Etihad Airways was about to add another airline to its growing portfolio of affiliates last week with the signing of an agreement to acquire a 49% stake in JAT Airways, the national carrier of Serbia. The airline is expected to be renamed Air Serbia.
Airspace access is the holy grail for an unmanned-aircraft industry seeing wartime demand winding down and looking to civilian uses for continued growth.
I would be grateful is someone could tell me whether any manufacturers of heavy transport aircraft place video cameras on the wingtips of their aircraft. Cameras placed to view control surfaces and engines inflight would be invaluable in the event of a malfunction. A lot of guesswork could be taken out of what happens next. For the flight engineer to be able to do a virtual walk-around at any time in a flight could be a helpful routine even during normal flights.
Mention over-the-wing engines, and aeroskeptics are quick to remind you of the commercial failure of Germany's VFW 614 small airliner of the 1970s. But as designers look ahead to future fuel-efficient ultra-high-bypass (UHB) turbofans, over-wing engine configurations are again being considered.
Rolls-Royce's association with India began in 1932, with Gypsy engines on the first Tata Aviation aircraft. Today, Rolls-Royce has 1,300 engines in service there. Kishore Jayaraman, president of Rolls-Royce India, discusses his company's future plans with Aviation Week's Jay Menon. AW&ST: Can you elaborate on any specific plans for Rolls-Royce in India in the next five to ten years?
Carol Erikson (see photo) has been named vice president-engineering for the Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Redondo Beach, Calif.-based Space Systems. She was director for Mission 1 system enhancement and captures, deputy program manager for program integration on the Advanced Missions Programs portfolio and a project manager for the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System.
This week, Aviation Week publishes two editions. On the covers of both is a modified Sikorsky S-76 that began autonomous test flights at the end of July. As the unmanned-aircraft industry matures from remote piloting to airworthy automation, Sikorsky has launched the Matrix Technology program to develop certifiable autonomy to increase the capability, safety and reliability of rotorcraft (see page 46). Sikorsky photo by Ted Carlson.
U.S. defense primes are reporting impressive second-quarter earnings. General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon all raised guidance for 2013, and their stock prices responded favorably. The bite of sequestration—automatic, across-the-board cuts in the Defense Department's budget—has initially proved to be not as harsh as was expected earlier in the year, and operating profits are benefitting from cost-cutting. Shareholders adore the primes' share repurchase
All Nippon Airways intends to use leased Airbus A320s to set up a new Japan-based low-cost carrier, following the demise of joint-venture AirAsia Japan. ANA says the LCC will launch at the end of December with two A320s, and will have five by the end of March. ANA already has an agreement in place with AWAS to lease three A320s, and an ANA spokeswoman says they were originally earmarked for AirAsia Japan but will now be used in the new LCC operation.
The European Union is keen to set up its own network of space surveillance assets that could track spy satellites and near-Earth objects, help satellite operators avoid orbital-debris collisions and protect critical infrastructure when spent spacecraft or other objects enter Earth's atmosphere. (Photo: NASA)
Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) is set to launch three Canadian-built C-band Earth-observation radar satellites for MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) under a “launch reservation contract” awarded to the Hawthorne, Calif., based launch service provider July 30. Funded by the Canadian Space Agency, the Radarsat Constellation Mission is designed to continue the C-band dataset of earlier Radarsats with as many as four daily passes over the Canadian land mass and “several” over the Northwest Passage.
Carol Huegel (see photo) has been promoted to senior vice president of Airbus subsidiary Metron Aviation, Dulles, Va., from vice president-business development. She had been senior director of business development for the Sensis Corp.
John Croft's and Guy Norris's excellent “Damage Control” (AW&ST July 22, p. 22), lists some key clues about what might have happened during the last few seconds of Asiana's Flight 214. The issue of cockpit management during the landing phase is raised. It turns out that pilot in control might very well now be the automatic pilot (AP). The first officer might be tasked with observing the AP's performance rather than observing the pilot-in-control's airmanship.
Lawmakers drifted away from Washington for their summer vacations, leaving the fate of the FAA's NextGen and numerous other aerospace programs up in the air.
Flying a helicopter low and fast over rugged terrain—using the hills for masking—to a safe landing in a forest clearing is among the most demanding tasks a pilot can face, but one that U.S. Army researchers believe can be performed autonomously with the right sensors and algorithms.
EU carbon dioxide allowance (EUA) prices under the EU Emissions Trading System were mercurial in July, as the market reacted to the European Parliament's vote in support of regulatory intervention to curb supply. On July 3 Parliament voted in favor of the European Commission's proposal to backload 900 million EUAs from auctions in 2013-15. The vote provides a legal basis for the EC to adjust the timing of carbon auctions to curb the supply of fresh permits entering the market, in a bid to avert a more severe carbon price crash.
As U.S. airlines report record profits, the big question is whether the industry is structurally reformed or if this is just the latest climb before the next extended slide. A key part of the answer will be the extent to which airlines adhere to the new religion of capacity constraint. After all, it is easy to keep a lid on capacity when times are tough, but it is a different proposition when the red ink recedes.
