Buoyed by increasing passenger and cargo traffic, Cathay Pacific Airways is dusting off a 1997 expansion plan that called for orders for the Airbus A340-500 and -600. ``We are back on the expansion trail,'' Cathay CEO David Turnbull told Hong Kong's Asian Aerospace Forum last week. Turnbull said the airline, one of Asia's three top international carriers, planned to add extra frequencies, routes and aircraft that would lead to a doubling of its annual passenger volume to 20 million.
The Pentagon's decision to fund both the Army's Theater High-Altitude Area Defense system and the Navy's Theater-Wide system is leaving the Navy missile defense system cash-starved. When the Pentagon abandoned its plan to fund just one upper-tier defense system after 2001, it failed to win sufficient funding to keep both efforts going, the Navy program's backers grumble. Thaad got enough money after the program was able to overcome its technical problems. But the remaining share for the Navy was too small, said officials.
Raytheon Co. has received its first award fee--$1.4 million--under the Rolling Airframe Missile Guided Weapon System helicopter, aircraft and surface mode development contract.
The Australian government is considering scrapping or deferring a number of major defense acquisition programs from the air force and army, in large measure because the high costs of leading the United Nations' relief effort in East Timor has knocked a hole in its defense budgets that is likely to last for three years.
RapidEye AG, a German remote sensing firm, will select a European or U.S. company to build and launch a four-satellite constellation designed for rapid delivery of multispectral imagery to the agricultural industry. Four companies are being considered, and a selection could come this month or next. The winner will build all spacecraft and deliver them to orbit, opening a segment of customer-tailored, space-derived services that could significantly alter agricultural business practices and processes.
Six Japanese manufacturers--Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries, Nissan Motors, Fujitsu Corp. and Toshiba Corp.--are to be named to the U.S.-Navy Theater Wide (NTW) ballistic missile defense program by March. Details of what the Japanese companies will work on are scarce, but it relates to the sea-launched upper tier defense system called NTW Block 2 (AW&ST Jan. 11, 1999, p. 425). The Japanese Defense Agency is spending about 900 million yen ($8.6 million) on BMD research in fiscal 1999, which ends Mar. 31.
A White House initiative to expand aviation employee reporting of safety concerns goes beyond accident prevention per se, to the pursuit of better aircraft design, maintenance and operation. Administration officials hope the Aviation Safety Action Partnership (ASAP) will result in advances like those realized in a five-year American Airlines demonstration program--everything from altered airport lighting to better equipment manuals.
Stephen H. Strom (see photo) has been appointed vice president-quality for the Cessna Aircraft Corp., Wichita, Kan. He held the same position at Tenneco Inc.
Boeing Co. turned around its finances and commercial jet production systems in 1999, posting solid operating earnings at its military and space divisions and reestablishing the profitability of its commercial transport group. In addition to restoring crucial investor and customer confidence, the company's strong free-cash flow and balance sheet provide a foundation for growth, acquisitions and introduction of new transport models.
Transport Canada is performing enhanced surveillance of Cubana Airlines' operations in Canadian airspace after the Havana-based carrier suffered three crashes in a year and a half in other parts of the world. State-owned Cubana regularly flies leased Airbus A320s into Montreal and Toronto and has had no recent problems in the country. Canadian authorities have restricted its operations in the past, however, over safety concerns.
Carnegie Mellon's Nomad robot is on the ice in Antarctica, preparing to autonomously search for meteorites in a NASA-funded program with direct applications for unmanned explorations of the surface of Mars and the Moon.
The helicopter industry is setting a new course in its decades-old struggle to develop the infrastructure and technology needed to promote the use of rotorcraft for civil and commercial transport.
Lack of competitive landing slots at Narita airport is forcing Continental Airlines to cancel its three-times weekly services connecting Honolulu with Tokyo as of Apr. 3.
BFGoodrich Co. has been chosen by the U.S. Air Force to upgrade more than 750 F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft with the company's advanced wheels and carbon brakes, under a contract award valued up to $30 million.
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has made its first observations of the Andromeda Galaxy (see image). The spacecraft made its first X-ray image of the galaxy late last year with its Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer. The image showed more than 100 individual X-ray sources, one of which was at the previously determined position of the massive black hole. Program officials said that while a typical X-ray star has a temperature of several tens-of-million of degrees, temperature of the supermassive black hole source is only a few million degrees.
Boeing and its commercial jet customers have teamed in a new process aimed at better addressing aircraft in-service problems. According to the aerospace manufacturer, representatives from its various 747, MD-11/DC-10 and 757/767 fleet operators now meet to determine which service-related problems should be addressed first. This better focuses the company's limited engineering resources and provides the greatest benefit more quickly for the widest number of operators, according to Boeing.
The Joint Strike Fighter program has enlisted the support of the U.K.'s Defense Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) for risk reduction work on STOVL flight control development.
Boeing's C-17 program may have a rocky future following a Pentagon Fiscal 2001 budget study that is looking at cutting near-term production by 20% and a diminished prospect for a follow-on purchase of 60 additional airlifters that would have raised the fleet total to 180 aircraft.
Several major Russian airlines recently revealed plans to tie their long-term fleet modernization strategy with Russian-built aircraft, reversing a trend to acquire Western-built transports.
Dale Krupla has been named general manager of flight support at Atlantic Aviation's Wilmington, Del., facility. Rick Kiewel has become corporate controller for flight support systems and Edward McKay corporate director of information services. Krupla was general manager of the Mercury Air Centers FBO at Nash- ville. Kiewel was controller of the Healy Group and McKay director of information services for Dopaco Inc.
Michael Miller is editor-in-chief of Aviation Daily, an Aviation Week newsletter based in Washington. This piece is adapted from a series published earlier this month, previewing the coming year in aviation. The U.S., the largest aviation market on Earth, has seen a dramatic and disheartening decline in its aviation leadership in recent years. While U.S. airline leaders continue to parlay their business acumen into profitability--despite customer service shortfalls--the government has lacked leadership when it counts most.
Skirmishing over the best way to fund the FAA should pick up in early February. The Senate Budget Committee is considering holding a hearing on the fraud and waste at the aviation agency. Airline and aviation industry officials are trying to dissuade the senators. They see the hearing as an attempt to generate ammunition for the argument that the FAA's funding should not be increased--specifically that the Airport and Airways Trust Fund should not be unlocked--because the agency wastes the money it already gets for major projects like air traffic control modernization.
Regulatory authorities, manufacturers and operators are laboring to set a worldwide standard for heliport design rules that would facilitate the integration of helicopters and tiltrotor aircraft into the commercial air transport system.
Recent Topex/Poseidon satellite data show slow-developing surface conditions cover most of the Pacific Ocean, a situation which could have significant implications for global climate change, according to project scientists. Higher-than-normal sea surface heights are beginning to dominate the western Pacific and Asiatic oceans in new imagery from the U.S.-French spacecraft.
AVIONICS UPGRADES TO CESSNA CitationJets can now allow them to meet the requirements for reduced vertical separation minimum (RVSM). The FAA has already given RVSM approval to model 525 CitationJets, and other models can receive an agency letter of authorization after a modification that includes a pitot static system upgrade, with the installation of two new Honeywell/Ametek AM-250 combined altimeter and air data computer units.
