DRS Technologies has received a $2.1- million order from the Royal Australian Navy to install up to 30 EAS3000 deployable cockpit voice and data recorders on Westland Sea King SK-50 and -50A and Sikorsky Sea Hawk S-70B-2 helicopters.
Inspired by the ability of living organisms to heal injuries, University of Illinois researchers are attempting to create mechanisms that would allow composite materials to autonomically heal themselves when cracks develop. Composite aircraft wings and microelectronics that use thermosetting polymers are susceptible to damage from cracks that often form deep in the structure where detection is difficult and repair is virtually impossible. Prof. Scott R.
Kaman Aerospace Corp. has received a contract from Boeing Commercial Airplanes to supply aircraft fuselage, wing and tail subassemblies for 747, 757, 767 and 777 aircraft.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission last week initiated court proceedings against Qantas Airways for anticompetitive practices. The ACCC alleges Australia's dominant airline ``misused its market power'' on the Brisbane-Adelaide route by substantially increasing the number of available seats on the route and engaging in fare wars in reaction to low-fare carrier Virgin Blue's entry into the market in December 2000.
James E. Keenan has become vice president-engineering and technical support at United Airlines' Maintenance Operations Center in San Francisco. He was general manager of engine maintenance.
Alfred J. (Jack) Smith, 3rd, has been appointed senior vice president-customer service for AirTran Airways. He succeeds Tommy Kalil, who has retired. Smith was vice president-global operations for Northwest Airlines.
The Italian air force has selected General Electric CF6-80C2 engines to power four Boeing 767 Global Tanker Transports, under an $80-million order. Deliveries will begin in 2005.
Raytheon Air Combat and Strike Systems will upgrade U.S. Air Force APG-63 (V) 1 radars on F-15s under a $116-million work order. Raytheon will deliver up to 36 radar systems, spares and test equipment. Additionally, India has signed an agreement with the U.S. government to purchase eight Thales Raytheon Systems' AN/TPQ-37 Firefinder counter-battery artillery radars with related support components.
The U.S. Air Force has overestimated, to the tune of $463 million, the amount of spare parts it will need when it reengines the C-5 using the General Electric CF6. The reason? Air Force analysts projected an engine removal rate of 0.12 per 1,000 engine flying hours. But that is much higher than commercial users experience and GE doesn't expect that removal to be reached until around 2035, which will be 30 years after the engine enters service on the C-5, according to an Air Force internal audit.
After identifying a slow market recovery, Airbus does not plan to further curtail commercial transport deliveries in the next two years. According to Chief Executive Noel Forgeard, the company's performance is ``extremely encouraging'' so far. In spite of difficult market conditions, he says the European manufacturer enjoys ``continued commercial success.'' Airbus has delivered 103 aircraft since Jan. 1 and plans about 300 deliveries in both 2002 and 2003. Last year, Airbus delivered 325 aircraft and had anticipated boosting production to close to 400 units.
Mark Kachmar, a master's degree candidate in Earth and atmospheric sciences at the University of Alberta, has won the 2002 Space Imaging Award for the Application of High Resolution Digital Satellite Imagery. His study ``Remote Detection of Live Forest Residuals'' will use satellite imagery to detect residual forest patches left standing after a forest fire to help strengthen the forestry industry's ability to estimate the total volume of standing timber remaining after a fire.
Regional carriers are struggling to eke out profits in a consumer environment dominated by discount fares and low yields, while attempting to lure back lucrative business travelers as well as brace for a series of operational and regulatory fights that loom on the horizon. According to the Regional Airline Assn. (RAA), passenger traffic this summer is poised to return to levels approaching those experienced before Sept. 11.
European space leaders are looking at a new set of support measures for the Ariane launch system and attempting to avert a clash over the X-38 experimental vehicle that could cloud relations with NASA. It had been hoped that a nearly 2-billion-euro ($1.8-billion) support plan approved at the last European Space Agency ministerial summit in November would be enough to ensure to secure a sound future for the European launch industry.
Germany is pondering a purchase of as many as 600 Taurus KEPD 350 standoff missiles, with a political decision anticipated in June. The long-range precision strike weapon would equip the Luftwaffe's Tornado combat aircraft and later the Eurofighter. A successful all-up test firing of the missile was carried out Apr. 25 at the Overburg range in South Africa. The test saw the missile fly over its publicly released maximum range of 350 km. (219 mi.), though its actual range is considerably greater.
Unscheduled landings by military aircraft at Japanese civil airports remain a bone of contention with nearby residents who don't like the noise. Japanese regulations require advance notification for all military aircraft prior to using civilian facilities, except for emergencies. U.S. military aircraft are said to frequently break that rule, without explanation. U.S. use of civilian fields has been declining--808 reported landings in 2001 versus 832 in 2000. However, Japanese military landings increased last year to 36,528--1,286 more than in 2000.
Lewis G. Russell has been named chairman of the Aviation Technologies Dept. at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. He has been an assistant professor and succeeds Larry C. Staples, who has retired.
U.S. Senate advocates for arming flight crews expect to have a bill completed this week that would give pilots and flight attendants some artillery to fight terrorists, two weeks after a pilots-only measure was submitted in the House. Senate sources said in addition to allowing pilots to carry firearms, their legislation would attempt to address flight attendant unions' concerns: More self-defense training, a communications device that would let them talk to other attendants and the pilots, and nonlethal weapons, possibly steel batons.
Francisco Escarti has been named vice president-business development for Europe and Tim Neale director of communications for Seattle-based Boeing Air Traffic Management. Escarti, a former general director of Iberia Airlines, was head of Services Improvement. Neale was aviation safety communications manager for Boeing Commercial Airplanes.
Juan Ricardo Castillo has been appointed Los Angeles-based West Coast sales director for LanChile Airlines. He was assistant marketing manager for North America.
DAVID A. FULGHUMROBERT WALL ( PALMACHIM AFB, ISRAEL)
While a test aircraft from a new family of UAVs buzzed in circles overhead, the pilots of Israel's lone squadron of unmanned reconnaissance aircraft showed visitors a film taken from one of their robot planes. A bucolic black-and-white scene in a suburban neighborhood was suddenly destroyed with the explosive launch of a pair of Katyusha rockets from a small stand of trees between houses. Moments later a motorcycle darted from the grove, entered the local highway and apparently made a clean getaway.
FORGOTTEN EAGLE Wiley Post, America's Heroic Aviation Pioneer By Bryan B. Sterling & Frances N. Sterling Carroll & Graf 371 pp. Hardcover, $27.00 The team of Bryan and Frances Sterling has done an admirable job in telling the neglected tale of Wiley Hardeman Post, one of aviation's premiere record-setting aviators of the 1930s. Post, a former oil field roughneck from Oklahoma, learned to fly in 1927, buying his first airplane with money received as a settlement for an oil field accident that caused the loss of his right eye.
