The devastating two-week pilot strike at Air France has cost the airline around €500 million ($635 million), and a lot of the company’s strategic questions remain unanswered. French pilot union SNPL only ended the strike after Air France-KLM CEO Alexandre de Juniac agreed to drop a key part of his restructuring plan—growing low-cost carrier Transavia into a pan-European airline. What remains unsolved is how big Transavia France can become and how Air France can achieve cost cuts in its legacy operation.
A design fault in the thermal system of the Soyuz Fregat upper stage is behind the botched launch of Europe’s first two fully operational Galileo navigation, positioning and timing satellites, which were deployed to the wrong orbit following their Aug. 22 launch from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana.
Northrop Grumman falsified test data on a GPS-based navigation system used to guide U.S. military ships, missiles and aircraft, including Predator and Reaper unmanned systems, an employee of the aerospace giant claims in a lawsuit alleging the company cut corners and produced phony test results. In a September 2012 complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Utah under a federal whistle-blower law, Todd Donaldson alleges Northrop Grumman sold the LN-100 guidance system to the U.S.
Balfour Beatty, the owner of Blackpool Squires Gate Airport in Lancashire, England, failed to find a buyer for the facility by its deadline of Oct. 7. Commercial flight operations are now set to terminate on Oct. 15. Work is underway to ensure that general aviation and offshore operations can continue.
Galileo satellite prime contractor OHB System of Germany is assessing options for salvaging the first two satellites in support of the full Galileo constellation. Kristian Pauly, deputy program manager for Galileo at OHB, says in their current elliptical orbit the spacecraft’s Earth-view sensors see the planet as overly large at the orbit’s perigee, sending their Attitude and Orbit Control System (AOCS) into safe mode and rendering them intermittently inoperable.
Giuseppe Orsi, the former president and CEO of Finmeccanica, has been given a two-year suspended prison sentence for false invoicing along with the former CEO of AgustaWestland, Bruno Spagnolini. The pair were found guilty in the corruption case relating to the sale of 12 VIP helicopters to the Indian government in March 2010. However, both men were acquitted of charges relating to international corruption.
A new study for the U.K. Space Agency said Britain appears on track to reach its target of representing 10% of the global space economy in 2030. But the 2020 goal remains “a challenging target, and would necessitate a significant acceleration in revenue growth over the next six years.” Indeed, the London Economics analysis last month said that to achieve the interim objective set by the Space Growth Action Plan for 2020, industry sales would need to grow by an average of 8.7% per year through then, even as increases in the past two years have slowed to 7.3%.
Australian composites manufacturer Quickstep will close its U.S. facility and transfer the equipment to licensee Vector Composites of Ohio. The two companies have been working on qualifying Quickstep’s economical out-of-autoclave composites process for the Lockheed Martin F-35 program. Part of Quickstep’s business is to license its technology, which is based on using glycol to cure composites, achieving faster and more controlled changes in resin temperatures than are possible with autoclaves.
Around 353 Earth observation (EO) satellites are expected to be launched over the next decade compared to 162 in 2004-13, according to Euroconsult. This will result in $36 billion in manufacturing revenue globally, an 85% increase over the previous decade, the consulting company said Oct. 9. In 2023, the commercial EO data market is expected to reach $3.6 billion (for an 8% compound annual growth rate for 2014‑23). Asia, Latin America and Africa are expected to grow at over 10% each.
An article in the Oct. 6 issue (page 22) should have stated the cost increase of the F-35 to Norway is 5.58% and the first phase for an F-35 facility will cost $96 million.
The French defense equipment agency DGA took delivery of the first of 10 modernized Dassault Rafale fighters for the nation’s navy Oct. 3. Upgraded to the current F-3 standard, the Rafales will replace Super Etendards as of 2016, when they will become the navy’s only strike fighters. Produced hastily to the F1 standard in the late 1990s in an effort to replace aging F-8 Crusaders, these 10 navy Rafales have been limited to superiority and air defense missions.
The French defense equipment agency DGA took delivery of the first of 10 modernized Dassault Rafale fighters for the nation’s navy Oct. 3. Upgraded to the current F-3 standard, the Rafales will replace Super Etendards as of 2016, when they will become the navy’s only strike fighters. Produced hastily to the F1 standard in the late 1990s in an effort to replace aging F-8 Crusaders, these 10 navy Rafales have been limited to superiority and air defense missions.
Regional Pilot Constraints Several points in Capt. Lee Moak’s Viewpoint: “Pilot Shortage? No, It’s a Pay Shortage” ( AW&ST Sept. 15, p. 58) need clarification: •There is a pilot shortage. It has led to canceled flights, dropped routes, and what Moak mischaracterizes as attempts to “roll back safety regulations.” Regional airlines and our member carriers are experiencing high attrition levels.
The U.S. Army is refining strategies for pairing manned/unmanned air platforms, such as its new General Atomics Gray Eagle UAS and Boeing AH-64E "Echo" Apache attack helicopter, to eventually include remote weapons release.
Airbus this month closed its takeover of the former optronics subsidiary of Carl Zeiss. Airbus had held 75% ownership but in October 2012 moved to take over the remainder. The 800-person unit, previously known as Cassidian Optronics, with headquarters in Oberkochen, Germany, now will be called Airbus DS Optronics. It designs and produces optronic, optical and precision-engineered products for satellites and UAVs.
With EASA certification now in place for the A350-900, Airbus is shifting gears to prepare for first delivery of the aircraft and a steep production ramp-up.
Metals giant Alcoa is continuing its push into Indiana and the aerospace business, with the formal opening last week of “the world’s largest” aluminum-lithium plant in Lafayette. The company says its cast house there, next to its extrusion plant, can produce more than 20,000 metric tons of aluminum-lithium annually. The $90 million facility is capable of making aluminum-lithium ingots big enough “to make any single-piece component on today’s aircraft,” says Alcoa.
Miami-based Eastern Air Lines, which is not yet flying, has confirmed its order for 20 Mitsubishi Aircraft 92-seat MRJ90 regional jets. Deliveries are due to begin in 2019, about two years after the MRJ enters service. Mitsubishi now has orders for 191 MRJs, which should increase to 223 when Japan Airlines confirms an order for 32 covered by a letter of intent. In addition, customers hold options and purchase rights on another 184 MRJ90s. Eastern will use the name and livery of the historic but unrelated U.S. airline that closed in 1991.
Production of Boeing 737s is expected to rise to an unprecedented 52 per month in 2018. The company, which already announced plans to increase the production rate to 47 per month in 2017, hinted last month that the even higher assembly rate was being considered in response to market demand. Once established, the new rate means more than 620 aircraft a year will be built, roughly equivalent to the cumulative production for the first 13 years of the 737. Boeing has a firm order backlog of more than 4,000 737s: over 1,700 for 737 NGs and 2,294 for the 737 MAX family.
NASA selected Boeing and SpaceX to take U.S. astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS) as a way to stop paying Russia $76 million a pop for seats (and training) in the Soyuz capsule after early 2018. But even in this era of cooling relations between the countries, it doesn’t mean astronauts will stop flying Soyuz. And cosmonauts probably will fly in the new U.S. vehicles, to restore the “dissimilar redundancy” in ISS crew transport that has been missing since the space shuttle retired.
Blackpool International Airport in the U.K. has announced that commercial flights could end by the middle of October if a buyer is not found for the loss-making facility. The airport owner, infrastructure company Balfour Beatty said Sept. 29 that if no buyer can be found before Oct. 7, airport operations will end on Oct. 15. The airport currently has flights to resort destinations in Spain and Turkey with U.K. low-cost airline Jet2 and flights to Ireland and the Isle of Man by Aer Lingus and Citywing.
