the Volga-Dnepr Group, has placed a $450-million order (at list prices) for two Boeing 747-400ER freighters. They will be powered by General Electric CF6-80C2B5F engines. AirBridge became Russia's first carrier to operate a 747 when it acquired a used -200F in 2004. Since then it has added two more -200Fs to its fleet, which also includes Russian-built freighters.
India has completed qualification of the indigenous cryogenic upper stage engine it has developed for the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), and is expected to flight test the engine soon. Intended to replace the Russian-supplied cryogenic stage on the GSLV, the new upper stage was designed to deliver about 7.5 tons of thrust. Ground qualification included some 4,000 sec. of cumulative hot-fire tests. India hopes to use the new engine to garner some commercial business for its big satellite-launching rocket.
I've been watching and reading a plethora of information on the Bush administration's decision to go back to the Moon. In "Moon-Bound, Again" and "Space Race Redux" (AW&ST Sept. 26, p. 22; Oct. 3, p. 24), there are no specific goals listed that America is to achieve by going back to the Moon.
Rolls-Royce's advanced concepts shop, now named Liberty Works, is focusing its efforts on a few key defense areas, say officials visiting in Washington. Researchers are looking at low-speed engines for week-long surveillance flights, expendable and cheap Mach 3+ engines for high-speed reconnaissance, and stealth propulsion systems for persistence in enemy territory, as well as engines that produce huge electrical power output--into the low-single-digit megawatts--for directed-energy weapons and long-range sensors.
An international team working on new flight demonstrations in Sweden believes it's possible to boost runway capacity by 30% by downlinking "4D" trajectories and coordinating arrivals up to an hour in advance.
Nicolas Brun (see photo) has been named vice president-communications for Paris-based Alcatel Alenia Space. He was vice president-corporate and marketing communications for the Carlson Wagonlit Travel Group.
Damage from Hurricane Wilma in late October is forcing Lockheed Martin to replace a 200,000-lb.-thrust Aerojet solid rocket motor on the Atlas V set to launch the New Horizons spacecraft to Pluto from Cape Canaveral Jan. 11. The Atlas was not on its launch pad, but inside the 300-ft. Atlas Vertical Integration Facility (VIF) when the storm struck. Part of the structure's large high-strength fabric door tore under 75-mph. winds, and some door or other storm debris struck the solid motor attached to the launcher.
