A General Electric CF6-80E engine stayed on-wing with a Qatar Airways Airbus A330 for more than 4,300 cycles over four years of service, a record for a powerplant operating in a hot, sandy environment. The engine was still achieving good service when it was removed to serve as a leading indicator for fleet conditions. CF6 General Manager Colleen Athans says Qatar used recommended water washes, proactive maintenance and followed GE's operational procedures to achieve the milestone.
Eutelsat officials say its Hot Bird 2 satellite, which was forced to transfer all traffic to Hot Bird 8 on Mar. 14 when it was hit by solar flare fallout, has suffered no apparent damage. Despite an anomaly observed in the satellite's power subsystem, the spacecraft appears to be in a healthy configuration, officials say. As a precautionary measure, traffic will probably not be transferred back to Hot Bird 2 until the next equinox.
FAA Administrator Marion Blakey is getting annoyed about the way congressional debate on her agency's reauthorization bill is developing. Give and take on Capitol Hill was "collegial" until recently, she tells an airport lobbyists' conference, "but lately I've been seeing a change." Blakey rebuts opposition to ATC user fees from top Democrats and a mobilized general/business aviation community. "If the FAA really wanted to kill [general aviation], we'd just sit back and do nothing.
There is a simple and common explanation for the angst expressed in these pages as a result of the decline in pilot and engineer careers: free market supply and demand (AW&ST Feb. 5, p. 44). Textile jobs, steel jobs and now automobile jobs have been lost to lower cost competition from overseas. Similarly, the legacy airlines have been outbid for customers by the low-cost carriers and engineers by their foreign competition. Regional carriers are not immune as some of their work has gone to lower bidding competitors.
As a software test engineer assigned to the B-52 Offensive Avionics System development in the early 1980s, we concocted a simulator mission for the software test laboratory that flew a rectangular course around the equator-international date line intersection as well as one that flew a similar course around the equator-prime meridian intersection.
A Hellfire missile, fired as part of the Japanese Defense Agency's operational evaluation test of its Longbow Apache attack helicopter weapons system, has scored 100% hits against stationary tanks. The tanks were targeted using fire control radar, data handoff from another helicopter, and the Arrowhead Modernized Target Acquisition Designation Sight/Pilot Night-Vision Sensor. Japan is scheduled to start receiving Longbow missiles in 2008.
Italian navy Rear Adm. (upper half) Giuseppe De Giorgi De Giorgi effectively contributed to the defusing and stabilization of the volatile situation in Lebanon after the bitterly fought "summer war" between Hezbollah fighters and the Israeli Defense Forces last year. He was the point person for preparing, directing and executing Operation Leonte, the name Italy gave its deployment of forces as part of the United Nations' Unifil 2 mission to Lebanon.
Lockheed Martin has captured a $40.4-million contract add-on to complete the A-10C precision engagement program's engineering and manufacturing development phase. The company also won a $23-million contract add-on for C-5 AMP production Lot V kits and spares.
Market research company Input forecasts that U.S. government information technology spending will grow about 5% per year from $79 billion this year to $102 billion in 2012. While this rate of growth will hold true for defense and civilian sectors of the government, the intelligence community's information technology spending is expected to grow 8.3% per year from $9.8 billion this year to $14 billion in 2012.
Cristhian Godoy Cristhian Godoy, 18, a fifth-year honors program student at New York's Aviation High School, is this year's winner of the annual Donald D. Engen Scholarship. The award consists of $5,000 from FlightSafety International and a matching $5,000 grant from The McGraw-Hill Companies. The scholarship was established 11 years ago by the chairman and founder of FlightSafety, A.L. Ueltschi. Seven years ago, McGraw-Hill Chairman, President and CEO Harold McGraw, 3rd, added the matching grant.
UNITED STATES Editor-In-Chief: Anthony L. Velocci, Jr. [email protected] Managing Editor: James R. Asker [email protected] Assistant Managing Editor: Michael Stearns [email protected] Senior Editors: Craig Covault [email protected], David Hughes [email protected] NEW YORK 2 Penn Plaza, 25th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10121 Phone: +1 (212) 904-2000, Fax: +1 (212) 904-6068 Senior News Editor: Nora Titterington
Raytheon has been awarded a $185-million contract for production modification of four Aegis Weapon Systems transmitter groups. AWS is the ship's primary anti-air defense. Three of the systems are for Australia's air warfare destroyer program and the fourth is for Spain. The company won a $53-million contract add-on for 2007 procurement of 111 Tomahawk launching system composite capsules and 220 nuclear submarine retrofit kits. Work is to be completed in 2009.
A plan for a Chinese micro-satellite to hitch a ride on a Russian probe to Mars in 2009 will deepen cooperation that the two countries foreshadowed last year. Chinese state media are presenting the project as a joint mission, but a micro-satellite would be no bigger than a soccer ball, and maybe as small as a softball. As a result, the Russians will play by far the larger role in providing the mother craft, the Phobos Explorer. The Chinese space administration is calling the agreement "a key step forward to working together on a large space program" with Russia.
Leading edges must still be fitted to Northrop Grumman's first Unmanned Combat Air System-Demonstrator aircraft (see p. 34). This Mar. 22 photo was taken at the company's Palmdale, Calif., facility originally for engineering purposes, but company officials decided to release it and others as they submit their UCAS-D proposal to the U.S. Navy Apr. 2.
The agreement between the U.S. and European Union on first steps toward a transatlantic open aviation area (see p. 60) is a remarkable achievement by the negotiators. For it to be more than that--for it to be the basis of the liberalization its advocates want it to be--the U.S. will have to deal squarely, once and for all, with issues of importance to Europe that America has ducked consistently.
In case someone thinks the current leaders of tactical air are doing a good job, let's set the record straight. The F-22, which has been in development for longer than any other fighter, could not make a transpacific flight without spending a week in Hawaii to fix the problem (AW&ST Feb. 19, p. 23).
Air Deccan Managing Director and Founder Capt. (ret.) G.R. Gopinath Now that it has discovered the low-cost carrier model, Asia is moving quickly to master it. Discount carriers' share of the region's market was just 1% in 2001. It's now reached 20%, according to the Sydney-based Center for Asia-Pacific Aviation. Following that cue, Indian low-cost carrier Air Deccan has its eyes on capturing the attention of the nation's fast-rising middle class.
The rains came. And by the time they finally stopped at Ft. Greely, Alaska, last summer, electronics components at seven interceptor missile silo underground vaults had suffered $38 million worth of water damage. The silos were being built for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system, and flooding was confined to their Silo Interface Vaults (SIVs)--prefabricated underground spaces adjoining the silos. The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) estimates that 40-70% of the factory-installed electronics modules in the SIVs will have to be replaced.
Letters 8-10 Who's Where 12-13 Industry Outlook 17 Airline Outlook 18 In Orbit 19 News Breaks 20-26 Washington Outlook 27 A European Perspective 65 Arrivals 66 Classified 79 Contact Us 80 Aerospace Calendar 81
Constantine Klakis, director of engineering for World Airways, and Leon Cornelius, manager of the carrier's maintenance programs, have received the Charles Taylor Master Mechanic Award from the FAA. The award, named in honor of Charles Taylor, the first aviation mechanic in powered flight, recognizes the lifetime accomplishments of senior mechanics. Klakis began his career as a U.S. Air Force mechanic in 1956.
Graham Niven has been named Singapore-based vice president-marketing for Northeast Asia and Angus Greene as Dublin-based vice presidents-marketing for France, Italy, Malta, and North and sub-Saharan Africa, both for the Commercial Airlines Group of CIT Aerospace. Niven was co-founder and director of Crichton and Co. Greene was a regional sales director with Airbus and director of marketing with BAE Systems.
Gary L. Crittenden, who is executive vice president/chief financial officer of the American Express Co., has been nominated for the board of directors of Atlanta-based UPS.
NASA/industry team that developed and operated the Stardust comet sample return spacecraft--Don Brownlee, Tom Duxbury, Peter Tsou and Joe Vellinga During a 3.2-billion-mi., 7-year roundtrip Stardust made a daring and dangerous close flyby of the comet Wild 2, then returned to Earth with 4-billion-year-old rock and dust samples that will revolutionize studies on the formation of the Solar System.
