AT A MEETING LAST WEEK in India on the midair collision between a Saudia 747 and an Air Kazakhstan Il-76, reports from Moscow and London on the flight data recorder readouts were presented. The accident occurred on Nov. 12, 1996. The meeting at the Delhi High Court was attended by representatives of Boeing, the insurance companies and the airlines involved. The court asked all concerned to file affidavits on the reports by Apr. 21, prior to the court's next session on the matter.
THE NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION Safety Board plans to hold hearings on the explosion of TWA Flight 800 this summer even if the FBI investigation of the accident has not been completed. Board Chairman James Hall told the Senate Commerce Committee the hearing will probably occur in late summer. An FBI official said his agency's investigation might not be completed then.
OFFICIALS CLOSE TO THE PREDATOR unmanned aerial vehicle program agree that the deicing system and the classified, signals intelligence (sigint) package developed for the aircraft use the same space--the leading edge of the wing--thereby making it impossible to use both at the same time. However, the problem that actually stalled the sigint system's deployment to Bosnia late last year was self-inflicted electro-magnetic interference (EMI).
The map for Indian airline deregulation has been redrawn under a new aviation policy that prohibits foreign airlines from investing in domestic carriers. The decision most affects Jet Air, India's largest privately run carrier--and its most successful--and a proposed alignment by Singapore Airlines (SIA) and the Indian conglomerate Tata to form a national rival to state-owned Indian Airlines. However, the government's new aviation policy does allow overseas investors outside the aviation sector to hold up to 40% of the shares of a domestic carrier.
The SkyStar GPS combines the navigational capabilities of a GPS receiver with personalized aircraft data files and checklists. The unit can perform weight and balance calculations and advanced flight planning tasks such as determining estimated time of arrival and fuel requirement projections, store five personalized checklist files with up to 10 items each and determine the best glideslope to the closest airports based on the aircraft's altitude, position and characteristics. It also calculates winds aloft, density altitude and true airspeed.
Northwest Airlines has begun nonstop flights between Minneapolis and Osaka in a continuing push to build service between the U.S. and Japan's second largest city and surrounding area. With Tokyo's Narita airport so slot-constrained, Northwest's recent Asia/Pacific expansion has focused on Osaka and its more accessible Kansai International Airport, gateway to the important Kansai region in western Japan.
RACAL AVIONICS IS PRODUCING an aircraft satellite communication transceiver with a single channel of data, based on the multichannel technology it developed with Honeywell, to sell for about $50,000. Designed to support packet data services, the 20-lb. Satellite Transceiver (STR) will probably first be used for airline administrative messages, but meets the integrity and real-time communication requirements for automatic dependent surveillance (ADS) for Air Traffic Management, according to Racal.
A new, multiaxis longbed laser scribing system significantly increases the speed, accuracy and economics of transferring chemical milling patterns onto large contoured parts. The Laserdyne 890 BeamDirector, manufactured by Lumonics, Eden Prairie, Minn., cuts chemical milling maskant at speeds up to 800 in. per min., depending on application. Accuracy is to .001 in. versus typical hand-scribed tolerances of .015, according to Steve Lahm, Lumonics product marketing engineer.
As it nears the launch of the third of a $1-billion series of five geosynchronous weather satellites, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is moving to build as many as four more. NOAA would include modest technical improvements in the new spacecraft which would be an extension of the once-troubled Goes-Next series. More important, perhaps, NOAA intends to adopt a procurement approach more like that of the commercial satellite operators.
Collins is performing human factors and man-machine interface testing on a new 13.8-in.-diagonal display, an extension of its large-format, high-resolution cockpit flat panel displays.
The LM6172AMJ-QML is a dual voltage-feedback operational amplifier with a fast slew rate, high bandwidth, high output drive current, low distortion and low power consumption. Applications involve high-speed signal processing in aircraft, satellite and ground communications. The unit has a 3,000-v./millisec. slew rate, a 100-MHz. unity-gain bandwidth and 2.3-milliamp power consumption per channel. It can operate at 15 v. or 5 v. and will function even after radiation exposure of 800,000 rads. National Semiconductor Corp., 2900 Semiconductor Drive, Santa Clara, Calif.
Concerns about the ability and willingness of airlines and the FAA to adequately monitor aircraft maintenance farmed out to third parties is leading the National Transportation Safety Board to consider mounting a special study of the maintenance, repair and overhaul industry. Government and industry officials recently have focused on maintenance problems as part of their campaign to cut the rate of commercial aviation accidents.
ordered a precautionary stand-down of all B-2 training missions until the cause of a fracture in an engine-to-accessory drive system shaft can be determined. The stand-down went into effect Apr. 8 and will continue until all aircraft have been inspected and cleared for flight. Sundstrand, Northrop Grumman and Air Force engineers were conducting analyses and inspections of the shafts late last week. The shaft was designed to shear if either the engine or Airframe Mounted Accessory Drive (AMAD) was to seize up, preventing damage to the other.
Korean Air has delivered its first nose section for the MD-95 to McDonnell Douglas. The Pusan-based aerospace manufacturing division of Korea's largest airline is scheduled to produce all subsequent nose structures for the 100-seat transport. McDonnell produced the MD-95 first nose to allow Korean Air to ramp up its production process. Final assembly of the MD-95 is scheduled to start in the second quarter of this year with rollout in early 1998.
The FAA plans--after a review of more than eight years--to toughen regulations governing repair stations this year by requiring those facilities to improve their record-keeping, training and internal and external quality-control procedures. But the FAA has yet to make changes to correct its own chronic shortcomings in safety oversight and restore public confidence in aviation maintenance, officials in that field said.
John D. Cosgrove, Dwight W. Decker and Larry D. Yost have been named corporate senior vice presidents of Rockwell International, Seal Beach, Calif. They are presidents, respectively, of Rockwell Avionics and Communications, Rockwell Semiconductor Systems and Rockwell Automotive.
Perimitrax is an FCC-certified outdoor perimeter intrusion detection system that relies on buried sensor cables. The electromagnetic field generated by the cables extends both above and below ground to detect intruders. The system can sense human characteristics such as mass and speed, giving a probability of detection that its manufacturer says is better than 99% and also providing a low false alarm rate. Applications include airports and military bases. The system is controlled from an IBM-compatible personal computer.
Photograph: Astronaut Jerry Linenger tries on Soyuz reentry pressure suit after arriving on Mir. His stay on the Russian station is approaching 100 days this week. NASA will take a tougher, more vigilant stance on assessing the health and safety aspects of the Mir space station before approving the long-duration flight of more U.S. astronauts on the aging vehicle.
A group of environmentalist associations is expected to appeal the French state council's authorization to construct two additional runways at Roissy/Charles de Gaulle (CDG) airport (AW&ST Mar. 31, p. 42). According to ADP, Paris airports authority's strategic plan, which was established in the early 1970s, CDG is to expand gradually to a five-runway system to handle as many as 100 million passengers/year in the early 2000s. CDG, France's major international hub, now has only two runways.
Samuel R. Berger is President Clinton's National Security Adviser. He recently spoke to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on ``A Foreign Policy Agenda for the Second Term.'' Excerpts follow.
The success of the ETS-7 mission will be an essential step in NASDA's development of rendezvous/docking and robotics techniques, but its launch is expected to signal a step forward of another kind. NASDA and Japan's main space science agency, the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), are negotiating an agreement with five politically powerful fishermen's unions that ply the waters off Japan's southern Kyushu and Shikoku islands to allow 50 more days each year for space launches.
