Maintenance, repair and overhaul suppliers who survive the severe recession ravaging the commercial aviation industry probably can look forward to a booming business climate in the second half of the decade. Until then, only the most tenacious players will succeed in expanding their share of what currently is a flat to declining market.
I see another Defense Dept. and contractor aircraft program management team has bit the dust for "cost problems." I don't know what Air Force acquisition chief Marvin R. Sambur has been doing for the past year, but as you stated: "Air Force and industry sources insist the costs were known at least a year ago." The discerning public was also well aware; so much for the very expensive Defense Dept.-imposed cost-reporting system.
Investigators from Ukraine and Iran will seek to determine why an Antonov An-140 twin-turboprop transport crashed on Dec. 23, in central Iran, killing all 45 people on board.
The first of two reproduction Me262A jet fighters flew for 35 min. on Dec. 20 from Paine Field near Seattle. Test pilot Wolfgang Czaia said the airplane was airborne after a takeoff run of 14 sec., lifting off at 110 kt. Czaia left the gear down during the flight as a safety precaution. "The airplane's handling qualities were excellent in all three axes, and I could trim the aircraft to fly straight and level hands-off," he said.
Beginning Mar. 1, Delta passengers traveling on most restricted fares will no longer have the option to travel on standby. Instead, passengers will be able to receive confirmation of flight changes for a $25 fee (waived for frequent-flier club members). The new policy applies to connecting flights as well as changes within 3 hr. of departure, on the same day of originally ticketed travel. It is effective for ticketing bought on or about Sept. 5, 2002, for travel beginning Mar. 1 in the U.S. and Canada on mainline, Delta Express and Delta Connection services.
Robert Wall (Washington), David A. Fulghum (Washington)
Although Washington is pursuing a diplomatic rather than military strategy in trying to defuse the nuclear crisis with North Korea, Pentagon officials undertaking contingency planning know they face a more lethal adversary in Pyongyang than Baghdad. Iraq has attempted to grow its so-called asymmetric capability, military tools such as ballistic missiles that exploit U.S. weaknesses. But Iraq's efforts can't rival what North Korea has amassed, much of which lies within striking range of South Korea's capital, Seoul.
A Proton M rocket fitted with the Breeze M upper stage orbited Canada's Nimiq 2 telecommunications satellite Dec. 30 in the first commercial mission for the upgraded combination, giving International Launch Services (ILS) and its Russian partner Khrunichev an alternative to the Proton version that failed in a commercial mission last November.
Mar. 10-11--European Transport Leaders Conference. Landmark Hotel, London. Mar. 12-13--Toulouse Symposium. Toulouse (France) Congress Center. Mar. 27-28--Defense Budget Conference. Holiday Inn, Rosslyn, Va. Apr. 15-17--MRO 2003 & MRO Latin America. Broward County Convention Center, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. May 6-8--Aerospace Defense & Finance Conference. Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York. May 14-16--Homeland Security Summit & Exposition. Hyatt Regency Crystal City, Arlington, Va.
On another front, BAE Systems has also reportedly suspended negotiations with EADS for the sale of BAE's 27.5% share holding in satellite and launcher manufacturer Astrium. This stall is apparently due to changes dictated by the deteoriating space telecom market.
CAPITALIZING ON THE NEW POTOMAC CONSOLIDATED TERMINAL Radar Approach Control (Tracon), the FAA plans to start implementing a redesign of airspace in the Washington-Baltimore areas by the end of the year. The facility began operation on Dec. 14, with Dulles Tracon controllers as the first occupants. In the next four months, controllers from Reagan Washington National, Andrews AFB, Richmond (Va.) International and Baltimore-Washington International airports will move in.
What to fix and when to fix it? In airline maintenance the answer isn't as simple as, "Whatever is broken." If it's a safety of flight issue, fixing what is broken is a given. If a repair falls below that threshold, then economics and fleet scheduling issues come into play. But knowing when something is going to fail is not an exact science.
Space industry and government leaders are moving to reinforce Europe's capabilities in EHF and SHF technology to meet rapidly growing demand for highly secure military satellite telecommunications.
By 2004, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' Nagoya plant is set to coproduce the center wing assembly of the Boeing 747-400. The agreement marks the second center wing section production deal in Japan; Fuji Heavy Industries produces the 777's center wing section. MHI expects the 747 production rate to be two units a month. Unit price is put at about $8.3 million each.
Controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory have written off the Comet Nucleus Tour (Contour) spacecraft, after a final attempt to contact it failed on Dec. 20. The silence that followed 16 hr. of commands in two Deep Space Network sessions last month was expected, given the apparent explosion of the spacecraft on Aug. 15 during a critical solid-rocket burn designed to take it to close encounters with several comets (AW&ST Dec. 23, 2002, p. 20).
Steven Ostro has been named to receive the Gerard P. Kuiper Prize from the American Astronomical Society's Div. for Planetary Sciences. Ostro studies asteroids as a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. He will be cited for his more than 20 years of research demonstrating the power of radar techniques to wrest information from near-Earth asteroids.
All Nippon Airways has reached an agreement with United Airlines for code-sharing on Boeing 777-200 flights from Kansai International Airport in the Osaka-Kobe region to Honolulu beginning in March. The two Star Alliance members currently code-share on Kansai-San Francisco flights. During the 24-hr. turnaround time on that service, United had been dispatching its aircraft from San Francisco to Guam, taking advantage of what used to be that island's popularity as a Japanese tourist spot. But Guam's appeal has waned, so United discontinued the practice.
Poland's decision to buy 48 new F-16 multirole fighters represents the country's largest military purchase, which U.S. government and industry officials believe could pave the way for the country to become a future buyer of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. After having lost several fighter competitions in the region, the F-16 closed last year by winning the largest prize available, a $3.5-billion deal to replace Poland's obsolete MiG-21 fleet of more than 75 aircraft.
UPS INTENDS TO INSTALL A NEW GPS WIDE AREA AUGMENTATION system (WAAS) receiver on its entire fleet of Boeing 757s and 767s by October. The FAA has certified the link and display processing unit (LPDU), manufactured by UPS Aviation Technologies, which is the first of its kind to receive the agency's blessing, according to the company. The LPDU is part of the correlated automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) and traffic alert collision-avoidance system (TCAS) display. The FAA plans to declare the WAAS signal operational late this year.
Here is yet another article on the push by EADS to penetrate the U.S. defense market (AW&ST Nov. 25, 2002, p. 31). On numerous fronts, EADS continues to try to entice U.S. defense decision makers with local production incentives, if selected. Enough is enough.
Tactical air transport crews learn how to survive missile and fighter attacks during a nine-day "Basic Course" run by the Advanced Airlift Tactics Training Center. Academics and part of the course's flight training is conducted from the Missouri ANG and USAFR school's headquarters at Rosecrans Municipal Airport near St. Joseph, Mo. Students and instructors then deploy to Ft. Huachuca, Ariz., for low-level training over desert mountains (see p. 46). Jim Haseltine photo.
BALL AEROSPACE & TECHNOLOGIES CORP. WILL DESIGN, develop and test an integrated antenna suite for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter's communications, navigation and identification system. Each aircraft suite will consist of one S-band, two UHF, two radar altimeter and three L-band low-observable antennas.
BAE Systems and Finmeccanica are trying a resolve a last-minute controversy that is likely to hold up formation of a new joint electronics venture, Eurosystems, for at least two months. The dispute over the venture, which was supposed to be created by year's end, stems from Italian treasury ministry concerns about the respective stakes of the two companies in the venture.
DynCorp Technical Services will continue to maintain NASA aircraft under an extension of its contract with Johnson Space Center until Feb. 29, 2004. The Fort Worth-based outfit won a $26.7-million option on its Aircraft Maintenance and Modification Program contract to maintain, rebuild and alter NASA aircraft based at JSC; El Paso, Tex.; Edwards AFB, Calif.; Kennedy Space Center, and Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va. The contract is worth $118.6 million to DynCorp if all options are exercised.
Expecting a rough ride for airline stocks over the next few months, analyst Sam Buttrick advises UBS Warburg investors to fasten their seat belts and buy the survivors. He likes the chances of four network airlines--Northwest, American, Continental and Delta. He includes them among solvent survivors whose fortunes are "to double or triple over the next two years."
Nellis AFB, Nev., is supposed to receive its first F/A-22 on Jan 17. It is the first of the stealth aircraft operated by Air Combat Command. The training base for the F/A-22 will be at Tindall AFB, Fla., while the first operational squadron will be located at Langley AFB, Va.
