Maurice Harris (see photo) has been appointed director of manufacturing for Hydro-Aire Inc., Burbank, Calif. He was focus factory manager for the Electronic Control Systems product line.
After the arresting officer clapped handcuffs on a man suspected of breaking into a house just east of the U.S. Capitol on a recent Saturday morning, he thanked his help from above--a small, quiet high-tech police helicopter and its two street-smart pilots. It's a scene that plays out daily in many variations in the skies above Prince George's County in Maryland since the 1,300-strong department purchased a pair of four-seat MD 520N helicopters two years ago.
Airbus and its partner Tenzing Communications hope the addition of avionics specialist Rockwell Collins to their inflight broadband communications team will give them a leg up on archrival Connexion by Boeing. Tenzing and Airbus teamed last year to develop airborne broadband communications and data management services (AW&ST Oct. 1, 2001, p. 52). Collins signed on in late July. The arrival of Collins will boost the team's onboard electronics and data/network management capabilities.
The first 107-seat Airbus A318 powered by 21,600-lb.-thrust CFM International CFM56-5B8 turbofans is shown during its 4-hr. maiden flight on Aug. 29 from Hamburg, Germany. First delivery to Frontier Airlines is scheduled for July 2003. Delivery of the Pratt & Whitney PW6000, initially the A318's primary engine type, has been delayed by technical difficulties. The service entry date for Pratt-powered A318s has been rescheduled to late 2005 (AW&ST July 22, p. 116).
Several leading U.S. airlines are rearranging flight schedules at major hub airports in experiments aimed at improving efficiencies of aircraft, facilities and personnel. The outcome of various approaches to ``depeaking'' flights, spreading them out over a span of time, may affect every airline operation in North America and the growing use of hub-and-spoke systems across the world.
Scientists and engineers from the Comet Nucleus Tour (Contour) spacecraft team have started planning a replacement for the probe that was almost certainly lost at the end of a critical solid-fuel rocket burn on Aug. 15, targeting a 2006 launch date to one and perhaps more of the same comets. Cornell University's Joseph Veverka, the Contour principal investigator, said Aug.
Travelers' alert: On Sept. 5, controllers and pilots from Alitalia, AlitaliaExpress and Eurofly plan a four-hour walkout. On Sept. 17, pilots from Alitalia and its affiliates plan another four-hour strike, and on Sept. 28, controllers expect to walk out for a 10-hr. period. Pilots are protesting the proposed sale of Eurofly by Alitalia to the Volare group; controllers, labor contract issues and proposed plans for the restructuring of ATC.
Vought Aircraft Industries will build 22 shipsets of composite lower wing skins for the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter during the airplane's Systems Development and Demonstration phase. Vought's facility in Milledgeville, Ga., will manufacture the skins. Vought also will assist Lockheed Martin in development of the integrated full-scale airframe test program under a separate contract. In related news, engineers at Arnold AFB, Tenn., are testing a 1/15-scale model of the Low-Cost Autonomous Attack System in a 4-ft.
Boeing scored a major contract victory over Lockheed Martin last week, winning the Kennedy Space Center Checkout Assembly and Payload Processing Services contract, worth a potential $810 million over 10 years, to prepare space payloads for launch.
Firefighters, emergency medical technicians and law enforcement personnel who comprise the initial responders to a terrorist incident are benefiting from a ``culture of safety'' concept developed and embraced by the U.S. airline industry. Training programs for these ``first responders'' are now based on cockpit resource management (CRM) procedures, which drastically reduced air carrier accidents attributable to human error.
Flight operations at U.S. airports are coming back from the Sept. 11 downturn faster than passenger volume and traffic, but with considerable airport-by-airport variation and some provocative individual differences, an analysis of FAA data shows. The data, compiled by FAA personnel at airport towers, record landings and takeoffs by large and small commercial aircraft, with 60 seats as the dividing point. Cargo aircraft are counted as they would be if they carried passengers.
Two of Europe's largest travel companies have launched low-cost airlines, adding further fuel to the fast-developing European no-frills sector. Last week, TUI (formerly Preussag) inaugurated a new carrier named Hapag-Lloyd Express, after TUI's charter airline, aimed at the lucrative German travel market. Hapag-Lloyd Express will fly to a select number of holiday and business destinations, primarily in southern Europe, from a base at Cologne/Bonn airport, in the center of the rich North Rhine-Westphalia industrial region.
The U.S. Navy has approved full-rate production of up to 237 Sikorsky MH-60S helicopters through 2010. The MH-60S is a baseline Black Hawk fitted with Seahawk engines, main rotor and dynamic components, including an automatic blade-folding mechanism, folding tail pylon and upgraded tail rotor gearbox. The cockpit is equipped with four 8 X 10-in. active matrix liquid crystal displays developed by Lockheed Martin Systems Integration, as well as dual flight management computers and dual GPS navigation systems.
State-owned Garuda Indonesia is leasing 12 Boeing 737-400s for domestic routes to meet competition from a mushrooming list of private carriers. The Jakarta-based carrier, which flies 25 other 737-300/400/500s, took delivery of the first four of the leased -400s in August. It gets another four this month and will take the final four in the first quarter of 2003 in time to boost traffic on its most popular tourist routes beginning in April.
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have used photon emissions from individual molecules of silver to create an electroluminescent light source. The development could lead to new types of nanometer-scale optical interconnects, lithography and high-resolution optical microscopy as well as other applications that require small light sources. In addition, the technique could form the basis for high-efficiency quantum information processing and cryptography because single molecules are known to emit one photon at a time.
Airbus last week announced it is expanding its three-month-old engineering facility at Wichita, Kan., and more than doubling its engineering staff there. Construction, already underway, will add 33,000 sq. ft. to the 12,600-sq.-ft. Airbus North American Engineering facility. Airbus has begun recruiting 90 people--86 of whom will be engineers--to add to its current 66-member staff.
The U.S. Navy is on the verge of starting production of the Tactical Tomahawk cruise missile after completing first flight and demonstrating the system's basic performance and features not provided by earlier versions. Tactical Tomahawk, or Block 4, is the latest evolution of the long-range, ship- and submarine-launched Raytheon cruise missile. The main enhancement is the addition of a two-way UHF satellite communication link that allows operators to retarget the missile in flight and to gain imagery of the target before the missile impacts.
The Europeans are evaluating the Continental/Delta/Northwest agreement cautiously. They are leery about such a wide-ranging partnership because it could permanently alter the airline industry's market forces, even though it was established to correct a temporary economic downturn. Europeans seemed stunned by the sudden move on the U.S. scene and, late last week, they were still assessing the rapidly changing situation.
Eclipse Aviation's Eclipse 500 business jet No. 100 achieved first flight Aug. 26 and was scheduled for its second flight late last week. The Williams International EJ22 turbofan-powered twinjet is shown lifting off from Runway 17 at Albuquerque (N.M.) International Sunport at 9:18 a.m. (MDT) under 7,000-ft. density altitude conditions with the aircraft's chief pilot, Bill Bubb, at the controls. The aircraft was operated at 9,000 ft. altitude and 130 kt.
Moscow's main international gateway, Sheremetyevo airport, has won a Category 3A ICAO status, the first granted in Russia and the second, after Kiev's Borispol, within CIS countries. Cat. 3A is expected to help improve dispatch reliability of Sheremetyevo, where low-reliability conditions are commonplace. Rival Domodedovo, Moscow's second biggest airport, is planning to apply for similar status next year.
By PIERRE SPARACO Michael A. Dornheim contributed to this report from Los Angeles. ( PARIS)
The critical importance of sustained flight-crew situational awareness, and the risks of spatial disorientation in total darkness, are being reviewed by safety experts in the aftermath of the Gulf Air Airbus A320 crash in mid-2000. Although ``no single factor was responsible for the accident,'' according to the newly completed final report, investigators stressed the need for optimal crew resource and cockpit workload management. The airline implemented a number of safety initiatives following the accident. On Aug.
Small airlines represented by the Air Carriers Assn. of America are twice as unhappy now that Continental/Delta/Northwest have joined United/US Airways in proposing a mammoth domestic code-share alliance (see p. 24). The ACAA asked the Transportation Dept. to evaluate both plans simultaneously and do what's needed to preserve competition.
The U.S. Navy has picked Northrop Grumman over Raytheon to supply the MH-60S' Rapid Airborne Mine Clearance System. Ramics is to allow the Navy carrier battlegroups and Marine amphibious ready groups to combat floating and near-surface sea mines.
THE MYSTERY OF FLIGHT 427: Inside a Crash Investigation By Bill Adair Smithsonian Institution Press 230 pp. Hardcover, $25.95 Bill Adair, a St. Petersburg Times reporter, puts forth that the crash of USAir Flight 427, on Sept. 8, 1994, changed aviation forever. This is most probably a journalistic overreaction, although the Boeing 737-300 accident prompted a redesign of the twinjet's rudder actuator and led USAir to change its name to US Airways in an attempt to erase bad memories.
Nearly a year after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Reconnaissance Office and National Security Agency lack two $1-billion secret eavesdropping spacecraft that should have been operational by now to provide critical intelligence to help track terrorist operations and plan for a possible war with Iraq. Although significantly delayed, one of the spacecraft may be undergoing modification to enhance its capabilities to better siphon communications related to Iraqi and Al Qaeda intelligence objectives.
