As the technology for printing metal, plastic and composite parts advances, on-demand printing may improve managing parts with intermittent demand, says Tim Gornet, manager of operations at the Rapid Prototyping Center, University of Louisville. Gornet believes 3-D printing also will be used to produce replacement parts for aging aircraft that are difficult to service today. Rather than maintain an inventory of parts and tooling for a decade or two, parts suppliers and MROs could produce parts on demand.
T hree big trends are underway in the Chinese airline industry: local government backing of services to promote economic growth, a westward push by carriers seeking to corral new markets and an outward push by airlines trying to make up for decades of underperformance in international operations. Movement on each of those fronts has occurred in the past few weeks.
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board might be six months from declaring the probable cause and contributing factors in the Asiana Airlines 777-200ER crash in San Francisco last July, but two main participants in the investigation, Asiana and Boeing, have already formed their own conclusions.
The Boeing 767’s once-lofty prominence in the global long-range airline fleet may be waning, but its mark on history is etched in stone. It was the first widebody twin to record 1,000 deliveries and the first widebody designed for a two-person crew. Most significantly, the two-engine aircraft carried twin long-range overwater flights from unheard-of to commonplace in no time.
Unlike most other panels’ sessions, however, the National Business Aviation Association’s Safety Committee focuses on human failings, systemic flaws and consequent errors that result in disaster and loss. Or, more specifically, how to prevent them.
First-class may be the most prestigious cabin onboard long-haul aircraft, but market shifts and product upgrades have positioned business-class to become the most important part of the aircraft—not just for airlines, but for seat manufacturers as well.
International Space Station (ISS) crewmembers saw this “starburst” of sunlight as the orbiting outpost passed above southwestern Minnesota in May 2013. Earth-science researchers are learning what astronauts and cosmonauts have long known—there is no better view of the home planet than the Earth-facing cupola of the ISS, 250 mi. above the surface. NASA is beginning to send instruments designed to take advantage of the station’s outside experiment mounts. Here is a preview of what can be observed, provided for the most part by the station crews.
Ecovative’s many materials are grown in basically the same way, using the same simple process McIntyre and Bayer discovered as students. Think of it as analogous to concrete: “You mix up a slurry of the particles and the tissue, pour it into a container, and it grows to that shape,” McIntyre says.
Last week’s launch of the 19th U.S. Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program spacecraft could be the last for that model. The Air Force and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are planning to study the impact of not launching DMSP-20, which has already been manufactured and is in storage.
With aircraft retiring younger, used parts will play an increasing role in the aftermarket. As volumes increase, parts dealers, lessors, MROs and others seem to be moving into the aircraft disassembly business, rather than relying on independent teardown facilities to feed them. Does this upstream integration make sense? Will it work?
The Indian air force is investigating the March 28 crash of one of two Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules in a two-aircraft formation. Among the five men killed were the squadron’s second-in-command and a trainee pilot who was being supervised on low-level maneuvers.
Etihad Airways has recently focused its acquisition activities on airlines in Europe. It holds stakes in Aer Lingus, Air Berlin, Darwin and Air Serbia and is exploring a major shareholding in Alitalia. But concerns voiced by the European Commission may slow down its progress.
The Polish government has extended the lives of some of its remaining Soviet-era Sukhoi Su-22 ground-attack aircraft. Twelve Su-22M4s and six twin-seat Su-22UM3Ks will be upgraded for a further 10 years of operation, Warsaw announced on April 2. Poland says keeping the Su-22s will offload part of the close-air-support and ground-attack missions from its F-16s.
The Dutch government is reinforcing its United Nations mission in Mali with the deployment of Boeing CH-47 Chinooks. Three of the transport helicopters will be deployed by Octber as part of the Netherlands mission to the U.N. Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali, which began at the end of 2013. The first Chinook will arrive in late April.
Where aviation visionaries and telecommunications entrepreneurs have failed, Facebook and Google may yet succeed. The idea of using platforms flying in the stratosphere to bring connectivity to remote regions is back, this time with the persuasive support of the Internet’s giants.
Japan’s major airlines have laid strong foundations for growth as they enter a new fiscal year, but the big question is whether economic conditions will be healthy enough to support their expansion plans.
Talk of streaming flight data from aircraft, sparked by the Air France Flight 447 crash into the Atlantic in 2009, has been rekindled by Malaysia Airlines Flight 370's disappearance over the Indian Ocean.
A man who flew his unmanned air vehicle over a BAE Systems submarine-testing facility in the north of England has been prosecuted and fined for breaching U.K. Civil Aviation Authority regulations. Robert Knowles is the first person in the U.K. to be prosecuted for the illegal flying of an unmanned aircraft. Knowles was found guilty of taking his UAV into the restricted airspace around the plant at Barrow-in-Furness and a single count of flying the machine within 50 meters (165 ft.) of a structure.
When Aviation Week visited Iberia Maintenance in March, digital message boards across the engine shop floor lit up informing employees that the MRO has been certified by Spain’s air safety agency to repair the IAE V2500 engine. The certification is welcome news for Iberia’s technical director, Jose Luis Quiros, who says the V2500 certification will help increase the volume of work by an additional output of 100 engines in 2015. In 2013, Iberia handled 184 engines.
An Arianespace Soyuz rocket has orbited the first Sentinel satellite built for the European Commission’s (EC) Copernicus Earth-observation program, lifting off from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana, at 5:02 p.m. local time on April 3. The launch of Sentinel-1A marks the seventh Soyuz mission to lift off from Europe’s South American spaceport since October 2011. Built by Thales Alenia Space under contract to the European Space Agency, Sentinel-1A is based on the Prima platform.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) is aiming to strengthen its commercial engine business by consolidating all such operations in a new subsidiary beginning Oct. 1 while also agreeing on cooperation with Japan’s main aero-engine specialist, IHI. The new company, in which IHI will make a “modest investment,” will handle sales, engineering, manufacturing and repair, says MHI.
The NTSB is asking the FAA and Boeing to study aids that could help MD-11 pilots avoid hard and bounced landings in the trijets, which can lead to a broken wing spar and “rollover” on the runway. As of August 2012, the NTSB says the MD-11 had the highest rate of hard landings among 27 large Western-built transport category aircraft, at 5.63 per 1 million flight cycles. Between 1994 and 2010, there were at least 13 hard-landing hull loss accidents around the world.
