LOT Polish Airlines renewed its component supply and reconditioning contract with ST Aerospace Solutions (Europe). The three-year contract worth €8.7 million covers material on seven Boeing 767s.
Snecma Services began offering training courses for jet engine borescope inspection at its EASA Part 147 certified training center. The five-day course combines classroom and hands-on work.
Gulfstream appointed Todd Strong director, engineering and quality, for its Long Beach, Calif., facility, where he will manage final phase engineering, service center engineering, designated alteration station, quality control and quality assurance functions and personnel.
Lufthansa Technik is to provide Aer Lingus with component support for its fleet of 34 Airbus A320 family aircraft and nine A330s under a 10-year agreement covering almost all aircraft components. The fleet is expected to grow to 54 aircraft by 2013. An LHT representative in Dublin will manage services, set to begin Nov. 1. The Hamburg-based MRO says the contract’s volume exceeds €90 million.
Component Control and Aeroexchange launched a new module of Quantum Control, to interface between Component Control’s ERP software and Aeroexchange e-business solutions. The module is designed to provide the full range of SPEC2000 messages needed for parts sourcing, purchasing and repair management.
LONDON—Accountability comes with the job if you’re an aircraft engineer, mechanic or technician. For such is the safety culture in civil air transport that the source of errors, malpractice or poor processes must be hunted down to eradicate repeats. It’s therefore a concern that four engineers and a mechanic are due to stand trial for manslaughter over the Concorde crash at Charles de Gaulle that killed 113 people in July 2000.
TURKEY Northrop Grumman has been selected by the Turkish Air Force to provide its integrated fiber-optic gyro inertial navigation system, the LN-260, for use on Lockheed Martin C-130 aircraft. The LN-260 inertial navigation system provides platform navigation and low-noise navigation inputs to steady radar pictures, precisely direct communications antennas or guide sensors to enable highly accurate positions for ground and aerial targets.
GE Aviation signed a three-year contract extension with Ryanair , including all current firm and option aircraft on order by Ryanair under its current OnPoint Solutions agreement for its fleet of CFM56-7B engines. The original agreement was signed in 2004, and now extends through 2017. The extension also adds coverage of the Tech Insertion engines first introduced into the Ryanair fleet in 2007. Saudi Arabian Airlines reaffirmed the GEnx engine to power its 12 on-order Boeing 787-9s, which will be supported by a long-term overhaul material agreement with GE.
Honeywell will provide repair and overhaul services for its avionics and mechanical products installed on Southwest Airlines’ fleet of more than 500 aircraft under a 10-year contract extension. Southwest previously had multiple, separate agreements with Honeywell for product maintenance; these existing agreements, with varied start and end dates, were consolidated into the 10-year deal to simplify matters and give Southwest a single point of contact, said Honeywell representative Karen Crabtree.
AAR has been supporting the supply chain of the U.S. military for many years through performance based logistics (PBL) programs. It supports 15 programs now. The Wood Dale, Ill.-based company, which offers supply chain, component repair and other services, recently announced it was expanding its presence in Huntsville, Ala., in support of the Army’s helicopter platforms. The program provides the U.S. Army with a single point of contact for rotorcraft support.
Three elements converging not too far off the horizon are building into the perfect storm for aviation maintenance training. New technology driving simulation, “a huge demand to put people through” training and industry commitment to uncompromised safety are coming together to “reinvent technical training,” according to Guillaume Herve, CAE’s VP of technical training. “It’s already starting to happen,” he said.
Designed for the long-term capture of high-frequency data and transient signals, Astro-Med’s new Dash20HF high-speed data recorder can facilitate transient capture and remote troubleshooting applications in aerospace or other industrial fields. It supports recording on 20 analog channels to an internal hard drive at sample rates of up to 500 kHz and a bandwidth of 100 kHz per channel.
CANADA The Canadian government awarded a C$25.9 million to contract L-3 Wescam Inc., in Burlington, Ontario, for an electro-optical and infrared sensor system to be installed in CAF Bell CH-146 Griffon helicopters. Known as the Interoperable Griffon Reconnaissance Escort Surveillance System (INGRESS), the project involves procurement of a common electro-optical/infrared sensor system for CH-146 installation, plus equipment to allow operation of sensors for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and escort tasks.
VEM Maintenance & Engineering delivered to TAM Linhas Aéreas its first Boeing 767-300, painted in the airline’s new livery. The painting of a second aircraft has begun in Rio de Janiero. VEM and TAM also signed a contract to handle 767-300 components, covering maintenance and provisioning of exchange and repair components, such as APUs, landing gears, avionics, pneumatics, hydromechanical systems and others. Engines
Texas Aviation Services delivered a mission-ready Bell 407 to the Volusia County, Fla., sheriff’s department for use in emergency medical and law enforcement air support activities. TAS also inked a contract with the Tampa, Fla., police department to carry out mission critical customizations and systems integration on a new Bell 206L-4 helicopter.
Value engineering extends the benefits of Lean methodology into the world of the war fighter: these projects ask contractors to identify actions that will reduce costs, increase quality and improve mission capability. The concept has helped the U.S. Department of Defense increase efficiency across its systems, processes and organizations. In 2007 alone, the DOD realized over $4 billion in savings and cost avoidance as a result of value engineering projects.
UNITED KINGDOM Despite a decreasing fleet size and expanding needs for maintenance and upgrades, the Ministry of Defense (MoD) has recorded meeting requirements for RAF C-130Ks to transport military personnel and freight in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hercules, which comprise up to 60% of the MoD’s current air transport assets, have a reported 85% flight availability for planned missions, according to a June report from the National Audit Office.
Messier Services signed an agreement with Aircraft Accessories and Components Co. Ltd. (AACC) to help the Jeddah-based company set up a landing gear MRO company in Saudi Arabia. The shop will handle both commercial military gear and will be located on an MRO campus AACC currently is developing.
SPAIN Spanish IT company Indra, in temporary partnership with Eurocopter España, will implement self-protection systems in 23 Eurocopter AS 532 Cougar and Boeing Chinook transport helicopters of the Spanish army. Awarded through NATO’s NAMSA agency, the €20 million ($31.8 million) project will explore the radio-electric spectrum for threat detection and identification, such as man-portable air-defense systems, commonly known as MANPADS.
Three of the four engines on a Kalitta Air Boeing 747 freighter failed within four minutes of takeoff, according to a preliminary investigation into the July 7 crash of the aircraft. The crash killed two people on the ground. The aircraft, tail number N714CK, was en route to Miami when it crashed outside Bogota, Colombia. On board the aircraft were some 73 tons of flowers transported on behalf of Centurion Air Cargo.
Hawker Beechcraft Corp. added Andy Phyler as VP of Hawker Beechcraft Services. Phyler, who previously has worked for Delta Air Lines, BFGoodrich Aerospace, Honeywell and L-3 Communications, will be responsible for all aspects of HBS operations.
Sikorsky picked Goodrich’s Vigor Health and Usage Monitoring System, part of a new line of lower cost, full-function HUMS systems, for the mid-size S-76D executive transport helicopter. Goodrich also introduced its new PC-based Intelligence Reference Library (IRL) software, designed to integrate data from several unrelated systems—such as Goodrich’s DB-110 reconnaissance pod, synthetic aperture radar systems, full motion video or other sensors—into real time battlefield snapshot.
Taikoo Sichuan Aircraft Engineering Services Co. Ltd. is the name of the RMB$1 billion joint venture that Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Co. Ltd. (HAECO) (40%), Taikoo (Xiamen) Aircraft Engineering Co. Ltd. (9%), Sichuan Airlines Group (42%) and Sichuan Haite High-Tech Co. Ltd. (9%) plan to set up at Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China. The JV, to be constructed at Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport in several phases, is to provide heavy maintenance, aircraft conversion, line maintenance, fleet/inventory technical management and other services for Airbus aircraft.
