Finnair has awarded a contract to the Lido Operation Center, a unit of Lufthansa German Airlines, to provide an advanced flight planning system scheduled to enter service next year.
NASA's aeronautics funding may have been cut, but Administrator Daniel S. Goldin is full of ideas on how to spend the money he does have. Using fully autonomous high-altitude aircraft such as Helios for disaster relief coordination is one idea. He says the U.S. must triple the throughput of its air traffic control system over the next decade and cites efforts such as the Final Approach Spacing Tool (FAST), now under study at Dallas-Fort Worth, as one example of research that is needed. Tests of FAST have increased aircraft movements 13-15%.
Portugal's defense ministry will acquire nine Eurocopter EC635 helicopters powered by 791-shp. Turbomeca Arrius 2B1 turboshafts. The contract is valued at $37.8 million. The two-engine EC635s will be operated by the Portuguese army's air corps, now being formed. Deliveries are set for 2001-02. Portugal is the launch customer of the EC635, a military/medical evacuation derivative of the utility EC135.
FAA plans to issue new rules which, if adopted, would prevent dispatch of Boeing 777s with a sheared back-up generator shaft. The rule is based on reports of 13 of the shafts which sheared, two of which resulted in an in-flight shutdown. Boeing said the 777 has multiple layers of electrical system redundancy and first shipments of the redesigned shafts arrived at the factory last week. The 777 is now approved for departures on extended-range operations flights with a failed back-up generator for up to 10 days. Dispatch reliability of the 777 fleet has been 98.9%.
John V. Sponyoe, CEO of Lockheed Martin Global Telecommunications, has been named to the board of directors of the Comsat Corp., Bethesda, Md. He succeeds Lawrence S. Eagleburger, who has resigned.
British Airways has selected the Pratt&Whitney PW6000 engine for its fleet of Airbus A318s. The carrier has ordered 12 of the aircraft and placed 12 options, with deliveries expected to begin in January 2003.
Stanton C. Lawson has become chief financial officer of DBS Industries Inc., Mill Valley, Calif. He was finance manager of the Worldwide Information Systems Div. of Autodesk Inc., San Rafael, Calif.
Jet Airways has introduced the ATR 72-500 to its regional operations in India and added four cities to its network, to provide seven city-pair links. The carrier's hubs are in Mumbai (Bombay) and Delhi. Jet's ATR operations started with two 64-seat aircraft. A third aircraft is due on Nov. 9, and the final two in the five-aircraft lease package are to arrive in March and April. The carrier plans to add eight city-pairs to its route network.
Scientists find that Greenland offers easy access to the Arctic, with sites that allow unusual windows into weather--both in space and on Earth. Greenland's ice sheet is second in size only to that of Antarctica. Scientists also conduct space weather research and ice core drilling in Antarctica, but if Greenland can fill the bill, research here is much less expensive.
Teleeta Jones, a project engineer for aircraft engineering and cabin configurations, is one of three Delta Air Lines engineers who have won 1999 Women of Color Technology Awards. The other two are: Melissa Martinez, an engineer in fleet structural programs; and Tonya McMillian, a business analyst, both in the Technical Operations Div.
GE Aircraft Engines has won a $40-million contract from Kendell Airlines of Australia, to maintain the new General Electric CF34-3B engines that will power the regional carrier's Bombardier CRJ100/200s.
Senior Pentagon officials, admitting that the time is still not ripe for large-scale transatlantic mergers, talked up the prospects for less formal alliances and partnerships at an unprecedented meeting of U.S. and European military and industry officials here last week.
U.S. aircraft flew 79% of NATO's intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance missions during the Kosovo air campaign. One lesson is that there are too few of these specialized birds and they need to be replenished, Air Force Gen. John Jumper told Congress last week. As an example of how close to a crisis this is, Vice Adm. Daniel Murphy says only nine P-3 patrol aircraft were available in Europe and they were all fully committed to Kosovo operations.
Raytheon Co. has won a $16-million contract to provide Maverick missiles, trainers and spares to Canada, Bahrain, Italy and Turkey through the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program. Raytheon will provide 58 AGM-65G/Fs, 20 TGM-65Gs and 13 spare guidance units.
The Pentagon lost 55 aircraft in Fiscal 1999 due to accidents in which 43 Defense Dept. personnel died. The value of the aircraft destroyed was $1.23 billion, the Pentagon said. Overall, the military experienced 1.58 class A aircraft mishaps--those with more than $1 million in damage--per 100,000 flight hours in the fiscal year that ended on Oct. 1. That rate is 4% lower than in Fiscal 1998, when 77 fatalities occurred and 60 aircraft were destroyed. The accident rate over the past five years is 25% lower than it was for the previous five-year span.
Reflectone UK Ltd., a subsidiary of British Aerospace, has received a contract from Syntegra to supply four management information systems for the WAH-64D Apache helicopter training program.
Despite spot shortages and lower military pilot output, the lure of high cockpit crew salaries at large U.S. airlines should ensure a steady stream of qualified pilot candidates for commercial flying jobs in the foreseeable future.
Top U.S. military commanders in Europe during the Kosovo air campaign say they were most worried about three issues--the possibility that Yugoslavia would introduce modern missiles and aircraft to the conflict, security leaks in NATO and the shortage of U.S. troops and weapons.
Shelving a veto threat, President Clinton signed the $268-billion defense appropriations bill for Fiscal 2000, which includes an 8% hike in weapons procurement spending (AW&ST Oct. 25, p. 36). He lauded Congress for approving the sustained military spending increases he had recommended, but criticized as a ``budget gimmick'' the emergency spending designation lawmakers put on $7.2 billion for routine base operations and basic training. Nominally, that enabled Congress to keep spending within statutory budget caps.
FLS Aerospace has signed an eight-year, $26-million contract with Futura International Airways for component support for 10 Boeing 737-800 aircraft that have been ordered.
Setting the stage for government control of the pending airline industry restructuring in Canada, Transport Minister David Collenette has asked Parliament to grant his office permanent authority over mergers and acquisitions involving Air Canada and Canadian Airlines International.
DaimlerChrysler Airbus has launched a freighter conversion program for the A310-300 transport in cooperation with Sogerma, a French overhaul and maintenance center. Conversions will be carried out at DASA's Dresden, Germany, plant or at Sogerma in Toulouse, France. Engineering work for the modification is expected to be completed by mid-2000 with first aircraft delivery expected late in the same year, according to Jurgen G. Habermann, director of sales and marketing for DASA. The cost of each conversion would be $7.5 million.
