After scrambling for the last several years, the U.S. Air Force has now pieced together a system to locate and shoot down stealthy cruise missiles. It is based on a series of upgrades to the E-3 AWACS and E-8 Joint-STARS aircraft and the AIM-120 Amraam air-to-air missile.
Northwest Airlines and its pilots continued negotiating last week in secret as travelers, airports and other carriers made contingency plans in the event of a strike on Saturday, Aug. 29, at the nation's fourth largest airline.
NEW ADVANCES MAY ALLOW INEXPENSIVE PLASTICS to replace other materials in optoelectronic circuits. Chemists at Molecular OptoElectronics Corp. (MOEC) in Watervliet, N.Y., discovered left or right-``handed'' molecular building blocks that can be used in the manufacture of certain plastics to give stable optical properties that are otherwise only available in more expensive and harder-to-fabricate materials.
British Airways is launching a trial program on Sept. 1 to combat what it terms ``air rage'' incidents by drunk and abusive passengers or those breaking the carrier's worldwide smoking ban. Based on the penalty system in soccer, a ``yellow card'' will be handed to miscreants with a final warning that they face arrest on landing unless they cease their disruptive behavior. The notice also warns that offenders will be liable for diversion costs if their behavior forces the pilot to land at the nearest airport.
Initial tracking camera imagery of the Aug. 12 Titan 4 explosion show rocket plume and other features that raise questions about the performance of one of the vehicle's solid rockets and liquid fluid systems in the $1-billion accident. The Lockheed Martin/USAF Titan 4A/Centaur exploded 40 sec. after liftoff on a mission to launch a National Reconnaissance Office Mercury signal intelligence satellite (AW&ST Aug. 17, p. 28). The failure is the single most expensive unmanned accident in the 50-year history of Cape Canaveral.
Philippine Airlines (PAL) expects to file a plan with the Security and Exchange Commission by Sept. 21 to reduce its fleet to 21 aircraft, with an average age of three years, and to reduce staff to 8,578, including 200 pilots. That amounts to a cut of 25 aircraft and more than 9,000 staff. Meanwhile, Caltex has sued the airline for $600,000 for unpaid deliveries of petroleum products, while Petron Corp. says it is owed $4.5 million for jet fuel. Petron is supplying PAL under a SEC order on a cash basis.
Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) completed its licensed production run of 50 CASA CN-235s for the Turkish air force earlier this month and is seeking export orders to continue manufacturing the medium transport.
The Air Force has completed a 1,000-hr. reliability test of two electro-hydraulic actuators on a Lockheed C-141 transport, concluding that they are at least as reliable as the standard hydraulic actuators they replaced.
Delta Air Lines' decision not to give its pilots union a voting seat on the company's board of directors has jeopardized the airline's proposal for a code-sharing partnership with United Airlines. The Air Line Pilots Assn. (ALPA) had made its request for full voting rights on the board a precondition for waiving its power to block a code-share alliance. The 9,000-member pilots union currently has a nonvoting seat on the board.
British Aerospace said it has held exploratory talks with Libya about rebuilding the country's civil aviation infrastructure, but denied it has in any way breached United Nations sanctions imposed on the North African state in 1988 following the Lockerbie bombing.
Japan's Ministry of Transport has developed a plan to make Tokyo's Narita Airport more environmentally friendly--and possibly help reduce local opposition to a planned second runway. Under the ``Eco Airport Plan,'' 6,000 tons of food waste created by seven on-airport kitchens will be given daily to local farmers for composting. It now is burned. The farmers also will be given the tons of grass clippings generated by airport lawns each year to add to their compost stock.
NATO flexed its muscles in the Balkans again last week, conducting a five-day Partnership-for-Peace exercise in Albania to develop common practices for peace enforcement operations. But it was also clearly intended as a warning to Serbian forces who continue their offensive against separatist ethnic Albanians in the neighboring Yugoslav province of Kosovo. Dubbed Cooperative Assembly '98, the exercise involved 1,700 troops and nearly 60 fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft from 14 countries.
Serpentine robot arms comprised of multiple lightweight, rigid tubular links attached end-to-end could aid critical inspection, troubleshooting and repair tasks in future aerospace and surgical fields. Called Multifunction Dexterous Boro-Robots (MDBR), each link would articulate one end-plate to maneuver the probe in snake-like fashion to reach areas and objects inaccessible to flexible boroscopes and other methods. Suggested size of the modular links is about 1 cm. in diameter and several centimeters long.
Iberia concluded a 5-year-long lease agreement with the International Lease Finance Corp. covering nine 124-seat Airbus A319s and seven 150-seat A320s. First delivery of the 16 CFM56-powered transports is scheduled for next May.
The Hubble Space Telescope is providing astronomers with a front-row view of a ``firestorm'' accompanying the birth of extremely massive stars. This Hubble image (shown) shows young stars in an embryonic cloud of glowing gasses. The stars, each 300,000 times brighter than the Sun, are located 200,000 light-years from Earth in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. Hubble's sharp resolution allowed astronomers to pinpoint 50 separate stars packed into the nebula's core within a 10 light-year diameter.
Robert W. Dean has been appointed vice president-strategic planning and business development of the United Space Alliance of Houston. Dean was senior vice president-advanced business development and administration for the Ball Corp.
A federal judge in Wilmington, Del., last week ordered Pratt&Whitney to provide critical information to an independent contractor, Chromalloy, that will allow the company to repair components for all Pratt&Whitney engines. A Pratt official said the engine maker will appeal the decision. Judge Roderick McKelvie's 55-page opinion dealt with the claims by Chromalloy that it was entitled to repair information under a 1985 agreement with Pratt.
Brent D. Bowen, director of the Aviation Institute of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, is slated to receive the Vern L. Laursen Award. The award recognizes service to the field of aviation education.
Turkey has started negotiations with Sikorsky Aircraft to procure 50 additional Black Hawk helicopters, reviving a long-stalled project begun in 1992. The Turkish government, which is considering arming the aircraft, is looking to boost its airborne capability in operations against separatist Kurdish guerrillas in the southeastern region of the country.
Adventurer Steve Fossett may not try again to become the first person to circumnavigate the globe nonstop in a balloon after plunging about 29,000 ft. into the Pacific Ocean 500 naut. mi. east of the Australian coast during a violent thunderstorm.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is expected to award a contract about Sept. 1 for a space mission to hunt for other planets in the Milky Way. The flight will require such precise measurements that its principal instrument will be calibrated to the subatomic level. The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) is a stepping-stone in NASA's Origins program that is investigating the 15-billion-year-long chain of events that began with the Big Bang and produced the Universe (AW&ST Feb. 10, 1997, p. 25).
Simultaneous control of four unmanned aerial vehicles by a single operator was demonstrated late last month by Northrop Grumman at the Naval Weapons Test Center, China Lake, Calif. The trial assessed performance of the company's Cooperative Aggregate Mission Management System (CAMMS). Four ``Dakota'' UAVs, Daedalus Research Inc. ``Truck'' vehicles modified to carry heavier payloads, were launched on a cooperative search mission, each tasked to relay real-time video back to the ground station.
Go, British Airways' new low-cost subsidiary, will try its hand in the U.K. domestic market starting on Sept. 8, when it will inaugurate a three-flights-daily service between London Stansted airport and Edinburgh. The move places Go in head-to-head competition for the first time against rival U.K. no-frills carrier EasyJet, which operates flights to Edinburgh from London Luton airport. Go, set to receive its fifth Boeing 737, also plans to launch daily services at the same time to Bologna, Italy.
Meggitt Plc., the U.K. aerospace and electronics group, has agreed to buy Vibro-Meter from Electrowatt for 42.2 million pounds ($68.4 million) in cash. Swiss-based Vibro-Meter, which posted sales of 31 million pounds ($50.2 million) in 1997, designs and manufactures vibration monitoring systems for propulsion units in a variety of aerospace applications. It will be run in conjunction with Meggitt's Endevco Corp.
