Scheduled aircraft deliveries will push the University of North Dakota's training aircraft fleet to more than 100 by year-end. UND Aerospace, as the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences is known, currently operates 87 training aircraft at its main location in Grand Forks and five extension training sites. Sixteen more aircraft are scheduled for delivery through December and another 14 next year.
A Pratt&Whitney JT9D engine sustained major damage when a UPS Boeing 747-100 encountered a flock of birds at 3:30 a.m. Nov. 4 on takeoff from Louisville International Airport. Engine pieces showered the infield at nearby Churchill Downs. The engine lost its spinner, and compressor damage was significant, a UPS official said. The aircraft landed safely.
Safety investigators are debating whether avionics bays in commercial aircraft need to be retrofitted with better fire-detection systems. The issue arose most recently after the Sept. 2 Swissair Flight 111 accident in Canada. An avionics bay fire initially was considered as a possible cause of the cockpit smoke reported by the MD-11's crew before the crash. Attention has since focused on possible smoke sources on the flight deck.
President Clinton's words of support for the International Space Station have raised hopes the Administration will defuse a funding time bomb at NASA, but it remains unclear how much money the White House is willing to spend. The U.S. space agency faces a massive bill of at least $2.4 billion over the next half-decade to put space station development back on track. About half of the total is directly related to the Russian government's failure to honor its commitments to the project.
Senior executives from the remote sensing industry were summoned to Washington recently to advise the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) on how to incorporate high-resolution commercial imagery into the ``national imagery architecture.'' NIMA wants to standardize interfaces with industry and ensure quick delivery of imagery. NIMA gets about 99% of its imagery from Defense Dept. and National Reconnaissance Office assets, but agency officials say that will change once high-resolution commercial systems are up and running.
Bill Nugent has been named executive director of government contracts and Mark Tomasevich director of maintenance training marketing of FlightSafety International of New York. Other recent appointments were: Michael Grabbe, director of maintenance training at the Bethany, Okla., Learning Center; Richard Deuve, assistant manager of the Paris Learning Center; and Chuck Urad, regional marketing director.
Lewis&Saunders, a U.S.-based subsidiary of the U.K.'s Dowty Aerospace, has been selected by Volvo Aerospace to provide tubular assemblies for General Electric CF6-80 and Pratt&Whitney PW2037 engines. The components business is expected to be worth $15 million over the next five years.
TRIMBLE BRINGS GPS TO THE PUBLIC with two new exhibits at Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. ``And a Star to Steer Her By'' in the museum's planetarium traces navigation from the development of celestial tools--including crossbars, quadrants, sextants and chronometers--to GPS. Illustrations from Ernest Shackleton's 1914 Transantarctic Expedition show the crucial role of sextant navigation in that party's survival. An adjacent exhibit--``GPS: A New Constellation''--shows hardware and GPS principles in more detail. Case and Seiko Epson Corps.
FAA Administrator Jane F. Garvey told the Third Global Analysis&Information Network meeting in Long Beach, Calif., last week that she will issue a policy by Thanksgiving directing agency inspectors not to penalize airlines and individuals based on data retrieved from aircraft quick-access recorders under Flight Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA) programs.
Douglas Stetson has been appointed manager of the Solar System Exploration Program Office in the Space and Earth Sciences Program Directorate at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He succeeds John C. Beckman, who is now manager of JPL's Systems Div.
HARRIS SEMICONDUCTOR AND SAMSUNG have teamed to apply spread spectrum communication technology to provide wireless local area networks for laptop computers. The system transmits data, voice and video wirelessly. To connect to the LAN, a user plugs a PCMCIA card into the laptop receptacle. An antenna on the end of the card, which protrudes about 1 in. from the laptop, transmits and receives signals to a base station. Each base station has a communication radius inside a building of 150-300 ft., and up to 1,000 ft. outside, according to the companies.
T. Allan McArtor, president/CEO of Legend Airlines Inc. and a former FAA administrator, has been appointed to the board of directors of the Angel Technologies Corp. of St. Louis.
Boeing Commercial Airplane Group must focus on fundamentals and return to delivering quality transport products on-time before attacking other issues, according to Alan R. Mulally, its new president. He also is a senior vice president of Boeing Co.
Raytheon is the prime candidate to replace South Korea's Nike Hercules surface-to-air missiles with the Patriot. Called SAMX, the program is to initially involve one battalion of six Patriot missiles with four firing batteries and one training battery. Although the program is on hold until 2000, increased North Korean Scud manufacturing activities have increased the program's profile. U.S. Forces Korea estimates North Korea could have as many as 1,000 Scud missiles.
Deregulation of the U.S. air cargo industry set the framework for development of integrated all-cargo air carriers which have achieved market dominance during the past two decades and are now beginning to make inroads internationally. ``It was a complete revolution, not an evolution,'' an air freight executive said of the changes in the U.S. air cargo business following deregulation of the industry in 1977. The change gave U.S. air freight companies the freedom to operate cargo aircraft of any size on any route at any time.
A supplier of one of the few aircraft insulation materials that the FAA now says has acceptable fire-safety qualities is working with the agency to speed its products to U.S. airlines. The FAA last month warned airlines that tests indicated most thermal/acous-tic insulation materials previously certified as fire-safe were in fact prone to support sustained inflight fires when exposed to high heat (AW&ST Oct. 19, p. 33).
Lockheed Martin Aeronautical Systems in Marietta, Ga., built a 3D model of the cargo door for the 1960s-vintage C-5 Galaxy to find out why it was showing signs of fatigue cracking and stress corrosion. The door is opened in flight for parachute drops and forms a pressure seal for the cargo bay when closed. Alan Pinnick, an LMAS specialist engineer, explained that modeling was used because the traditional trial-and-error method for solving the problem would be costly and time-consuming. The 1,850-lb.
British Airways has launched a 150-million pound ($250.5-million) revamp of its long-haul economy services aimed at business and leisure travelers alike. The changes, to be phased in over the next 30 months, include fitting the carrier's fleet of 747s with Rockwell Collins' Total Entertainment System. BA's 777s are to be fitted with the GEC-Marconi Flight System. But the carrier stopped short of introducing an interactive entertainment system, saying it would wait until the technology is more reliable.
Hugh A. Cutler has become Newburgh, N.Y.-based Eastern U.S. vice president and Ted Iwaszkiw vice president-logistics and international services for Emery Worldwide, Redwood City, Calif. Cutler was vice president-international services, and Iwaszkiw was managing director of Emery's Customs brokerage.
John T. Yates, Jr., who is R.K. Mellon professor of chemistry and physics and director of the Pittsburgh Surface Science Center at the University of Pittsburgh, has been appointed to the Science Advisory Board of Spacehab Inc., Vienna, Va.
Illustration: Graph: U.S. Airline Accidents Aviation authorities throughout the world are puzzling over the best ways to adapt their safety rules and oversight systems to airline operations continually transformed by changes in the deregulated marketplace. The U.S. cast the mold 20 years ago for the liberalization of airline competition that has migrated to Europe, Asia and Latin America. But regulators here have been slow to adjust to the challenges the new marketplace rules pose to their primary job--ensuring that air carriers operate safely.
With a second space flight under his belt, John Glenn will participate in another launch upon his return to Earth. In his personal gear on Discovery, Glenn was carrying a host of trinkets that will be turned over to the Smithsonian Institution's National Air&Space Museum. The trinkets will be used to kick into full gear the campaign to raise $130 million for construction of a 700,000-sq.-ft. exhibition center at Dulles International Airport. Larger items that won't fit in the downtown museum, such as the shuttle Enterprise and an SR-71, will be displayed there.
Despite powerful computer-aided engineering and design software, design engineers turn to supplementary analytical tools such as Mathcad for numerical analysis and calculations. Mathsoft Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., has added new visualization tools to its updated Mathcad 8 Professional product so designers can use equations to create what Vice President Chris Randles calls ``spec-driven designs.'' Besides turning equations into charts or graphics, the update also shows text and equations together in a free-form environment.
John M. Nannes is a deputy assistant attorney general in the Antitrust Div. of the U.S. Justice Dept. He recently spoke in Boston at a gathering of lawyers for a conference of the National Institute on Representing High-Technology Companies. Nannes' topic was ``Antitrust in an Era of High-Tech Innovation.'' Excerpts follow.
