Airbus says Alitalia is embracing the Airbus Future Air Navigation System-B (FANS-B) and will put it on 23 A321s. FANS-B, which is now being used by Aeroflot and Finnair, is intended to improve communications between the aircraft and ATC. On the non-electronics side, the airframer submitted an application to the European Aviation Safety Agency for an A380 escape slide with an extendible length, which would be necessary to bridge the potentially large variation in the sill height of Door 1 (uppermost entrance/egress of the aircraft) from the ground in the event of a crash.
Five years ago, the satellite imagery industry was attracting a lot of attention from investors, thanks to President Bill Clinton's decision to allow U.S. aerospace contractors to commercialize technology developed for early U.S. reconnaissance satellites. Merrill Lynch and Banc of America Securities predicted the market would be generating $2-2.5 billion in annual revenues by 2005. Space Imaging LLC, a private venture owned primarily by Lockheed Martin Corp.
Edward W. Stimpson, former U.S. representative to the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization and current first vice president of the ICAO Assembly, has been named to receive the 2005 Award for Meritorious Service to Aviation from the Washington-based National Business Aviation Assn. He also is chairman of the board of governors of the Flight Safety Foundation. Ronald J. Guerra, president of KaiserAir Inc., is to receive the 2005 NBAA John P. (Jack) Doswell Award.
In the satellite operator realignment that is now underway, Canada's Telesat appears positioned to play a key role. This fall, the Ottawa-based company plans to take on-orbit delivery of a new K u-/C-band spacecraft, Anik F1R, launched Sept. 9 on a Proton/Breeze-M rocket to a slot at 107.3 deg. W. Long. The EADS Astrium-built spacecraft carries 32 K u-band transponders and 24 in the C-band.
Heeding President Bush's call after the Columbia accident for something beyond the space shuttle and International Space Station, NASA finally has a new plan for sending humans beyond Earth orbit to explore the Solar System (see p. 22). Technophiles that we are, we find it reassuring that the plan was unveiled not with the inflated rhetoric of a politician but with the logic of an engineer and the caution of an accountant. As one admiring observer suggested to us, the pieces of this blueprint fit together like the movements of a Swiss watch.
The Society of British Aerospace Companies has named BAE Systems Chief Operating Officer Chris Geoghegan as its new president. He expressed support for the British Defense Ministry's review of its industrial strategy, although some executives fear the outcome may be disappointing, and he urged the government to provide financial support for the Airbus A350.
Airbus expects the next round of its cost savings initiative to yield the same 1.5 billion euros in savings the current Route 06 project is supposed to deliver. Chief Executive Gustav Humbert told reporters the long-anticipated follow-on to Route 06 would likely run through 2010.
NASA shut down Johnson Space Center on Sept. 21 and transferred control of the International Space Station to Mission Control Center-Moscow as Rita approached the Houston area. An 82-member emergency rideout team that was assembled after the center closed Sept. 21 was sent home the next day as the storm strengthened. At Michoud Assembly Facility near New Orleans, where some workers maintained a system of pumps and levees to prevent flooding during Katrina, a 40-member rideout crew remained in place after the facility was closed.
Flying in the face of the prevailing gloomy view of the U.S. airline industry, consultant Edmund S. Greenslet is predicting a huge 2006 turnaround for most of the nine largest U.S. airlines. He reaches into history to explain how airlines have always been slow to respond to high fuel costs, the real culprit of 2005. In his monthly report, The Airline Monitor, Greenslet points to recovering yields and sharp cost-cutting as setting the stage for change. "The real answer to higher fuel costs is higher yield and revenue, and that is beginning to happen," he wrote.
As much as your analysis of Boeing's poor labor relations is relevant to the company's long-term success, you could substitute "suppliers" for "employees" and "rank and file" in your editorial (AW&ST Sept. 12, p. 66). It's particularly galling to see CEO W. James McNerney, Jr.'s, package and Boeing's share price when the supply chain is continuously beat up for flat or lower prices, with the oft-repeated threat of losing work even when vendors do cave in.
Tokyo Narita International Airport says that as of Oct. 1 it will begin leveling charges based on aircraft noise. The new rating system will reduce overall landing charges and reward airlines that fly newer aircraft that produce less noise. (London's three international airports--Heathrow, Stansted and Gatwick--use an industry-standard noise rating system to accomplish much the same thing.) At Narita, Category A aircraft--the quietest--will have charges that are 31% lower than the present level.
The House might take up an amendment to the Iran Nonproliferation Act as early as this week, following Senate adoption of language Sept. 21 permitting NASA to buy Russian space hardware for the International Space Station (ISS). The Senate said NASA can buy rides on Russian Soyuz vehicles or other Russian goods and services for the ISS until Jan. 1, 2012, rejecting a Bush administration call for an open-ended amendment.
Lower tier French aerospace suppliers are feeling the financial pinch even as the bigger players ride the current wave of aircraft orders to healthy profits. Analysts warn that third- and fourth-tier suppliers have failed to adapt their business structure to new market conditions in the face of strong price pressures handed down by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) like Airbus. These factors threaten their survival and could drive more businesses into foreign hands.
I didn't think you "did" irony, but your report "What Went Right" (AW&ST Sept. 12, p. 22), which told us the "TSA flew in hundreds of screeners to supply security . . ." has revealed an unsuspected sense of humor. Long may it continue.
The U.S. Air Force is using the low-light imaging capability of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) spacecraft to map power outages and restoration on the Gulf Coast in the wake of Katrina. The same capabilities will be used to map any power-grid effects from Hurricane Rita. The four DMSP spacecraft flying in 515-mi. polar orbits have built a database of U.S. city and rural lights visible from space, as well as the distribution of lights in other urban areas around the world.
Mars may be the ultimate target, but continued strong U.S. leadership in human spaceflight is the stated goal of NASA's tightly focused new plan for lunar exploration. A rigorous scrubbing over the summer held the cost of a return to the Moon as a first step to the Red Planet to what NASA says is 55% of the cost of the Apollo program in inflation-adjusted dollars. Still, despite making lavish use of hardware developed during the past 45 years, it will cost an estimated $104 billion to keep the U.S. in the critical path back to the Moon by 2020.
Fast-growing DRS Technologies Inc. has agreed to buy Engineered Support Systems Inc. (ESSI) for $2 billion in cash and stock, a move that would increase DRS's revenues by two-thirds and propel it into the ranks of the world's Top 25 defense contractors. The merger, which is expected to close by March 2006, will create an integrated supplier of military hardware, software and support services, combining DRS's strength in defense electronics hardware with ESSI's expertise in support.
Northrop Grumman Corp. staff artists provided company concepts of what the Pentagon's future unmanned aircraft fleet could include. While being interviewed for the group of UAV stories that begins on p. 56, one longtime operator suggested that perhaps a single decade from now, half the aircraft in a Red Flag exercise will be remotely piloted. The computer-generated illustration on the cover of an unmanned tanker refueling an unmanned combat aircraft as well as the illustration on p. 57 of an advanced intelligence-gathering and bombing aircraft were created by Peter A.
In the weeks since Hurricane Katrina savaged the Gulf Coast, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter has taken off almost every night to help keep watch for looters along the area's still dark streets and waterways. The helos are flown by pilots of what used to be known as the U.S. Customs Service. They're usually accompanied by Border Patrol agents carrying M-4 automatic weapons for backup firepower. Smaller AS350 Border Patrol helicopters often fly along with the Black Hawks.
Flying often has been described as "hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror." And for JetBlue Flight 292, boredom was no factor in the 3 hr. from takeoff to an emergency landing with its nose gear cocked at a 90-deg. angle (see photo).
Contractors bidding to replace the space shuttle fleet must stuff their big ideas into a ballistic capsule with only three times the volume of the Apollo command module. Like that 1960s-vintage capsule, the planned Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) will sustain a crew as it travels to and from the Moon. But it must also convey the first Mars explorers on the last leg of their trip back to Earth someday, and it will start its career shuttling crew and pressurized cargo to the International Space Station (ISS).
The European Commission wants to strengthen post-9/11-instituted rules governing aviation security, after inspections showed "a number of shortcomings." Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot argues that the new rules "will enable us to be more effective and react faster to a threat which is constantly changing." Specifically, the EC wants to broaden the reach of existing rules to freight and inflight security, and to amend current rules to be more flexible so it can adapt more quickly as technologies evolve.
David Clayton has been appointed finance director of the International Federation of Air Line Pilots Assns. He has been a controller in the automotive industry in South Africa.
Chief Financial Officer James Bell's message to Wall Street is positive: Boeing has a $170-billion backlog in military/civil contracts, has taken 605 aircraft orders this year (compared with 272 last year), and saw second-quarter revenues rise 15% and earnings jump 30%.
Turkey has launched the so-called Turna project to buy 12 light-medium surveillance and reconnaissance rotorcraft. Ankara wants the helicopters to seat 6-8 and have two-person flight crews. The rotorcraft should already have certification for day/night operations under visual and instrument flight rules.
