Air France has ordered a Thomson Training&Simulation Boeing 777 full-flight simulator. It will be equipped with an Evans&Sutherland Esic 3350GT visual system.
The French aerospace industry during the first half booked orders valued at $11.7 billion, a 16.8% increase over 1997. Military orders decreased a sharp 28.5% but commercial orders soared 41.2% to $9.2 billion, a trend tied to Airbus Industrie's healthy sales. Revenues increased 8.9% to $12.08 billion, including $7.9 billion in the export market, according to GIFAS French aerospace industries association.
Smiths Industries' selection of Planar Systems and dpiX to provide advanced, high-resolution flat panel displays for the Eurofighter Typhoon cockpit is the latest aerospace win for a team that grew out of a Darpa initiative to ensure the U.S. did not fall behind Japan in its ability to produce advanced liquid crystal displays.
Ansett says it is studying a five-year, billion-dollar fleet renewal plan that it cannot undertake until it can demonstrate sustained profits, so in the meantime it is slashing regional routes it is unequipped to run profitably. Its decision to hand over regional routes to Kendell Airlines, its low-cost subsidiary, pits Embraer and Canadair in competition for an order of a dozen 50-seat commuter jets, the first to serve rural Australia.
European airlines are accelerating large-scale outsourcing of their information technology systems to third-party providers. ``Such initiatives are CEO-level decisions. It is better to reposition business in a prosperous time, when investment money is available,'' according to Gregory A. Conley, general manager of IBM's Travel and Transportation Industry unit. He added that the airline IT market is growing at 20%-plus every quarter. According to SITA Director General John O. Watson, airlines spend just over 2% of their annual revenues on IT.
Singapore Airlines says it will spend $1.5 billion to pursue equity alliances in partnership with Lufthansa in Africa and Asia while it upgrades cabins in its long-haul 747 fleet.
As part of NATO exercises conducted earlier this summer off Newfoundland, a Kaman K-Max helicopter equipped with a Magic Lantern Adaptation system demonstrated shallow water mine detection. Data from the ML(A) system was downlinked to a ground control station and all sensor system control was performed from the ground with no airborne operator. The K-Max also was flown in a surrogate drone role to evaluate its capability as a long-duration, pilotless aircraft in the usually hostile, near-shore mine-hunting environment.
Arthur G. Stephenson has been named director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala. He has been president of Oceaneering Advanced Technologies of Houston. Carolyn Griner, who has been acting director, will return to her position as deputy director.
George Paulikas (see photo) received the Jimmy Doolittle Fellowship Award and National Reconnaissance Organization Gold Medallion upon retiring as executive vice president of The Aerospace Corp. of Los Angeles. The Doolittle award recognizes lifelong military and civilian contributions to the national defense, aeronautics and advancement of U.S. aerospace endeavors. The NRO cited Paulikas for the ``successful on-orbit delivery of NRO space systems during the last three decades.''
Investigators are assessing whether a fire from failure of electrical devices on the flight deck could have created smoke in the cockpit and led to the crash of Swissair Flight 111 off Nova Scotia. Since shortly after the crash nearly a month ago, investigators have been debating whether a component failure or fire in the avionics, or electrical and electronics (E&E), bay below the cockpit could have caused the smoke reported by the crew of Flight 111 to air traffic control about 17 min. before their MD-11 plunged into the Atlantic.
The National Reconnaissance Office will launch a satellite technology testbed next month to demonstrate several satellite subsystems and components that could drastically change how future satellites are designed and built. The Space Technology Experiment ``will test and validate 29 high potential, advanced technologies,'' STEX program director for the NRO, John Schaub, said. ``Each of these enabling technologies was chosen specifically because they will support the development of higher performance and lower cost space systems in the future.''
Trevor Lloyd has been appointed product manager for satellite communications and Stephen Gardiner export sales manager of TRL Technology Ltd., Tewksbury, England.
Brazilian manufacturer Embraer is scheduled this week to begin tests of an increased-gross-weight version of its ERJ-145 transport. Tests to be performed at Moses Lake, Wash., on the 50-seat transport will include maximum kinetic energy, Vmu minimum ``unstick'' speed and Vmcg minimum engine-out control speed on the ground. Formerly a USAF base, remote Moses Lake is being promoted as a flight test facility due to its 13,500-ft.-long runway, favorable weather conditions and uncrowded airspace. The $16-million ERJ-145 has a maximum takeoff weight of 48,500 lb.
Delegates from the International Civil Aviation Organization's 185 member nations convened at ICAO's Montreal headquarters on Sept. 22 for the organization's 32nd triennial assembly. ICAO officials hope to win endorsement from the delegates for plans to mandate independent inspections of each member nation's regulations, surveillance and enforcement of aviation safety standards and to set a global agenda for combating the most pressing threats to civil aviation safety. The session is to end on Oct. 2.
Switzerland's Flightlease, SAirGroup's leasing subsidiary, and GATX Capital concluded an agreement to form GATX Flightlease Management. They will be equal partners in the Zurich-based company that is expected to manage a portfolio of about 200 commercial transports valued at $6 billion.
The high sensitivity of Galileo's camera has allowed it to produce much better images of Jupiter's ring structure than made by the Voyager probes two decades ago, leading to the discovery that the outer rings are formed by dust from two small moons.
Virgin Atlantic is appealing a decision by the U.K. Civil Aviation Authority to allow British Airways to add an additional flight per week from London to Capetown, South Africa. Under a U.K.-South Africa bilateral agreement, British carriers will be allowed to operate 26 services per week versus the current 25--7 for Virgin and 18 for BA. Virgin proposed a twice-weekly service and claims South African authorities were ready to grant approval.
NASA is accelerating the use of advanced interactive virtual-reality capabilities for shuttle astronaut training and International Space Station operations planning. The two main flight training facilities here--the Shuttle Mission Simulator (SMS) and Shuttle Engineering Simulator (SES)--are to be equipped with new Silicon Graphics computers and software that will give them a 30-fold increase in the ability to generate and display out-the-window and closed-circuit television scenes of detailed flight operations engineering tasks.
Boeing is broadening the scope of its maintenance support for the 717 transport and exploring new working relationships with some leasing firms as the company takes a harder look at smaller carriers in an effort to bolster orders for the twin-jet.
Rosvoorouzhenie, Russia's state arms trading company, is proposing a package of Su-27s and multirole MiG-29s to Australia to replace its F-111s and F/A-18s.
The CIA's newly released history of its U-2 operations (see p. 29) includes some anecdotes about the largely anonymous pilots. In one incident, also mentioned in Ben Rich's Skunk Works memoir, CIA pilot Carmen Vito, a habitual consumer of lemon drops, reached into a pocket of his flight suit and, without looking, pulled out an ``L-pill'' of liquid potassium cyanide. Such ampules were provided to give pilots an alternative to being tortured. It had been tucked away by a ground crewman who hadn't known about Vito's candy trove.
Thomson-CSF Communications and Racal Radio, a Racal Defence Electronics Group affiliate, concluded an agreement to jointly form a C3I joint venture. They will be equal partners in the yet unnamed U.K.-based company.
ICAO now has a Web site dedicated to the Year 2000 (Y2K) computer problem for civil international aviation. The site describes ICAO's program, lists an action plan, surveys participating countries and describes member countries responsibilities. The address is: www.icao.int/y2k.
A top U.S. Transportation Dept. official has called for a new review of remaining restrictions on international aviation, including limits on foreign investments in airlines and curbs on airline operations within another nation's territory. At the same time, another agency official warned that steps must be taken to promote competition in the domestic arena lest the benefits of 20 years of deregulation be lost.
