CSeries customers assembled here by Bombardier to talk up the aircraft say they are comfortable with the program's progress so far, as the company aims for a first flight by the end of this month. “On performance and timing, we are very confident we will get what we contracted for when it is wanted,” says Nico Buchholz, Lufthansa executive vice president for group fleet management. Lufthansa has 30 110-seat CS100s on firm order for subsidiary Swiss.
NASA has picked a new class of astronauts—four men and four women—as it pares its corps of government space travelers to meet the reduced requirements of operating the International Space Station and perhaps beginning to reach out beyond low Earth orbit. The agency intends to employ 45-55 astronauts for the foreseeable future. The corps reached an all-time high of 139 in 2000, when NASA was launching 5-6 shuttle missions annually and beginning to staff the station full-time. The new astronauts will join NASA 's 49-member “active-status” astronaut corps.
Jun Tsuruta (see photos) has been named senior director of maintenance procurement for Hawaiian Airlines. He was senior procurement project manager for Gulfstream Aerospace and had been director of supply chain/strategic sourcing at Lockheed Martin. Bill Meredith has been appointed director of the project management office. He was vice president for health-care consulting at Teampraxis and Datahouse Consulting.
International Aero Engines (IAE) will begin building the first V2500-E5 test engine for Embraer's KC-390 tanker/transport this week. The joint venture plans to deliver three flight-test engines to the Brazilian aircraft manufacturer this year and three more in the first quarter of 2014. The KC-390 is scheduled to fly in the second half of next year. The V2500-E5, which is almost identical to the V2500-A5 for the Airbus A320, is scheduled for civil certification in the third quarter of 2014.
Manolo Centeno (see photo) has been promoted to director/leader of the operations consulting practice at Sabre Airlines Solutions, Southlake, Texas, from project leader for the operations practice.
France has signed off on a long-awaited €1 billion ($1.32 billion) purchase of 34 Eurocopter NH90 utility rotorcraft for its army. Meanwhile, certification of Eurocopter's EC175 medium helicopter is expected to be held up at least four months as the company tries to fix its troubled Helionix avionics system. First customer deliveries are now not expected until early 2014.
Do you remember Michael O'Leary's ironic remark about the envisioned one-pilot flight crew? Ryanair's chief executive last year claimed direct operating costs could be significantly reduced by eliminating the first officer on commercial flights
Reauthorization of the Commercial Space Launch Act (CSLA)—and its federal indemnification coverage and potential mandates over seeking informed-consent waivers from launch participants and crew—could be hot topics as U.S. lawmakers and industry prepare to update the nearly decade-old law. The Republican chairman of the House space subcommittee, Rep. Steven Palazzo (Miss.), says he is eager to work for reauthorization and he knows that industry has a long list of desired changes, including the Federal Communications Commission's regulatory reach into space.
Rolls-Royce may lack the weight of General Electric or Pratt & Whitney in the U.S. military market, with a mixed bag of programs, but its diverse installed base could prove beneficial as defense spending comes down. Accounting for 20% of overall Rolls-Royce revenues, the defense business is split roughly 50:50 between production and services. The majority of revenues come from mature engine programs. Only about 5% stems from development work, so the company's main focus is on upgrading existing engines.
Airbus kicked off the flight-test campaign of its newest clean-sheet widebody, the A350, on June 14. Test aircraft MSN001 took off from Toulouse-Blagnac airport at 10 a.m. local time and remained in the air for 4 hr., 5 min. Chief test pilot Peter Chandler was at the controls along with Guy Magrin, an A350 project test pilot. They climbed to 10,000 ft., then 25,000 ft., reaching 340 kt. at both altitudes. The landing gear were retracted for the first time 33 min. into the flight.
ATR's shareholders appear poised to approve development of a 90-seat turboprop. Officials at the EADS-Finmeccanica joint venture say it will “likely” launch a new generation of turboprops “with increased size, greater comfort and significant improvement in efficiency.” Finmeccanica is pushing for a quick go-ahead, and says it will find “alternatives” if EADS is not interested in developing the aircraft.
NASA will spend $32 million on hardware for an instrument to fly on Europe's BepiColombo Mercury probe in 2015, under an agreement signed in Rome last week by Administrator Charles Bolden and Enrico Saggese, president of the Italian space agency. Switzerland will provide ion to the U.S., which NASA will use to build the Strofio instrument—a mass spectrometer designed to find the sources and properties of Mercury's tenuous exosphere.
Larry Peet (see photo) has been named director of sales for Hangar Ten, Kansas City, Mo. He was director of operations and aircraft sales for Port City Air, Portsmouth, N.H.
This week, Aviation Week publishes two editions. On the cover far left, the crew of a chase plane monitors the first flight of the Airbus A350, from Toulouse-Blagnac Airport June 14 (page 24) (Airbus photo by P. Masclet). Elsewhere in both editions are reports on the HammerHead UAV (page 34) and Embraer's new line of regional jets (page 28) and full analysis of developments at the Paris air show. Our MRO Edition includes additional articles.
