Lockheed Martin Federal Systems has won a $30-million contract from Northrop Grumman Electronic Sensors and Systems for 62 AN/APR-48A Radar Frequency Interferometers to be integrated into the U.K.'s Westland Apache helicopter.
THE INTERNATIONAL CIVIL AVIATION ORGANIZATION has developed a comprehensive plan to help nations address potential problems for worldwide air traffic services caused by the year 2000 computer problems. ICAO has developed a dedicated action group with members from key air transport organizations and the International Air Transport Assn., which already has an extensive Y2K program. The focus is on raising awareness, assessing progress, supporting efforts and encouraging contingency plans. ICAO plans to be on the Internet in August, but does not have a Web site yet.
Steven B. Zaidman has been named FAA associate administrator for research and acquisition, succeeding George Donohue. Zaidman had been acting deputy in the associate administrator's office and director of the Office of System Architecture and Investment Analysis. Steve Brown has been named deputy to the associate administrator for air traffic services. He has been president of the National Aeronautics Assn. James H. Washington, deputy director of air traffic services, has been promoted to director of air traffic system requirements.
Michael A. Mayer has been promoted to senior vice president from vice president-sales, marketing and purchasing, and Edward C. Randall to senior vice president from vice president-finance and administration, of the Avatar Alliance in Atlanta. Charles H. Postel has been named vice president-sales and material support. He was vice president-sales for Hydraulic Aircraft Specialist of Miami.
Being in the aircraft publishing business is no easy task. At Boeing's Long Beach facility where the C-17 transport is assembled, product support specialist Peter Wainwright deals with about 175,000 pages of documentation pertaining to flight and maintenance manuals. The Flight&Operations Manual alone is 3,000 pages for the ground study version and 1,200 pages for the flight version. Revising such documents is an ongoing process and is complicated by who is doing the revising.
CHINA'S HAINAN AIRLINES WILL EQUIP five new 737-800s and three 767s with Honeywell/Racal's Aero-I satcom system. The sale is the first of the new MCS-7000 satcom to China, and makes Hainan the first Chinese carrier to prepare to use the spot beams of the new Inmarsat-3 satellites. The 737s will use the current-generation MCS-6000 Aero-I, while the 767s will get the new 7-channel MCS-7000. Certification is planned for this month for the 737 and 1999 for the 767.
Japan's National Space Development Agency (NASDA) is developing a small--50-cm. (19.7-in.)--hexagonal satellite for piggy-back experiments on future H-2A missions. Called Upsilon-Lab Sat, the 50-kg. (110-lb.), three-axis controlled spacecraft are to carry out a variety of experiments, including triple redundancy for on-board computers, peak power tracking control and new designs in integrated bus structures. The goal is to minimize the size and costs of satellites and to demonstrate various advanced technologies. Mission life expectancy is about a year.
A watermarking system to protect original owners and customers of copyright multimedia data has been developed by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Klara Nahrstedt, a professor of computer science, and graduate student Lintian Qiao use a watermark construction algorithm that combines a standard encryption function with part of an original video image. The intent is to prevent attackers from manipulating the watermark to confuse ownership.
The Indonesian currency crisis has slowed the investigation into the loss of SilkAir Flight 185 at Palembang last Dec. 19, frustrating U.S. legal firms that are filing lawsuits on behalf of 80 families. Chief Investigator Oetarjo Diran said a lack of available funding ``has hampered the investigation.'' He could give no date for his preliminary report into the cause of the crash, which involved a Boeing 737-300 carrying 104 people, all of whom died.
Emery Worldwide Airlines plans to add five McDonnell Douglas DC-10 freighters to its North American fleet over the next two years and will organize its future fleet around the type. The wide-body aircraft, equipped with Stage 3 compliant engines, each will be capable of lifting 125,000-lb. and will be used on the company's heavy traffic ``lanes,'' according to David Beatson, president and chief executive officer. First delivery is scheduled for year-end with all five transports planned to be in operation by Fall 2000.
India's Tata Group has pulled out of a consortium that included Raytheon and Changi Airports Authority of Singapore to build a $335-million airport in Bangalore, India's computer and high-technology industrial center. The project would have been India's first private airport.
SEXTANT AVIONIQUE AND RUSSIA'S GOSNIIAS plan to collaborate to develop a combined GPS/Glonass satellite positioning receiver. Advantages will be redundant satellite navigation systems and improved global coverage, with 48 satellites instead of 24. The companies say the combined receiver will have better jamming resistance, increased integrity and higher accuracy. GosNIIAS plans to start production in late 1999.
CONTINENTAL AIRLINES WILL BUY TWO of CAE's MaxVue Plus Visual Systems to retrofit existing full flight simulators, believed to be for 737 aircraft, at its flight training facility in Houston. Continental recently ordered two more visual systems as part of an order for 777-200 and 737-700 full flight simulators. MaxVue Plus offers a significant improvement in resolution and brightness for daytime scenes, and more realistic clouds and fog.
Problems with the E-8C Joint-STARS and E-2C Hawkeye programs are proving troublesome--and costly--for Northrop Grumman Corp. It's taking longer than the company had anticipated to refurbish older Boeing 707 aircraft used as the E-8C platform because of the amount of remanufacturing required, and the company is incurring increased E-2C production costs to overcome problems caused by parts shortages. The combination cost Northrop Grumman $25 million in the second quarter in electronics operating profit the company already had booked.
A Ukrainian Zenit booster carrying the fourth Russian Resurs 01 Earth resources satellite and five other small spacecraft from Australia, Germany, Thailand, Israel and Chile was launched successfully July 10 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The launch began the first Zenit flight since a failure a year ago, and its success means the Loral Globalstar program can maintain its schedule for the launch of 12 of the spacecraft on a Zenit in mid-August.
Site development is underway for United Parcel Service's Hub 2000, an $860-million expansion project and the linchpin of a decade-long remaking of the Louisville International Airport. The largest-ever construction project for Atlanta-based UPS, Hub 2000 will replace the current international air hub at Louisville. Portions of the building now in use will be incorporated in the hub, but the new construction alone will comprise 2.7 million sq. ft. of useable space.
ELBIT SYSTEMS OF ISRAEL WILL PARTNER with Virtual Prototypes Inc. (VPI) of Montreal to develop the software code upgrades to aircraft, helicopters, and command and control systems. Elbit already uses VPI's virtual avionics prototyping system and automatic code-generator technology in those upgrades, for interactive pilot-vehicle interfaces. Elbit uses VPI products as the basis for developing cockpit and head-up displays, helmet-mounted sights and instrument panels.
PGA Portugalia Airlines is on track to carry 1 million passengers this year. The Lisbon-based airline carried a total of 301,465 passengers during the first five months of 1998, a 29.2% increase over the same period last year. International passenger traffic grew by 58.3%. Portugalia recently opened new routes to Nice and Lyons, France. The airline has taken delivery of the last of six Embraer RJ145s on order, which it operates along with six Fokker 100s.
Sheila Whittaker has been elected chair of the British Columbia Aviation Council. She is vice president-school operations for Coastal Pacific Aviation in Abbotsford and was council vice chair.
France-based Avions de Transport Regional is once again considering the merits of the AIRjet regional transport. The French-Italian consortium will reassess the ill-fated program and initiate exploratory talks with potential risk-sharing partners. The proposed AIR-70 was terminated last December, when AIR's partners failed to agree on the $1.2-billion program's business plan. The 70-seat twinjet was tentatively scheduled to enter service in late 2001 and would have been followed by 58-seat and 84-seat derivatives of the basic version.
A bitter but simmering dispute between Canada and Brazil over counter allegations that each nation unfairly subsidizes its primary aerospace company has boiled over again into formal complaints to the World Trade Organization.
It looked finally as if Northwest Airlines was going to get some serious competition at its Minneapolis/St. Paul hub, where it has an 85% share of the 29 million passengers using the airport. Southwest Airlines, which brings low fares to the cities it serves, said it was holding a job fair in Minneapolis last week ``looking for local employees.'' That implied a new city on its route map. But no such luck for competition-starved Twin Cities' residents. The word ``local'' was a mistake. Southwest did hold a job fair, but it wasn't looking for local employees.
