CESSNA'S PROTEST over the award of the Air Force/Navy primary aircraft contract to Raytheon's Beech Mk.2 will be ruled on by Feb. 5, according to General Accounting Office officials. Heavy snows and government furloughs have slowed the paperwork, they said.
A DELTA 2 booster lofted South Korea's second telecommunications satellite to orbit Jan. 14, but a third-stage telemetry failure left mission managers uncertain of the $196-million spacecraft's fate for 3.5 hr. The Delta 2 7925 lifted off pad 17B at Cape Canaveral Air Station at 6:10 a.m. EST. The launch was delayed 43 min. by problems with the warm-air purge from ground support equipment that allowed the temperature around the Delta 2's Rocketdyne RS-27A main engine to drop below 30F. The ascent went as planned for 5 min., 59 sec.
AP LABS OF SAN DIEGO WILL DESIGN and develop test consoles for McDonnell Douglas' C-17 avionics integration support facility in Long Beach, Calif. Using commercial off-the-shelf hardware and software, the consoles will allow testing in a low-noise, room-temperature environment, according to AP Labs. McDonnell Douglas plans to use the consoles to test and qualify operational flight programs for C-17 line replaceable units.
Lockheed Martin has selected the RD-180 Russian derivative as the core engine for its next-generation, Atlas 2AR booster and the baseline engine in its bid for the Air Force's Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program.
A recent news item should have stated that scheduled airlines worldwide carried more than 1.25 billion passengers in 1995, according to estimates by the International Civil Aviation Organization (AW&ST Jan. 1, p. 16).
DELTA AIR LINES AND AUSTRIAN AIRLINES will start international code-sharing on new service starting May 1 between Atlanta and Vienna, with Austrian Airlines buying seats on Delta's Boeing 767-300ER aircraft. In turn, Austrian will provide the aircraft to code-share on Delta's current Frankfurt-Vienna route starting on May 2. Delta also plans to expand its pact with Sabena to a second daily nonstop flight between New York and Brussels when Delta starts L-1011 service between the cities this June.
Prospects for achieving significant cost reductions at USAir Group Inc. are looking up with last week's appointment of former UAL Corp. chief Stephen Wolf as the new chairman and chief executive officer (see p. 30). Or so Wall Street thinks. On Wednesday, the day after the announcement, the USAir Group stock price rose 17/8 to 141/2, a gain of about 15%. Moreover, at least one transportation analyst raised his rating on the airline to ``outperform (speculative)'' from neutral. Trading in USAir soared to 3.1 million shares on triple the normal volume.
MCDONNELL DOUGLAS CORP. recorded a pretax charge to fourth-quarter operations of more than $1.8 billion, resulting in a net loss of $936 million, or $8.35 per share, for the three-month period ending Dec. 31. The charge was taken to cover a change in how the company accounts for costs incurred in the MD-11 program. Excluding the effect of the accounting change, the company had a 1995 profit of $707 million, an 18% gain over 1994's earnings, and a fourth-quarter profit of $187 million, a 13% increase over the year-ago period.
THE ALLIED PILOTS ASSN. requested federal mediation last week in its 18-month-long contract talks with American Airlines. The carrier supported the move because the sides have failed to agree on long-term competitive issues, such as revised work rules and pay scales that would permit American to launch a low-cost operation to compete with Southwest and newer, low-cost carriers.
RUSSIAN TROOPS ASSIGNED to the American zone in Bosnia will begin receiving real-time intelligence from U.S. sources ``within days,'' U.S. intelligence officials said late last week. They will be able to view but not handle or keep satellite imagery. However, they will get real-time video from the more versatile Predator unmanned aerial vehicles after the UAVs begin operationing from Hungary in March, the spooks said.
ROCKWELL COLLINS WILL PROVIDE TAIWAN with a UHF ground-to-air communication system for its air force under a $22.7-million foreign military sales contract. Technology in the Collins GRC-171 D(V)4 solid-state communications system, which was designed for air traffic control, was used in the U.S. Air Force's Icelandic Air Defense System completed last year. The Taiwan work is slated for completion in December.
CATHAY PACIFIC SAYS IT WILL NOT MOVE its flight simulators out of Hong Kong to Australia and Britain. The carrier's cockpit crews are predominantly British and Australian, and Cathay is encouraging them to live in their home countries. With costs rising in Hong Kong, it seemed natural to shift simulators there as well (AW&ST Sept. 18, 1995, p. 34). But Cathay says good offers on land in Hong Kong and the size of investment it is making in a crew hotel at the new Chek Lap Kok airport have caused it to change its mind.
THERE ARE NOW 50 INTERNET incident response teams worldwide working to track any illegal break-ins by hackers and to advise Internet site managers on security issues. The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) coordination center is a key one formed in 1988. It is part of a Defense Dept. (ARPA) program at Carnegie Mellon University. CERT provides 24-hr. technical assistance for computer security incidents.
Parametric Technology Corp., a startup company that grew into a leader in the computer-aided design field, is finally making headway in the aerospace/defense sector with Lockheed Martin, Hughes, AlliedSignal and other companies. Most aerospace companies are now standardizing on one computer-aided design, manufacturing and engineering (CAD/CAM/CAE) package to make it easier to develop common processes.
Debra Facktor, chief of Moscow operations for Analytic Services' research institution, the Center for International Aerospace Cooperation, will participate in the training program of the International Women's Forum Leadership Foundation.
U.S. HELICOPTER REPAIR AND COMPLETION centers are gearing up to convert an additional 300 surplus U.S. military helicopters to law enforcement and related public safety agency use. The helicopters are scheduled to be retired by the Pentagon through the year 2000 (AW&ST Mar. 6, 1995, p. 57). Horsham Valley Airways, Horsham, Pa., has established a detailed inspection, assessment and update program for the OH-58, a military version of the Bell JetRanger. Customer options include a computer-directed maintenance plan.
Lars Bandling has been appointed vice president of Volvo Aero's office in Washington. He was vice president of IPAC. Bandling succeeds Lars G. Karlsson, who has returned to Volvo Aero in Sweden.
Chinese authorities have approved a site near Kunming International Airport for FlightSafety International's new aviation training center in China, its first in Asia. The FlightSafety Kunming Training Center school will be modeled after its facilities in Paris, Wilmington and Tucson, but with an important difference: it will include a 12-story hotel for pilots and flight attendants because there are not enough suitable facilities available locally.
Three U.S. Air Force U-2R reconnaissance aircraft have been deployed to southern France to fly NATO reconnaissance missions over the Bosnian theater. A total of five U-2Rs could eventually be deployed to the French Istres air force base on the Mediterranean to support NATO Bosnian operations. U.S. officers praised the excellent French cooperation.
THE U.S. AIR FORCE SPACE COMMAND is pushing production of the ``Hook-112'' survival radio to ensure that about 1,000 units are installed in Navy and Air Force tactical aircraft operating in Bosnia. The radio, which grew out of a Space Warfare Center Technical Exploitation of National Capabilities project, adds a GPS receiver to the basic aircrew survival transceiver. A downed pilot can retrieve his exact GPS coordinates, then burst-transmit that location to search-and-rescue teams. Current plans call for first deliveries early this year.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is preparing for its first-ever auction of radio spectrum for satellite services, and bidders in industry appear eager to ante up hundreds of millions of dollars. The ``spectrum'' auction, set for Jan. 24 in Washington, actually involves the selloff of two of the eight orbital slots given to the U.S. by international agreement to access the 12.2-12.7 Ghz. range reserved for direct broadcast satellite (DBS) services.
MORE THAN HALF OF THE SURPLUS helicopter assets released by the Pentagon since 1990 for counter-drug use have gone to six states. Law enforcement agencies in Florida and California lead the pack, receiving 56 and 41, respectively, of the discharged UH-1, OH-6 and OH-58s. Texas, Missouri, Ohio and South Carolina have received 12-15 each, according to the Airborne Law Enforcement Assn., Tulsa, Okla. Police agencies in another 27 states, plus Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, have taken an additional 138 ex-military helicopters.
TAIWAN IS STRENGTHENING its integrated air-sea-land defense network in response to recent saber rattling by China. Taiwan's first indigenous Tien Kung 2 (Sky Bow 2) air-defense missiles became operational earlier this month. Six Tien Kung batteries are planned, with two to be stationed on outlying islands. There's also a new version of the venerable AT-3 light attack/trainer twinjet. Designated the AX-3, it incorporates radar, an autonomous navigation system and forward-looking infrared sensor.
Joint-STARS crews are monitoring vehicles moving over bridges in Bosnia, and one mission was used to cover the area around a disabled Black Hawk helicopter that landed with a mechanical problem.
SHORT BROTHERS' SEARCH FOR A BUYER for Belfast City Airport will continue without Belfast International Airport's bid after a Monopolies and Mergers Commission inquiry concluded a merger would reduce choices for passengers and airlines. Belfast International was bought by its management last year. Shorts said a number of parties still are interested in Belfast City. Traffic has risen at both airports since the cease-fire in Northern Ireland.
