U.K. competition authorities believe the BAA’s ownership of seven airports in the country is hurting consumers, signaling it may call for changes in the airport authority’s structure. But regulators will wait until August until stating more clearly if they want BAA to be broken up over concerns that the organization’s hold on key markets is stifling the development of the airports and service quality for travelers.
The European Parliament has overwhelmingly approved a €2-billion funding plan for the Galileo satellite navigation system that will allow construction and deployment of the 30-spacecraft network to be financed entirely with public money. The plan, recommended by the European Commission last June when it became clear the previous public-private partership scheme for this phase of the program was unworkable, has already been approved by the European Council and the EC Transport Directorate.
Arnie Reiner writes that essentially the U.S. military services should reconsider their planned purchases of V-22s, and instead buy aircraft built around the X-2 concept (AW&ST Mar. 24, p. 10). The X-2 has yet to fly and is only a small demonstrator. To count on that technology at this early juncture to replace aging CH-46s and CH-53s is a real stretch. The X-2 “advancing blade” concept, with and without J-60 turbojets, was tried unsuccessfully many years ago with the XH-59A.
German researchers expect to achieve major advances this year in using fuel cells on commercial aircraft and are optimistic that industrial development of the technology will kick off next year.
Among industry’s first tasks under the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Vulture program will be to identify the services and agencies that could be candidate customers for an unmanned aerial vehicle able to stay aloft for at least five years.
David A. Fulghum (Washington), Amy Butler (Washington)
A game plan is emerging as top Pentagon officials maneuver to meet the growing demand for airborne surveillance and intelligence-gathering generated by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. There’s also an unanswered question about whether efforts to increase intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) spending may conflict with plans for advanced technologies needed to confront sophisticated foes of the future.
With Europe’s Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (Marsis) declared a success, planetary scientists around the world are eagerly anticipating other targets for the technology. Riding on the European Space Agency’s Mars Express, the radar sounder has produced valuable data on the distribution of liquid and solid water in the Martian crust to depths of several kilometers.
The U.S. Air Force is eager to secure a long-term purchase contract for coal-to-liquid or bio-alternative fuels to supplement JP-8 petroleum, Secretary Michael Wynne said Apr. 22 at an Aviation & Environment Summit in Geneva. This would provide an incentive for investors to finance refinery capacity secure in the knowledge that a steady revenue stream was forthcoming, he said, noting that there are other benefits from synthetic fuel.
The U.S. Air Force’s combat search and rescue helicopter program is accumulating more delays. Amendment 6 to the request for proposals says new information and schedules will require more time for review and extend the contract award process.
The Boeing 757 wing panel fastening system could well be the target of NTSB safety recommendations in the near future. In its continuing probe of a Mar. 22 inflight wing panel separation on US Airways Flight 1250, the NTSB determined that metal fatigue caused the failure, before flight, of two of three fasteners securing the panel’s leading edge to the wing. The third fastener failed when the 757 was in flight, leading to separation. The 4 X 5-ft. panel struck several rear windows and cracked the outer pane of one.
China’s civil aviation administration has withdrawn a range of service rights held by China Eastern Airlines as punishment for bad management of a labor dispute that culminated in pilots turning back flights last month. The airline has lost two routes to competitors and must cut back services on others.
Boeing prides itself on paperless processes to support its airplanes but it took 7,000 pages to explain its bid of the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet as a candidate for the Indian air force’s Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft competition. The competition is one of the industry’s most contested and is made more complex by India’s offset requirements and concerns about life cycle management costs.
EADS is setting up German Aerostructures Corp. (GAC) as a new fully owned subsidiary. The unit will include the Airbus sites in Varel and Nordenham as well as the EADS plant in Augsburg, which were originally earmarked for sale. However, a deal failed earlier this year when talks with OHB Technology collapsed. Airbus insists it still plans to sell the facilities. French Airbus workers went on a 4-hr. strike last week to demand that sites in St. Nazaire and Meaulte should not be sold either.
The Italian government hopes a €300-million ($480-million) loan to Alitalia will keep the airline afloat long enough to find a solution for the money-hemorrhaging carrier’s financial woes. Rome, in a bid to appease the European Union concerns, says the loan was made at market conditions and will be repaid by year-end. But Brussels isn’t placated and will review the loan with “urgency,” noting that it had rejected further state aid after an earlier financial injection into the airline.
Simulator-maker Mechtronix has selected HBE Aviosec as a sales partner to help penetrate the Indian aviation pilot training market. The Montreal-based flight simulator maker will set up an office in New Delhi and is targeting three of India’s fastest-growing fleets—ATR turboprops and Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 twinjets—for full-flight simulators. HBE’s also provided the Airports Authority of India with computers and software for surface movement, flight inspection and digital terminal information systems.
Russia is expected to sustain its new strength as a business aviation market, but industry officials believe regulations still need to catch up with developments in the bizav sector. After seeing the number of Russian-registered corporate aircraft reach 54 last year, versus 15 in 2002, Jet Aviation projects a further 18% fleet growth for 2012. The business aviation service provider presented the forecast at a recent forum in Moscow, with other industry representatives echoing views on growth trends.
John Happ has become executive vice president-airlines for Aircell , Itasca, Ill. He has been an executive at Frontier, ATA, Hawaiian, Continental and Singapore airlines.
Scott Toelle (see photo) has become director of key accounts in the U.S. for U.K. airline BMI . He was vice president/chief operating officer of Trans Am Travel, Alexandria, Va.
Avtech and Naverus are having a major impact on how air navigation systems are being transformed around the world. Avtech—with only 36 employees and part-time associates working in Stockholm and Toulouse—has been helping Airbus with the Sesar program, among other prestigious assignments. Lars G. V. Lindberg founded Avtech in 1988 after serving as a powerplant engineer at Volvo Flygmotor and then as a technical pilot at Scandinavian Airlines. He’s still an SAS captain flying the MD-80/90.
Program slip or not, the 787 is closing in on Boeing’s 777 family in total orders. Biman Bangladesh Airlines became the 58th customer for the company’s newest twinjet with an order for four 787-8s. That raises the 787 to a total of 896 orders. Biman also ordered four of Boeing’s larger 777-300ERs, raising that family’s total to 1,074 orders from 56 customers.
It may be no surprise that airline outsourcing of maintenance, repair and overhaul activities is shifting to low-cost labor regions as airlines seek deeper cost reductions. But can the U.S. be listed as one of those regions? The dollar’s decline, coupled with the hike in fuel, are likely to lead to a resounding “yes” for at least some carriers. That was the finding of a study of 130 airline and MRO executives undertaken by Oliver Wyman consultants in conjunction with this magazine and reported here at AVIATION WEEK’s annual MRO Conference.
The U.S. Army is interested in whether sheet material made from long carbon nanotubes can be used to make lighter and stronger body armor for soldiers. Nanocomp Technologies Inc. says it has done millions of dollars of research into the technology for the U.S. Army Natick (Mass.) Soldier Center and at its facility in Concord, N.H. The material’s light weight and ballistic protection properties don’t necessarily make it a replacement for Kevlar or other materials, but rather something that could be woven into body armor in layers.
It appears that Iberia, Europe’s fourth-largest airline, is headed for a serious disagreement with key shareholders British Airways and Caja Madrid over its future strategy, a situation that Air France-KLM and Lufthansa are monitoring with keen interest.
The key building blocks of global air traffic system modernization should be deployed at airports on two continents by year-end. The pioneering projects show why there’s no need to wait a decade or more to lower fuel burn, emissions and noise while boosting runway capacity. The 4D trajectories (4DTs) and Required Navigation Performance (RNP) approaches are being implemented at Arlanda Airport here and Brisbane Airport in Australia. These medium-size facilities are good testbeds because of their mixed traffic and complex airspace.
Boeing will increase research and development funding this year as it works its way out of production delays on the 787 and overcomes the drag that program put on other new products, notably the 747-8. The new 787 schedule and additional 747-8 development costs will require an increase of $400-600 million in total R&D funding, raising the total this year to $3.6-$3.8 billion, CFO James Bell revealed in a first quarter earnings briefing last week.
