Pratt&Whitney has issued an inspection/monitoring advisory covering 8,887 newly manufactured JT8D turbine blades that were made in February and March in order to recover 173 blades which the company believes were improperly processed at its North Haven, Conn., plant and shipped between Feb. 26 and Mar. 31.
The Clinton Administration's budget office and leading members of Congress are at odds over where to find the billions of dollars needed to pay for overruns on the International Space Station project. The chairman and the ranking Democrat on the House Science Committee, citing an independent assessment that found the station will likely cost $7.3 billion more than originally estimated and reach completion up to three years behind schedule, are calling on the Administration to help cover the shortfall.
Warren C. Jenson has been appointed executive vice president/chief financial officer of Delta Air Lines. He has been senior vice president-finance/CFO of the National Broadcasting Co.
Look for rapid adoption of ``intelligent graphics'' in airline maintenance operations. In addition to improved maintenance manual illustrations using 3D color graphics, all data related to a component in a pictured assembly could instantly be shown on the same screen by placing a cursor over it and ``clicking.'' Other advantages, according to the Air Transport Assn.'s Technical Information and Communications Committee, include parts and assemblies that can be automatically ``exploded'' or ``imploded'' on screen.
The Naval Aviation Depot at Jacksonville, Fla., is completing testing on an improved version of Western Data Systems' CompassMRO product that should offer greater predictability for its maintenance, repair and overhaul work. The software's introduction is part of a larger, $30-million upgrade that WDS has undertaken for the Joint Logistics Systems Centers (JLSC) to introduce commercial-off-the-shelf manufacturing resource planning software to the 18 major Navy, Marine and Army depot facilities. Jacksonville started live testing of CompassMRO last year.
Dr. Bernard A. Harris, Jr., a former astronaut and now vice president-microgravity and life sciences of Spacehab Inc., has been appointed to the National Deafness and Other Communication Disorders Council of the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md.
Joe Enderle has become turbine service manager of Woodland (Calif.) Aviation Inc. He succeeds Terry Babcock, who is now manager of the Starship 2000 cost of maintenance program for Raytheon Aircraft, Wichita, Kan.
Boeing's glowing assessment of where it stands in the integration of its military business with those of heritage McDonnell Douglas and Rockwell is sharply at odds with how industry observers perceive the company's progress. Alan Mulally, president of Boeing's Information, Space and Defense Systems unit, says the company is actually ahead of schedule.
THE GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE SEES needless duplication in the AAQ-24 Directed Infrared Countermeasures system for use on USAF Special Operations Command C-130s and the ALQ-212 Advanced Threat IR Countermeasures for use on the Army's Longbow Apache and other helicopters. The AAQ-24 DIRCM was developed by Northrop Grumman for the British Ministry of Defense and SOCOM for use on transports and helicopters (AW&ST Oct. 27, 1997, p. 47).
In a twisted turn of events, Mobile Communications Holdings Inc. (MCHI) announced plans last week to award a contract to build its Ellipso satellite telephone system to Boeing instead of Orbital Sciences Corp., the company originally selected for the job. A spurned Orbital Sciences quickly countered with a preliminary agreement to build spacecraft for a competing mobile satellite project, CCI International's Ecco system. CCI had earlier said its satellite work would go to Matra Marconi Space.
Japan's aging fleet of twin turboprop Nihon YS-11s are slated for replacement by the government agencies flying them. The Maritime Safety Agency, the equivalent of the U.S. Coast Guard, is seeking replacements for five YS-11s it flies in a search-and-rescue role. The Civil Aviation Bureau for the Ministry of Transport, which uses six YS-11s for low- and medium-altitude navigational aid flight checks, contracted to buy five Saab 2000s as replacements.
Despite much innovative thinking within industry and the government about what the next-generation U.S. military transport aircraft should look like, lack of funding will keep any of those visions from becoming a reality in the near future.
Initial details of the new upper cryogenic stage proposed for the Ariane 5 heavy-lift booster were revealed here last week. Known as the ESC, the stage would be offered alongside a new reignitable version of the present storable propellant stage to make the launcher suitable for emerging market requirements.
PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS OF DATA from the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder of Taiwan's Formosa Airlines Saab 340, which crashed on Mar. 18 while en route from Hsinchu to Kaohsiung, killing 13, indicates a possible instrument failure and a loss of power in the aircraft's right engine (AW&ST Mar. 30, p. 61). A transcript of the CVR shows the aircraft was assigned a heading by air traffic control 2 min. after takeoff, but it turned in a different direction. The pilots discussed the heading and asked for a confirmation from ATC.
CONTINENTAL EXPRESS, the regional subsidiary of Continental Airlines, has ordered 25 Embraer RJ-135s, the 37-seat derivative of the 50-seat RJ-145 it already operates. At a list price of $12.6 million per aircraft, the transaction is valued at $315 million. The RJ-135 is set for roll-out on May 12 in Sao Jose Dos Campos, Brazil. Continental Express was the first in the U.S. to operate the 50-seater and said the addition of the smaller jet would advance its plan to move to an all-jet fleet over the next five years.
The Air Transport Assn. is pushing to standardize the report format of Built-In Test Equipment (BITE) on commercial transports and plans to have a specification published by year's end. U.S. airlines want BITE reports that are simple, in a universal, plain English format, and containing only the information the end user (line mechanic) needs, according to Nick Mateo, chairman of ATA's Avionics Systems Engineering and Maintenance Committee.
The orbiter Columbia approaches Runway 33 here May 3 to complete the Neurolab mission, which ends 15 years of Spacelab flights using European Space Agency hardware. NASA has decided against reflying Neurolab to save costs and retain flexibility to accommodate delays in initial flights to assemble the International Space Station.
Norway will conduct evaluations of the Eurofighter late next month as the multinational consortium looks to exports--now that it has contracts with the four partner nations for 620 aircraft, guaranteeing 15 years' worth of production.
NASA's Ames Research Center expects to have a full-fidelity 360-deg. control tower simulator in operation by January that will allow airport planners to test and validate new procedures for air traffic control and aircraft surface movements.
BOEING HAS SHIFTED Gary Scott, the chief of its troubled Renton, Wash., narrow-body transport factory to a new job. Scott will become vice president and chief operating officer for Boeing Enterprises, Boeing's new entrepreneurial arm. He formerly was vice president and general manager of 737 and 757 programs. Scott will be replaced by Jim Jamieson, currently vice president and deputy general manager for 737/757 programs. Plans for Boeing Enterprises include possible manufacturing projects.
ANOTHER FLAT PANEL TECHNOLOGY recently shown by the U.S. Display Consortium for portable, battery-powered applications is Candescent Technologies Corp.'s thin color cathode ray tube. The cold-cathode technique, developed but not producible in the 1960s, uses a matrix addressable approach, rather than beam deflection of big-tube, hot-cathode CRTs. The glass is 8 mm. (0.3 in.) thick with driver electronics attached. Demonstration models are being built with 4.4-in.
Blake C. Fish has been appointed senior vice president-Line Service Div. of Atlantic Aviation, Wilmington, Del. He was vice president-Eastern Div. operations for Signature Flight Support. Fish succeeds Joseph J. McShulkis, who is retiring.
Scott Strode (see photo) has been named division director for Boeing's new Delta 4 rocket factory in Decatur, Ala. Phil Marshall, senior manager of production operations, will succeed Strode as acting general manager of the Pueblo, Colo., facility.
