Regarding the editorial “Airline M&A Sense and Nonsense” (AW&ST Aug. 26, p. 54), a great to-do is made about the mediocre financial history of these so-called legacy carriers but no one bothers to mention how destructively costly deregulation has been to the airline industry, airline and airline-related employees, shippers, investors, creditors, communities and the nation.
Boeing's first stretched 787-9 is undergoing initial ground tests at Everett, Wash., in readiness for first flight, which is expected to take place this month.
Turkish Aerospace Industries has completed the first flight of the Hurkus, the country's first indigenously produced turboprop trainer. The prototype became airborne from TAI's facility at Akinci air base near Ankara on Aug. 29 for a 33-min. flight, which saw it climb to 9,500 ft. Powered by a 1,600-shp Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-68T engine, Hurkus has been developed to compete with other turboprop trainers. TAI hopes to achieve EASA certification of the Hurkus at the end of 2014.
U.S. Navy Cmdr. (ret.) David Tussey (New York, N.Y. )
Bravo for Bill Sweetman. If I were still in Defense Department's cost assessment and program evaluation division, as I was in the late 1980s, his proposal for the Joint Strike Fighter (AW&ST Aug. 19, p. 19), would be exactly what I would recommend: kill the “B” and “C” models, preserving the U.S. Air Force's F-35A. This is not about parochialism or threats and capabilities. It is about balancing budget, force structure and aircraft procurement. We can't reduce force structure (much), so we need “X” new aircraft yearly bought with “Y” dollars.
In casting a net far and wide seeking solutions to the runway incursion problem, the FAA is particularly interested in the brand of unencumbered creativity that tends to spring from the minds of college students. That optimism in part is what is behind the safety agency's annual design competition, now in its eighth year. This year's winner in the runway safety category, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) students, devised an aid for the worst offenders in the runway incursion problem—general aviation pilots.
USAF Lt. Gen. Robin Rand has been nominated for promotion to general and assignment as commander of the Air Education and Training Command, Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, Texas. He has been commander of the Twelfth Air Force (Air Forces Southern) of Air Combat Command, Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz. Maj. Gen. Russell J. Handy been nominated for promotion to lieutenant general and assignment as commander of Alaskan Command, U.S.
Stephen M. Nolan (see photos) has been named senior vice president-strategy and business development and Jay Tibbets senior vice president and president of the Sporting Group of Arlington, Va.-based ATK. Nolan was interim senior vice president-business development and had been vice president/general manager of the Advanced Systems Div. Tibbets was his group's senior vice president-business development and had been vice president-strategy and business development for ATK Armament Systems.
There a very bizarre quote in William Garvey's recent Inside Business Aviation column (AW&ST Aug. 19, p. 20) in which George Antoniadis said he wanted to disprove “ . . . the belief that aviation destroyed billions of dollars of value every year.” I should like to know who holds such a view, just what they consider to be “value” and what is their evidence. Antoniadis was apparently paraphrasing someone else.
Scott Hubbard, who led NASA Ames Research Center, Calif., for four years and conceived the airbag landing system of the Mars Pathfinder mission, is scheduled to be inducted into the Kentucky Aviation Hall of Fame in Lexington on Oct. 26. Hubbard, a Kentucky native, is now at Stanford University's Aeronautics and Astronautics Department. He is a member of the International Academy of Astronautics and received the Von Karman Medal from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Many of us have enjoyed spectacular video of rocket launches from the rocket's point of view, with the launch pad receding rapidly and strap-on boosters falling away as the black sky of space shows up around Earth's curve. The “RocketCam” videos are a staple on YouTube, but they have a value that far exceeds entertainment. In the high-stakes spaceflight business, video shots of rockets and other space hardware in action give engineers a much better view of system performance than even the most detailed numeric telemetry.
Unloved and abandoned by its creator, the outcast Hawker 4000 (see photo at right below) is being embraced as a valued member by at least one adoptive family. Talon Air, an aircraft management and charter operator, now has nine of the super-midsize twins on its FAR135 certificate. Since only 69 of the big Hawkers were built before its manufacturer halted production and went through a bankruptcy that included cancelling their owners' warranties, Talon Air's fleet is by far the largest. And it is delighted with that distinction.
These are among the 94 STOs and 95 VLs conducted thus far in Developmental Testing 2, a follow-on to a set of day-only DT trials in 2011. The trials, slated to end last week, are designed to open the envelope to include night flying around the ship, different approaches and headings for landings and conducting these operations in varying wind conditions. So far, testing has been conducted in headwinds of 35 kt and crosswinds of 15 kt, says Navy Capt. Kurt Kastner, executive officer of the Wasp, which was operating about 35 mi. offshore.
The remnants of the tail section of UPS Flight 1354 lie near Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport in Alabama, its intended destination, which is in the background of this photo and the one above, both from the NTSB. With back-to-back widebody crashes in the U.S. in June and July—an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777-200ER in San Francisco and the UPS Airbus A300-600F in Birmingham—we offer an in-depth look at global safety initiatives.
NASA supporters may hate the restraints of the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA) and annual sequestrations brought in part by tea party demands for lower federal spending, deficits and debt, but with the law looking increasingly likely to stay, space boosters might want to pay more attention to the House's related spending and NASA authorization bills this year.
Douglas E. Scott has become senior vice president/general counsel of AeroVironment Inc., Monrovia, Calif. He was head of the legal department at the Science Applications International Corp.
China's lunar exploration program will meet its long-standing target to launch the Chang'e 3 sample-return mission this year, but only just, according to a government authority with oversight of space activities. The mission will launch at year-end, says the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense. Chang'e 3 is to demonstrate soft landing on the Moon, surveying of the surface by rover, survival on the lunar surface, communications for long-distance monitoring and control, and direct injection into a lunar transfer orbit.
European Union carbon dioxide allowance (EUA) prices under the EU Emissions Trading System made modest gains in August, trading in low volumes as expected during the summer lull. December 2013 EUAs averaged €4.42 per metric ton Aug. 1-27, up from €4.24 in July, according to Platts daily closing assessments. The market this year has been increasingly driven by EU policy, as lawmakers grapple with European Commission proposals to withhold short-term primary supply in a bid to support the price.
