Air Canada plans to operate nonstop flights four times weekly, starting June 2, between Toronto and Beijing. The airline says the service is the first direct link between eastern Canada and mainland China. The carrier says its new Asia services--which include daily flights from Vancouver to Beijing and Shanghai, and from Toronto to Hong Kong--will boost seating capacity 16% between Canada and China, and provide 45% more cargo tonnage compared with January 2004.
Hearty congratulations are in order to the European Space Agency team that dropped the plucky Huygens probe down on the surface of Titan, and to ESA's collaborators at NASA and the Italian space agency ASI. It was an astounding engineering feat that already has added volumes to human knowledge about Saturn's largest moon.
Last week's unveiling of the Airbus A380 is a crowning achievement for the European company, its employees and suppliers from dozens of countries. It is a significant reminder of what the global aerospace industry can accomplish, and should highlight to everyone that despite much talk that the aerospace industry is a mature one, there is still plenty of room for technical innovation.
Air Canada, in code-share with Star Alliance partner United, is offering daily Boeing 747-400 service from Hong Kong to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The Canadian carrier provides twice-daily nonstop service to Hong Kong, from its Toronto and Vancouver hubs.
ESA officials expect to start the subsurface sounding radar on the Mars Express orbiter in March or April, and not toward the end of the year as feared earlier (AW&ST Aug. 2, 2004, p. 20). ESA Science Director David Southwood says engineers are satisfied that the complex linear coupling mechanisms involved in deploying the radar boom will not harm the other instruments on the spacecraft. The Marsis radar is intended to search for underground aquifers.
Catherine Kuenzel (see photo) has been appointed vice president-field operations in the Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Information Technology Sector, Herndon, Va. She was director of the company's cryptologic systems division.
Construction of Virgin Blue's 18,500-sq.-meter maintenance facility at Brisbane, Australia, is underway. When completed in roughly one year, the two-bay hangar is to provide line maintenance for Virgin Blue's Boeing 737 fleet as well as complement the carrier's line-maintenance operation at Melbourne. Richard Branson's low-cost Australian carrier--with support from the government and the Brisbane Airport Corp.--won approval for its major development plan late last year. Brisbane is eyed as a key Asia-Pacific aviation maintenance/training hub.
Boeing has received a $194-million contract from the U.S. Army to remanufacture 12 CH-47s into the special operations MH-47G configuration. The award is an installment on a total $224-million contract. The helicopters are to be completed by mid-2006.
Boeing has completed the first live warhead drops of the Small-Diameter Bomb as part of the development program to deliver the first 250-lb.-class GPS-guided bombs to the military next year. Weapons were dropped last month from an F-15E in two separate missions, Dec. 13 and 15, at the White Sands Missile Range, N.M., and achieved direct hits, Boeing reports. The tests are the second major event for the company's SDB program. The other was when Pentagon acquisition officials dismissed the idea proposed by some in the Defense Dept.
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General Electric says five international companies will contribute about a 36% share of the GenX engine under development for the Boeing 7E7 and Airbus A350. Ishikawajima Harima Heavy Industries and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan will hold a 15% stake in producing the low-pressure turbine rotating components and module assembly. They also will produce compressor airfoils, the mid-fan shaft and combustor casing. Avio of Italy will hold a 12% share and make gearboxes, the low-pressure turbine static components and casing, and the lubrication system.
Michael A. Taverna (Darmstadt, Germany), Alexey Komarov (Moscow)
A wide-ranging agreement between the European and Russian space agencies will enable the two organizations to cooperate in developing, building and operating launch vehicles. The move sets the stage for a reinforced role for Russia in the European space program and, perhaps, joint development of future launchers.
Nav Canada reports that Reduced Vertical Separation Minimum procedures that began in southern Canada on Jan. 20 should save airlines $22 million this year. Separation was reduced to 1,000 ft. from 2,000 ft. between Flight Level 290 and FL 410 inclusive, as it was in the U.S. and the rest of the Western Hemisphere last week. Airspace capacity at those altitudes will increase by 80%, says Nav Canada President/CEO John Crichton.
Shares in fast-growing EDO Corp. got a nice bounce on Wall Street last week after the U.S. Army added $56 million to the defense electronics company's contract to build cutting-edge bomb-jamming devices to protect soldiers in Iraq. The Army's Warlock electronic countermeasures effort attaches EDO-built devices to military vehicles to jam remote-control frequencies that Iraqi insurgents are using to trigger hidden roadside bombs.
The Chilean air force is expected to purchase four Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. Dhruv advanced light helicopters. Recent flight demonstrations in Chile were performed under a joint venture company owned by Israel Aircraft Industries and HAL that is marketing the helicopter internationally. It features a glass cockpit and avionics from IAI. A pair of Turbomeca TM 333-2B2 engines produce 1,000 shp. each.
Airbus officially introduced the A380 mega-transport to the world last week amid great fanfare, making its debut look almost easy. Now comes the hard part: proving the 555-seater's viability in the airline market of the future.
An item in last week's World News Roundup misstated the relationship between two space companies (Jan. 17, p. 389). Launch services startup SpaceX has taken a 10% stake in small-satellite builder Surrey Satellite Technology, not the other way around.
John Liotta (see photo) has become regional sales manager for aircraft technical services for the Montreal Jet Center. He was Mid-Atlantic sales manager for Gulfstream Aerospace.
World War II tactician and fighter ace John R. Alison and record-setting aviatrix and aerobatic champion Betty Skelton Frankman are among the individuals named for enshrinement in the National Aviation Hall of Fame, Dayton, Ohio, on July 16. Also selected were the late military aviatrix Nancy Harkness Love and the late Benjamin R. Rich, a longtime member of the engineering staff at the Lockheed Skunk Works.
James Loy, the U.S. Homeland Security Dept.'s second in command, will take over for Tom Ridge if he leaves before the Senate confirms Michael Chertoff, who has been nominated for the top post. Ridge is slated to depart Feb. 1. c The U.S. will appoint a full-time homeland security attache to the European Union to coordinate antiterrorism activities. The appointee will work closely with Gijs de Vries, the EU counterterrorism coordinator named last year following the Madrid train bombings (AW&ST Apr. 5, 2004, p. 46).
U.S. Army pilots are establishing new boundaries in operational flexibility by remotely controlling armed, unmanned Vigilante rotorcraft from another helicopter. The Ft. Eustis, Va.-based test crew flew on a UH-1 Iroquois (see photo below) operating over the Yuma, Ariz., Proving Grounds. They became the first to fire weapons from an unmanned helicopter, in this case four 2.75-in. Hydra 70 rockets with dummy warheads (see right photo).
India successfully tested its Trishul short-range surface-to-air missile last week from a mobile launcher at its Integrated Test Range in Chandipur. Trishul is 3 meters (10 ft.) long and 200 cm. (61 in.) in diameter. Powered by two solid-stage motors, it can deliver a 33-lb. payload up to 9 km.
Fred Buttrell, Comair's new president, is telling employees in back-to-back meetings that they must restore the carrier's tarnished reputation for reliable customer service while he focuses on rekindling growth with large-capacity regional jets.
Astronomers think they may have acquired the first direct image of an extrasolar planet (shown as a pink spot), using the combined capabilities of the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile and the Hubble Space Telescope in orbit. Following up on the VLT discovery last April of a faint companion to a brown dwarf in the constellation Hydra, astronomers used Hubble's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (Nicmos) to gain more evidence that the object is a planet.
Debbie Adams has been named head of the legal division of U.K.-based National Air Traffic Services. She succeeds Kate Gregory, who has resigned. Adams was senior legal adviser for Angel Trains Ltd.
