FedEx switched from GE Aircraft Engines to Pratt&Whitney to power three new Boeing/Douglas MD-11 trijet freighters the package carrier will acquire in the first quarter of next year. It's only an 11-engine swing for P&W, but a significant move nonetheless for FedEx, which flies a fleet of some 17 GE-powered MD-11s. P&W will deliver nine installed 62,000-lbst. PW4462 turbofans on the aircraft, plus two spare engines. FedEx plans to take the three aircraft in March and June 1999.
An Environmental Assessment of Boeing's Sea Launch project found that it would have no significant short - term or long - term effects on the environment or surrounding populations, the Federal Aviation Administration said. After studying several different factors, the U.S. agency said no Environmental Impact Statement would be required.
NORTHROP GRUMMAN said its Directed Infrared Countermeasures (DIRCM) system has successfully completed its first airborne test for the U.K. Ministry of Defense. The March 20 test, aboard a helicopter at a test range in England, evaluated the system's basic functionality in typical helicopter flight scenarios, the company said, adding that all planned data runs were accomplished. The flight, the first of several planned flights, followed a series of contractor tests at Westland Helicopters in Yeovil, U.K.
GE Engine Services-Dallas, Inc., won a multimillion-dollar, long-term contract to maintain America West's CFM International CFM56-3, International Aero Engines V2500A1 and Pratt&Whitney JT8D-15 aircraft engines, the carrier says.
Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) said that despite changes in the U.S. Air Force's F-22 fighter program, the decision of his Senate Armed Services airland subcommittee on whether to require additional development testing before production is "still an open question." The subcommittee will make the first SASC decision on the F-22 program in marking up its portion of the fiscal 1999 defense authorization early next month.
House and Senate leaders and their Appropriations Committee chairmen agreed yesterday to split the Administration's fiscal 1998 supplemental request into two bills, but not to require offsets for the defense portion of the supplement, House and Senate sources said. The agreement clears the way for the House-Senate conference on reconciling the different versions to start Tuesday.
United is buying 23 new widebodies from Boeing as part of a plan to grow the fleet by 68 aircraft, from 571 at yearend 1997 to 639 at yearend 2001. The Boeing order comprises one 747-400, 16 777-200s and six 767-300s, to be delivered between 1999 and 2002, powered by $550 million worth of Pratt&Whitney PW4000 series turbofans. The expansion adds up to capacity growth of about 3% a year, says Chairman Gerald Greenwald.
Ministers of five European countries involved in the restructuring of the continent's aerospace and defense industry invited the Swedish government to take part in the process, the U.K. Dept. of Trade and Industry said yesterday. At a meeting in London Wednesday, ministers of France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K. said the restructuring should continue along the lines of the Airbus plan to become a Single Corporate Entity, and that the new Airbus should be fully in place on Jan. 1, 1999.
British Airways is retiring all eight of its DC-10s next year, replacing them on Gatwick long-haul routes with two new GE Aircraft Engines GE90-powered Boeing 777s that it ordered last week and six 767s already in service or on order. The 767s were intended originally to operate from Heathrow. BA also unveiled orders for six 757s that will replace the six 767s at Heathrow. Orders for four 747-400s will be replaced with three more 777s. All newly ordered aircraft will be delivered next year. The 767s and 757s will be powered by Rolls-Royce engines.
The value of UAL Services contracts under long-term program agreements soared from $5 million to almost $500 million during 1997, with engine maintenance agreements taking much of the credit, the United Airlines maintenance unit reports.
TWA is buying new Pratt&Whitney JT8D-219 series turbofans to power 24 Boeing/Douglas MD-83 narrowbody twins, along with six JT8D spares and one spare each of the PW2000 and PW4000 engine series, in a deal worth $211 million. Engine deliveries will run from this year through 1999.
CFM International will distribute CFM56-7 medium turbofan maintenance documents through Boeing's On-Line Data, or BOLD, system under a new agreement, CFM reports. Digitized versions of the engine manual, illustrated parts catalog and service bulletins for the CFM56-7 - which powers next-generation Boeing 737 series aircraft - will be available later this year. Forty customers have ordered 866 737NGs.
Electronic commerce is the cornerstone of bringing U.S. Dept. of Defense business practices into the modern age, Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre said yesterday. "We're choking on paper," Hamre said in a speech, noting that last year, DOD moved 300 million sheets of paper associated with business practices.
House National Security Committee Chairman Rep. Floyd Spence (R-S.C.), ranking Democrat Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.), and all but one of the chairmen and ranking members of HNSC subcommittees, sent letters to President Clinton and the congressional leadership urging that the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 be renegotiated to provide increased defense spending to address the military services' growing shortfalls. The letters were sent Wednesday and released yesterday.
LOCKHEED MARTIN elected CEO Vance Coffman as chairman of the board, effective immediately, the company said yesterday. Coffman became CEO and vice chairman on Aug. 1, 1997, after serving as president and COO. He joined Lockheed Corp. in 1967. Norman Augustine will step down as chairman but remain on the board.
Spain's Iberia Airlines handed CFM International a nearly $1 billion boost yesterday with an order to power 50 firm and 26 option Airbus Industrie A320 narrowbody twins with CFM56-5B/P medium turbofans. International Aero Engines competes on the A320 with its V2500 medium turbofan, and the Iberia campaign was a contest to power the largest single A320 order by a European carrier so far.
U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Ryan said that the F-22 fighter program enjoys strong congressional support, and that anyone interested in finding money to pay for unfunded military operations should stay away from it. "Some are saying we are going to have a [funding] fight," Ryan told reporters in Washington on Tuesday. "But I have not gotten that from the leadership over in Congress. I get from the leadership in Congress that they are behind the F-22."
NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin told senators yesterday he does not yet accept conclusions of an independent report that the International Space Station will be delayed by up to three years and cost as much as $250 million more per year relative to the fiscal year 1999 budget submission.
Lufthansa ordered 10 Rolls-Royce Trent 500-powered Airbus A340-600s, becoming one of the launch customers for the aircraft, which has a range of 7,500 nautical miles. In Lufthansa configuration, the plane will carry 330 passengers in three classes on routes to Asia and the Americas when deliveries begin in early 2003. The German flag carrier operates 16 A340s and is Airbus's largest airline customer. Lufthansa also is Airbus's largest A340 operator, with 30 of the models on order.
Asia's sputtering economy may yet take a bite out of projected rises in aircraft build rates, but only for a short time because the fundamentals underpinning airline growth remain unchanged, suggests Merrill Lynch VP and aerospace analyst Byron Callan. And a lot of Callan's colleagues think that might not be so bad - Boeing's $1 billion stumble on the Next Generation 737 program shows that a little cooling off to get manufacturing process changes profitably in place might not be a bad thing.
The U.S. Air Force late this year plans to award a contract for a subscale aerial target to meet a projected shortfall in BQM- 34 targets, Lt. Col. Ken Hislop, the AF's program director for aerial targets said Wednesday at the AF's annual armaments industry day here. The winner of the competition would build between 50 and 100 targets at a cost of $18 million to $27 million. Hislop said all the money is in procurement accounts with no development funding, which means the target will have to be a non-developmental item.
Research into the physics of ice formation shows that getting it off wings or engine inlets may be as simple as passing a small electric voltage through the ice - a fact that could lead to dramatically more simple and lightweight in-flight de-icing equipment.
NASA's Space Shuttle Atlantis is undergoing a $70 million overhaul at Boeing's facility in the Air Force Plant 42 complex here that will equip it as a workhorse for assembling the International Space Station.
