A new batch of Russian-made Sukhoi fighters. A contract for the purchase of 55 Su-27-based fighters is expected to be signed during Russian President Boris Yeltsin's visit to China in November. To meet China's needs, the Su-27 can be equipped with Chinese avionics and a Western satellite navigation system. China has a license to build up to 200 Su-27s under a $1.2-billion agreement.
China President Jiang Zemin's scheduled talks with President Clinton in Washington late next month are a welcome sign for Boeing. China's ninth five-year plan calls for purchases of 250 commercial aircraft, but its order rate has been well below that mark. Boeing thinks Sino-U.S. tensions have hurt it and helped Airbus, so it was encouraged by the visits to Beijing earlier this year of Vice President Al Gore and Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright. Still, Boeing thinks China is no longer going to use a state visit like Jiang's to announce a jet order.
The Mars Global Surveyor is to fire its retrorocket on Sept. 11 to place the spacecraft into an initial orbit around Mars, which will be reduced by a four-month period of aerobraking to a final mapping orbit. The point of high anxiety will come on Sept. 9, when the dormant main engine system is pressurized in preparation for the Sept. 11 orbit insertion firing. A NASA review board concluded that the pressurization was the most likely cause of failure for the Mars Observer spacecraft in August, 1993 (AW&ST Jan. 10, 1994, p. 25).
The aging radar at Washington National Airport went down two days in a row just before Labor Day weekend, but a hardware replacement is still 10 months away. An undetermined hardware fault caused the 25-year-old ASR-7 airport surveillance radar to go down the first time. And a communication failure prevented the ASR-9 radar at nearby Andrews AFB, Md., from carrying out the back-up function. Even though controllers increased aircraft separation for safety, no aircraft delays resulted during the 2-hr. outage, according to the FAA.
Soyuz is designing a new indigenous engine to serve as an alternative to the Snecma/Turbomeca Larzac 04R20 turbofan on the MiG-AT advanced trainer. The new engine may be ordered for aircraft being acquired for use by Russian forces.
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines plans to sell its 51% controlling stake in KLM ERA Helikopters to the Schreiner Aviation Group based in Leiden, Netherlands. The remaining 49% is owned by the U.S. Rowan Cos. through its subsidiary, ERA Aviation. The Dutch carrier aims to concentrate efforts on core businesses and consolidate offshore helicopter operations in a highly competitive market, KLM officials said. Schreiner also operates business twinjets and twin turboprop regional transports. KLM ERA owns six Sikorsky S-6 1Ns and five S-76Bs.
Aerospace North America, formerly Airshow Canada, continues to build its niche on the international airshow circuit by focusing on business aircraft and the small-to-medium exporters who might not get noticed at larger events.
The battery on the rover Sojourner--which supplies power for analysis of rock composition on the surface of Mars--is depleted and cannot be recharged. The 300-watt-hour lithium thionyl chloride battery primarily was used to make night-time measurements with the rover's Alpha Proton X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) instrument when there was no power available from the rover's solar cells. The unit is divided into three strings, with three D-cell sized batteries in each string.
NTSB teams will reconvene in New York this week to examine debris from Trans World Airlines Flight 800 that some investigators claim has unusual or as-yet-unexplained damage. Key groups of the National Transportation Safety Board's investigation into that accident, including the structures, systems and fire/explosion teams, are to meet at the hangar in Calverton, N.Y., that holds the reconstructed wreckage of that Boeing 747-131's center section and other debris from the aircraft.
Solar observation spacecraft has discovered jet stream-like rivers of plasma flowing beneath the surface of the Sun near its poles. The streams, ringing the Sun at about 75 deg. Lat., are 17,000-mi. across and are buried several thousand miles below the surface. A Stanford University team made the discovery with SOHO's Doppler imager, which uses sound waves to peer inside the Sun, much like a sonogram. The researchers found that features similar to the Earth's tradewinds flow not only across the Sun's surface, but penetrate to depths of at least 12,000 mi.
A search for weapons carried by an Air Force A-10 that crashed in the Colorado mountains in April. An explosive ordnance disposal team from San Diego is using side-looking sonar and remotely controlled vehicles fitted with cameras to probe several high-altitude lakes in the 7-sq. mi. search area near Gold Dust Peak. Capt. Craig Button's A-10 crashed near the 13,365-ft. summit on April 2. As of late last week, the team had searched four lakes, but found no evidence of the four Mk. 82 500-lb. bombs the aircraft was carrying.
Protection from creditors and suspended operations Aug. 28. The Columbia, S.C.-based airline had served 10 cities with 48 daily flights using a fleet of seven 737s. The carrier had been trying to renegotiate leases on five of its aircraft and a $12-million, 1994 loan from the state of South Carolina.
Instrument platforms to the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana, for the second qualification flight of Europe's new Ariane 5 booster. The launch of the Ariane 5, which failed and was destroyed in its maiden voyage last year, is officially scheduled for late-September, but there is a good chance that date will be slipped. The two platforms, Maqsat H and B, weigh about 4 metric tons and constitute about 80% of the payload for the second Ariane 5 flight.
Most experienced astronauts, who collectively have participated in 15 space shuttle missions and two long-duration flights on Mir, are leaving NASA to puruse new careers outside the space agency. They are astronauts John Blaha and Jerry Linenger, who have both flown long-duration missions on Mir, and Story Musgrave, NASA's most experienced shuttle crewmember.
To a Titan 4/Centaur booster in preparation for a scheduled launch on Oct. 6 from Cape Canaveral. The spacecraft, built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., is designed to undertake a four-year study of Saturn. Earlier, the Huygens interplanetary probe was mated with Cassini at the Kennedy Space Center. Built by France's Aerospatiale, Huygens is slated to be released into the atmosphere of the Saturnian moon Titan in 2004, as Cassini begins its study of Saturn.
Voluntarily ceased operation last week rather than face an immediate suspension of its certificate by the FAA. The FAA assigned 11 inspectors to examine Fine Air after the crash of a DC-8 at Miami on Aug. 7. and this detailed examination led to the shut down. There will also be increases scrutiny of cargo loading procedures when FAA inspectors are examining other cargo carriers. The agency is also conducting a 60 day review of its inspection methods and is working on long range plans to improve its methods for identifying problems before they become safety issues.
After more than three years of intense investigation into the crash of USAir Flight 427 near Pittsburgh in September, 1994, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board plans to issue a probable cause later this year that centers on a malfunction in the Boeing 737-300's rudder control system and the pilots' inability to regain control before impact.
A growing number of violent passengers has prompted Japan Airlines to take a harder stand in protecting its cabin crew and passengers. JAL's operations manual has been amended to allow captains or airport office managers to refuse to board drunk passengers when they appear to be a threat to the flight crew or other passengers. Captains also may be permitted to restrain passengers if they bother others on board or the crew. In addition, when an episode occurs in flight, the captain may elect to land at the nearest airport to eject the unruly passenger(s).
The cost-cutting potential of Ansett Australia's alliance with Air New Zealand and Singapore Airlines means its choices for a fleet renewal are no longer as clear-cut as they once were. But preferences are emerging.
The French government is putting the finishing touches on new guidelines for the long overdue aerospace-defense industry restructuring, as well as Air France's fate. Although Prime Minister Lionel Jospin is taking a more flexible approach to complex economic problems--and slowly backing away from left-wing dogmas--Air France's long-anticipated financial overhaul is threatened by political infighting.
The White House continues to reserve judgment on the claim of Russian seismologists that a recent tremor the U.S. detected in the Arctic region near the old Novaya Zemlya nuclear test site was caused by an earthquake, not by a nuclear test. ``We are still studying the data and have reached no conclusion,'' one insider here said last week, adding that a White House verdict would come ``shortly.'' Neither the U.S. Senate nor Russia's State Duma, the lower house of parliament, has ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which the U.N.
Stephen P. Errandi, William M. Shore and Sue K. Waterhouse have been promoted to senior vice presidents of D'Accord Financial Services in New York from vice presidents.
In their attempts to re-establish contact with the Lewis satellite, which went into a spin and lost power late last month (AW&ST Sept. 1, p. 31). Repeated commands sent last week via ground stations and NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System were unable to turn the spacecraft's transmitter back on. NASA engineers project the now-stable orbit of the $65 million satellite will begin to decay between Sept. 23 and Sept. 28 if they are unable to command Lewis to fire its thrusters to counter the spin.
Bruce Barash (see photos) has been appointed Western regional vice president and Ryder Jones management development manager of MSAS Cargo International Inc., Burlingame, Calif.
