Air Canada Technical Services, a division of Air Canada, announced a $66-million agreement for maintenance and repair of Canada's National Defense Department fleet of Airbus A310s. The deal, which became effective last month, includes five one-year options for contract extensions, with the potential of bringing the contract length to 10 years and possible revenue of $160 million. Maintenance work on the five A310s will be performed at the company's Vancouver and Montreal sites and at Canadian Forces Base facilities in Trenton, Ontario.
Peter V. Price has been appointed senior vice president-finance/chief financial officer of the Integrated Systems Div. of L-3 Communications, Greenville, Tex. He held those positions at L-3's Link Simulation and Training Div., Arlington, Tex.
Alitalia last week took delivery of the first of six Boeing 777-200ERS (see photo) which are to become the mainstay of the carrier's long-range fleet, replacing 747-200s. The carrier, which recently committed to a 1.9-billion-euro ($1.86-billion) fleet modernization, has five other 777s on order, which are to be delivered by the end of April 2003, and holds another six options. Alitalia's 777s have a 291-seat configuration, with 42 business-class seats.
Thales ATM will manufacture and supply ground-based, low-power distance measuring equipment (DME) to the FAA during the next five years. According to Thales, the 415 SE DME has been designed specifically for the U.S. market, and will be installed in conjunction with both new and existing instrument landing systems. The contract calls for 375 DME systems. Thales ATM also has supplied the FAA with more than 100 Mark 20A ILS systems.
A U.S. District Court judge in Miami has fined SabreTech $500,000 for its role in the May 1996 crash of a ValuJet DC-9 operating as Flight 592 in Florida that killed all 110 onboard. The NTSB concluded that the probable cause of the accident was an operational oxygen generator that started a fire in the cargo hold. The fine was imposed after a federal appeals court upheld a single conviction that the company had failed to train employees in the handling of hazardous materials.
Thailand's Korat AB has begun taking delivery of five upgraded F-16s from the U.S. Air Force's Ogden (Utah) Air Logistics Center's upgrade facility. The aircraft, which came out of storage at USAF's Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center in Tucson, Ariz., have upgrade structures and Pratt & Whitney F100-PW-220E engines that match other Royal Thai AB F-16s. Thailand took delivery of 36 F-16A/Bs from 1988-96 and has surpassed the 55,000-flight-hour mark.
Byron Callan's thought-provoking report on the investment impact of a U.S. attack on Iraq focuses on the defense and aerospace sector and contrasts the current situation with that of the pre-Persian Gulf war period. The Merrill Lynch analyst identified some key differences as the current low level of regional and international support for an invasion of Iraq and the potential this time for urban rather than desert warfare. Current defense stock valuations are at record highs, compared with low valuations then, and the U.S. spending trend is up while then it was down.
NTSB Chairman Marion Blakey's nomination to be FAA administrator will go before the Senate Commerce Committee Sept. 3. The panel scheduled a hearing a month ago but had to postpone it because the Senate broke for its summer recess a day earlier (AW&ST Aug. 5, p. 21). The agency's longtime acting deputy administrator, Monte Belger, currently the acting administrator, has delayed his retirement until mid-September.
The FAA is considering banning general aviation aircraft and charter operators from flying below 18,000 ft. within 30 naut. mi. of the Sept. 11 crash sites in New York, Washington and Somerset, Pa., during several commemoration ceremonies next Wednesday. For the New York area, officials are also considering a ban on general aviation and charter aircraft weighing less than 12,500 lb. from Sept. 11-13 due to a United Nations General Assembly meeting there. An earlier plan to prevent non-U.S.
The discussion about nonmilitary piloting almost always turns to compensation. Senior pilots at major airlines make major money, more than $200,000 for the most senior pilots flying the heaviest aircraft. It's a sore point for the National Business Aviation Assn., whose members are seeking comparison not between corporate pilots at Company A and Company B but pilots compared with pilots, regardless of whether flying for a regional or major airline or for a corporate flight department.
By ANTHONY L. VELOCCI, JR. ( WICHITA, KAN., and LEXINGTON, MASS.)
Raytheon Aircraft Co.'s (RAC) operations probably will lose around $15 million this year. While such a prospect hardly inspires confidence, there's a growing body of evidence--still not widely known--that a turnaround is underway at this long-troubled business. For the first time in years, management is regaining control of RAC's manufacturing operations. At the operating level, there are meaningful, documented results in many areas, and positive momentum is building. Moreover, the progress is reflected in the bottom line.
Lockheed Martin's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will require seven years and more than 10,000 flight hours and 5,700 sorties to wring out the new aircraft before it enters low-rate initial production in 2006. Current plans call for first flight of an F-35A conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) version for the U.S. Air Force in October 2005. However, the company's goal is to fly the first airplane on Aug. 28, of that year, said Paul Metz, director of Lockheed Martin's F-35 Integrated Test Force and former chief test pilot for the F-22 program.
President Bush said he will not spend $5.1 billion of the $28.9 billion in Fiscal 2002 emergency supplemental appropriations. The White House didn't ask for the amount, and Congress told the President he would have to spend it all or none of it. Tied up in the maneuver is funding for F-15 radios, Coast Guard aircraft, and command, control and communications systems.
Kenneth E. Gazzola Executive Vice President/Publisher
More than a month has passed since my Publisher's Message ``The Danger of Playing It Safe'' (AW&ST July 1, p. 3), and there continues to be little encouraging news to report, either from governments or industry/business.
William J. Lynn has become senior vice president-government operations and strategy of the Raytheon Co., Lexington, Mass. He was executive vice president of DFI International of Washington.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Boeing's Rocketdyne Propulsion & Power unit have completed design tests of their MB-XX prototype cryogenic upper-stage engine designed as an option for Delta IVs or the heavy-lift proposals for Japan's H-IIA rocket. The full-scale Combustion Chamber/Injector Assembly tests were conducted at MHI's Tashiro Test Facility at full operating pressure and temperatures. Over the past two years, the team has conducted a series of four tests, the last involving 26 burns, usually of about 20-sec.
Thai Airways International is to add Bahrain to its Middle East destinations as of Nov. 2. It will use an Airbus A300-600 in the thrice-weekly offering. It already flies to Dubai, Muscat, Kuwait and Jeddah.
A string of crashes involving older aircraft has prompted the Civil Aviation Administration of China to begin planning a three-year phase-out of aging airframes, a move that will affect nine airlines that come under the management purview of the regulatory body. The CAAC began reviewing carriers' fleets after a May 8 China Northern Airlines MD-82 crashed on a flight from Beijing to Dalian. The crash occurred after a cabin fire broke out while the aircraft circled above the Yellow Sea in a holding pattern for landing.
Erik Antonsson, who has been chairman of the Mechanical Engineering Dept. at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, has been named chief technologist of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is also in Pasadena.
The smaller you are, the slower you think the FAA should go with its plan to reduce vertical separation between aircraft over the continental U.S. The agency proposes separation of 1,000 ft. instead of the current 2,000 ft. at altitudes between 29,000 ft. and 41,000 ft. (Flight Levels 290-410), starting in December 2004. This would nearly double the capacity of airspace at altitudes where jet aircraft cruise most efficiently. But it also would require altimeter, autopilot and TCAS II upgrades (AW&ST May 13, p. 38).
Ken A. Peterman has been named vice president-business development for Rockwell Collins Government Systems, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He was director of communication systems marketing.
The British Royal Air Force has carried out firing trials of the Storm Shadow land-attack cruise missile in the run-up to the missile entering service, with the air force also beginning to consider future options for development of what is a key weapon in its future precision strike inventory. At least one test firing of a Storm Shadow was by a Royal Air Force (RAF) aircrew at the U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center at China Lake, Calif., during July, with the missile hitting extremely close to the aim point on the target.
Micron-thin, stick-on sensor arrays, which give researchers real-time insights into dynamic airflow changes, could hold the key to advanced, active flight controls. Tao Systems developed the hot-film sensor arrays to monitor aerodynamic phenomena such as buffet, flutter, stall and wing rock by electrically measuring the viscous airflow on the surface of interest, as opposed to using conventional pressure taps.
The U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command has used the CV-22 special operations version of the tiltrotor in the Millennium Challenge 2002 exercise to test how well joint forces can execute a rapid, decisive operation in about 2007. The latest test emphasized the exchange of command, control and information between forces. In it, pilots flew the CV-22 flight simulator at Bell Helicopter Textron facilities in Fort Worth. A second simulator is scheduled to become operational next month at Kirtland AFB, N.M.
