Melbourne-based Ansett Airlines has for the past 1.5 years undergone an intensive review with 50% equity partner Air New Zealand (ANZ) to rationalize the operation, with the aim of increasing profits and market share. Chairman Rod Eddington recently took a series of proposals to the board of Ansett Airlines, which were expected to be ratified and presented to employees on Sept. 9. Analysts believe about 1,700 staff will be trimmed.
TWA Flight 800 investigators will meet soon at the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington to see whether they can extract additional data from that aircraft's flight data recorder and to review FBI agents' summaries of interviews with witnesses to its July 17, 1996, crash. NTSB officials want to nail down whether parties to the probe agree with their assessment that the FDR stopped recording data from TWA 800's flight at 8:31:12 p.m., about the time investigators believe a center fuel tank explosion ripped the 747-100 apart off Long Island, N.Y.
Ronald P. Desjardins, director of commercial flight operations for American Airlines, is to receive the Walter W. Estridge, Jr., Award. The award recognizes service to the field of aviation/aerospace education.
Turbulence continues to injure many passengers and flight attendants every year, and the time has come for an industry-wide campaign, similar to the one against wind shear in the early 1980s. Turbulence remains the leading cause of non-fatal passenger and flight attendant injuries. The FAA reports that turbulence injures nearly 60 passengers in the U.S. each year, but the Association of Flight Attendants believes injuries are substantially underreported.
NORTHROP GRUMMAN'S ELECTRONIC SENSORS and Systems Div., formerly Westinghouse Electronic Systems, will continue development of an advanced dual-mode seeker for the U.S. Army's BAT ``brilliant'' armor submunition. The selection followed a 31/2-year competition with a seeker made by Alliant TechSystems. Both companies produced a dual-mode, millimeter-wave and infrared seeker that were then subjected to two captive flight tests against moving and stationary targets. BAT uses passive acoustic and infrared sensors to find and attack moving tanks and other armored vehicles.
Don't expect President Clinton to engineer any big deals on arms control when he goes to Moscow for next week's summit with Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Russian experts at the Carnegie Endowment say neither leader appears to have any major proposals to bring to the table. And both are politically weakened--Clinton by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Yeltsin by an economic crisis that forced the Russian government to devalue the rubble by 20%.
Physiologically based flight crew scheduling and rest requirements for long-haul flights are set to become law in Hong Kong next March. The new rules, now contained in a provisional document, are aimed at countering cumulative fatigue problems on multi-time-zone flights, according to the Hong Kong Civil Aviation Dept. (CAD). The changes are the result of a two-year joint study by CAD and the Hong Kong Air Crew Officers Assn., the union representing 1,000 Cathay Pacific pilots and flight engineers.
US Airways and the International Assn. of Machinists (IAM) have reached a tentative agreement on an initial contract covering about 6,100 fleet service employees. The IAM was elected to represent the carrier's workers, who handle baggage and other ramp services at airports, in 1994.
NASA will negotiate fixed-price Phase 1 contract awards for 25 research proposals for the 1998 Small Business Technology Transfer program at seven of the space agency's field centers. The combined total for the Phase 1 contracts is $2.5 million.
The Asian economic slump has played a role in a global shift of airline capacity. Aircraft once operating in the Pacific or designated for the region are being repositioned around the globe. Markets in Europe, the North Atlantic and Latin America are already feeling the impact.
The FAA has failed to heed the lessons of past accidents and decades of research on the dangers of inflight icing, according to the record of the investigation into the most recent icing-related turboprop transport accident. The National Transportation Safety Board's five members are slated on Aug. 27 to review the investigation into the Jan. 9, 1997, crash in Detroit of a Brazilian-built Comair EMB-120RT and determine the causes.
The International Space Station is about to take off. But the ``flight plan'' NASA has filed is in peril, and Washington isn't doing a thing about it. The first element of the station--the Russian-built, U.S.-financed FGB module, now christened ``Zarya''--is ready to be launched in less than three months. The first U.S. component, a connecting node dubbed ``Unity,'' is set to be orbited two weeks later.
Northwest Airlines astounded the industry last week by a very public flip-flop over pricing. The carrier had nixed--six times over four months--a 4% increase in leisure fares set in motion by its competitors. Then last week it raised its advance-purchase and sale fares by 4% on its own, which other carriers matched. Then, within two days, Northwest rescinded the increase.
Raytheon Travel Air's fractional ownership program is adding airplanes and pilots to meet increasing customer demand which is outpacing business projections.
Another mission examined for migration to space was electronic jamming, particularly of radar, Air Force officials say. But the requirement to transmit high power over long distances and problems with directional control of a jamming signal stymied any near-term shift to satellites. With increasing numbers of stealthy U.S. aircraft and missiles, the need to jam low-frequency radars will grow, they said. Yet, there will be no decision on a jamming aircraft to replace the Navy's limited number of EA-6Bs ``for a decade,'' one Air Force official said.
The U.S. Air Force has awarded Northrop Grumman Corp. a $17.7-million contract to provide for eight shipsets of the Precision Attack Targeting System (PATS) in support of the F-16.
Boeing has begun flight testing an upgrade package for E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft. The enhancements, made to AWACS test aircraft TS-3, will be demonstrated during USAF's Expeditionary Force Experiment EFX '98 in mid-September at Eglin AFB, Fla. The improvements include a phased-array antenna able to receive large amounts of information quickly and perform other high-bandwidth applications, an updated mission system architecture and a stand-alone broadcast intelligence terminal.
