The Pentagon estimates that 130 aircraft will be lost and their crews killed in the next 25 years in accidents involving controlled flight into terrain. Those fatalities can be avoided, the Air Force believes. A software-based Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System has demonstrated 98% effectiveness in eliminating aircraft crashes into the ground and it is ready for operational integration into current aircraft, including the F-22 and F-35, Pentagon officials say.
Cessna Aircraft Co. has received 720 orders valued at more than $75 million for its light sport aircraft entry, the SkyCatcher. The manufacturer introduced the two-seat aircraft July 22 at EAA AirVenture 2007 (see p. 62).
EADS is considering selling its manufacturing facility in Augsburg, Germany, as part of the large initiative to overhaul the supply chain for Airbus. The decision marks the first non-Airbus site that could be sold off under the Power8 restructuring program. Despite doing a lot of commercial work, including some for Boeing on the 787, the Augsburg facility falls under the EADS Defense and Security Div. It is the seventh facility to be put up for sale or offered for partnership. The rest belong to Airbus and are spread over Germany, France and the U.K.
The automated, coordinated flight of UAVs continues to expand. Proxy Aviation Systems says it has completed demonstrations of cooperative flight using one of its SkyWatchers and another SkyRaider in conjunction with two simulated UAVs under a contract with the U.S. Air Force UAV Battle Lab. The flights were conducted in July at Creech AFB, Nev. The operators communicated over a common mesh network so one person could manage all four aircraft.
An 18-week test campaign on Europe’s Automated Transfer Vehicle will get underway in Kourou, French Guiana, in the next few days in preparation for the robotic supply spacecraft’s first flight next year. The Jules Verne ATV arrived at Kourou after a two-week voyage from Rotterdam on board the MN Toucan, the dedicated payload/launcher vessel operated by Arianespace.
NASA is giving astrophysicists a chance to refine proposals to use the Moon as a base for advanced research in their field once humans return there. The agency, which hopes to start building a lunar base after 2020, will fund concept studies of experiments on the Moon designed to test Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, study X-rays produced by solar wind and advance understanding of the early structure of the Universe.
Air New Zealand has asked the country’s high court to void a landing fee increase at Auckland International Airport that is scheduled to go into effect Sept. 1. Landing fees will go up 13% over the next five years, says an airport spokesman. Fees had not been increased since September 2001, he adds. Analysis undertaken by PricewaterhouseCoopers for Air New Zealand found Auckland was generating more than NZ$90 million ($69 million) annually in excess revenue, rendering a fee hike unnecessary.
The government is moving to further bolster the Tactical Missile Corp. as the country’s pre-eminent missile company. A further five enterprises are to be added, including the Omsk-based Central Design Bureau of Automatics, which is responsible for the passive seekers for the Kh-31 (AS-17 Krypton) family of anti-radiation missiles produced by Tactical Missile.
David A. Fulghum and Bettina Chavanne Amy Butler (Washington NAS Patuxent River, Md.)
Details about stealth, new missions such as air-to-air refueling and some unexpected benefits of a combat aircraft without a pilot are beginning to seep out around the edges of Northrop Grumman discussions of their new U.S. Navy contract to land an unmanned combat aircraft on a carrier deck by late 2011.
Passengers traveling through Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport Terminals 1 and 2 will find common-use self-service (CUSS) passenger kiosks in place, the first to be deployed in Russia. Nine Arinc SelfServ kiosks, delivered this month, arrived in time for the busy summer travel season. Shared self-service check-in capability allows airlines to lower costs and passengers to avoid long check-in lines. Sheremetyevo, served by more than 100 airlines, handles 12.7 million passengers a year, with about 60% of them traveling on international flights.
The first Superjet 100 should be in an airline fleet late next summer. With that target in mind, Sukhoi and its partners are planning a year-long burst of activity to ready the aircraft, systems and production facilities to support growth of the project. Today, production facilities still show that manufacturing is focused on test articles, with tooling at a minimum and ample space within factories. But as production ramps up to 60 aircraft by 2010 and perhaps 70 by 2011, more tooling will be added quickly.
China’s Chengdu Aircraft, a unit of aerospace conglomerate Avic I, will build horizontal stabilizers for Boeing 747-8s under a $300-million subcontract from Vought Aircraft.
Dyke Weatherington, the Pentagon’s acting acquisition director of air warfare programs, says Boeing’s work on the X-45 family can be applied to technology needs at the Defense Dept. despite its loss to Northrop Grumman’s X-47B concept for the Navy’s Unmanned Combat Aerial Systems-Demonstrator contract. “That body of work is not going to waste,” he told a group of reporters at a recent Assn. of Old Crows’ roundtable in Washington. Weatherington says the X-45 work could feed into an emerging requirement for the Air Force for a platform to conduct stand-in jamming.
The Homeland Security Dept. plans to integrate passenger manifest data from international flights into the soon-to-be-resurrected Secure Flight passenger-prescreening program. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) intends to begin operational testing of the long-delayed Secure Flight program this fall before it publishes a final rule in the Federal Register. Initially TSA wants passenger data—name, itinerary, date of birth and gender—from volunteer airlines, checking that information against federal watch lists.
After years of delays, cost overruns and technical challenges, the U.S. Air Force is expecting to launch two new military satellite systems in the coming months that will begin to dramatically revamp the Pentagon’s communications infrastructure.
ITT hopes to soon lock-in the launch customer for the first pod-mounted application of its ALQ-211 radio-frequency countermeasures system while further expanding applications for the self-protection system.
Airlines are buying Airbus A330s, A350XWBs and A380s and Boeing 777s, 747-8s and 787s—more than $50 billion-worth at the Paris air show. These new long-range aircraft can fly profitably more than halfway around the world, and fleet size affects operating costs. Should the U.S. negotiate more flight freedoms for airlines between countries outside the U.S.? Use of the most efficient transport benefits cargo manufacturers and customers, plus airlines and airframers. It also lowers the impact of global warming, especially with new engines designed for lower NOx emissions.
Frontier CEO Jeff Potter is set to become the head of Exclusive Resorts Sept. 10, four days after his official departure from the airline and the date of Frontier’s shareholders meeting. Ahead of that annual meeting, the carrier hopes to have a replacement for Potter, who’s been with Frontier since 1995, except for a year in 2000 when he ran Vanguard Airlines.
Alliant Techsystems (ATK) will start key tests of a third-generation scramjet combustor in October as part of efforts to advance its goal of powering free-flying hypersonic test vehicles, possibly including later flights of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory’s Boeing X-51 WaveRider demonstrator.
Defense contractors will have more time to tailor their proposals for a joint U.S. Navy-Marine Corps small tactical unmanned air system (Stuas), now that the project’s schedule has slipped into next summer. The program was expected to issue a draft request for proposals in late 2007. Now the draft RFP isn’t expected until January, with the final RFP coming in June or July 2008.
Qantas says its overseas maintenance is not compromising safety despite allegations to the contrary by the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Assn. The union identified wiring issues on two aircraft repaired outside Australia, but David Cox, Qantas’s executive general manager of engineering, says these problems didn’t compromise safety. The airline had already found the problems and notified Australian safety authorities. About 90% of Qantas’s heavy maintenance is performed in Australia, he adds.
CAE Inc. of Montreal is making a big push into training, and logged $66 million in new contracts in the quarter ending June 30. It signed a 20-year agreement with Bombardier to provide training for Global Express business jets and the Challenger 300. And, CAE signed a five-year contract with Flight Options to train maintenance technicians. After the end of the quarter, CAE said it will provide training center operations for Air Canada, a first for CAE with a North American legacy carrier. The company also sold 13 civil full-flight simulators in the quarter.
A flight attendant for Atlantic Southeast Airlines has pleaded not guilty to charges that she was intoxicated Aug. 5 while preparing an aircraft for departure from Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Ky. Airport police removed Sarah Mills, 26, of Atlanta, from the aircraft. ASA has a zero tolerance policy toward employees who break federal regulations related to alcohol use while on duty.
