In response to a plea for urgent action from the National Transportation Safety Board, the FAA has directed air traffic controllers to deny departing aircraft clearance to position and hold on runways being used for arrivals. The agency's action was spurred by a series of recommendations made by the safety board earlier this month, as part of its investigation into the cause of a runway incursion accident last November at St. Louis (AW&ST Nov. 28, 1994, p. 19).
FEDERAL EXPRESS EXPECTS TO OPEN ITS ASIAN HUB in Subic Bay July 1 with six flights a week from Anchorage through Tokyo and other Asian cities. It will rely on a combination of A310, MD-11 and DC-10 freighters to bring express documents and freight to the new hub. According to company officials, FedEx is seeing strong growth throughout the Asia/Pacific region and expects to add Myanmar (Burma) to its list of countries served late this spring. Its new service into China (AW&ST Mar. 6, p. 26) will connect 32 cities there into its network.
The seven astronauts on board Endeavour spent their first week in orbit fine-tuning a collection of ultraviolet astronomy instruments to study rarely explored aspects of the universe.
U.K. Ministry of Defense has decided to procure 22 Westland/Agusta EH101 utility helicopters and 14 more Boeing Chinook HC Mk. 2s for additional medium support helicopters for the Royal Air Force. The total program cost is valued at 1.2 billion pounds ($1.9 billion), about 300 million pounds ($480 million) more than had the government opted for a single aircraft type. Westland's contract will be worth about 500 million pounds ($800 million), Boeing's will be less, and the remainder will be in other RAF costs.
BELGIAN POLICE ARE investigating the suicide, on Mar. 8, of Lt.-Gen. (Ret.) Jacques Lefebvre, a former Belgian air force chief of staff linked to a procurement corruption scandal. Belgian authorities are investigating allegations that Italian manufacturer Agusta in 1988 paid about $1.8 million in bribes to secure a Belgian army contract for 46 A109BA antitank/escort helicopters. NATO Secretary General Willy Claes, who was a member of the Belgian government when the A109BA contract was negotiated, has denied involvement in the scandal.
Global air cargo, propelled by burgeoning international trade, will expand about two percentage points faster than passenger traffic during each of the next five years. Increasing cargo capacity, however, will continue to hold down rates and erode yields. As a result, operators will be forced to lure customers with an ever-wider array of value-added distribution and logistics services.
The Hobart Whisper Power can produce 120 kva. to meet the ground power needs of modern transport aircraft. The Cummins 200-hp. engine that powers the unit can be started with the push of a button. A starter lock-out helps prevent flywheel damage. An in-line fuel pump helps reduce emissions from the engine, which burns Jet A fuel.
A LEAP KINETIC KILL test vehicle failed to hit its missile target launched from Wallops Island, Va., in a test Mar. 4. A Defense Dept. statement noted ``deviations from the expected interceptor flight path'' in the Lightweight Exo-Atmospheric Projectile test.
Japan is to continue development of its H-2 launch vehicle this week with its third mission, the launch of the country's first recoverable space platform and a U.S.-made communications satellite.
Asia's well-documented air service growth, particularly the use of new wide-body transports, will be a major factor in the long-term success of Boeing and Airbus. The region's impact on Douglas Aircraft is less clear because its sales there are diminishing.
In the next three years major U.S. airlines will earn only modest profits as they struggle to reduce costs, rebuild crippled balance sheets and combat growing numbers of aggressive, low-fare competitors. The airline industry will remain in a constant state of flux through 1995-97 as it attempts to complete a life-or-death metamorphosis of its financial and organizational structures and corporate philosophies.
Peter Muirhead has become production manager of Aviall Caledonian Engine Services, Prestwick, Scotland. John Horsburgh is director and general manager of CF6 services, and David Crews is general manager of CFM/Accessories/Test. Muirhead was a management consultant in the U.K. and U.S. Horsburgh worked in project and contract management, and Crews has been with Aviall Caledonian since 1982.
This line of yttrium oxide paints can help stop interactions between reactive materials at high temperature. The thermodynamically stable properties of ytrrium oxide make the paints ideal for crucible and mold coatings in applications involving highly reactive molten metals, and as a reaction barrier coating between other reactive materials. Other proven uses include high-temperature lubrication/release with superplastic forming, diffusion bonding and hot processing. The paints, available in liquid, aerosol or paste forms, can withstand temperatures of more than 1,900C.
Frederick Sine has been appointed vice president-engineering services and quality assurance for Intertrade, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He was with UPS' Airline Div.
Cleveland M. Howie has been named director of marketing for the Nacelle Services Unit of Precision Standard. He was senior sales and marketing representative for AAR Engine Component Services.
While the Pentagon's top civilians are considering whether to ask Congress to seek a fifth round of military base closures, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Gen. John Shalikashvili, has said such a move is inevitable.
CAROL BOYD HALLETT will become president of the Air Transport Assn. of America Apr. 3, replacing James E. Landry, who announced his intention to retire last year. Hallett, a general aviation pilot, currently is trade adviser for a Washington-based law practice and was U.S. Customs Service Commissioner in the Bush Administration.
New, higher-performance products, an improving global economy and record orderbooks portend a strong corporate aircraft market over the next five years. Challenges include containing high operator costs, climbing interest rates and proposed FAA reform. Rapid and reliable access to and transit within certain Asian airspace also is necessary to maximize the utility and value of increasingly capable business aircraft.
THE FIGHT IN CONGRESS OVER FINANCING two new wind tunnels for NASA may go into extra rounds if Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R.-Mo.) has his way. Bond, chairman of the Senate subcommittee on independent agencies, wants to restore $400 million approved for Fiscal 1995 but dropped by the House in a follow-up emergency supplemental appropriations bill. Although the White House agrees the tunnels are needed, it did not provide the additional $400 million in its Fiscal 1996 budget request required to keep the NASA projects alive.
TioTech 20/21 are solvent and water-free coatings designed for application on metal surfaces. TioTech 20 is a 100% solids coating applied in a liquid resin system that serves as the carrier and the film former by converting from a liquid to a high-quality solid film upon baking. TioTech 21 is an ultra-high solids version of TioTech 20 that uses a small amount of non-HAPs solvent. It allows users to reduce emissions by more than 50% while making minimal equipment changes. Tioga Coatings Corp., 1440 Huntington Drive, Calumet City, Ill. 60409.
Christopher Maddy has been named director of communications for the Cirrus Design Corp., Duluth, Minn. He was public relations chairman of Aviation Expo 1994.
Structuring by major airlines will help U.S. regional carriers grow in the coming year, but tougher federal safety regulations will make that growth more expensive to achieve. The shift of marginally profitable markets to smaller carriers from major airlines has been underway for more than a year. But the process will leap forward May 1, when Delta Air Lines overhauls its schedule to refocus on long-haul, high-yield flights in an attempt to improve its performance by at least $40 million a year.
NORTHWEST AIRLINES' SEATTLE-OSAKA route, begun in January, will be worth more than $150 million a year to the Seattle region's economy, according to Port of Seattle estimates. Upgrading the nonstop, thrice-weekly flights to daily service would bolster related tourist and business spending around Seattle to approximately $500 million annually. Osaka's new Kansai offshore airport services the sixth largest metropolitan area in the world, with a gross regional product larger than the combined economies of Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan.
NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System data base is now available on CD-ROM for IBM-compatible personal computers. The system collects, analyzes and responds to voluntarily submitted incident reports. Specialized indexing allows a user to search more than 140,000 reports in a matter of seconds. A user can select reports based on any combination of more than 50 data fields. One data base contains about 40,000 accidents that have been fully coded, including a full-text paragraph description of the event.
