Departments 11-12 Correspondence 13 Who's Where 14 Market Focus 17 Industry Outlook 19 Airline Outlook 20-22 World News Roundup 23 In Orbit 25 Washington Outlook 63 Classified 64 Contact Us 65 Aerospace Calendar
Neelam Mathews (New Delhi), Michael Mecham (San Francisco)
In a post-sanction world, Lockheed Martin expects to open talks in mid-December about upgrades to ex-U.S. Navy P-3B anti-submarine warfare aircraft that will bring them up to a "C" status, matching what the U.S. is proposing to sell Pakistan.
The Australian defense department is trying to further tighten its financial controls after the government audit agency issued a rebuke of internal controls. The Australian National Audit Office has repeatedly raised concerns about defense accounting. "A great deal of work remains in areas of systems, management and practice" to meet accounting requirements, the defense department concedes. Finance department and private sector entities will also sit on the Financial Statements Project Board to help streamline defense department accounting.
Veteran Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev and NASA astronaut John Phillips will be the next crew of the International Space Station, beginning their stay in April 2005. Both men have been there before. Krikalev was a member of the first ISS crew in 2000, and Phillips visited in 2001 during a 12-day mission to install the robotic Canadarm2. With a total of 625 days on missions dating back to 1988 on the Mir orbital station, Krikalev could set the record for time in space, during his planned six-month stay as commander of ISS Expedition 11.
NASA counts some $426 million in earmarks--unrequested spending ordered by Congress--in its $16.2-billion appropriation for Fiscal 2005 (see p. 37). Much of that money must be spent on pork-barrel projects in the $500,000 to $1 million range, but one $25-million item keeps alive a program that was killed just as it was starting to pay off.
EasyJet's preliminary result for the year ended Sept. 30 saw profits before taxes rise to 62.2 million pounds ($117 million), up 21%. Revenue rose 17% to 1.09 billion, while revenue per passenger fell by 2%. EasyJet, along with Ryanair, last week announced additional flights and routes to Italy in the wake of the collapse of no-frills carrier Volare (see p. 44).
Bell Helicopter Textron will conduct advanced flight tests of its new tail fan system next year and is developing a propulsive anti-torque system that in the future could replace tail rotors and fans altogether.
NASA's Swift gamma ray burst observatory is being commanded through its checkout in orbit by a control team at Pennsylvania State University, following the spacecraft's launch Nov. 20 from Cape Canaveral on board a Boeing Delta II booster. The 3,324-lb. spacecraft is designed to "swiftly" shift its attitude to focus optical/ultraviolet and X-ray telescopes on fleeting gamma ray bursts, indicative of black-hole formation or collisions between binary stars (AW&ST Nov. 8, p. 33).
U.S. senators incensed by the scandal surrounding Pentagon plans to replace KC-135Es with Boeing KC-767 tankers are showing no sign of relenting and warn they will pursue the matter next year while at the same time pushing the Defense Dept. to initiate additional investigations.
NATO's top military official, U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, wants the alliance to copy something the Pentagon has essentially implemented--a process to buy rapidly the key military equipment it needs. NATO's procurement methodology is notorious for moving at a snail's pace. "It cannot be acceptable, on today's global playing field, to have to wait a year and half to field a piece of technology that our commanders need in the field because it devolves into industrial-based transatlantic competition involving 26 nations," Jones says.
When I started reading the Nov. 15 Viewpoint (p. 90), I thought I was reading a plea for selecting the best helicopter to carry my President. That is until I encountered the amazing claim: "If a dual-engine aircraft loses an engine during liftoff, it must land immediately and, in most cases, hard."
Robust but uncontrolled traffic growth and low yields in the last few weeks exacerbated Volare's financial weaknesses, leading to the company's demise. Leasing companies and insurers on Nov. 19 abandoned the Italian low-cost carrier, grounding aircraft as well as stranding thousands of passengers.
Readers Peter Young and Werner Cyrmon attempted to clarify the situation described as microgravity in their letters (AW&ST Nov. 1, p. 9). Unfortunately, they only added to the confusion. The terms weightlessness, 0g and microgravity are all wrong. The net force on any object in low-Earth orbit is about 85% of what it is on the Earth's surface, regardless of whether the object is traveling a circular, parabolic or straight-line path. There is no offsetting outward force that cancels out the gravitational force.
John P. Balaguer (see photo) has been appointed Indianapolis-based general manager for engineering and production support for the Raytheon Technical Services Co.
You can now register ONLINE for Aviation Week Events. Go to www.AviationNow.com/conferences or call Lydia Janow at +1 (212) 904-3225/+1 (800) 240-7645 ext. 5 (U.S. and Canada Only) Feb. 16-17--World Aerospace Symposium/Toulouse. Pierre Baudis Toulouse Congress Center, Toulouse, France. Apr. 19-20--MRO Military Conference. Also, Apr. 20-21--MRO USA Conference & Exhibition. Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center, Dallas. May 24-25--Homeland Security Summit & Exposition. Washington.
Feeling neglected by the executive jet community, Sacramento (Calif.) International Airport has issued a request for proposals for a full-service fixed-base operator. The airport, which is about 75 mi. from busy business aircraft centers in Oakland and Concord, Calif., has a fuel service operator but no full-time FBO.
An American Airlines MD-82 (N234) sustained minor damage Nov. 21 after hitting approach and runway threshold lights on short approach to Denver International Airport's Runway 35L. The aircraft, en route from Dallas-Fort Worth International, was operating under Instrument Meteorological Conditions, with a 0.5 mi. of visibility and freezing fog, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
A move to merge French defense electronics giant Thales with EADS is running out of steam, barely days after surfacing. In sharp contrast with information leaked earlier this month, the merger "isn't on the agenda [anymore]."
Domestic travel, propelled by the low air fares of budget carriers flying to secondary airports, has expanded the market for turboprops in India, presenting opportunities for companies such as ATR. The Toulouse-based turboprop manufacturer is prepared to set up training and outsourcing facilities in India.
USAF is continuing its steady stream of funding to Northrop Grumman to provide protection against heat-seeking missiles to its aircraft. The latest is a $12.5-million deal to install the Large Aircraft Infrared Countermeasures system on 18 C-17s. Installations are to be completed within a year.
Cobham subsidiary FR Aviation and Bristow Helicopters are widening the reach of their helicopter joint-venture, FB Heliservices (FBH), with the award of a contract for helicopter troop transport/support for Brunei. FBH is also acquiring an additional six helicopters previously operated by Bristow, bringing its fleet to 60.
American Airlines will defer by 6-7 years scheduled delivery of 54 of 56 aircraft it has on firm order from Boeing in an attempt to reduce near-term costs and repair damage to its balance sheet. Announcing an agreement with the manufacturer, American said it will take two 777s in 2006, moving up one aircraft scheduled previously for 2007. But the carrier will defer 47 737-800 aircraft by seven years apiece, and each of seven 777s by six years, past their original scheduled delivery dates in 2006-10.
Airbus is in the final stages of negotiating a deal with Britain's Marshall Aerospace to cover a flight program for the A400M's turboprop engine, using a Lockheed Martin C-130 Hercules as the test platform. The military arm of Airbus prefers the C-130 option to testing the EuroProp International (EPI) TP400-D6 on either its own A340-300 twin-aisle airliner test aircraft, or an Ilyushin Il-76, although as of last week the decision had yet to be formally ratified by directors.
Astronaut C. Michael Foale has been named deputy associate administrator of NASA for exploration operations. He has flown on four space shuttle missions, the Russian Space Station Mir and the International Space Station. Foale has been chief of the Astronaut Office Expedition Corps and assistant director (technical) of NASA's Johnson Space Center.
