Swiss Outlook Bleak Swiss International Air Lines faces a bleak outlook for the year, as its financial situation continues to deteriorate, potential partners waver and a key ruling could force the carrier to alter pilot seniority lists.
UNITED STATES Editor-In-Chief: David M. North [email protected] Managing Editor: James R. Asker [email protected] Assistant Managing Editors: Stanley W. Kandebo--Technology [email protected] Michael Stearns--Production [email protected] Senior Editors: Craig Covault [email protected], David Hughes [email protected] NEW YORK 2 Penn Plaza, Fifth Floor, New York, N.Y. 10121 Phone: +1 (212) 904-2000, Fax: +1 (212) 904-6068
A318 WINS JAA CERTIFICATION The Airbus A318 last week received certification by the European Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA) for operations with the International CFM56-5B powerplant. FAA certification of the 100-120-seat single-aisle airliner, the smallest in the Airbus A320 family, is expected this month. Certification with the final version of the alternate powerplant, Pratt & Whitney's PW6000, is anticipated in November 2005, upon completion of the remaining 100 hr. of flight trials.
United Airlines Capt. Walt Bates (Land O' Lakes, Wis.)
John P. Abbey's suggestion to quit recycling cabin air (AW&ST May 5, p. 8) asserts that the recycling system saves money. My data from five years of flying the Boeing 767-300 show the opposite.
There has recently been considerable coverage of the processes and decisions related to replacing the aging KC-135 tanker fleet, and of the problems of insufficient tanker resources to support air operations during the Iraqi war. Similar debates on the number of new tankers that can be provided are occurring in the U.K. over replacing VC10 and TriStar tankers.
CRUSHING BLOW Wright Experience's 1911 Model B Wright Flyer crashed on May 19 while on a test flight. Ken Hyde, the head of the Wright Experience and pilot of the replica, broke a wrist when the aircraft flew into trees. Hyde discovered he did not have enough wing-warp control to overcome a bank angle. The accident occurred at the Warrenton, Va., facility, extensively damaging the Model B. The aircraft was scheduled to attend the Paris air show.
Foam Jars T-Seal The first shuttle external tank foam impact tests against simulated Columbia leading edge panels on May 29 knocked loose a T-seal opening a 22-in.-long gap in the simulated wing leading edge--a stunning test result that begins to provide physical proof that foam shed by the Lockheed Martin tank caused the loss of Columbia and the death of seven astronauts.
Russian Snafu Russian investigators have narrowed the cause of the unplanned ballistic reentry of the new Soyuz TMA-1 spacecraft carrying the station's Expedition 6 crew to the "inadequate reaction" of descent control unit avionics to signals from the spacecraft's gyroscope and an angular rate meter. Their initial assessment is that the potential for this problem was accidentally built into the component's electronics when the design was adopted as part of the original Soyuz T upgrade in 1979.
Tristan Lewis has been named national vice president-client services, John McCormick national vice president-managed aircraft sales and John R. Nelson director of business systems, all for Executive Jet Management Inc. of Cincinnati. Ronald Silverman has become Northeast U.S. vice president-client relations, based in Woodbridge, N.J. He was regional vice president-client services for TAG Aviation USA Inc., White Plains, N.Y.
It may have been an icon for aeronautical research, but that didn't pay the bills. So the 80 X 120-ft. wind tunnel at NASA Ames Research Center has been put on "standby" and could be closed permanently next year if business doesn't improve. There's not much hope for that. The order to cease operations came abruptly on May 16, but it wasn't unexpected.
USAF Lt. Col. (ret.) John F. Harvell (Merrimack, N.H.)
With respect to your article "Unfriendly Fire" (AW&ST Apr. 7, p. 28), in addition to its capabilities in network-centric warfare, the Joint Tactical Information Display System (JTIDS) provides an inherent identification-friend-or-foe (IFF) capability.
APOCALYPSE NOW The Senate Armed Services Committee's cut of two F/A-22s from the Fiscal 2004 budget request could have more far-reaching consequences than the lawmakers intended, warn service officials. Advocates for the stealth fighter paint a doom-and-gloom scenario, saying as many as nine aircraft could be lost as a result of the measure because the per-copy price would go up, in part because "supplier confidence" would be eroded. Still lingering are software problems for the stealth fighter, with reliability running far below where it should be.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries holds nearly a third of the $11.1 billion the Japanese Defense Agency spent in fiscal 2002 for military equipment. MHI, the prime contractor on Japan's F-2 close air support fighter, also builds the SH-60K helicopter and Patriot missile defense system under license. It received slightly more than $3 billion of the JDA's total procurement allocation, and its business base was three times larger than its nearest competitor, Kawasaki Heavy Industries.
HACK ATTACK Hackers are starting to overwhelm the decision-making of computer systems administrators trying to defend against attacks with viruses that work faster. Richard Clarke, who has advised President Bush on cyber-security, says the "Slammer" worm in January infected more than 300,000 computer networks on five continents within 14 min. "It is almost impossible to react in time to a new threat like Slammer, even if you do see it coming," he said. So far, hackers who have taken control of computer systems haven't used that power for destruction, Clarke said.
6 Correspondence 10-11 Who's Where 14-15 Market Focus 17 Industry Outlook 19 Airline Outlook 21 In Orbit 22-23 World News Roundup 25 Washington Outlook 79 Classified 80 Contact Us 81 Aerospace Calendar
WORLD NEWS ROUNDUP 22 Grand Canyon tour operator gets its first EC130 22 Four major international carriers post profits 23 Boeing hires ex-French official to revamp European strategy WORLD NEWS & ANALYSIS 26 Back from brink, V-22 once again eyeing rosier future 28 AgustaWestland likely to get an equal role on the BA609 30 Bell looking for performance to match tiltrotor promise 31 Raytheon wins decoy pro- gram; jammer version stalls
Timothy P. Malishenko has been named corporate vice president-contracts and pricing for Chicago-based Boeing. He succeeds Robert J. Ingersoll, who has retired. Malishenko was vice president-contracts and pricing for Boeing Integrated Defense Systems.
Ronald B. Woodard, former president of the Boeing Commercial Airplane Group, has been appointed to the board of directors of Continental Airlines. He is chairman of the MagnaDrive Corp.
The CFM56-powered Airbus A318 obtained JAA certification on May 23, while FAA certification is expected to follow next month in preparation for first delivery of the 107-seat twinjet to Frontier Airlines. A Pratt & Whitney-powered version, which has been delayed repeatedly by the technical difficulties with the PW6000 turbofan, is scheduled to enter service in November 2005.
Los Angeles-based Senior Engineering Editor Michael A. Dornheim visited the pair of Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) while they were undergoing final assembly and test at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in nearby Pasadena, Calif. The 400-lb. vehicles dwarf the first rover to operate on Mars, the 23-lb. Sojourner that was a key part of the 1996 Mars Pathfinder mission. The flight spare for Sojourner is in the foreground at lower left. The first MER launch is set for June 5, which will take it to a Jan. 4, 2004, landing in what may be an ancient lakebed (see p. 54).
BAE Systems plc has been in talks with Bombardier Inc. about acquisition of its NATO and Canadian aviation flying training centers. The business is valued at around $100 million.
Add Applied Signal Technology Inc. to the list of small defense electronics companies whose most recent quarterly performances substantially exceeded Wall Street expectations and provided further proof that there are industry niches where the concept of "aggressive growth" remains the order of the day.
EIGHT-IN-ONE Rockot is preparing for a late-June launch that will see no fewer than eight small scientific satellites lofted into space on a Rockot booster, including the company's first Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO) missions. One of the larger satellites, to be placed in elliptical orbit, will be a Czech spacecraft, Mimosa, intended for upper atmospheric density measurements. Another to be sent into SSO will be Canada's first space telescope, Most. The rest of the payload, also earmarked for SSO, consists of nanosatellites.
CORE PROBLEM Back when O'Keefe's biggest problem was getting space station spending under control, he designated delivery of the second multi-hatch node to the station as key. That would get the program to the "U.S. core complete," a milestone that slipped way to the right with the Columbia mishap. Still, workers at Alenia Spazio's factory in Turin, Italy, are packing up Node 2 to ship to the Kennedy Space Center. There were a few bad moments earlier this month after the 16 "petals" designed to protect the node's peripheral hatches were installed and fit-checked.
