The General Electric/Rolls-Royce F136 team has completed the Phase 3 critical design review of their propulsion system for the Joint Strike Fighter, clearing the way for full engine tests to begin next July.
Ryanair's soaring traffic growth in Continental Europe is being threatened by a fierce legal dispute surrounding the low-cost carrier's financial arrangements with chambers of commerce and airport authorities in France and Belgium.
Kim Day (see photo) has become interim executive director of Los Angeles World Airports. She succeeds Lydia H. Kennard, who has resigned. Day was deputy executive director for facility and space planning, design, engineering, and construction and maintenance at all four LAWA airports.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency not only wants to review detailed designs for Lockheed Martin's and Northrop Grumman's unmanned combat armed rotorcraft, it also wants to see how each system could operate with manned helicopters before deciding on a developer.
A handful of U.S. communities have attracted air service by creating travel banks in which companies and individuals invest money in advance for exclusive service by a participating airline. Now that concept has spread to Canada.
HANEDA BIRD CALL That Mother Nature in the form of gulls can be a major risk to airline safety was illustrated Aug. 15 at Tokyo's Haneda airport, Asia's busiest. Trouble started during the morning rush as a Japan TransOcean Airlines 737-400 bound for Okinawa hit a flock of gulls as it lifted off at 6:30 a.m. The aircraft returned without incident to the airport as the airport was shut down for about 15 min. while the 3,000-meter (9,840-ft.) runway 16L/34R was checked out. At about 7 a.m.
TRIAL BY FIRE, ETC. A nationwide exercise centered on a simulated bioterrorism attack in the vicinity of Las Vegas constitutes U.S. Northern Command's graduation exam. If Northcom's performance meets expectations, its leaders will notify Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that it will be fully operational by Oct. 1, as scheduled. Determined Promise 03 (DP-03) is a two-week, multilevel exercise that kicked off Aug. 18 with a simulated outbreak of pneumonic plague, which then rapidly spread beyond Clark County, Nev.
KEEP IT SIMPLE The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Assn. (AOPA) takes the Bush administration and the FAA to task, finding scores of errors and "unintelligible" information regarding hastily prepared Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs) stemming from a visit by the prez to Redmond and Sunriver, Ore. AOPA chief Phil Boyer said the notices about the TFRs "were almost impossible to decipher" and left pilots wondering how they were supposed to comply with directives.
Former astronaut Winston Scott (see photo) has been appointed executive director of the Cape Canaveral-based Florida Space Authority Board. He succeeds Ed Gormel, who has retired. Scott, a retired U.S. Navy captain, was associate dean of the Florida State University College of Engineering.
Magellan Aerospace will manufacture advanced aero engine components and kits for use in the repair and overhaul of Sweden's Volvo Aero Corp.'s RM12 military engine, under a $5.7-million work order. The engine powers the BAE Systems/Saab JAS 39 Gripen multirole aircraft.
COLLATERAL DAMAGE The high operational pace of U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places is forcing the Defense Dept. to further curtail its international exercises, which are frequently seen as one of the best tools to foster military-to-military ties with other countries. The Pentagon announced last week that this year's Bright Star, scheduled for September in Egypt, is the latest victim. The U.S. military this year has scrapped 49 of 182 planned exercises. The next Bright Star isn't scheduled until 2005.
SOMEWHAT STEALTHY FRIGATE Delayed by a year, INS Talwar, the 4,000-metric-ton Russian Krivak-class guided missile frigate has joined the Indian navy. The first of three ordered, it is the only Indian combatant to have some stealth characteristics, including reduced echoing areas, sound emissions and heat waves. It carries vertically launchable ship-to-surface Club missiles with a distance of more than 200 km. (120 mi.).
GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT After 33 years, Ohsumi, Japan's first satellite, reentered the atmosphere early this month over North Africa, according to the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS). Named for its launch site, the 18.9-in.-dia. spacecraft was an engineering test satellite launched by ISAS' fifth Lambda-4S solid-fuel rocket on Feb. 11, 1970. It was put into a 350 X 5,140-km. (217X 3,194-mi.) elliptical orbit, making Japan the fourth nation after Russia, the U.S. and France, to enter space. Ohsumi was at an altitude of 150 km. when it died.
Every pilot knows safety depends on monitoring the aircraft's flight path and systems. What might not be obvious is that to ensure the highest levels of safety, each flight crewmember must also actively cross-check the actions of each cockpit colleague. These crew monitoring and cross-checking functions can literally be the last line of defense; when a crewmember can catch an error or unsafe act, this detection may break the chain of events leading to an accident.
The advantage of Pegasus as a small satellite booster is that with an air-launched vehicle, the launch infrastructure is portable and can go wherever launch parameters and the customer dictate. In addition to Kennedy and Vandenberg AFB, Calif., missions, previous launches have been based out of Edwards AFB, Calif.; NASA Wallops Island, the Canary Islands and Kwajalein atoll. Orbital Sciences Corp. (OSC) has also coordinated plans with Brazil for future missions out of the Alcantara launch site area.
Dwight Streit, vice president-microelectronics technology at the Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Space Technology sector, has been named chairman of the engineering advisory board of the University of California at Irvine. He succeeds Henry Samueli, co-founder/chief technology officer of Broadcom. Streit has published more than 300 technical papers and holds or has pending 25 patents.
STARTING GUN Release of the Columbia accident report clears the way for an intensive first round of space shuttle hearings on Capitol Hill that probably will be limited only by how long Congress remains in town this year. First up will be the House Science Committee, which plans a Sept. 4 session with Harold Gehman, the outspoken chairman of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will follow the next week, with John McCain (R-Ariz.) wielding the gavel.
While Mil is emerging as the likely winner in the Russian defense ministry's nearly interminable effort to replace the Mi-24 Hind combat helicopter with the Mi-28N, the future of another key program, the Mi-38 medium-heavy transport helicopter, is far less certain. Only days before the week-long Moscow air show opened on Aug. 19, senior Russian air force officials made clear their ambitions to introduce into service up to 50 of the Mi-28N Havoc all-weather attack helicopter by 2010.
Elie Housman has been named chairman of ICTS International, Amstelveen, Netherlands. He succeeds Ezra Harel, who is retiring. Housman has been chairman of ICTS subsidiary Inksure Technologies Inc.
Hoping to cut costs by A$1 billion ($666 million) over the next two years, Qantas is establishing stand-alone business units for its domestic and international flight operations, maintenance and engineering activities, and catering, cargo and holiday package activities.
NASA plans to crank up its new Engineering and Safety Center on Oct. 1, setting a safe return to flight for the space shuttle fleet as the center's top priority. To achieve that goal, its blue-ribbon engineering team will have new clout within the NASA management structure, patterned on U.S. Navy engineering and safety practices, according to former Kennedy Space Center Director Roy Bridges, who was recently named to head both the engineering center and Langley Research Center, Va., where it will be headquartered.
USAF Maj. Gen. (ret.) Timothy J. McMahon (see photo) has become Colorado Springs-based vice president-strategic programs for Northrop Grumman's Mission Systems. He was commander of the 20th Air Force at Warren AFB, Wyo.
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