Western Pacific Airlines will begin service from Denver International Airport (DIA) on June 29 with 45 daily departures, while cutting 13 flights from its Colorado Springs hub schedule. WestPac currently has 35 daily departures from the Springs, and the impending receipt of another four Boeing 737-300s enables expansion into the larger Denver market this summer. It will then operate 19 -300s, which have an average age of 8.4 years--one of the lowest in the industry.
THE U.S. DEFENSE DEPT. has not yet made a final selection of a precision landing system that meets the requirements of all military services. For this reason, the U.S. will not recommend any specific precision landing system as a future NATO standard during a working group meeting in mid-May in Rome (AW&ST Apr. 21, p. 54). Last August, the Pentagon invited industry to submit ideas for a precision landing system and received a number of different concepts, which have been under evaluation.
After months of problems, work on the International Space Station here is getting back on track with an influx of government funding and a revised development plan by Russian industry, but NASA is hedging its bets on whether the Russians will deliver critical hardware when promised. Money is finally emerging from the Russian government to Energia, which is developing the Service Module, ending a funding delay that led NASA to slip the schedule for building the international station.
News tidbits from the annual Boeing shareholders meeting, held in Seattle last week, included increasing military interest in the Model 609 tilt rotor manufactured jointly with Bell Helicopter Textron. Demand for the 11-place Model 609--a smaller version of the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey originally intended for civil markets--is forecast at about 1,000 units over 20 years, according to Alan Mulally, president of Boeing's Defense and Space Group. The company also hinted at increased offshore production of components for its hot-selling commercial transports.
The Cassini spacecraft program is counting down to an October launch to Saturn that scientists expect to answer many of the baffling questions raised by the twin Voyager spacecraft, which flew past the ringed planet in the early 1980s. Unlike Voyager 1 and 2, however, Cassini will remain within the Saturn system making scientific observations for four years--and possibly longer--returning volumes of data during the course of some 60 orbits around the planet and its moons.
A TRUCK DRIVER ABANDONED a shipment of four AGM-130 missiles at a lumberyard in Ranger, Tex., on Apr. 24. The missiles were not fitted with warheads and posed no threat to the public, a U.S. Air Force official said. The driver, Ronald D. Coy, was arrested at a truck stop near Orange, Tex. The missiles were loaded on Coy's truck at a Boeing facility in Duluth, Ga., and were supposed to be delivered to Cannon AFB, in Clovis, N.M.
OVERWORKED STAFF and lack of proper infrastructure at Delhi International Airport were the main cause of a major mid-air collision there last November, a lawyer for Saudia Airlines alleged to an Indian court of inquiry last week. In a written submission, he accused the Airports Authority of India of ``criminal neglect'' for failing to install more advanced airport radar, which allegedly had lain idle for months.
Japan's first woman commercial pilot, Aya Nagano, has begun flying as a first officer on British Aerospace Jetstream 31s for J-Air, a Japan Airlines subsidiary. Nagano, 26, is a graduate of the state-owned pilot academy. A second academy graduate, Tomoko Azuma, is expected to qualify as a 747 first officer by this fall. Nagano and Azuma stand out from the traditional role that Japanese women see themselves fulfilling in air services.
Mesa Airlines expects to begin daily service between Fort Worth and Houston this week using Canadair RJ aircraft, after the FAA halted proving flights. FAA officials assigned to monitor and approve the airline's overall performance found about 20 discrepancies. Flights were stopped in April, in part because pilots experienced difficulty in programming the flight management computers on the short, 40-min. Fort Worth-Houston flights.
Frank M. Jauregui has become vice predsident-product support operations for Hughes-Avicom International, Pomona, Calif. He was vice president-worldwide line maintenance operations for Northwest Airlines.
The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is planning to award a lucrative contract in the fall of 1998 to build a new constellation of imagery satellites. Six industry teams have been selected to compete for the multibillion dollar contract. A request for proposals is expected early next spring. And NRO is planning to take the unprecedented step of announcing the names of the winning contractors. NRO Director Keith Hall told reporters last week that the first satellites should be launched early in the next decade.
NEWS CORP.'S AGREEMENT to invest $1 billion in EchoStar to create an unprecedented direct broadcast satellite network is in jeopardy because of a dispute between the two companies over what type of encryption system to use. A planned filing with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has been delayed.
Think tankers looking ahead to post-NATO-enlargement Europe say the alliance had better pay attention to Ukraine. Kiev isn't likely to accept NATO's or Russia's vision of the future, they say, because Soviet domination made Ukrainians highly protective of their independence. Sherman W. Garnett, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, notes that widespread predictions of a ``shipwreck'' in Russian/Ukrainian relations after the Soviet Union crumbled proved unfounded.
One of three flight test Global Express business jets suffered a gear-up landing at Toronto's Downsview airport on Apr. 25. The belly landing occurred at about 7 p.m. local time when, after a routine test flight, the crew forgot to extend the landing gear, according to Bombardier Aerospace. The accident caused minimal damage to the aircraft and should not delay the Global Express certification program, Bombardier said. About 60 of the ultra-long-haul, $32-million jets are on order, with certification planned for the second quarter of 1998.
THE U.S. AIR FORCE SUSPENDED further attempts to recover an A-10 and the body of its pilot, Capt. Craig Button, from a Colorado mountain until snow melts later this spring. DNA analysis of human ``fragmentary remains'' by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology confirmed that Button went down with his aircraft, according to an Air Combat Command official. Consequently, the service elected to close its search-and-rescue center in Eagle, Colo., noting that additional recovery efforts did not warrant endangering personnel.
Michael R. Disbrow has been promoted to vice president-marketing and customer support for Hartzell Propeller Inc., Piqua, Ohio. He was vice president-product support.
British Airways is seeking to shift its Paris operations to Orly airport because of security concerns over the resumption of flights by Air Algerie at Charles de Gaulle.
Thomas C. Johns has been appointed vice president-business development and Eileen M. Effinger assistant general counsel of Coltec Industries, Charlotte, N.C. He was president of Coltec's Farnam Sealing Systems Div. She was a senior associate with the New York law firm of Wien, Malkin and Bettex.
Despite schedule slips and fires in space, NASA is now ``cautiously optimistic'' that its joint efforts with Russia will proceed as planned. Well, at least as replanned. Wilbur C. Trafton, the associate administrator for space flight, says using the Russian-built Service Module as the third piece of the international space station is the ``desired option,'' even though the U.S. is pressing ahead with backup hardware (see p. 22).
Safety regulators have ordered inspections of BK-117 helicopters for fatigue cracks after the discovery of a 6-in. crack in the tail boom of one that crashed in New York. U.S. operators were ordered, on Apr. 25, to inspect their BK-117s before further flight and repeat the inspection every 100 hr. of in-service time thereafter.
Most major U.S. aerospace/defense companies, along with many of their vendors, are expected to sustain in the near term the healthy earnings and revenue growth the industry posted for the first quarter.
The Navy's EP-3 fleet is slated to get an upgrade, sponsored by the Pentagon's joint service Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office, that ``will change how we use the aircraft,'' says VQ-2 skipper, Cdr. Robert Leeds.
Cranfield College of Aeronautics in the U.K. has embarked on a study of comparative levels of airport charges for the Assn. of European Airlines. The study is focusing on major European airports, with examples from the U.S. and the Far East, to identify areas where the 26 airlines which make up AEA's membership are not getting their money's worth in terms of services.
Refinements are being made in the Cassini mission to ensure the health of sensitive spacecraft instruments and to fulfill as many priority scientific objectives as possible following budget cuts during the past five years. The reductions resulted in major changes to the spacecraft design in 1992 and more recently have caused funds available for the cruise and orbital phases of the mission to be essentially cut in half. The cruise and orbital segments cover a period of 11 years.
