Feb. 1-3—Routes Americas. Denver. See www.routesonline.com/events/172/Feb. 1-3 Feb. 3-6—National Business Aviation Association’s Schedulers & Dispatchers Conference. San Jose, California. See www.nbaa.org/events/sdc/2015/ Feb. 11-14—Lawyer Pilots Bar Association’s Winter Convention. Sunscape Sabor Resort. Cozumel, Mexico. See www.LPBA.org
Norwegian Would . . .? In “Redefining the Model” ( AW&ST Nov. 24, p. 38) Norwegian CEO Bjorn Kjos clearly states that NAI will be based in Ireland “because it needs a European Union air operator certificate to gain access to traffic rights to destinations in Asia.” The article also addresses the fact that Norway already has an open skies agreement with the U.S.
More than 130 photographers from 20 countries submitted more than 500 images for Aviation Week's 23rd Annual Photo Contest. See the best photos selected by our panel of judges.
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.
Orbital Sciences Corp. says it will resume Cygnus cargo carrier flights to the International Space Station in September 2015 with the United Launch Alliance Atlas V 401 standing in while its Antares launcher is upgraded. A reengined Antares will resume flights to the ISS for NASA in early 2016, and Orbital says it expects to accomplish all remaining cargo deliveries under its $1.9 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA by the end of 2016 at no extra cost to the agency, using a long-planned upgrade to the Cygnus.
The U.S. Defense Logistics Agency has named its best-performing suppliers for 2014 as part of the Pentagon’s effort to name-and-shame industry into helping achieve better acquisition outcomes. Forty of the agency’s 153 parts and commodity suppliers with the largest contracts, together accounting for more than $5 billion in annual contract spending, have been listed in three tiers of favorites. They include primes like Boeing and Lockheed Martin in the top tier, as well as small businesses like I-Solutions Direct.
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.
Controllers at the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory are checking out NASA’s New Horizons probe after a successful pre-programmed reactivation Dec. 6, preparing for an unprecedented flyby of Pluto and its five known moons on July 14. The 70-meter Deep Space Network antenna at Canberra, Australia, received the signal indicating the 478-kg (1,050-lb.) nuclear-powered spacecraft had switched from hibernation to active mode for the 18th time since it was launched on Jan. 19, 2006. It will remain active until after it passes within about 6,000 mi.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
