With its new 10% stake in Irkut Corp., EADS aims to strengthen its relations with the Russian aerospace industry. The purchase late last month, for 55 million euros ($66 million), will give EADS a seat on Irkut's nine-member board. As Russia's largest privately controlled aircraft manufacturer, Irkut is a likely key component in the single aerospace company the Russian government is striving to set up to consolidate the fragmented aerospace/defense industry.
Jan. 28 marks the 20th anniversary of the 1986 Challenger space shuttle accident that killed NASA astronauts Dick Scobee, Mike Smith, Judy Resnik, Ron McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Hughes corporate payload specialist Greg Jarvis and teacher-in-space Christa McAuliffe.
China intends to launch four unmanned space missions this year and to start work on its lunar launch vehicle. The large Xinnuo 2 communications spacecraft, a new weather satellite and two space science missions are scheduled for launch this year. Fabrication is underway on the Long March 3A booster China plans to use to send the Chang'e spacecraft into lunar orbit in April 2007. The $137-million Chang'e development is also progressing.
A European Commission plan to include aviation in emissions trading is finding support among regional environmental ministers, even as the U.S. mounts opposition. During a recent meeting of environment ministers from the 25 European Union member states, the top officials endorsed the EC concept of expanding the emission trading system to aviation as a way to limit pollution. They added that the EC proposal should receive "prompt attention."
William J. Alibrandi (Forecast International/www.forecastinternational.com)
By 2010, annual worldwide turbine engine production should top 9,000 units, an increase of roughly 1,500 over current-year forecast output. The increase will be driven in part by continuing strong sales of Airbus and Boeing narrow-body aircraft, demand for the new very light jets (VLJs) and strong military helicopter sales. This trend will reach a peak in 2012 and then begin a decline as customers absorb new aircraft into their fleets and the cyclical ordering process slows.
Can Boeing match last year's impressive win of 1,002 commercial aircraft orders? Don't bet on it, say Banc of America Securities analysts. They're projecting the company will see a 50% drop in orders in 2006 as booming demand from Asia slows and cash-strapped U.S. airlines continue to defer purchases of new aircraft. And while Boeing plans to increase deliveries 36% this year, to 395, the analysts predict supply chain constraints will limit the production increase in 2007 to just 8%.
The Italian air force has started flying its new Eurofighter Typhoon for air defense duties, making the country the first operational user of the fighter. The air force's Grosseto-based 4th Wing now operates two Typhoons on 15-min. quick reaction alert.
Kevin Connell (see photo) has become vice president of Fort Worth-based Bell Helicopter Textron's XworX organization. He was H-1 program director and had been executive director of commercial programs.
I read with interest TSA Administrator Edmund (Kip) Hawley's quote to Congress (AW&ST Nov. 7, 2005, p. 27) concerning the Registered Traveler program. RT, he stated, "will enhance aviation security, ease travel for passengers and permit TSA to better focus security resources based on risk." The Transportation Safety Administration already has a registered group of travelers called crewmembers. For whatever reason, no amount of identification has kept the TSA from using a crewmember, traveling non-revenue, from being searched.
EADS has rolled out a specially configured Airbus A310 fitted with a refueling boom. The aircraft is intended as a flying testbed to demonstrate the technology. EADS is developing the system in part to convince U.S. military officials it has the required expertise to compete in an eventual U.S. Air Force KC-135 modernization program. The aircraft and boom will undergo flight trials this year.
Eric Pechstein (see photo) has become New Jersey-based vice president-North America for Qatar Airways. He was a passenger sales executive with US Airways and Delta Air Lines.
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have resolved a relatively tiny partner orbiting the super-giant Pole Star Polaris, determining that the fixed point of light used for generations by sailors and aviators to navigate is actually a three-star system. Reporting to the American Astronomical Society in Washington last week, researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Space Telescope Science Institute said the orbiting telescope was able to resolve the companion less than 0.2 arcsec.
News on recommended defense budget cuts continues to leak out of the Pentagon. Now considered dead or fatally crippled are the Army/Navy Aerial Common Sensor and the Air Force E-10 command-and-control aircraft, the latter down to a single demonstrator with no plans for full-scale development. The Navy/Air Force Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems (J-UCAS), an unmanned strike aircraft demonstrator, also has been gutted.
Starsem, the Arianespace affiliate that markets Soyuz-Fregat launches, has won a contract to launch Canada's Radarsat-2. The launch, scheduled for December, will be the fourth on Starsem's manifest this year. Arianespace officials also say they have been chosen to orbit SES Global's Astra 1M telecom spacecraft, assuming that the backup spacecraft is assembled as planned. The Astra 1M award compensates Arianespace for the loss of Astra 1KR, which was transferred to International Launch Services.
Space Exploration Technologies is making changes to its Falcon 1 rocket and launch equipment based on lessons from the Dec. 19 launch scrub, and now hopes to make the company's first flight on Feb. 8 at 4:30 p.m. PST.
Astronaut Marcus Pontes is making final preparations to become the first Brazilian in space with the planned Mar. 22 launch of the Soyuz TMA-8/12S mission to the International Space Station. Pontes has been training in the U.S. and Russia to be a station astronaut since 1998, shortly after Brazil joined the ISS partnership. The Brazilian Air Force lieutenant colonel will join the 13th expedition to the space station--with the expedition commander, cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov, and flight engineer, astronaut Jeffrey Williams--in the third seat of the Soyuz.
U.K. air traffic management provider National Air Traffic Services (NATS) handled a record 23 million flights in British airspace in 2005--a 5.7% increase compared with 2004 and its highest annual growth since 1999. NATS attributes the numbers to a 36.5% increase in flights by low-cost carriers to Eastern Europe, and a 12.9% rise in services to the Middle East, Asia and Africa. NATS notes, however, that the year's strong domestic passenger traffic, which reached 9.5% peak growth in May, dipped with the advent of winter schedules to 0.4% in December.
Snecma is planning an ambitious research and demonstration project aimed at positioning the French engine maker as a rival to established players in the business jet market.
One Dassault Falcon 900EX, the first of an anticipated two, has been in operation with the 31st Wing of the Italian air force since last month. The intercontinental-range aircraft are configured to carry up to 16 passengers. The 31st Wing is an exceptionally busy unit because, along with its head-of-state transport status, it serves an emergency medical role, logging about 1,500 flight hours in more than 300 medical missions.
Florence Pontieux has become media and industry analyst relations manager for Paris-based Alcatel Alenia Space. She was a corporate press relations officer.
In another hopeful sign that U.S. airline market conditions are improving, carriers are not discounting tickets as heavily during the traditionally slow winter months. Merrill Lynch analyst Michael Linenberg found that promotional fares are 15-20% higher than a year ago. One example: An advance-purchase promotional flight from New York to Oakland on JetBlue Airways costs $109 each way, up 28% from a year earlier. Linenberg says the higher prices should stick--if the industry remains restrained in adding new capacity in 2006.
Julie Zoller, a director of engineering at ITT's Industries' Advanced Engineering and Sciences Div., Reston, Va., has been nominated as the U.S. candidate for the Radio Regulations Board of the Geneva-based International Telecommunication Union (ITU). ITU establishes governing principles for operation of telecommunication networks and services, and promotes the development of communications technology.
Austrian Airlines will become the first European carrier to operate regularly scheduled service to Iraq. The airline will start serving Erbil, using an Airbus A319. The twice-weekly service, slated to begin in March, will increase to three times per week in May.
Three years after the creation of the U.S. Homeland Security Dept., the market for homeland security goods and services appears to be stabilizing but, by most estimates, is far from mature.
