ATR parent companies EADS and Finmeccanica are interested in developing a new, larger turboprop for the European airframer and may introduce new partners into the project. “We and EADS are closely examining the business case for such a new project,” Finmeccanica Chairman and CEO Giuseppe Orsi said during a ceremony observing the delivery of the 1,000th ATR, which will be operated by Spanish regional carrier Air Nostrum. “We want ATR to remain at the very top of the market, ahead of current and future competitors,” he added.
Cessna’s backlog primarily comprises orders taken in 2007 and 2008, Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst Ronald Epstein reports, adding that most of the deferrals and cancellations also have come from that time period. Cessna maintains that the light- and medium-jet market is still a spot market with an average three-month order-to-delivery period, Epstein says. However, market demographics continue to shift. U.S. customers accounted for 70% of the business in 2011, but that is trending downward to 60% this year, he says.
May 7-9—Airports Council International-NA Airport Economics, Finance and Human Capital Conference, Nashville, Tenn., www.aci-na.org/conferences/ May 14—16 Annual European Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition (EBACE2012), www.ebace.aero May 14—24th Annual Greater Washington Aviation Open, Lansdowne Golf Resort near Leesburg, Va., email [email protected], www.gwao.org June 7—National Business Aviation Association Business Aviation Regional Forum, Teterboro Airport (TEB), Teterboro, N.J., (202) 783-9000, www.nbaa.org
FAA is adopting a series of flight restrictions for a large swath of airspace over Chicago from May 19-21 due to the 25th NATO Summit. The temporary flight restrictions (TFRs) are one of two new flight advisories that the agency recently issued for international meetings – the second involves the G-8 Summit in Thurmont, Md.
The National Business Aviation Association has developed a guide to help flight operators properly classify workers as either employees or independent contractors. The association notes that misclassification opens a company to tax, liability and legal risks. “The U.S. Department of Labor has one standard it applies. The Internal Revenue Service has another.
The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) appointed Craig Spence as acting secretary general of the International Council of Aircraft Owner and Pilot Association (IAOPA), stepping in for John Sheehan, who retired. Spence is currently AOPA’s vice president of operations and international affairs, managing safety and security regulatory and operational issues. He has served with AOPA since June 2008 as the first vice president of the newly created Aviation Security Department.
An industry trade group is trying to spur the release of the FAA’s proposed rules for allowing small UAVs to operate in civilian airspace, which had been anticipated in March. The rule appears stalled in the office of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, according to a May 4 letter from Michael Toscano, president of the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International to LaHood.
Bombardier today (May 7) is kicking off its first tour of a Learjet 60 XR in Poland. The five-day tour, which will be conducted with Polish carrier Blue Jet, will include stops in Wroclaw, Krakow, Warsaw, Poznan and Gdansk.
JOHN LEHMANN has joined JetFlite International as director of business development. Lehmann brings an extensive background in sports marketing, spending 25 years as a professional tennis player, coach, agent, promoter, marketer and entrepreneur. He formerly was president of Network Sports Marketing, where he specialized in customer events at Wimbledon, the US Open, the Masters, the Super Bowl and the Tour de France, among others. He also initiated and began Nike Golf’s corporate sales division.
BELL Model 204B, 205A, 205A-1, [Docket No. FAA-2012-0415; Directorate Identifier 2008-SW-065-AD] – proposes to supersede an existing AD that currently requires conducting various inspections associated with the main rotor grip. If a crack is found, that AD requires replacing the grip before further flight. If delamination of the buffer pad on the grip tang inner surface is found, that AD requires inspecting the grip surface for corrosion or other damage and repairing or replacing the grip if corrosion or other damage is found.
May 7-9—Airports Council International-NA Airport Economics, Finance and Human Capital Conference, Nashville, Tenn., www.aci-na.org/conferences/ May 14—16 Annual European Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition (EBACE2012), www.ebace.aero May 14—24th Annual Greater Washington Aviation Open, Lansdowne Golf Resort near Leesburg, Va., email [email protected], www.gwao.org June 7—National Business Aviation Association Business Aviation Regional Forum, Teterboro Airport (TEB), Teterboro, N.J., (202) 783-9000, www.nbaa.org
Bombardier’s official groundbreaking of its Learjet facility in Wichita on April 30 is expected to help bring more than 1,000 jobs to the facility over the next decade, the company says. The expansion, the largest in Learjet’s history, is welcome news for Wichita, which already has seen the loss of 13,000 aerospace jobs in recent years and is bracing for 2,000 more with the decision by Boeing to pull out of the community. Just last month, Hawker Beechcraft issued layoff notices to 350 more workers.
Alcoa's 50,000-ton press may not match the heft of a gargantuan 80,000-ton unit being built in China, but the metals manufacturer says its 12-story machine is the most capable in the world. A $100 million redesign and rebuild of the Cold War-era press at the company's Cleveland plant added a new hydraulic system that allows tighter tolerances during the forging of aluminum, titanium, inconel and steel parts, significantly reducing the amount of metal needed while cutting machining costs.
Automated layup is cutting the time required to produce composite structures. But production volumes forecast for the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 are pressuring industry to accelerate the rate at which it can deposit carbon fiber on tools. Flexible, multi-head machines provide one answer. The U.K.'s National Composites Center is the first to operate an automated fiber-placement machine with two robotic heads working cooperatively. Built by France's Coriolis Composites, it is being used by GKN Aerospace on the U.K.'s Next-Generation Composite Wing project.
Automated non-destructive inspection of composite parts for delamination and other defects is a critical step that is becoming more challenging as structures become larger and more complex. Ultrasound inspection conventionally requires parts to be immersed in a water tank or sprayed with water jets to guide the pulses. Now non-contract laser ultrasound is allowing remote, robotic inspection of complete airframe sections. Airbus, with EADS Innovation Works and France's Ecole des Mines, is evaluating a laser ultrasound system using a composite forward-fuselage demonstrator.
Additive manufacturing—producing parts layer by layer direct from digital models—is moving into aerospace. Three-dimensional printing is widely used for rapid prototyping with polymer materials, but technologies for additive manufacturing with aerospace metals are maturing.
Across composite and metallic aircraft structures, technology is being developed and deployed to minimize component lead times, reduce manufacturing costs and increase production rates. Automated processes that can take component geometry data directly from three-dimensional design databases are high on the most-desired list for aerospace manufacturers.
Cutting and drilling of cured composite components during manufacture or repair are a growing challenge as structures become bigger, more complex and costly.
Automotive-style robots are moving onto the aircraft assembly line to save time and cost. Bombardier plans to use six single-arm robots to join the cockpit and fuselage sections of its CSeries airliner, saving more than 40 hr. Each 12-ton robot will be able to drill a hole and insert a fastener in 32 sec. for aluminum-lithium structures and 53 sec. for composites.
Friction welding fuses metals without melting them and is used in aerospace to join engine disks (rotational welding) or fabricate aircraft and spacecraft structures (friction-stir welding). Now hybrid components produced by linear friction welding of dissimilar metals promise to overcome a key disadvantage of composites: carbon fiber cannot be attached directly to aluminum because of galvanic corrosion, forcing use of higher-cost titanium. But friction welding can allow titanium to be incorporated into the join between aluminum and composite structures.
Isogrids are among the lightest and strongest of structures, the lattice pattern of integral stiffening ribs providing extremely high strength-to-weight ratios. Lightweight isogrid panels machined from aluminum plate to produce thin-walled, self-stiffened and damage-tolerant structures are used in launch vehicles and aircraft doors. Advanced grid structures made from composites have been used for components such as payload shrouds, but require time-consuming and costly manual layup. Isogrid Composites Canada Inc.
Composites may be replacing metals in aircraft structures, but the use of titanium is increasing both to reduce weight and because of the incompatibility of aluminum and carbon fiber. Boeing's 787 is 50% composite by structural weight, whereas its earlier 777 is only 12%, but a 787 contains almost 90 tons of titanium compared with 55 tons in a larger 777. And titanium can be around 10 times as expensive as aluminum, so pressure is on to reduce costs.
Nanotechnology-enabled materials are moving into aerospace. New Hampshire-based Nanocomp Technologies is scaling up production of electrically and thermally conductive yarn, sheet and tape made from long carbon nanotubes (CNT). Spun yarn is being used to replace copper in data cables in aircraft and spacecraft, potentially halving the weight of wiring harnesses. Sheet material was used on NASA's Juno spacecraft, launched in August 2011, to provide electrostatic-discharge protection of attitude-control thruster and main-engine components.
BAE Systems is turning to its civil airborne electronics business to provide growth as it wrestles with falling defense spending in key markets. The company is hoping to take advantage of the increase in commercial aircraft sales, CEO Ian King says. The hybrid vehicle business and expanding government cybersecurity activities into the commercial domain are other areas of interest.
