“Our customers have spoken,” says Southwest. Famous for its no-frills open-seating policy, which it said helped keep fares low, Southwest began feeling pressure in the past few years from other low-fare competition that offered assigned seating and other “frills.” But when the Dallas-based carrier surveyed passengers, it reports they opted to keep open seating, which Southwest achieves by classifying passengers into boarding groups on a first-come, first-served basis. This practice has prompted Southwest regulars to check in online 24 hr. in advance of their flight.
The introduction of a new breed of small jets into the global general aviation industry in the next two years promises to not only reinvigorate the entry-level segment of the market, but could revolutionize personal air travel. Aviation Week & Space Technology takes a look at the chief contenders in this crowded market and at the status of their aggressive certification programs.
Jonathan Gaffney (see photo) has been named president of the National Aeronautic Assn. He was vice president-communications for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.
EADS is test-flying a Eurofighter Typhoon development aircraft fitted with what it calls “apex strakes” to examine high angle-of-attack (AOA) maneuverability. The modification extends the leading edge of the wing considerably further forward on the inlet box. The work is being carried out on behalf of the German defense ministry. Flight testing began on Sept. 13 and is scheduled to conclude in October following 10 flights.
NASA is looking for a few good people to join its next group of astronauts—Class of 2009—for duty that could include exploring the Moon. With the space shuttle fleet due to retire in 2010, astronauts selected early in 2009 under a new round of recruiting will be assigned for extended stays on the International Space Station “and missions to the Moon,” the agency says. Deadline for application is July 1, 2008, with selected candidates to report to Johnson Space Center for basic training in the summer of 2009.
Gary E. Hart has become senior vice president-flight operations for NetJets Aviation, Columbus, Ohio. He was vice president of flight operations/director of operations and had been president of Raytheon Travel Air.
Close-air support will get a boost from a $45.5-million U.S. Navy contract for Rockwell Collins Network-Enabling Software. The project is to support development and deployment of the Tactical Air Control Party, Close Air Support System, and will provide digital communications between the TACP, aircraft and command-and-control systems by 2012.
The first two-seat Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft are already in build at BAE Systems for the Royal Saudi Air Force, with the work underway well in advance of last week’s announcement of the U.K.-Saudi Arabia government-to-government deal.
The letter from Walter Sonneborn in support of the Bell/Agusta BA609 tiltrotor accuses V-22 critics of bias (AW&ST Aug. 13, p. 8). Yes, I am biased. The V‑22’s 30 fatalities before it even goes to war have made me biased. Do you think it will do better once people are shooting at it?
Reflecting confidence that the Space-Based Infrared System (Sbirs) missile warning satellites will operate as expected, the Air Force is changing the direction of the program it hastily established less than two years ago as a backup. The Alternate Infrared Satellite System will now be named the Third-Generation Infrared Surveillance program, Air Force Space Command officials say. The new name reflects a shift in focus toward exploring technologies that can be infused into Sbirs after construction of its fourth geosynchronous satellite.
A group of retired generals says the Pentagon’s airlift community is suffering from two major crises—an unmet requirement for nearly 350 C‑17s during the next decade and a lack of leadership capable of obtaining funding to purchase them.
What do you do when you’re scheduled to take over from a retiring CEO who has transformed a laggard company into an industry model, delivering nearly a 1,300% shareholder return along the way? For starters, you don’t talk about deviating far from his playbook.
China will demand many more aircraft over the coming 20 years than Boeing expected a year ago, according to the manufacturer’s latest forecast. Average annual traffic growth of 8.8% will drive Chinese purchases of 3,400 new aircraft worth $340 billion from 2007 to 2026, Boeing says. Demand forecasts routinely creep up from year to year as the period under review edges further out, but the latest figures from Boeing show a radical revision to its outlook. The unit forecast has risen by 18% from last year and the value forecast by 21%.
Russia’s Foton-M3 robotic recoverable capsule, crammed with life sciences and other microgravity experiments, is due to parachute back to Earth Sept. 26 following this successful Sept. 14 liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan (see photo). The Soyuz-U rocket carried the 6,500-kg. (14,330-lb.) capsule to its 300-km. (186-mi.) orbit without incident.
Aviation Communication & Surveillance Systems (ACSS) expects to certify its SafeRoute software for Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast on UPS 767s this month and UPS 747-400s by year-end. The novel software has already been certified on UPS’s 757s. The small-package carrier plans to use SafeRoute to manage its freighters’ merging and spacing operations arriving at UPS’s WorldPort Hub in Louisville, Ky. The software can show other UPS freighters nearby on a cockpit display during arrivals.
In December engineers at NASA and the U.S. Air Force’s Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) in Tullahoma, Tenn., are scheduled to conduct advanced aerothermal tests of sample materials that could be used on the heat shield of NASA’s Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV). The team already has completed a preliminary round of tests to help AEDC validate and calibrate the High Enthalpy Aerothermal Test H2 facility.
Pittsburgh International Airport has seen lower fares, increased traffic and a better mix of legacy and low-cost carrier air service since US Airways cut it as a hub in 2004, according to Lucinda Harschman, the airport’s director of air service development. Pittsburgh’s low-cost carriers attracted 360,000 additional passengers for an economic impact of $1.8 billion, according to a study commissioned by the airport. The airport looked at ways to protect the city’s top 30 business markets, says Harschman. “We found that if we could keep the top 25, we’d be fine.
Compass Airlines will build a $9.85-million, three-bay maintenance facility at Louisville (Ky.) International Airport for its fleet of 76-seat Embraer 175 regional jets. Louisville is centrally situated between parent Northwest Airlines’ chief hubs at Minneapolis, Detroit and Memphis. Construction is set to be completed by fall 2008.
The search for Steve Fossett over rugged Nevada terrain continued in its third week with no sign of the aviator-adventurer, who was last seen Sept. 3, when he took off from the Flying M Ranch air strip at Yerington, Nev. The Civil Air Patrol has scaled back its search effort using fixed-wing aircraft, but as of late last week, eight Army and Air National Guard helicopters and five fixed-wing aircraft were flying assigned search grids daily, looking for signs of Fossett and his Bellanca Super Decathlon aircraft.
Avionics Innovations Inc., provider of IFE solutions for business and regional aviation will include an Apple iPod Nano with each ICE (Integrated Cabin Entertainment) system from Sept. 15-Dec. 15, in celebration of its system’s one-year anniversary. “This promotion rewards dealers and customers with something they can use with their ICE system,” notes President Dave Hainline. The company recently received a contract to supply a ruggedized Mil-Spec video switching unit to BAE Systems for a pending retrofit program funded by the U.S. Army.
Honeywell Aerospace will serve as an APU/air management systems integrator on the A350XWB in a deal potentially worth $16 billion, as Airbus prepares to roll out similar integration agreements with other vendors. Airbus is expected to announce a fresh wave of awards for the A350XWB as it moves to assemble larger, complete work packages with a smaller number of major suppliers. These companies will relieve the European airframer of a lot of the systems integration work it used to do itself.
After bitter budget deliberations, the Swedish government last week slashed defense spending, with cuts of 350 million kronor ($53.6 million), 620 million kronor and 980 million kronor in the next three years. Defense minister Mikael Odenberg, who thought he had fended off the cuts, left the government in the run-up to the announcement. More cuts could come, with a review now begun to see if annual defense budget expenditure can be reduced by 3-4 billion kronor starting in 2010.
The U.S. Air Force’s tests using Fischer-Tropsch process-derived fuel are more of a publicity stunt than a useful approach to reducing the use of imported oil for military aviation (AW&ST June 25, p. 24). FT-derived fuel will barely produce any more energy than will be invested in the process itself, and will result in egregious environmental damages to the U.S.
China will return to the Moon with human explorers before the U.S. accomplishes that goal, says NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, illustrating his view of the intensifying economic competition between the two countries fueled by spaceflight activities. In the first of a planned series of lectures commemorating NASA’s 50th anniversary next year, Griffin says the U.S. public is unaware of the spacefaring skills of Russia, China and India, as well as those of NASA’s established spaceflight partners in Europe and Japan.
Delegates from 40 African nations have endorsed a comprehensive safety improvement plan that will allow the International Civil Aviation Organization to manage and coordinate government and private projects aimed at reducing the continent’s increasingly poor safety record. A four-year budget of $3.8 million will fund the new role for ICAO. African-based air carriers have the world’s highest accident rate: increasing to five fatal accidents per million departures from 2000-04 from 3.6 per million departures from 1995-99.
