Boeing's marketing efforts with the 717-200 regional transport may be threatening the viability of the multinational AE31X competitor backed by the state-owned Aviation Industries of China (AVIC), Airbus Industrie and Singapore Technologies. ``Where we are not clear is in the business plan for the project,'' Airbus Chief Executive Jean Pierson said here last week. The ratio between cost and selling price is causing headaches for the AE31X partners, he added.
SkyWest Airlines intends to increase its regional fleet by more than 50% to meet additional United Express hub requirements and recent route expansion from existing locations.
Boeing has concluded a month-long series of wind tunnel tests aimed at validating and refining the performance of key features of U.S. Air Force's planned Airborne Laser aircraft.
Lockheed Martin is implementing a computer-based, streamlined material control process that is expected to allow quality assurance inspectors and personnel to enter review items directly into the system at the manufacturing/production level. Software is designed to perform the material review process automatically and create rework orders based on disposition. A laser copy of each review will be routed with affected parts, and each review eventually will be closed by the inspectors. The system initially is being used for the F-16 and F-22 programs.
Saab has won a $75-million contract from Airbus Industrie partner Aerospatiale to supply an integrated structural floor assembly for A340-500/600 aircraft. The first deliveries are scheduled for the third quarter of 1999. The contract, Saab's first for an Airbus product, marks a major step for the company's strategy of establishing itself as a partner and subcontractor for large commercial aircraft, following its decision to exit the regional aircraft manufacturing business.
Workers here joined the major fuselage assemblies of the first production V-22 last week, effectively bringing to a close a 17-year period of uncertainty over whether the Osprey would ever enter production.
The French government's stake in flag carrier Air France is scheduled to decrease in the next few months to about 53%, down from 97%. Although the carrier's value has not been determined yet, Transport Minister Jean-Claude Gayssot and Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn last week finalized the long-awaited plan (AW&ST Feb. 23, p. 44). To acknowledge the French left-wing coalition's position, Gayssot and Strauss-Kahn made politically correct reference to the ``opening'' of Air France's capital, avoiding allusion to partial privatization.
A ruling in the Lockheed Martin conflict-of-interest case has been delayed by the Board of Contract Appeals of the U.S. General Services Administration. A judgment was expected last week, but the board requested additional information from Lockheed Martin and the Washington Consulting Group of Bethesda, Md. WCG has charged that Lockheed Martin has a conflict of interest as the prime contractor for the FAA's National Airspace System Implementation Support Contract, a follow-on contract valued at $1.044 billion over 10 years (AW&ST Feb. 2, p.41).
Washington is close to an agreement with Pretoria that would lift the ban on U.S. companies doing business with Armscor, South Africa's weapons procurement agency. The two governments have been negotiating since 1996 to end the debarment order, imposed during the apartheid years. Progress has been made toward establishing an effective compliance regime at Armscor but it is uncertain all will be wrapped up in time for President Clinton's visit to South Africa this month.
During the next 10 years, 26,230 aircraft of all types, valued at $680.4 billion, are expected to roll off the production lines of the world's aircraft manufacturers, according to the Teal Group Corp., a defense/aerospace market analysis firm based in Fairfax, Va. The group's latest annual world aircraft production forecast says the total figure includes 5,294 commercial jet transports valued at $358.2 billion, 2,657 regional aircraft ($2.9 billion) and 3,736 business aircraft ($45.1 billion).
Glasgow-based Pilkington Optronics has teamed with Independent Product Support AG of Switzerland to develop an integrated, passively cued anti-aircraft artillery fire control system. Called Protector, the system employs Pilkington's Air Defense Alerting Device, an infrared search-and-track system in service in the U.K. and Germany and being evaluated by the U.S. Marine Corps. Protector, which employs commercial off-the-shelf technology, includes an electro-optical target acquisition and tracking unit with auto-track camera and laser range finder.
John B. Thompson has been named vice president-business management of the Northrop Grumman Corp. Electronics and Systems Integration Div. (ESID), Rolling Meadows, Ill. He was interim vice president-business management at ESID headquarters, Melbourne, Fla. Thompson succeeds Hank Frankenberg, who is now senior adviser to the general manager.
American Airlines and Japan Airlines have forged a code-sharing alliance that will include access to destinations beyond gateway cities. The alliance comes in the wake of an aviation bilateral agreement hammered out between the U.S. and Japan earlier this year (AW&ST Feb. 9, p. 74).
Business Express has placed a key order for 20 firm Embraer RJ135 regional jets, almost doubling the new 37-seat jet's orderbook to 48. The signed purchase agreement, with 40 options, is valued at up to $810 million including spares. Embraer also announced the sale of 20 firm and 40 options for the 30-seat turboprop EMB-120 Brasilias to SkyWest, a commuter based in St. George, Utah (see p. 49).
THE NTSB URGED THE FAA to mandate major inspections of all General Electric CF6-series engines at intervals of less than 4,000 cycles, to head off fatigue problems that have triggered about a half-dozen uncontained failures of those powerplants. The recommendations are the result of investigations by the NTSB and Canadian Transportation Safety Board into the failures, many of which involved what has been called ``dwell-time'' fatigue of the titanium Stage 3-9 spool in the CF6's high-pressure compressor.
SABENA BELGIAN World Airlines last week selected CFM International's CFM56-5B turbofan to power 34 Airbus Industrie transports it ordered last November.
Wyman-Gordon, a crucial link in the commercial aircraft supply chain, is scrambling to make up for some lost capacity until the turbine-components maker can repair a broken 29,000-ton press.
DESPITE THE FAA'S CLAIM THAT YEAR 2000 (Y2K) computer problems are under control, some computer experts are concerned about potential problems being underestimated. Even if the FAA's ATC system is fine, they question whether the FAA is working enough with other CAAs, since problems on either end would affect the world's air traffic flow. Disruptions to electrical power suppliers, commercial telephone networks, airline reservation systems, weather computers and credit card companies could contribute to a monumental snarl if not totally Y2K compliant.
Traffic between the U.S. and Canada grew dramatically in the first three years after the Open Skies agreement between the two countries was signed, and dozens of cities got new nonstop transborder flights.
MIT's Profit program recently received a contract from the FAA to apply knowledge management to the Enhanced Traffic Management System. The ETMS predicts overloaded points in the air traffic system, which often are alleviated by delaying departures to avoid inflight holding. The system was designed a dozen years ago and the FAA wants to explore the latest techniques for its replacement. Profit is just starting to organize the ETMS data. Another new program will look at data from the FAA's Flight Standards division.
Despite the Asian currency crisis, Qantas, Ansett Australia and Air New Zealand posted solid six-month profits through Dec. 31, but they say the full impact of the crisis has yet to hit. Ansett's and Qantas' figures were boosted by higher yield and load factors from the strong Australian domestic market. Their results also reflect savings from staff cuts and various downsizing programs. The positive results, despite difficult trading conditions, have increased speculation that plans to acquire new aircraft, which had been slowed, will be accelerated.
There they go again. NASA officials are doing some just-in-case planning for another slip in the space station assembly schedule. They're eyeing another rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul budget shuffle. And they're both looking at developing free flyers to boost station science output and hunting for experiments to keep the shuttle busy if assembly doesn't begin this year. In his Capitol Hill debut as space flight chief, Joseph Rothenberg said the agency is ``skeptical'' about Russia's ability to finish the station's Service Module in time for its scheduled December launch.
Congressional reaction to the U.N.-Iraq pact was split along partisan lines, but not uniformly. Republican critics cried ``sellout'' when U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz signed an accord to resume ``immediate, unconditional and unrestricted'' U.N. inspections of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The GOP critics charged that the White House had ceded control over U.S. foreign policy to the U.N.
A new spacecraft isolation system that replaces traditional attachment bolts dramatically reduces the vibration experienced by payloads during launch. Developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory and built by CSA Engineering Inc. of San Diego, the isolator system consists of a ring of passive shock absorbers installed between the booster and its satellite. The first application was on a Ball Aerospace/U.S. Navy GeoSat Follow-on spacecraft launched by an Orbital Sciences Taurus rocket (AW&ST Feb. 23, p.41).
