Consolidated revenues for Bombardier were $11.5 billion (Canadian) for the year ending Jan. 31, a 35% increase over the previous year. Net income for the period was $554 million, up 32%. Company officials said its aerospace activities led the way in revenues and profits in the recently announced annual financial results. Aerospace revenues were $6.4 billion, primarily due to an increased number of aircraft deliveries.
The Pentagon plans to upgrade the avionics on many of its C-130s. The largest program is the USAF's C-130X Avionics Modernization Program to upgrade 525 aircraft at a rate of about 75 per year. The competition winner will have to integrate a common avionics suite on 13 different types of USAF C-130s, including special ops aircraft. Additionally, the Navy recently decided to upgrade 100 Navy and Marine Corps C-130s.
A Boeing product development concept for a large transport to compete with the planned Airbus A3XX shows a single-deck, 777-like fuselage with large wing and four engines. The Large Airplane Preliminary Development (LAPD) study, which is being conducted in close cooperation with key system suppliers grouped in cross-functional teams, envisions an aircraft with a ramp weight of 1.18 million lb. and double-lobe fuselage cross section. The aircraft would have five main landing gear posts. They would have four-wheel trucks as would the nose gear.
The U.S. Air Force has identified five companies as ``highly qualified'' to pursue the Integrated Space Command and Control (ISC2) contract, potentially worth $1.5-1.8 billion over 15 years. TRW, Litton PRC, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Computer Sciences Corp. are forming teams capable of integrating approximately 40 air, space and missile-defense command and control systems into one network used by U.S. Space Command and NORAD.
A test of India's first solid-fueled, two-stage intermediate-range ballistic missile has prompted a tit-for-tat response from Pakistan. Ironically, leaders of both nations alerted the other prior to their tests, but the exchange is regarded as evidence that both intend to develop a nuclear deterrence capability regardless of Western condemnation.
THE FAA IS COMMITTED TO THE AERONAUTICAL Telecommunications Network as the standard architecture for the next generation of Air Traffic Management communication, and has a transition plan to go from FANS-1 communication to ATN. The agency envisions ATN as ``the Internet of data link,'' allowing users to exchange messages without regard for the systems being used. The FAA plans to demonstrate ATN first in December, 2000. Initial capability for Miami, the key site in the U.S., is slated for 2002, using Build-1 software and testing four messages.
Nicotine-starved passengers have no choice but to cope with jittery withdrawal symptoms in flight, what with a general ban on smoking in the sky. But what happens when flight crewmembers cannot satisfy a yearning for tobacco? Japan's two major carriers have recognized what could happen with a nervous pilot-in-command and have recently stated that the no-smoking rule on long-haul flights may be lifted for flight crew--but only if ``prolonged abstinence'' poses a safety problem.
Airpower can play a key role in countering ``superterrorism,'' the variety that would use weapons of mass destruction, but it will have to be tailored to warfare in cities because terrorism is increasingly an urban phenomenon, a new Rand study says.
NATO's air campaign, whether by design or not, is entering its third phase--the destruction of the Yugoslav military in Kosovo. At first, a limited series of air strikes flown at night were expected to intimidate Yugoslavia's leadership. This having failed, operations were stepped up in an attempt to cut off the country's field forces. Despite long stretches of bad flying weather, three weeks of NATO bombing have shattered Yugoslav military communications, destroyed fuel production and reserves, and cut roads, railroads and bridges to embattled Kosovo.
To make it easier to exchange digital product data, the International Standards Organization is developing and implementing the Standard for the Exchange of Product Data (STEP), which is being promoted by PDES Inc. (http://pdesinc.aticorp.org), an industry-government consortium. STEP has been sought by industry for a long time, but reaching a workable common standard has been difficult because it calls for defining large amounts of life-cycle data--from design to disposal--that had not all been defined before.
AIRCRAFT AND UAV DESIGNERS CAN USE ATHENA'S analytic flight tolerant technique to rapidly develop digital control systems so controllability of new unstable aircraft proposals can be checked in simulation before starting development. That evaluation can be done in a day or two because the approach only requires a few design points to cover the entire flight envelope, according to David Voss, the system architect.
The saga continues: Will Narita, Tokyo's overcrowded international airport, finally get a second runway? Japan's Transport Ministry thought it had finally reached agreement with two farming families whose land sits in the middle of the planned runway site. But Deputy Minister Masahiko Kurono said the families seem to be reverting to their original position: opposition to any runway construction. He hopes to lock in the program this year so that construction can start in 2000, but he's not optimistic. The ministry decided the best tactic is to let the situation cool off.
A Korean Air MD-11 freighter with a crew of three crashed into a construction site 6 min. after takeoff from Shanghai, killing seven people and injuring more than 30 on the ground. The aircraft, HL7373, departed Shanghai's Pudong Airport at 4:04 p.m. on Apr. 15 bound for Seoul. Its crash into a construction site about 10 km. (6.2 mi.) away accounted for the large number of people on the ground killed or injured.
Buoyed by a 24% improvement in traffic growth in the first quarter and a brightened outlook in the South Korean economy, Korean Air officials say the carrier's aircraft deliveries will remain on schedule next year. Deliveries were interrupted last year over financing issues that required aircraft to be stored in Marana, Ariz. In all, seven transports were delivered in 1998. Two Airbus A330-200s and two Boeing 777-300s are to be added later this year. The A330s will replace A300s, while 747-200/300s will be replaced by 777s over the next two years.
Strong demand has caused American Blimp to increase its manufacturing area by about 30%, or 4,400 sq. ft., at its Hillsboro and Tillamook, Ore., facilities. By year-end, there will be six A-150 and 14 A-60+ airships in service worldwide, according to Jim Thiele, president and CEO. The company has four gondolas under construction and an A-150 being readied for flight test.
Russian and U.S. air traffic controllers are using mobile telephones linked through the Iridium satellite constellation to hand off control of commercial aircraft in the Russian Far East. Air traffic managers in the U.S. and Russia turned to the $4.85-billion Iridium system to overcome communications reliability problems that had triggered severe restrictions on the number of flights that could use three air routes in the region.
A defective solar panel forced Arianespace to postpone its next launch, which was set for Apr. 28. Officials hope to be able to launch the payload, NewSky K-TV, built by Matra Marconi Space, around mid-May. Arianespace has also been obliged to switch part of the payload for the first Ariane 5 commercial launch, flight 504, from Eutelsat W4 to WorldSpace's AsiaStar, due to satellite delivery problems. The firm has been plagued by problems that have so far limited operations this year to two launchings (AW&ST Mar. 8, p. 39).
Although uncertainties remain on the effectiveness of NATO's air strikes against the Yugoslav military inventory overall, multinational interoperability is playing a critical role in Operation Allied Force. The British government is reinforcing the U.K.'s role in Operation Allied Force with significant additions. The Royal Navy's ``task group,'' which is being deployed to the Ionian Sea, south of Italy, to further support attacks against Yugoslavia, was expected to be in position late last week.
Boeing sees positive signs from a more robust South Korean economy, but concern about Japan's turnaround linger as a decision on whether to extend the product range for the 747 and 777 draws near. In recent comments here, Boeing's chairman and CEO, Phil Condit, said the worst of the Asian recession is over for his company, but he continued to express caution about Japan. ``I am concerned when the world's second biggest economy is sluggish,'' he said.
Boeing is making its extensive flight test capabilities and expertise available to outside customers. The company's Glasgow Flight Test Facility, located in northeastern Montana, can be used to perform instrumented ground and flight tests on a variety of airborne platforms, including rapid inflight data acquisition. The company also is opening its avionics development and flight simulation capabilities to outside work, including hardware-in-the-loop testing. Boeing also has a brake control simulation laboratory available for general aviation manufacturers.
United Technologies and Sundstrand last week moved closer toward completing their merger after the Hart-Scott-Rodino waiting period expired without any challenges being raised to the transaction.
NASA could face a setback in plans to begin flight testing its newest X vehicle if the U.S. Air Force sticks with a last-minute decision to prohibit the use of a New Mexico air base for the tests. The space agency had planned to stage initial flights of the X-34 reusable launch vehicle out of Holloman AFB this summer. The unpiloted, air-launched vehicle was to be dropped from an L-1011 aircraft based at Holloman. In later tests, the X-34 was to return and land on a runway at the base to demonstrate its autonomous landing system.
Lockheed Martin has replaced the horizontal stabilizers in the first two F-22A Raptor test aircraft as a result of disbonding in the original structures. According to U.S. Air Force officials, the horizontal stabilizers in Raptor 4001, the first engineering and manufacturing development F-22, were replaced in January. Similar structures were replaced in Raptor 4002, the second EMD aircraft, last month. Both changes were made during a period scheduled for incorporating aircraft upgrades and conducting ground tests (see p. 17).
