The European Space Agency has set spending levels and program content for the initial phase of its Future Launcher Preparatory Program (FLPP). The agency will seek 24 million euros for the Early Activities Phase, which will run until the FLPP cranks up in earnest at the next ESA ministerial summit in May 2004. The money will be divided equally among three areas of study: system and experimental vehicle definition, propulsion, and materials/structures.
An American Bar Assn. panel on aviation issues before Congress was drawing to a close Nov. 6 in Washington when the moderator, Will Ris, an American Airlines senior vice president, asked one last question--whether the Air France-KLM near-merger would pose concerns on Capitol Hill. KLM operates between New York Kennedy and Amsterdam, Ris noted, and so does Air France's antitrust-immunized SkyTeam partner, Delta. Might Air France's relationship with Delta and its potential control over KLM affect Delta-KLM competition in ways the U.S. wouldn't want?
U.S. Army Lt. Gen. (ret.) Larry R. Jordan has been named senior vice president-Army programs, USN Vice Adm. (ret.) Anthony A. Less senior vice president-Navy programs, USAF Lt. Gen. (ret.) Lansford E. Trapp, Jr., senior vice president-Air Force programs and USN Capt. (ret.) Gary M. Hughes vice president-Naval Aviation programs, all for Burdeshaw Associates, Bethesda, Md.
After nearly a decade of juggling and belt-tightening, the European Space Agency has signaled that if Europe wants a viable space science program, it will have to pay for it. ESA's science program committee last week announced it would cancel a cornerstone planet-finding and astroseismology mission, Eddington, and rescope another, the BepiColombo Mercury probe, because it no longer has the money. BepiColombo will have to do without a landing component.
Having burst the budget ceiling by hundreds of millions of pounds, AgustaWestland and British Defense Ministry procurement officials are battling to try to rein in costs on a key program, both for the ministry and the helicopter manufacturer. Westland's initial cost submission for the project, intended to provide a successor to the army and navy's respective fleets of Lynx helicopters, was well over 20% of the available funding. This is thought to have been on the order of 300 million pounds ($500 million) over budget.
Qatar Airways has unveiled ambitious plans to develop a new airport at Doha, the first phase alone of which will cost $2 billion. This phase, due for completion in late 2008 or early 2009, will see the construction of a 4,850-meter (15,900-ft.) runway, and a 4,250-meter runway. Some 50% of the site will be reclaimed from the sea. The main terminal will have 24 gates, two of which will be capable of handling the Airbus A380-800, along with a minimum of seven remote gates. Two follow-on phases will see the addition of a further 16, and 40 contact gates, respectively.
XCOR Aerospace has filed the first "sufficiently complete" application with the FAA to operate reusable launch vehicles. The determination gives the FAA's associate administrator for commercial space transportation 180 days to issue or deny a license to the Mojave, Calif., company, which applied to fly an "intermediate technology launch vehicle" that could lead to a piloted vehicle like XCOR's proposed Xerus suborbital RLV concept.
Senior Army acquisition officials will take another look at infrared countermeasures for helicopters, after the shoot-downs of a UH-60 Black Hawk and CH-47 Chinook in Iraq, killing more than 20 soldiers. Acquisition chief Claude Bolton insists that, previously, technology was simply not ready and failure to have better self-protection equipment on helos isn't a case of the service dragging its feet. While still in the Air Force, Bolton was involved in that service's decision to pull out of the Common Missile Warning System, which also derailed the Army's efforts.
Gianna F. Monsch and James Szymanski have become senior vice presidents and Rich Coskey vice president of the New York-based Seabury Group. Monsch was vice president-revenue information at Swissair and had been head of Cap Gemini Ernst & Young's airline sector for Europe. Szymanski was an executive with US Airways and Continental Airlines before becoming vice president-revenue accounting services for the Navitaire subsidiary of Accenture. Coskey was general manager of flight profitability and operational analysis for Delta Air Lines.
Russian aerospace agency Rosaviakosmos and the European Space Agency have formalized a three-year deal to refly experiments lost with the space shuttle Columbia on two Russian Foton automated research capsules. With launches in May 2005 and in fall 2006, respectively, Foton-M2 and Foton-M3 will carry 660 kg. (1,455 lb.) of ESA scientific gear in total. The arrangement will also help ESA cut its backlog of experiments waiting for flights to the International Space Station (AW&ST Oct. 6, p. 31).
Anyone uncertain about why United Airlines renegotiated agreements with its United Express regional carriers need look no further than its third-quarter financial report. Concluding that its new and revised agreements are operating leases, United reported sales at Air Wisconsin, Mesa Air Group and SkyWest as operating revenue from regional affiliates, and also revealed payments to them as a separate operating-expense category. Their revenue for the quarter ended Sept. 30 was $250 million and expenses totaled $313 million, for a profit margin of -25.2%.
Michael A. Taverna (Velizy, France), Andy Nativi (Velizy, France)
Discussions are underway to demonstrate an extended anti-theater ballistic missile defense capability for Europe that would offer an engagement envelope at least twice that of an initial Aster SAMP/T Block 1 system ordered last week.
Quality Checked Software has released Cantata++ Version 3.1, a software testing tool for C/C++ software professionals in the avionics industry. This version is suited for software designed for use in flight control, engine control or other safety-critical applications, and is designed to automate some of the developer's testing work. New features include an enhanced set of Java-based "test wizards" that guide users through the tool's testing steps. These include: enabling access to private class members, yielding improved testability of the developer's code.
Recent events revealed flaws in the Transportation Security Administration's passenger screening procedures as carry-on bags with box cutters, bleach and simulated plastic explosives were found onboard Southwest Airlines aircraft. This was bound to happen when current screening procedures allow virtually every employee group except the flight crew to bypass security with backpacks, lunch boxes, tool boxes and provisioning trucks, while pilots--the very people entrusted with the lives of all those on board--are subject to an outrageous screening process.
LANCAIR HAS BEGUN DELIVERY of its new Columbia 350 airplane after obtaining FAA approval. Although the company has been building it since midsummer, delays encountered with the certification of the S-TEC autopilot and Avidyne FlightMax Entegra flight displays prevented delivery to customers, according to Mark Cahill, vice president, sales and marketing. The composite Columbia 350 is an upgraded version of the Columbia 300. It has a cruise speed of 190 kt. and a range of more than 1,200 mi. Cahill said Lancair plans to deliver at least three airplanes each week.
Roy Martin, chief test pilot for the Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Integrated Systems Sector, El Segundo, Calif., has been inducted as a fellow by the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, the highest grade of membership attainable. In more than 30 years of flying, Martin has logged about 9,400 flight hours in more than 60 aircraft, including the F-4, F-5, C-141, E-3A, T-39 Sabreliner, Lear Jet and Gulfstream II.
Louis J. Mancini has been appointed senior vice president of Boeing Commercial Aviation Services of Seattle. He succeeds Michael J. Cave, who has been named senior vice president-airplane programs. Mancini was vice president-maintenance services.
TSA plans immediate steps, in a matter of days, to improve air cargo security, according to Tom Blank, assistant administrator for security. The agency won't wait to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking to start instituting changes, Blank told pilots and security specialists at an Air Line Pilots Assn. conference. The TSA has $85 million earmarked for cargo security in Fiscal 2004, triple last year's funding.
Airline service provides the necessary links for globalization, a trend that will not quit, and the Star Alliance will continue to grow, mature and become more efficient at serving the world travelers who are driving that trend, Star CEO Jaan Albrecht contends.
Development of NASA's Research Park from the remnants of Moffett Field is not just a real estate development project to fill empty buildings at the U.S. Navy's long-closed base in the San Francisco Bay area. Its planners expect it to be the main catalyst behind a convergence of "biological-nanotechnology-information technology" capabilities that will lead to introduction of new products for homeland security and other disciplines.
Single-engine airtankers or "Seats" may be the most misunderstood, underutilized aerial firefighting assets available to incident commanders. While suffering from outdated perceptions within the U.S. Forest Service, Seats have become a very effective initial attack resource in Spain and Portugal, and are being embraced by some U.S. state governments.
Strong product demand from government customers allowed Rockwell Collins to offset weak commercial sales and report a 12% increase in earnings per share and a 9% boost in net income for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, compared with fiscal 2002. Sales edged up to about $2.5 billion. As anticipated, sales of commercial aviation electronics systems and products to the air transport, business and regional jet manufacturers declined in the fourth quarter due to lower production rates.
Not since Air Canada failed to avert filing for bankruptcy protection in the spring has the world's 11th largest airline been under as much pressure as it is right now. Hong Kong businessman and Canadian citizen Victor T.K. Li will pump US$491 million of capital into the cash-strapped carrier--but only if Air Canada satisfies several critical conditions. Among other things, the company must: *Resolve its huge pension deficit, which totals about $1.15 billion.
Lockheed Martin isn't ready to give up on some sort of aerodynamic lift for its entry into the Orbital Space Plane competition, even though the tide seems to be running in the direction of a simple ballistic capsule. The company's OSP team, which now includes former competitors Northrop Grumman and Orbital Sciences, is still carrying what it calls a "lifting capsule" concept in addition to a straight ballistic version as NASA prepares to release its OSP request for proposals.
Centralizing airtanker command and control, then equipping aircraft with GPS and satellite telephone systems, has cut British Columbia's wildland firefighting costs by millions of dollars. The combination of dispatching efficiency and space-based technology has also translated to containing fires at much smaller sizes than in the past.
