Photograph: Since its 1993 launch, the Canadair RJ has achieved a 99.13% fleet-wide dispatch reliability. Air Canada operates 26 of the Bombardier-built turbofan jets. PHOTO BY RONALD ADAM Afleet-wide inspection of 166 Canadair Regional Jets, prompted by the discovery of a 14-in. fatigue crack in a CRJ's center pressure bulkhead, turned up 38 aircraft with cracks that require repair. Acting to reduce disruption to air service, the manufacturer Bombardier developed a Transport Canada-approved modification within 72 hr.
Raising the orbit of its Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer/Earth Probe (TOMS/EP) last week to make up for some of the data being lost now that Japan's Adeos-1 Earth-observation satellite has failed (see p. 31). The TOMS sensor on Adeos was extending the global total column ozone measurements that NASA began with Nimbus-7 in 1978. The TOMS/EP spacecraft was complementing the Adeos-1 ozone counts, but it has operated at a lower altitude--310 mi.--to collect high ground resolution research data.
Photograph: The docking node (arrow) of the Service Module for the new International Space Station is identical to node on Mir. It shows where the two space-suited Mir crewmen will conduct the repair. They will enter the node from inside Mir. The unit here was originally to be Russia's ``Mir-2'' before the structure was transferred to the new program. U.S. and Russian space teams are working as a combined force to save the Mir space station with an ambitious repair strategy designed to restore electrical power to the 125-ton vehicle by next week.
Photograph: Adeos-1, shown during testing, was Japan's second largest spacecraft when launched last year. Adeos-2 will not have as broad an environmental focus when launched in 1999. Japan's premier spacecraft for the study of global environmental changes--the polar-orbiting Advanced Earth Observation Satellite--abruptly stopped relaying data last week, and the $1-billion program is assumed lost. It is not yet clear what caused the failure.
Italy's Air Dolomiti concluded an order with Aero International Regional for three ATR 72-210A and one ATR 42-500 twin turboprop transports. Recently, Air Dolomiti and Lufthansa German Airlines expanded a partnership accord in Italy and Germany to neighboring France. Lufthansa currently accounts for 137 of the 156 daily flights operated by Air Dolomiti, and two out of every three passengers carried. This year, traffic is expected to jump 33% to 400,000 passengers.
FUEL TANK EXPLOSIONS Commercial Fuel Tank Explosion/Ignition Experience Operator/ Hull Fuel Inerting Phase of Model location Year Fatal loss type benefit operation Boeing 707 Oso, 1959 4 Yes UNK Yes Flight Wash.
Photograph: Solid know-how in large integrated systems like the Eurocat 2000 is expected to drive strong growth at Airsys ATM, a newly formed joint venture of Siemens AG and Thomson-CSF. Siemens AG has entered the final phase of a planned selloff of its Defense Electronics Group and spun off its air traffic management business to a joint venture with Thomson-CSF in a move that will further consolidate the European aerospace and defense industry.
Bernard Lathiere, Airbus Industrie's managing director from 1975-85, died June 27 in Paris. He was 68. Lathiere, a former top official of the DGAC French civil aviation authority, was instrumental in developing and implementing the consortium's strategic plan. He also was central to efforts to establish a strong product line and land a major share of the commercial transport market. From 1986-92, he headed the ADP Paris airports authority.
Astronaut Brent W. Jett, Jr., has succeeded Michael Lopez-Alegria as the NASA manager of operational activities at Star City, Russia. Lopez-Alegria will return to the Johnson Space Center in Houston to begin training for the second U.S. mission to assemble the International Space Station.
Darryl C. Van Dorn has been appointed director of NASA and commercial Delta programs for McDonnell Douglas Aerospace, Huntington Beach, Calif. He was program manager for the NASA medium light expendable launch vehicle services contract.
Sens. Christopher Dodd (D.-Conn.) and Joseph Biden (D.-Del.) have introduced legislation that would prohibit advanced weapons from being sold or transferred to Latin America unless the President and Congress certify the transaction is in U.S. interests. The bill would cover fighters and attack helicopters, but not transport helicopters. High-tech arms sales to Latin America were essentially banned by a 1977 Carter Administration directive, the only exception being the 1982 sale of F-16s to Venezuela in response to Cuba's acquisition of MiG-23s.
MTU and Snecma have embarked on a long-range engine technology development program aimed at reducing fuel consumption on long-haul civil transports by more than 20%. The program will focus mainly on combining heat exchanger and intercooler technologies in order to obtain a better compression ratio. The partners may exploit the results on their respective engines or pool them for future joint programs, an MTU spokesman said. The venture is part of MTU efforts aimed at stepping up collaboration with European engine makers.
Brussels-based DHL International expects to lease three all-cargo Airbus A300B4 twinjets from the U.S. Pinnacle Aircraft Leasing Co. The aircraft will be converted into cargo configuration by Daimler-Benz Aerospace Airbus (DASA Airbus) and are scheduled to enter service by the end of the year. They will be operated on DHL's European route system. Last week, Farnair Europe also acquired three used A300B4s that will be converted by DASA Airbus.
FAA and NTSB officials are squaring off for a fight over what caused the destruction of TWA Flight 800 and what actions should be taken to prevent such an accident from happening again. Senior FAA officials have prepared their own analysis of the July 17, 1996, crash, challenging the National Transportation Safety Board's initial findings that something within the 747-131's nearly empty center tank triggered an explosion of fuel vapors that ripped the aircraft apart.
Stephan J. Egli is moving from Swissair, where he has been vice president-network management, to become vice president-Atlantic/Pacific business for Delta Air Lines. Egli will succeed Michael Medlicott, who is now managing director of Opus Holdings Plc. in the U.K.
As NATO leaders gather for this week's Madrid summit, Turkey is rated the most vulnerable member of the alliance in a new U.S. assessment of world flashpoints. Critics of NATO expansion fear the summit's addition of at least three East-Central European states will further dilute and disperse the alliance's command structure, already weakened by Turkish/ Greek hostility.
The two worst things that can happen to orbiting spacecraft with humans on board, NASA astronaut Jerry Linenger has aptly observed, are fire and depressurization--and now both have happened on board Mir. Linenger was there in February when fire and smoke erupted from an oxygen generator on Mir not unlike the ones that brought down ValuJet Flight 592.
Watch for the Defense Dept. to buy a substantial portion of the higher-resolution satellite imagery that's due to hit the commercial market soon. Why would the military--and even the spooks--want to buy 1-meter-resolution pictures from the likes of Orbimage and Space Imaging when U.S. intelligence satellites easily offer finer resolution? Because they are likely to be available quickly and can fill gaps when the big spy satellites are busy with strategic concerns like treaty verification, and aircraft can't get to a recce target in time.
Desert Storm is being reevaluated by the General Accounting Office. The congressional auditors say newly declassified figures show the effectiveness of the air war was overstated by the Pentagon and industry. For example, the F-117 hit rate was 41-60%, not 80%, and an average of 11 tons of guided munitions had to be expended on each target destroyed. Still, the GAO acknowledged that the weapons produced ``perhaps the most successful war fought by the U.S.
The forward fuselage of a Lockheed/Boeing F-22 fighter has been attached to and flown on the nose of a Boeing 757 ``flying avionics laboratory.'' The aim of the flying testbed is to reduce avionics development costs by testing, evaluating and troubleshooting F-22 avionics systems in flight prior to being installed in an actual F-22. For simplicity, initial F-22 fighter test aircraft will use only minimal avionics. Installation of the F-22's Northrop Grumman AN/APG-77 radar is scheduled to take place in Baltimore later this year.
Photograph: Iridium's Main Mission Transceiver Antenna System, being designed and built by Raytheon, will use gallium arsenide monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs), also produced by Raytheon. Raytheon Co. will capture substantially everything it sought in its $2.9-billion acquisition of Texas Instruments' defense operations, based on a settlement reached with the Justice Dept. last week.
Passenger interference with cabin crewmembers is increasing. American Airlines reported 140 assaults on flight attendants by passengers in 1995, up from 33 the year prior. United Airlines reported the number of verbal and physical assaults on its cabin staff increased from 77 to 94 during the same period, according to a just-published report by the FlightSafety Foundation, Alexandria, Va. An analysis of the problem by Northwest Airlines revealed intoxication was responsible for about 25% of all abusive passenger behavior.
