Air France's Transavia low-cost venture will take on a larger role under the airline's restructuring effort, but the overall fleets for the struggling short-haul and freight networks will be trimmed. In a bid to stem losses, Air France will focus its own short-haul operation on Marseille, Toulouse and Nice, as well as other locations where business travel dominates and needs to be connected to the carrier's long-haul network. Transavia will largely take over responsibility for leisure traffic, and see its fleet grow to 20-22 aircraft by 2015-16.
The Australian government will buy 10 Alenia Aermacchi/L-3 Communications C-27Js to meet its tactical transport needs. An item in The World (May 14, p. 15) incorrectly identified one of the contractors.
To see more details about the Medal of Honor aviators, plus photographs of them and video footage from the conflicts in which they served, go to AviationWeek.com/medalofhonor or your digital edition of AW&ST on an iPad. By the time Joe Jackson volunteered for duty in Vietnam at the age of 45, he already was a combat veteran. He had flown 107 sorties during the Korean War as a Republic F-84 pilot, and later was chosen to fly Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance missions.
The Air Force suffered a back-to-back pummeling by two House committees over its proposal for deep cuts to the Air National Guard (ANG). Now the Senate is piling on. Senators are dismissing the Air Force's plan to scale back Guard forces to help meet federally mandated budget reductions, complaining that it was hastily made without adequate supporting analysis.
“You Thought It Was Over . . .(AW&ST May 14, p. 31) shines a bright light on the many and varied weaknesses of the TP400D engine. Rolls-Royce and its associates have a strong history of great engines, but this one needs more time. Meanwhile, Airbus's frustration grows as the A400M military aircraft falls further behind in proving trails. Why doesn't Airbus opt for an engine option, allowing the A400M to finish the trials. Rolls would then have a less-pressured environment in which to iron out the problems that continue to arise.
Exploration-program experts looking for ways to restructure NASA's downsized Mars program will have 400 concepts and abstracts to review, following a call for ideas in connection with an upcoming workshop in Houston. The Mars Program Planning Group received about twice as many responses as expected on ways to explore Mars now that the agency has pulled out of its joint effort with the European Space Agency (see p. 37).
The first Tupolev Tu-214R twinjet reconnaissance aircraft is now in flight trials. This aircraft, made at the Kazan-based KAPO facility, a subsidiary of Russia's United Aircraft Corp. (UAC), is the first of two airplanes ordered by the Russian defense ministry in 2002. Under this contract, both aircraft should have been delivered in 2008, but according to KAPO's annual report for 2011, delivery of the first Tu-214R has been s postponed until 2013. The second Tu-214R is on the final assembly line, with delivery expected in 2014.
As top-tier defense contractors begin to move away from an era of big-ticket weapons procurements, they are scrutinizing their portfolios in an effort to weed out lower-performing businesses. And one problem area keeps coming to the forefront: low-margin government services businesses.
The long-running effort to reengine the U.S. Air Force's E-8C Joint Stars aircraft with a version of the Pratt & Whitney JT8D has taken a step forward with the completion of Northrop Grumman and Air Force flight tests on a testbed aircraft. The tests were completed in 32 flights versus a planned 39 and form a necessary precursor to obtaining military airworthiness certification. The new-build engines will replace TF-33s, the military variants of Pratt's JT3Ds.
In “Embracing Change” (AW&ST May 14, p. 45) the sentence about the atrophy of targeting capability being linked to specialized personnel who are assigned to unrelated tasks between operations, struck a familiar chord. This is not only an Air Force problem. It plagued the Marine Corps' aviation units as well. As an ordnance chief, I was in a constant dance to keep personnel trained and up-to-speed so operations officers could have pilots qualify or re-qualify with both new and old weapons.
Ralph DeMarco has been named president of sales and marketing at L-3 Aviation Products of Phoenix. He held the same title in L-3's Aviation Recorders division.
The big question in Washington is whether a squabbling Congress will act to avert an automatic government-wide budget reduction of $1.2 trillion, half of which would come from defense spending. But it may not matter. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is warning the Pentagon to prepare itself for major reductions to defense spending—up to $1.5 trillion over 12 years—regardless of what happens on Capitol Hill.
Boeing's long-term strategic plan to set up a second assembly site for the 787 took another step toward completion with the initial flight of the first aircraft to be built at Charleston, S.C., on May 23. The aircraft—the 46th 787—becomes the first Boeing jet airliner to be completed away from the company's facilities in Puget Sound, Washington, and the heritage McDonnell Douglas manufacturing sites in Southern California.
Max-Viz anticipates June approval for installation of its Enhanced Vision System (EVS) on the Hawker series of business jets. Award of the Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) will extend to well over 200 different aircraft models for which the system is approved—a remarkable showing for a young outfit with just 10 employees and focused on a single technology. EVS thermal imaging effectively “turns night into day,” enabling a pilot to view objects, including wildlife, on moonless nights or in smoke or haze.
When the U.S. Air Force showed only a tepid interest in unmanned aircraft, a small San Diego company, General Atomics, decided to build them on its own dime. So when the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks hit and U.S. forces were suddenly sent to combat guerilla-like forces in the mountains of Afghanistan, the company's Hellfire-equipped Predators were not just a concept—they were in production.
Pete Laszcz is the new general manager of Timco Aviation Services' Greensboro, N.C.-based airframe maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) operations, succeeding Mike Anderson. Laszcz was managing director of MRO marketing and sales at American Airlines.
Airbus is seeing better-than-expected fuel-burn savings during initial flight trials of its A320 winglet upgrade, called Sharklets. The company was hoping for a fuel-burn improvement of up to 3.5% on long flights, but early indications are the savings may exceed estimates, says Fernando Alonso, senior vice president for flight and integration tests. Low-speed performance of the A320 is not degraded by the addition of the winglets and, Alonso says, handling also continues to be good.
In the 1980s, I was a propulsion systems engineer at the then-Douglas Aircraft Co. in Long Beach, Calif., and Boeing Commercial Airplanes in Renton, Wash. In Long Beach, I was involved in the study of DC-9 derivatives equipped with high-bypass-ratio turbofan engine installations and DC-9 propfan aircraft performance studies. As part of a tiltrotor aircraft advanced composites structures group at Renton, I was involved in the preliminary design of the engine installation for a Boeing/NASA/UDF (unducted fan) flying testbed.
Textron Defense Systems has demonstrated refinements to its BattleHawk squad-level loitering munition with flights of the lethal unmanned aircraft for the U.S. Army's Rapid Equipping Force at Socorro, N.M. BattleHawk is a tube-launched, warhead-equipped small expendable UAV unveiled by Textron last year as the Tactical Remote Aerial Munition, its entry into the emerging loitering-munition market.
Indonesia aims to become a major defense exporter and will increasingly be working to secure partnerships that can assist it in achieving that goal. The government is formulating guidelines for international joint development of defense equipment including military aircraft, the country's deputy defense minister, Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin, told Aviation Week at the Defense Services Asia (DSA) exhibition here last month.
European airlines are suffering. Almost every one of the continent's legacy carriers has its own restructuring program in place to reduce losses, minimize the pain and somehow climb out of the abyss they are in. That's the case for the very big players such as Air France-KLM, Lufthansa or the International Airlines Group's Iberia unit, and even more so for smaller carriers. Hardly any European airline is going to make a profit this year, and if they do, then it's more because of non-flying activities such as Lufthansa Technik.
Saudi Arabia will acquire £1.6 billion ($2.51 billion) in military training equipment. The deal includes 22 BAE Hawk advanced jet trainers, 55 Pilatus PC-21s and support elements under the Saudi air force aircraft training effort.
