Technical investigators scrutinizing the crash of a Helios Airways Boeing 737-300 will have several leads to follow as they try to understand the cause of the possible oxygen-starvation problem that affected the flightcrew.
An inexpensive flight recorder is to be delivered on several new light aircraft and is attracting interest for different applications, including flight operations quality assurance. The UHL Research Associates flight reconstruction system records GPS position and uses post-flight processing to produce airspeed, pitch and bank angle, load factor, and a host of other parameters useful for accident investigation, flight operations quality assurance (FOQA), maintenance monitoring, training and other applications.
Almir Bolina has become senior director of engineering, Suzette Snyder senior manager of human resources, Dane McGuffee director of aftermarket sales and Bryan Blunt director of quality, all for Textron Lycoming Engines, Williams- port, Pa. Doug Bubb has been elected president of United Auto Workers Local 787 at Lycoming, and Dave Mankey has been named plant committee chairman.
Amid a brewing battle in a southern Indiana U.S. Bankruptcy Court over abrogation of the pilots' labor contract, ATA Airlines founder J. George Mikelsons is retiring and a former Southwest Airlines executive has succeeded him.
Elaine Guth has been appointed assistant vice president-procurement and finance for the Arlington, Va.-based Aerospace Industries Assn. She was an attorney and council director for the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation. Guth succeeds Pat Sullivan, who has retired.
The Civil Aviation Flying University of China has bought a fleet of 42 Cessna Skyhawks for its ab initio pilot training program. Of these, 20 will be equipped with Garmin G1000 integrated avionics packages; the remainder will have analog instrumentation. Deliveries are slated to begin in the first quarter of 2006.
A minority opinion by members of the space shuttle Return-to-Flight Task Group says NASA management lacks leadership, accountability, discipline and the ability to define requirements in shuttle program engineering and management after the Columbia accident. This latest bombshell will place additional pressure on the space shuttle and International Space Station programs and will also affect downstream management of the new Exploration Initiative.
Frank Flores (see photos), vice president-engineering, logistics and technology in the Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Integrated Systems Sector, has received the 2005 Pioneer Award from the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Corp. (HENAAC). Flores leads an organization of more than 4,000 employees that supports programs such as the RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned reconnaissance system, F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, B-2 stealth bomber and F/A-18 Super Hornet strike fighter.
Launch of the orbiter Atlantis on the next shuttle mission will be delayed until at least November and possibly into 2006, after an initial reanalysis of pre-flight test data turned up no subtle defects on the orbiter Discovery's tank that shed potentially dangerous debris during launch July 26.
Ray M. Robinson, a retired AT&T regional president who now is vice chairman of the East Lake Community Foundation, has been appointed to the board of directors of the Fort Worth-based AMR Corp.
Italian authorities are investigating the crash of a Tuninter ATR 72, but fact-finding is proving complicated as parts of the aircraft are submerged in deep water. In addition to the Italian accident investigation authority ANSV, prosecutors in Bari and Palermo are mounting their own investigation. The ANSV is being aided by its French counterpart, the BEA, and the Tunisia accident investigation board. The crash killed 16 of 39 people on board, including four crewmembers.
A plan to combine all the aviation assets of the Homeland Security Dept.'s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) unit could lead to turf battles and hurt interagency missions, some in the department fear. The plan would merge the Office of Air and Marine Operations (AMO)--which already has changed parent agencies twice since the creation of Homeland Security in 2003--with the aviation arm of the Border Patrol, forming what Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner calls "the largest federal air force outside the Dept.
The Indian Space Research Organization is pushing ahead on several fronts, including the upcoming test of a reentry vehicle and development of its lunar orbiter. ISRO plans to launch its next Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle--PSLV-C7--with two payloads. The Cartosat-2 satellite, weighing 650 kg. (1,430 lb.), will deliver 1-meter-resolution imagery, while the 600-kg. Space Capsule Recovery Experiment will continue ISRO's work on a recoverable capsule for microgravity experiments. Both are to be sent to a 620-km. Sun-synchronous orbit.
The NASA National Center for Advanced Materials (NCamp), which is housed within the National Institute for Aviation Research in Wichita, Kan., recently conducted a survey to obtain feedback from the U.S. aerospace industry on current and future use of composite materials. The results are intended to provide NCamp with information about which composites should be added to the shared material database.
BAA, the operator of London Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports, believes there has been some impact on the domestic air traffic market in the wake of the London bombings on July 7 and the failed attempts on July 21. "But we don't think it is significant and we haven't changed our forecasts," says BAA spokeswoman Samantha Bateman. "There's too little data to quantify the impact and, in any case, the bigger issue, especially at Heathrow, is capacity. We are capacity-constrained," she says.
Boeing's P-8A Multimission Maritime Aircraft program is being buffeted by shrinking defense budgets in two of the three countries most interested in buying the new patrol aircraft.
We in the U.S. no longer possess the "right stuff" needed to get humans into low Earth orbit, much less to the Moon or Mars. Instead of bold innovation, NASA leadership is regressing toward 50-year-old design concepts using 30-year-old technology. We are being drawn toward technological mediocrity by the faster-better-cheaper siren call.
The directors of the Johnson Space Center, Kennedy Space Center and possibly also the Marshall Space Flight Center are likely to be replaced by the end of August by NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin. The move is related to his attempt to accelerate the agency's new exploration and space transportation goals.
The Pentagon's new unmanned aircraft road map (see p. 18), which offers a look at future warfare, specifically previews "weapons that use either electromagnetic or directed energy as their primary destructive mechanism." Unmanned aircraft can carry such weapons closer to the enemy than their piloted equivalents because of greater survivability--they would be smaller, thus harder to detect, and could maneuver more violently. Approaching closer also means directed-energy weapons would require less power to damage enemy electronics.
Flight simulator giant CAE Inc. posted revenue of C$266 million ($221 million) for the quarter ended June 30, a 15% increase from a year earlier. Net earnings from continuing operations at the Montreal-based company were C$20.8 million, a 1% increase.
Amy Butler (Washington), Edward H. Phillips (Dallas)
A Bell-Boeing Osprey made an emergency landing last week at a Texas airport following what officials are characterizing as a minor incident. The MV-22 tiltrotor landed on Amarillo International Airport grounds about 2 mi. away from Bell's facility. Following takeoff, the pilot accelerated to 111 kt. He had an "immediate indication something was wrong," says Edward Carroll, a spokesman for the V-22 Joint Program Office in Maryland.
British Airways on Aug. 11 canceled all flights in and out of Heathrow Airport at least until late on Aug. 12 after ground personnel walked out in sympathy with striking Gate Gourmet staff. Gate Gourmet is the carrier's sole caterer at Heathrow. At least 20,000 passengers were stranded and 120 BA flights at Heathrow were canceled Aug. 11. Unions want BA to pressure Gate Gourmet to rehire employees dismissed earlier this month by the caterer in a labor dispute.
