The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board took a closer look last week at regional airlines and the codeshare agreements they frequently operate under, to discuss ways to improve operational safety, both real and perceived. Regional Airlines Association President Roger Cohen says regionals are “still very misunderstood,” even though they operate more than half of U.S. departures.
Airbus Military remains confident that the A400M Grizzly’s civil certification program will be completed by the end of next year as engineers recover from several problems that caused testing to slip slightly. There is also progress on the contractual front, with German government sources indicating that the country will only take 53 of the 60 military transports originally on order. In addition, French avionics specialist Thales will have to cover possible additional expenses for flight management system (FMS) changes, the sources say.
The layer of crushed concrete positioned at the terminus of 51 obstacle-ridden runways in the U.S. has accounted for seven aircraft saves, the latest when a Gulfstream G4 ground to a halt Oct. 1 at Teterboro (N.J.) Airport, its landing gear entrenched in what the FAA refers to as Engineered Material Arresting Systems (EMAS).
Howard Lefkowitz has joined inflight broadband provider Row 44 as chief commercial officer. He served as vice president-business development and marketing for Earthlink and helped Dick Clark Productions bring the first interactive prime-time show to network TV.
MISSION: STS-133, Fifth International Space Station Utilization Flight (ULF5), the 133rd launch of the shuttle program and the 35th to the ISS. ORBITER: Discovery (OV-103), making its 39th flight. Discovery last returned from orbit on April 20 at the conclusion of the STS-131 mission to deliver a load of supplies to the ISS.
Michael Mecham (Busan, South Korea, and Nagoya, Japan)
The biggest names in aerospace manufacturing in South Korea and Japan are heavily involved in their nations’ defense and space industries, but they are leveraging wing and fuselage contracts for Boeing’s 787 to expand their reach as global suppliers in commercial aviation.
Frank Morring, Jr., Aviation Week’s senior editor for space, received the 2010 Von Braun Memorial Dinner’s Media AwardOct. 27 from the National Space Club-Huntsville, Ala., Chapter during its 22th Annual Dr. Wernher von Braun Memorial Celebration.
Michael A. Taverna (Brussels), Frank Morring, Jr. (Washington)
With a new U.S. space policy finally taking shape, plans to assemble a multinational space exploration effort patterned after the International Space Station are starting to advance. The five ISS partners, along with dozens of other countries with an interest in space—China and India among them—concurred at a European Union conference in Brussels Oct. 21 that exploration is only feasible if undertaken as an international partnership. The participants also accepted basic precepts to guide this effort.
Army acquisition, including of unmanned air systems and helicopters, increasingly will be driven by the imperative to “buy less, more often,” according to Lt. Gen. Michael Vane, director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center. The Army Training and Doctrine Command also will speed up the frequency with which it reviews the concepts that inform new requirements, Vane told the Association of the U.S. Army conference last week in Washington.
European network carriers are seeing a faster-than-anticipated rebound in revenue that is creating an improved earnings picture despite continued operational headwind.
“Pacific Watch” (AW&ST Oct. 11, p. 31) reports that Japan is debating whether to buy four RQ-4B Global Hawk surveillance aircraft. Articles like this make me question using remote-controlled aircraft at all. The principal argument almost always seems to be that drone use removes pilots from danger, coupled with a suite of very capable information-gathering capabilities. Every time a human climbs into the cockpit of a flying machine there is risk involved, but so what?
Ethiopian Airlines has ambitious plans to grow sixfold in the next 15 years and create new subsidiaries in other parts of Africa, together with Star Alliance members South African Airways and Egyptair.
A weak dollar and prospects of a strong workforce are prompting Extra Aircraft of Germany to set up an assembly facility for its Extra 500 turboprop in Montrose, Colo. The company received approval from the Montrose County Commission last month to use a county-owned hangar at Montrose Regional Airport for completing the small executive aircraft. Ken Keith, an American executive who acquired the company in 2003, says he expects assembly operations to begin before year-end and that the first U.S.-completed aircraft will be delivered next March or April.
Mark Bianchi has been named vice president and general manager of StandardAero ’s Los Angeles International Airport facility. He was executive vice president-aircraft maintenance for NetJets Aviation.
Asian airlines’ balance sheets will benefit from a round of raising capital that is being undertaken while the passenger market is strong. The rebound in air traffic and the need to finance aircraft on order are leading carriers to tap financial institutions and markets. Airline managers have also learned that it is important to have more cash on the balance sheet to cope with one-off events such as terrorist attacks that may lead to a sudden drop in traffic.
As the International Space Station passed the record set by Russia’s Mir as the longest continuously occupied spacecraft,the ISS crew activated a new system that will generate as much as 530 gal. of water a year for the station’s environmental control and life support system (ECLSS). On Oct. 22, station crewmembers ran their new Sabatier system for 8 hr., producing water from by-products of the ECLSS Oxygen Generation System and Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly.
Nov. 8-10—SMI Group Conferences’ 12th Annual Global MilSatCom Conference and Exhibition. Millennium Conference Center, London. Call +44 (207) 827-6000, fax +44 (207) 827-6001 or see wwwsmi-online.co.uk/events Nov. 8-10—SAFE Association’s 48th Annual Symposium. Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego. Call +1 (541) 895-3014, fax +1 (541) 895-3014 or see www.safeassociation.com
The fluidic flight controls of the Demon UAV (AW&ST Oct. 11, p. 20) are an elegant solution for stealth that could easily find its way into other areas of aeronautics. Applied to the trailing edges of conventional control surfaces, fluidics could reduce the size of these assemblies while improving their response. The rugged simplicity of the systems could be used in challenging applications like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Mission Adaptive Rotor (AW&ST June 7, p. 24), where high cycle rates and light weight are needed.
Sam Scimemi (Washington, D.C.), Deputy, International Space Station (Washington, D.C.), NASA Headquarters (Washington, D.C.)
I would like to underscore some items related to your article “Power Options” (AW&ST Oct. 4, p. 48) and to relay NASA’s stance. Although NASA has studied nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP), the agency does not favor any one particular technology. Many factors go into implementing a Mars mission, including political support over several decades, funding, international partnering, nuclear waste and disposal, and mission challenges. Some key points:
The irrepressible traffic growth of European low-cost carriers is again making lots of noise. This time, it is due to Ryanair’s sudden decision to close its Marseille “base” and move pilots, flight attendants and aircraft to more tolerant locations in Italy and Spain. Europe’s best-performing low-fare airline decided to retreat after a French court ruled that Ryanair’s France-based flight crews must pay taxes and social insurance contributions locally rather than in Ireland.
Gary Payton, the recently retired Air Force deputy undersecretary of space programs, is trying to help set the record straight about NASA and human spaceflight plans, but it is a tough sales job, even for him. Payton, who flew on the space shuttle as a military payload specialist, reminds anyone who asks whether NASA is getting out of human spaceflight that the International Space Station is still carrying NASA astronauts, and he describes plans to replace the shuttle eventually after it is retired next year. But he is not happy about it.
NASA’s space shuttle Discovery is bound for its fleet-leading 39th and final mission, an 11-day voyage to the International Space Station to deliver an equipment storage compartment. The last scheduled run is taking place amid growing urgency for the White House, Congress and NASA to resolve uncertainties over how and when the 30-year-old program will end. Discovery’s liftoff from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center is scheduled for Nov. 1 at 4:40 p.m.
The coalition’s fight in southern Afghanistan is shifting demand for unmanned aircraft from the RQ-7 Shadow tactical UAV to the smaller Raven and Puma All Environment systems, according to Col. Gregory Gonzalez, the U.S. Army’s unmanned program manager.
ATK’s five-segment Solid Rocket Motor (SRM) is ready for flight testing, declares Charlie Precourt, vice president and general manager of ATK Space Launch Systems. ATK announced Oct. 27 that data from the second successful Development Motor test Aug. 31 showed that it performed “precisely as designed.”
