Japan's medium-lift launch program has resumed operations after a two-year rebuilding effort with the successful launch of the prototype H-IIA liquid-fueled booster from the Tanegashima Space Center off Kyushu Island.
American Airlines' regional subsidiary, American Eagle, has taken delivery of its 100th Embraer regional jet, a 44-seat ERJ-140, and will accept another 14 of the aircraft by year-end. Eagle is launch customer for the ERJ-140. Plans called for the jet to enter service at Chicago O'Hare International Airport late last month.
Thales has landed a 360-million-euro ($330-million) award from the British Ministry of Defense for optronics systems for light armored vehicles. The award, made under the U.K.'s Battle Group Thermal Imaging program, partially compensates for failure to win the Bowman radio program contract last July. Thales has invested heavily in the U.K. to position itself as a major domestic competitor to BAE Systems.
Jim Grothusen has become principal/senior airports engineer of the Phoenix office of Atkins Benham. He was manager of the Quad City Airport, Moline, Ill.
Bombardier Aerospace pilots have logged more than 11 hr. of certification testing in the company's first Continental business jet since its maiden flight on Aug. 14 (AW&ST Aug. 20, p. 50). According to Bombardier, the airplane has attained an altitude of 35,000 ft. and speeds up to Mach 0.70. Plans call for five airplanes to complete a 1,500-hr. test program leading to certification late in 2002 under FAA FAR Part 25, Transport Canada 525 and European JAR 25 rules. Four additional jets are scheduled to join the test fleet this year.
Beverly A. Grear has become vice president-customer service for Sun Country Airlines. She was senior vice president-customer service and operations for Spirit Airlines.
U.S. military planners and policy makers should prepare to confront new types of conflicts as a result of shifts underway in the global arms market, a National Intelligence Council report contends.
Boeing and Lockheed Martin are unveiling an upgrade to the AH-64D Longbow Apache helicopter to make the system more lethal at extended ranges. But the upgrade wasn't enough to convince Australia it should select the Apache in its hotly contested reconnaissance attack helicopter competition.
Students in the current Fighter Combat Instructors course, which began here last month, will learn not only the fine points of employing Australian F/A-18s in both air-to-air and air-to-ground roles, but will develop new tactics that take advantage of the latest Hornet upgrades. The FCI course is a 20-week program to train 6-8 Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) mid-rank fighter pilots to be weapons experts and instructors. A new class begins about every 18 months, and is hosted by No. 2 Operational Conversion Unit (2OCU) at RAAF Base Williamtown.
Air Canada and IBM recently entered a $909-million (C$1.4-billion) strategic partnership with two goals: to ``e-enable'' the carrier and to pursue business opportunities focused on customer service and information technology-based travel-industry solutions that will benefit not only Air Canada but other carriers. The agreement, concluded in late July, is closely aligned with Air Canada's enhanced profitability initiatives announced last month. These were part of an aggressive action plan launched late December to cut costs and generate new revenues.
The Japanese Defense Agency has selected the Boeing AH-64D Apache helicopter to fill the army's attack helicopter role as a replacement for the 88 Bell/Fuji AH-1S helicopters now in service.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is asking the services for deep sacrifices. The latest budget guidance calls for the services to trim 15% of their total budget by 2007. The first cuts would come in 2004, with a 5% reduction, followed by another 5% the next year and 2.5% in each of the following two years. The money is supposed to finance Rumsfeld's ``transformation,'' with which he hopes to change the structure of the military and prepare it for the future.
Resurrecting a name, Qantas said last week it will launch a low-cost carrier called Australian Airlines to fly secondary Asian routes from six Australian cities that the mother carrier plans to abandon in the next six months.
Sam Gilliland has been appointed group president of the Airline Solutions unit of the Sabre Holdings Corp. of Fort Worth. He will continue as chief marketing officer of Sabre.
NASA'S SCIENTIFIC AND ENGINEERING WORKSTATION Procurement (SEWP III) has selected a team of Government Micro Resources Inc. and Cray Inc. for an IDIQ (indefinite delivery and indefinite quantity) contract in the high-performance supercomputer class. Purchases under the five-year government-wide acquisition agreement are available to all federal agencies. Cray believes its multithread architecture and SuperClusters represent the wave of the future for parallel and vector processing.
Space shuttle safety is the title of a hearing this week before the Senate space subcommittee, but space shuttle spending will likely be the topic when Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) gavels the session to order. NASA is staring at a $200-million shortfall for the shuttle in the Fiscal 2002 budget pending on Capitol Hill, and the situation doesn't improve much in the out-years, according to Bill Readdy, the shuttle chief at NASA headquarters.
Six Dutch companies and Pratt&Whitney have signed a memorandum of understanding covering the support of F119-powered Joint Strike Fighters. The Dutch partners are Eldim, Fokker Elmo, Hamilton Sundstrand Maastricht, Urenco Nederland, Stork and Neder-lands Centrum voor Laser Research.
Developers report the start of tethered hover testing of a full-sized exoskeleton flying vehicle that could be used by soldiers or border agents as an unobtrusive look-down platform for patrolling, scouting or searching operations. Called the SoloTrek XFV, the vehicle is a project of Millennium Jet Inc. Designed to make it easy for an operator to achieve vertical takeoff and landing (Vtol) flight, the XFV requires nothing more than strapping it on and taking off, said company founder and CEO Michael W. Moshier.
THE SWEDISH ODIN-1 RESEARCH SATELLITE, launched in February, is carrying the first indium phosphide (InP) integrated circuit in orbit, according to the chip manufacturer, TRW. The low-noise amplifier chip is part of a broadband radiometer being used by the scientific satellite to detect very faint radiation emitted by galactic oxygen. TRW is using InP chips to create smaller, lighter and more sensitive remote sensing instruments.
The Royal Australian Air Force recently introduced BAE Systems Hawk 127 aircraft--modified with cockpits that duplicate the functionality of an F/A-18--to prepare pilots for Hornet conversion training.
Jorge A. del Calvo, a partner in the law firm Pillsbury Winthrop of San Francisco, has been appointed to the board of directors of Berkeley Process Control Inc.
Spanish investigators seeking causes for a CN-235 crash last week near Malaga airport, Spain, are expected to review three recent fatal accidents that involved the same aircraft type. Binter Mediterraneo's CN-235, carrying 44 passengers, two flight crew members and a flight attendant, crashed 1,000 ft. from the airport edge on Aug. 29. Four people on board died, including a pilot, while more than 20 passengers suffered injuries. The airline is a small regional operation that runs five aircraft on short-haul routes.
