Turkey has started negotiations with Sikorsky Aircraft to procure 50 additional Black Hawk helicopters, reviving a long-stalled project begun in 1992. The Turkish government, which is considering arming the aircraft, is looking to boost its airborne capability in operations against separatist Kurdish guerrillas in the southeastern region of the country.
Adventurer Steve Fossett may not try again to become the first person to circumnavigate the globe nonstop in a balloon after plunging about 29,000 ft. into the Pacific Ocean 500 naut. mi. east of the Australian coast during a violent thunderstorm.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is expected to award a contract about Sept. 1 for a space mission to hunt for other planets in the Milky Way. The flight will require such precise measurements that its principal instrument will be calibrated to the subatomic level. The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) is a stepping-stone in NASA's Origins program that is investigating the 15-billion-year-long chain of events that began with the Big Bang and produced the Universe (AW&ST Feb. 10, 1997, p. 25).
Simultaneous control of four unmanned aerial vehicles by a single operator was demonstrated late last month by Northrop Grumman at the Naval Weapons Test Center, China Lake, Calif. The trial assessed performance of the company's Cooperative Aggregate Mission Management System (CAMMS). Four ``Dakota'' UAVs, Daedalus Research Inc. ``Truck'' vehicles modified to carry heavier payloads, were launched on a cooperative search mission, each tasked to relay real-time video back to the ground station.
Go, British Airways' new low-cost subsidiary, will try its hand in the U.K. domestic market starting on Sept. 8, when it will inaugurate a three-flights-daily service between London Stansted airport and Edinburgh. The move places Go in head-to-head competition for the first time against rival U.K. no-frills carrier EasyJet, which operates flights to Edinburgh from London Luton airport. Go, set to receive its fifth Boeing 737, also plans to launch daily services at the same time to Bologna, Italy.
Meggitt Plc., the U.K. aerospace and electronics group, has agreed to buy Vibro-Meter from Electrowatt for 42.2 million pounds ($68.4 million) in cash. Swiss-based Vibro-Meter, which posted sales of 31 million pounds ($50.2 million) in 1997, designs and manufactures vibration monitoring systems for propulsion units in a variety of aerospace applications. It will be run in conjunction with Meggitt's Endevco Corp.
Melbourne-based Ansett Airlines has for the past 1.5 years undergone an intensive review with 50% equity partner Air New Zealand (ANZ) to rationalize the operation, with the aim of increasing profits and market share. Chairman Rod Eddington recently took a series of proposals to the board of Ansett Airlines, which were expected to be ratified and presented to employees on Sept. 9. Analysts believe about 1,700 staff will be trimmed.
TWA Flight 800 investigators will meet soon at the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington to see whether they can extract additional data from that aircraft's flight data recorder and to review FBI agents' summaries of interviews with witnesses to its July 17, 1996, crash. NTSB officials want to nail down whether parties to the probe agree with their assessment that the FDR stopped recording data from TWA 800's flight at 8:31:12 p.m., about the time investigators believe a center fuel tank explosion ripped the 747-100 apart off Long Island, N.Y.
Ronald P. Desjardins, director of commercial flight operations for American Airlines, is to receive the Walter W. Estridge, Jr., Award. The award recognizes service to the field of aviation/aerospace education.
Turbulence continues to injure many passengers and flight attendants every year, and the time has come for an industry-wide campaign, similar to the one against wind shear in the early 1980s. Turbulence remains the leading cause of non-fatal passenger and flight attendant injuries. The FAA reports that turbulence injures nearly 60 passengers in the U.S. each year, but the Association of Flight Attendants believes injuries are substantially underreported.
NORTHROP GRUMMAN'S ELECTRONIC SENSORS and Systems Div., formerly Westinghouse Electronic Systems, will continue development of an advanced dual-mode seeker for the U.S. Army's BAT ``brilliant'' armor submunition. The selection followed a 31/2-year competition with a seeker made by Alliant TechSystems. Both companies produced a dual-mode, millimeter-wave and infrared seeker that were then subjected to two captive flight tests against moving and stationary targets. BAT uses passive acoustic and infrared sensors to find and attack moving tanks and other armored vehicles.
Don't expect President Clinton to engineer any big deals on arms control when he goes to Moscow for next week's summit with Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Russian experts at the Carnegie Endowment say neither leader appears to have any major proposals to bring to the table. And both are politically weakened--Clinton by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Yeltsin by an economic crisis that forced the Russian government to devalue the rubble by 20%.
Physiologically based flight crew scheduling and rest requirements for long-haul flights are set to become law in Hong Kong next March. The new rules, now contained in a provisional document, are aimed at countering cumulative fatigue problems on multi-time-zone flights, according to the Hong Kong Civil Aviation Dept. (CAD). The changes are the result of a two-year joint study by CAD and the Hong Kong Air Crew Officers Assn., the union representing 1,000 Cathay Pacific pilots and flight engineers.
US Airways and the International Assn. of Machinists (IAM) have reached a tentative agreement on an initial contract covering about 6,100 fleet service employees. The IAM was elected to represent the carrier's workers, who handle baggage and other ramp services at airports, in 1994.
NASA will negotiate fixed-price Phase 1 contract awards for 25 research proposals for the 1998 Small Business Technology Transfer program at seven of the space agency's field centers. The combined total for the Phase 1 contracts is $2.5 million.
The Asian economic slump has played a role in a global shift of airline capacity. Aircraft once operating in the Pacific or designated for the region are being repositioned around the globe. Markets in Europe, the North Atlantic and Latin America are already feeling the impact.
The FAA has failed to heed the lessons of past accidents and decades of research on the dangers of inflight icing, according to the record of the investigation into the most recent icing-related turboprop transport accident. The National Transportation Safety Board's five members are slated on Aug. 27 to review the investigation into the Jan. 9, 1997, crash in Detroit of a Brazilian-built Comair EMB-120RT and determine the causes.
The International Space Station is about to take off. But the ``flight plan'' NASA has filed is in peril, and Washington isn't doing a thing about it. The first element of the station--the Russian-built, U.S.-financed FGB module, now christened ``Zarya''--is ready to be launched in less than three months. The first U.S. component, a connecting node dubbed ``Unity,'' is set to be orbited two weeks later.
