CAA/FAA certification of BAE Systems' Avro RJX aircraft has been delayed until December 2001 because a manufacturing process for the integrated powerplant system (IPPS) is taking longer than anticipated. The IPPS includes pylons, nacelles and Honeywell AS900 turbofan engines. First flight of the RJX-85 is scheduled in February 2001, followed by the RJX-100 in April. Company officials said there are no technical problems with the system or engine, which have logged 3,300 hr. in testing. BAE Systems flight test crews, who have flown the IPPS for 85 hr.
USAF Maj. Gen. (ret.) Michael Butchko has become program manager of Space Gateway Support's Joint Base Operations and Support Contract for Logicon, Herndon, Va. He has been a management consultant since retiring as commander of the Air Force Development Test Center, Eglin AFB, Fla. Butchko succeeds William P. Hickman.
Qualcomm has become a partner in the SkyBridge broadband satellite network. The agreement will allow Alcatel-led SkyBridge and its other partners to use Qualcomm's CDMA digital wireless technology and licenses in its terminals and gateways along with TDMA and other protocols. Alcatel and Qualcomm are already partnered in the Euteltracs satellite tracking system.
An Antonov An-26 turboprop crashed on the night of Oct. 31 in northeastern Angola after taking off from Saurimo en route to the capital of Luanda, 450 mi. to the west. All 42 passengers and six crew were reported killed in the crash. According to Angolan civil aviation authorities, the aircraft lost contact with the control tower roughly 20 min. after takeoff. An official at the Angolan company that operated the aircraft said the An-26 ``exploded'' in mid-air.
Sally Ball has been promoted to executive vice president/chief financial officer from vice president-finance/controller of Exigent International Inc., Melbourne, Fla.
Ball Aerospace will design and develop a Stellar Reference Unit for the Outer Planets/Solar Probe Project under a $10.4-million contract from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Paul Corcoran has become engineering director of Jasmin plc, Nottingham, England. He was head of the Electronic Systems Div. at the University of Derby.
Loral Space&Communications--its much vaunted satellite-telephone service faltering badly--is not teetering on the brink. Nor is the company about to fall into the arms of another company.
Raytheon Co. recently reported a 53% drop in third-quarter earnings from a year ago, to 39 cents a share, on sales of $3.68 billion. Nevertheless, earnings essentially met targets, and the company's cash flow was solid. Wall Street views the results as evidence that the defense contractor may be on track for a sound recovery from a faltering financial performance in the last year or so.
Air France plans to terminate the Paris-Brussels route in March 2001. The French flag carrier's shortest European route (160 naut. mi.) is expected to be replaced by an expanded business agreement with Thalys International, a cross-border organization operating the Paris-Brussels-Amsterdam TGV high-speed trains. Today, in addition to nonstop services, four Brussels-Paris TGVs stop daily at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport to provide increasingly popular intermodal services. TGVs link Brussels and Paris in 1 hr. 20 min.
David Southwood has been appointed science director of the European Space Agency for 2001-04. He will succeed Roger-Maurice Bonnet. Southwood is strategy manager of the agency's Earth observation future programs.
The Joint Strike Fighter competition between Boeing and Lockheed Martin may come down to a classic replay of performance versus cost. With low observables, on-board processing and aerodynamic performance roughly at parity (although short takeoff and vertical landing propulsion systems are yet to be tested), the choice of a winning design may be determined in other areas such as the radar and electro-optical sensors, according to aerospace industry officials here for the International Powered Lift Conference 2000.
Members of the space shuttle ice and debris inspection team at the Kennedy Space Center have been honored for safety observations prior to the launch of Discovery on its mission to the International Space Station last month. Gregory N. Katnik and Jorge E. Rivera of NASA received its Exceptional Achievement Medal, while Michael Barber, John B. Blue and Thomas F. Ford of the United Space Alliance and D. Scott Otto of the Lockheed Martin Space Services Co. received the NASA Public Service Medal.
Gulfstream, the General Dynamics business jet subsidiary, has just leased five military version Gulfstream C-37As to the Air Force for $477 million, but company planners have a bigger sell in mind: pitching the long-endurance, high-altitude aircraft to the Navy as a utility electronic reconnaissance and patrol aircraft. Officials at the Center for Naval Analysis have asked Gulfstream to look at an even larger version of its newest and biggest G-VSP. The Navy wants technical data by Dec. 1 on a G-V with a longer fuselage and more powerful engines.
The U.S. National Security Agency's Echelon electronic surveillance system generates serious concerns, could threaten public and individual freedoms and requires ``appropriate responses,'' according to the French parliament's defense committee.
The first A340-600, which rolled off the final ssembly line in Toulouse, France, late last month, is entering the ground test phase in preparation for its maiden flight next year. The 56,000-lb.-thrust Rolls-Royce Trent 500 turbofans, auxiliary power unit and additional systems have not been installed as yet on the 380-seat aircraft, the biggest commercial transport built in Europe. The stretched-fuselage derivative of the in-production A340-300 has a 7,500-naut.-mi. maximum range and will be complemented by the 313-seat, extended-range A340-500.
Enormous debt, low yields and escalating fuel costs factored into cash-strapped Malaysia Airlines' recent decision to scale down its fleet by 20 aircraft by Jan. 1 and significantly reduce services. Malaysia Airlines (MAS), which has suffered losses since 1995, is in debt to the tune of M$9 billion ($2.4 billion)--30% of which is attributed to the depreciation of Malaysian currency at the height of the Asian economic crisis in 1997.
An advanced forward-looking infrared system being developed for the U.S. Army's RAH-66 Comanche helicopter will be matured and refined as part of Lockheed Martin's ``Arrowhead'' upgrade to U.S. Army AH-64A/D Apache rotorcraft. By sharing technology between the programs, overall cost and risk should be reduced substantially.
USMC Maj. Gen. (ret.) James E. Livingston has been appointed to the board of directors of Petroleum Helicopters Inc., Lafayette, La. He is executive vice president of Columbus Properties.
France and the U.S. are planning a validation flight in 2007 to test vital technologies for a planned joint Mars sample return program. The flight will test a main orbiter/reentry vehicle to be provided by French space agency CNES, a high-precision landing/hazard avoidance system to be developed by NASA and a telecom relay orbiter to be supplied by Italy. It will also demonstrate a novel aerocapture orbital braking technique and deploy four European Netlanders to probe the Martian weather and subsurface structure.
China says it has launched its first navigation/positioning satellite. The official Xinhua news agency released a photo of a Long March 3-A lifting off from the Xichang launch center in Sichuan province in southwest China. The news agency said the payload was ``the Beidou Navigation Testing Satellite'' and that the launch was in the early morning hours of Oct. 31.
After coming in for strong criticism from Congress about the state of its science and technology program, the U.S. Air Force is taking steps to try and allay lawmakers' concerns.
The European Space Agency has released one of the first images taken with its new XMM-Newton orbital X-ray observatory. The image, taken by the satellite's EPIC-pn camera in the 0.3-2.0-keV. energy band, is a mosaic of 12 independent observations of the Coma Cluster of galaxies. The mosaic, obtained thanks to the very large collecting area of XMM's telescopes, shows the huge number of galaxies belonging to the cluster. Some of these galaxies have been tentatively identified.
Congress is stepping up the FAA's aviation security program, concerned that too many weapons still clear airport checkpoints undetected. The strongly bipartisan Airport Security Improvement Act of 2000 mandates better training of security personnel, and fingerprint checks to buttress the control of access to the nation's airports. Other provisions order the FAA to strengthen the physical protection of air traffic control facilities, and encourage more extensive use of explosive detection systems.
Bruce E. Tarletsky has become vice president-marketing and development of the Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport Authority. He was director of business development for the Lehigh-Northampton Airport Authority, Allentown, Pa.
