Mooney International turned to Dzyne Technologies when it wanted to design its first all-new light aircraft in decades, the M10, and do it behind closed doors.
California’s Surf Air is seeking to extend its scheduled business-jet service model to other large states—but are those markets ready for what company founders have called the “Netflix of aviation?”
Data from the Orion flight test—recorded at much higher rates than the normal 1-Hz used operationally so engineers can pinpoint the changes in loads and other factors during the flight—will be used to validate models and improve designs.
Our executive editor, a former Smithsonian Air & Space Museum staffer, director of photographer for LIFE books, Reuters photo editor and U.K.-based aviation photographer collaborate to select the best photos.
Germany’s federal aviation authority LBA has decided that Air Berlin is still a company under effective control of Europeans and therefore cleared the airline’s current relationship with its main shareholder, Etihad Airways, with some conditions. Germany’s transport ministry stated the decision will be issued formally in the coming days. Conditions include a requirement for a majority of board members to be EU nationals. The Air Berlin chairman also has to be European, and the airline has to submit full transcripts of board meetings to LBA.
Spirit AeroSystems will pay Triumph Group $160 million to take on the former’s Gulfstream wing work packages in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The companies announced a deal Dec. 9. “This transfer continues Spirit’s transformation and allows us to further focus on our core markets of aerostructures for commercial and defense aircraft,” Spirit CEO and President Larry Lawson says. Triumph says it becomes a “major” provider of wings to Gulfstream, supplying the G280, G450, G550 and G650.
The Pentagon has selected F-35 development partners Italy and Turkey to handle major maintenance, repair, overhaul and upgrade work for the single-engine, stealthy fighter in Europe, with facilities operational by 2018. The U.S. Defense Department plans to announce the location of maintenance for the Pacific region this week. Japan and Australia are expected to fare well in those assignments. Italy’s Cameri Air Base will be the site for heavy airframe maintenance. Turkey will initially handle the heavy engine maintenance for the Pratt & Whitney F135.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden took advantage of an international air traffic control conference in Beijing last month to meet with Wang Zhaoyao, director of the China Manned Space Engineering Office. Jaiwon Shin, associate NASA administrator for aeronautics, is chairman of the 23-nation International Forum for Aviation Research that met in Zhuhai, China, so the visit apparently fell within the exemption for multilateral conferences in the congressional ban on space cooperation with China.
A 30-ft. long, multi-bay box test article made out of a low-weight, damage-tolerant, stitched composite structural concept called Pultruded Rod Stitched Efficient Unitized Structure, or Prseus, has been delivered to the NASA Langley Research Center for evaluation.
The global airline industry is forecast to benefit significantly from the drop in fuel prices, but part of the improvement will be passed on to consumers as lower fares, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) forecasts. The association believes airlines will post a combined profit of $25 billion in 2015, up from $19.9 billion this year, $10.6 billion in 2013 and $6.1 billion in 2012. “We see falling oil prices giving a great boost both to the industry and consumers,” IATA Chief Economist Brian Pearce said last week.
Renewed discussions around deliveries of the A350 and the future of the A380 along with a less than enthusiastic outlook for future profits left their mark on the Airbus share price last week. The stock was down more than 10% on Dec. 11, the worst decline in six years.
A $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill designed to keep the U.S. government open for the remainder of fiscal 2015 includes $18 billion for NASA for the year.
An item in the Nov. 24 Washington Outlook column (page 20), “Size Doesn’t Matter,” misstated the type of judge who ruled in a dispute over a UAV fine by the FAA. The story should have stated that an administrative law judge initially ruled on Raphael Pirker’s case. The NTSB overturned it.
Correction: . The Dec. 1/8 article “Uncivil 737s” (page 49) incorrectly stated some of the capabilities of the P-8A. The Navy says it has not seen a “current active plan” to test depth charge capability, and notes that the SLAM-ER is no longer part of the program of record. In addition, the rank of VP-30’s officer in charge of fleet integration for the P-8A and MQ-4C was misstated. He is Cmdr. Andrew Miller.
With the clock ticking toward the first run of the GE9X core in 2015, and manufacturing of the first full engine core components getting underway, GE is counting on these materials to play a critical role in reducing weight and boosting efficiency.
