Phillips 66 is bringing back single-grade ashless dispersant aviation oil for opposed piston engines nearly two decades after it dropped its Type A 100AD single-grade oil, because many owners and pilots still want just a single-grade oil, the company says.
Three-year-old Extex, the Mesa, Ariz. parts manufacturer, delivered its 1,000th Allison Model 250 engine nozzle to Era Aviation of Lake Charles, La., and 500th compressor wheel to Airborne Engines of Richmond, British Columbia. The new company, headed by former Orenda Engines chief Larry Shiembob, has met its sales targets sooner than expected. "The market has responded very strongly to our offerings," Shiembob says.
A Florida federal court sentenced 32-year-old Jose Costales, Jr., to 12 years inprison and imposed a $1.3 million fine for robbing repair stations of jet engines, Allison turbine engine blades and other engine components, and then re-selling the stolen goods. A second defendant, Guy Salom, was sentenced to an 18-month term for his role in the scheme.
NASA officials are meeting with their Russian counterparts this week at Johnson Space Center in Houston to discuss Russia's plan for de-orbiting the Mir space station, NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin told lawmakers yesterday. "We remain concerned about the status of the RSA plans to de-orbit the Mir space station," Gore told the House Appropriations subcommittee on VA, HUD and independent agencies.
The Lockheed Martin Intersputnik Ltd. joint venture will launch its first satellite, LMI-1, late in December on a Russian Proton rocket, the companies announced yesterday.
Spain's Iberia airline expected this week to get bids from both CFM International and International Aero Engines in launching the competition to power up to 76 Airbus A320-series aircraft, a US$900 million contest. That's based on what airline executives describe as a "face value" of 140 billion pesetas, but insiders expect discounting and market share considerations to take a considerable sum off that total. Iberia is buying nine Airbus A319s, 36 A320s and 31 A321s.
Landsat 7 will not be launched as planned in July because the electrical supply hardware for the Earth remote sensing spacecraft must be modified, NASA reported yesterday. Meanwhile the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (ASAF), itself delayed because of checkout problems at TRW, has been completed and should be ready for launch in December, the U.S. space agency said.
A proposed upgrade program to the U.S. Air Force's 126 C-5 transport aircraft would boost the dispatch rate of the aging and not-so-reliable aircraft to levels near those the service is achieving with its newest transporter, the C-17, according to AF Gen. Walter Kross, commander-in- chief of U.S. Transportation Command and chief of the AF's Air Mobility Command.
With the West's medium turbofan specialists all jockeying to re-engine nearly 200 Air Force Boeing 707s (AP, Feb. 13), CFM International reports that two CFM56-2As powering a U.S. Navy E-6 TACAMO aircraft have set a new U.S. military record for engine time on wing, logging more than 10,000 flight hours without a single shop visit - and so far, the engines still aren't scheduled for removal.
U.S. airlines, coming off a fourth straight year of strong traffic growth and record profits, will experience a growth rate of 3.5% for the next 12 years, according to an FAA forecast issued yesterday. The growth rate for international routes will be 5.8%, DOT Secretary Rodney Slater said in remarks prepared for yesterday's 23rd annual Commercial Aviation Forecast Conference in Washington.
China-National South Aero-Engine Co. (SAEC) and Pratt&Whitney Canada formed a joint venture in Zhuzhou, in China's Hunan province, to make gas turbine components. Together the companies are investing US$27 million in Southern Pratt&Whitney Aero-Engine Co. Ltd., with SAEC holding a 51% stake. SAEC is controlled by the Aviation Industries of China (AVIC), and the latest deal marks the third joint venture between Pratt&Whitney and an AVIC engine company. Chinese partners and P&W parent United Technologies have formed 20 joint ventures over the years.
THE SENATE BUDGET Committee has put off its markup of the fiscal 1999 Federal budget resolution until next Tuesday. The Committee had originally planned to start the markup this week. With the House Republican leadership preferring to wait for an improved economic forecast to boost chances for a deep tax cut, the House Budget Committee has not scheduled any markups.
Adm. Jay L. Johnson, Chief of Naval Operations, yesterday testified that the F/A-18E/F wing-drop problem "is days away from officially being solved" and "as a practical matter it has been solved." Defense Secretary William S. Cohen has testified that he will not allow the release of $2.39 billion in fiscal 1998 funds for the Lot II buy of 20 aircraft later this month until he is satisfied that the problem has been solved (DAILY, Feb. 6).
The new U.S. Air Force concept of keeping conventionally armed bombers on alert similar to the nuclear alert bombers of the Cold War would allow it to strike targets within 24 hours, Air Combat Command chief Gen. Richard Hawley said.
FAA EXPERTS yesterday were studying an incident Tuesday in which Air Force One disappeared from the New York Center radar scope for more than 30 seconds. President Clinton was aboard, but the agency said the incident did not endanger the presidential 747 or other aircraft in the vicinity. Working controllers tied the incident to a new radar site in Gibbsboro, N.J., which has caused problems in the past.
Astronomers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have discovered roughly 100 previously unknown asteroids by searching two years worth of data from the Hubble Space Telescope by eye. Over three years the researchers have examined more than 28,000 Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) images, looking for the "wide, looping streaks of light" that asteroids leave as they pass through the camera's field of view when it is focused on higher priority targets.
Boeing signed a five-year contract in Washington yesterday with Russia's Verkhnaya Salda Metallurgical Production Association (VSMPO) for milled titanium products for all Boeing commercial aircraft. The contract, signed in connection with the regular technical cooperation meeting between Vice President Gore and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, is valued at a minimum of $175 million, and could reach $200 million depending on the product mix.
MARS PATHFINDER failed to respond to a last attempt at contract by Jet Propulsion Laboratory controllers Tuesday, bringing to an end a robotic landing mission that produced the first images from the Red Planet's surface in 20 years. The Pathfinder lander and its Sojourner rover have been silent since Oct. 7, the feared victims of Mars' nighttime cold. On Monday controller spent four hours alternately commanding the lander to turn on its transmitter and then listening with a 34-meter Deep Space Network for a response that never came.
Technicians at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla., are preparing to submit the first U.S.-built element of the International Space Station to a two-week leak test as pre-flight testing for the unit reaches the halfway point.
An asteroid discovered in December is "virtually certain" to pass close to Earth in October 2028 and while a collision is unlikely, it is "not entirely out of the question," the International Astronomical Union reported yesterday.
BOEING FORMALLY DELIVERED the company's first two 767 Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft to the government of Japan yesterday, the company announced. The second of the four 767s will be delivered in early 1999. "The 767 platform gives us a system that will meet our defense requirements far into the next century," Col. Kunio Orita, Japan Air Self Defense Force AWACS program manager, said in a prepared statement.
Beginning this fall for a six-month period, 120 vehicles in southern Minnesota will be equipped with Global Positioning System (GPS) equipment in a project designed to help 911 and emergency response officials react faster and more efficiently to vehicle crashes, Calspan announced Tuesday.
House Appropriations national security subcommittee chairman Rep. C.W. (Bill) Young (R-Fla.) said yesterday his panel will approve the Administration's $3.8 billion defense and disaster relief supplemental request without offsets as President Clinton wanted, but he cautioned that the outcome in the full Appropriations Committee remained uncertain.
Boeing has "hit some bumps in the road recently," but is well positioned for the future, a senior executive told investors at the Piper Jaffray 12th Annual Pacific Northwest Investor Conference in Seattle on Tuesday. The company looks strong due to "our strong customer and market bases, broad product range, new product development, process improvements and talented people," Ron Woodard, president of Boeing Commercial Airplane Group, said in a prepared statement.
A $5 million satellite launched last month that was designed and built primarily by undergraduate students at the University of Colorado-Boulder is functioning normally and returning data, according to project scientists at the school's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.
