The increase in air traffic in the last week of April suggests that the postwar recovery in U.S. travel demand is well underway, according to Merrill Lynch analyst Michael J. Linenberg. Domestic traffic for the last full week in April was up 4%, compared with the previous week's decline of 5%. Atlantic and Latin load factors saw similar increases.
Leaders of Europe's troubled space program are proposing sweeping changes in the launcher sector and a sharp reduction in the scope of projects conducted by national agencies, beginning with French space agency CNES.
ROTARY WING ER Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. presented Canadian Helicopters Ltd. and the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care with an award for achieving 100,000 hr. of accident-free flying in helicopter emergency medical service. This is the first time worldwide that an EMS helicopter operation has reached this milestone. CHL, the largest EMS helo operator in Canada, has provided medical transportation services to Ontario since 1977, carrying more than 7,000 critically ill or injured patients annually.
Yannick D'Escatha, president of French space agency CNES, has reaffirmed government aims to unload part or all of the agency's 32% share in launch firm Arianespace. "Everyone agrees there is no reason CNES' stake must remain at the present level, " he said, echoing a recent statement by Research Minister Claudie Haignere that several scenarios--including the full withdrawal of CNES from Arianespace capital--were being studied.
American Airlines Capt. Don Bliss (Franklinton, N.C. )
Well congratulations, low-fare, low-cost people, you won fair and square. However, before celebrating too much, you might consider the consequences. Instead of fighting to raise yourselves to the service quality and compensation level of an industry and profession that took more than 80 years to develop, you have dragged us all down to the discount level.
DUMBER, BUT FASTER After years of deliberating whether to initiate the development of a low-cost, small, loitering cruise missile, U.S. Air Force leaders are finally giving the green light to a serious development program. The Air Force Research Laboratory and Lockheed Martin have been working for years on the Low-Cost Autonomous Attack System (Locaas) that would find a target using its ladar seeker and attack it. But that level of autonomy was too much for service officials, who argued an operator-in-the-loop was still required before a weapon could be employed.
NEWSPAPER ROUTE IN THE SKY Qatar Airways is offering its first- and business-class customers free access to same-day printed versions of about 170 of the world's newspapers, including the Boston Globe, Moscow Times, Shanghai Daily and the Times of India. Each flight's selections of papers is based on the aircraft's destination--for example, French newspapers would be available on flights to Paris. The newspapers, exact reproductions of print editions, are laser printed at the airport and delivered to the aircraft prior to departure.
USAF Lt. Gen. (ret.) Roger G. DeKok, a former vice commander of Air Force Space Command (AFSPC), died of a heart attack on Apr. 24 during a business trip. He was 56. After retiring from a 34-year USAF career in April 2002, DeKok joined Northrop Grumman in June, serving as a vice president and deputy general manager of its Mission Systems' Command, Control and Intelligence Div., based in Colorado Springs.
The comment by NASA Deputy Associate Administrator Michael Kostelnik that "It cannot be another Challenger-type downtime, because with the International Space Station we really have a need to get back to flight" (AW&ST Apr. 14, p. 30) represents an attitude that surely will bring about the next shuttle accident.
Just because Toulouse is the center for European aerospace doesn't mean the city has an edge on devising a long-term airport policy for resolving the opposing demands of the traveling public and the residents.
END LOOMS FOR MALINDI COMPLEX The long story of Italy's San Marco equatorial space launch complex off the Kenyan coast, 30 km. north of Malindi, seems to be coming to a bitter end. Money is running out after a long confrontation fought in the courts between the Italian space agency (ASI) and the University of Rome, which is the legal owner of the seven converted offshore oil platforms and related facilities on dry land. And no users are in sight.
There were minimal NASA safety staff inputs to Columbia prelaunch and in-orbit external tank debris risk assessments critical to the shuttle's Feb. 1 reentry accident, according to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. An audit of the more serious bipod foam events, like the one implicated in the Columbia accident and a flight three months earlier, indicate such incidents could have occurred many more times in the program than NASA has been able to account for, board members said.
GOING LONG Look for the Air Force to shift its munitions spending, with increasing amounts going to longer-range weapons. About half of its Fiscal 2003 spending on air-to-ground ordnance is going to the GPS-guided Joint Direct Attack Munition that was used heavily in Iraq. But in future budgets, the direct attack weapon, with a 10-12-mi. range, will be less prominent. A large amount of the money that had been going to JDAM will now shift to the small-diameter bomb, the 250-lb.-class GPS-guided weapon that features a wing-kit to reach targets at ranges of more than 40 mi.
FAMILY OF BLIMPS A small group of U.S. Navy officials has long been among the Pentagon's staunchest advocates for the use of lighter-than-air (LTA) vehicles, and now the service is on the verge of launching a demonstration for Hybrid Ultra Large Aircraft. The service is mulling the fielding of a variety of such aircraft ranging from 30-100 tons payload that could operate from unprepared facilities and even from water. To realize that vision, the service would start with the design and testing of a relatively small, 500-lb. payload version to learn more about LTA systems.
Russian Soyuz operations like those that sustained eight Soviet-era space stations over three decades have now ridden to the rescue of the International Space Station by launching a new two-man U.S./Russian caretaker crew and planning to return the Expedition 6 trio on board when shuttle operations were halted.
The U.S. Air Force has exercised an option to buy an additional F-22 in Fiscal 2003, raising the buy to 21 fighters. The money for the additional aircraft came from cost savings on the program, the Air Force said. The service hopes to repeat the move in 2004 to bring the buy that year back to 23, after having to trim the budget request to 22 because costs were increasing. However, Rep.
BIG DOGS WON'T BARK The new Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, says he's still deciding whether to go to the Paris air show, despite Washington's ban on generals attending. But, he adds, "I'd certainly check with the [NATO] secretary general and the [U.S.] secretary of Defense." Such approval isn't likely. Meanwhile, Jones is busy trying to persuade Europe's NATO members to turn at least some of their 2.3-million-troop military into a lean, mobile, network-centric expeditionary force.
There are remarkable similarities between the space shuttle Columbia tragedy and the July 2000 Air France Concorde crash in how flight safety risk was assessed by managers charged with judging debris-related incidents. Debris incidents occurred several times in each program before each suffered a catastrophic accident.
Burt Rutan is the most gifted designer/engineer on the planet, a true genius in the top rank of aerospace pioneers. SpaceShipOne enchanted me, not the least because it closely resembles the rockets I drew as a schoolboy reader of pulp science-fiction more than 50 years ago--right down to the multiple round windows and stars all over the exterior (AW&ST Apr. 21, p. 64). After a long career in aviation, I hope I can cap it with a 100-km. ride in SpaceShipOne. Who's handling reservations?
ALABAMA BOUND U.S. Air Force overhaul work at Pemco Aeroplex Inc. in Birmingham, Ala., has given Avexus Inc. entree into commercial MRO work for its Impresa maintenance management software at Pemco World Air Services in Dothan, Ala. Pemco has plans to expand its Boeing 737-300 overhaul and 757 cargo conversion operations in Dothan, where it has 500,000 sq. ft. of hangar space. Impresa will be operated online in Dothan from Birmingham.
Daniel J. Crowley has been appointed president of Lockheed Martin Information Systems, Orlando, Fla., effective May 15. He will succeed John Hallal, who is retiring. Crowley has been vice president-business development and advanced programs for Lockheed Martin Space and Strategic Missiles, Sunnyvale, Calif.
THE ACCIDENT RATE FOR BUSINESS AVIATION in the U.S. last year was 0.116 per 100,000 flight hours, according to Robert Breiling Associates and Business and Commercial Aviation magazine. The fatal accident rate declined to 0.029 per 100,000hr. compared with 0.031 in 2001. Business aircraft were involved in eight accidents, two of which were fatal, killing six people. Scheduled airlines operating under FAR Part 121 had the second lowest rate at 0.195 with a fatal accident rate of zero. Business aircraft flown by professional pilots amassed 6.89 million hr.
A "tangle" in NASA management processes is partly to blame for why NASA canceled initial requests to the Defense Dept. for reconnaissance satellite imagery that could possibly have shown, before reentry, whether the orbiter's left wing was fatally damaged, said Sally K. Ride, a member of the Columbia accident board and first U.S. woman in space. Ride is part of a board team examining the role NASA's management processes played in the accident.
