ROLLS-ROYCE AERO ENGINES SERVICES and Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Co. (Haeco), the maintenance arm for Cathay Pacific Airways and Dragonair, will be 50-50 partners in a new engine overhaul company. Use of Rolls-Royce Trents is growing in the Asia/Pacific region but the startup costs of maintenance facilities had worried Haeco, which is building a 120,000-lb. test cell in an industrial area of Hong Kong. Rolls-Royce's backing will help spread costs of the HK$800-million ($104-million) venture. The new company will be called Hong Kong Aero Engine Services Ltd.
The Galileo orbiter has received signals from its Jupiter atmospheric probe, indicating a good chance of success for a scientific high point in the mission, according to initial telemetry late last week. The telemetry also showed that the long rocket firing to place Galileo into planetary orbit had gone well. This event concluded the critical part of the Jupiter encounter (AW&ST Dec. 4, p. 26). The orbiter is now going on its two-year tour of the planet's moons. The first encounter with Ganymede will be July 4.
FRANCE'S THOMSON-CSF will upgrade 55 Spanish air force Dassault Aviation Mirage F1 fighters, in collaboration with Spanish companies such as CASA, Amper Programas and Indra. In July, Thomson-CSF acquired a 24.9% stake in Indra, a defense electronics producer. The Spanish F1 upgrade program, valued at about $140 million, involves the installation of Sextant Avionique avionics systems such as a head-up display, inertial navigation, NATO-interoperable Have Quick 2 communications and encrypted Mode 4 digital identification.
THE TRANSPORTATION DEPT. EXPECTS MORE PROGRESS in liberalizing international air services in 1996, following a bumper crop of new open-skies agreements in 1995 with Canada and nine European countries and other expansionary pacts with Peru, Brazil, Hong Kong, Macau and the Philippines. In the offing are talks with the Czech Republic, Germany, Brazil again, South Africa, Thailand and Indonesia, and possibly Poland and Ukraine. Even Bosnia has offered to negotiate. Says Patrick V.
William H. Buckles has been promoted to vice president/general manager from general manager of the McCauley Accessory Div. of Cessna Aircraft, Vandalia, Ohio.
NASA'S FISCAL 1996 BUDGET TOOK ANOTHER step forward, but a brick wall looms. Last week, the House approved, 227-190, an appropriations conference report that contains NASA funding, even though it was nearly identical to the measure it rejected the week before (AW&ST Dec. 4, p. 17). President Clinton has said he would veto the bill in its present form because of cuts to environmental and national service programs. The Senate, which could take up the measure this week, is working to craft a compromise acceptable to the President.
Debis AirFinance, a new Amsterdam-based company, will acquire commercial transports operated by several airlines under lease agreements with Fokker. Ownership of 18 F100 and two F28 twinjets as well as 15 F50 twin-turboprop transports leased to regional carriers will be transferred from Fokker to debis AirFinance. The 35 aircraft are valued at $562.5 million.
A new 2.5-ton French Telecom 2C spacecraft launched Dec. 6 by an Ariane booster will help bolster French military communications capability in Bosnia. The spacecraft, developed by Matra Marconi Space and French Telecom, carries an Alcatel Syracuse 2 military communications system that will back up two other Telecom 2/Syracuse 2 vehicles already in orbit.
THE U.S. AIR FORCE 509th Bomb Wing's first B-2, the ``Spirit of Missouri,'' has returned to the Northrop Grumman plant in Palmdale, Calif., for upgrades to the Block 30 configuration. In line with the bomber's planned acquisition strategy, the upgrade will expand the B-2's combat capabilities by adding precision guided munition (PGM) and ground moving-target search features, completing the low-observable package and bringing the terrain-following/terrain-avoidance radar system up to full mission status (AW&ST Apr. 17, p. 52).
Timothy Hewit has been appointed marketing manager of the DeVore Aviation Lighting Systems Div, Albuquerque, N.M. He was with Purdue University's aviation manufacturing technology program.
Prospects for an extended Boeing strike have airlines shuffling schedules and suppliers cutting production and drawing up contingency plans, including layoffs. As of late last week, Boeing had not suspended, or postponed any parts or engine orders and continued to accept deliveries at its Seattle- and Wichita-area factories. This strategy is being ``reviewed daily'' by Boeing as costly outside parts inventories pile up, a company official said.
Walter H. Johnson, a director of the International Air Cargo Assn. and former vice president-sales of American Airlines, has received the Air Cargo Lifetime Achievement Award for 1995.
Janitrol Factory Rebuilt Combustion Aircraft Heaters feature a CermaKote combustion tube that eliminates the need to comply with FAA Advisory Directive 82-07-03, which requires periodic combustion tube pressure decay inspections on the manufacturer's combustion heaters. The rebuilt heaters are designed to extend time between overhauls by 50% to 1,500 hr. Electrosystems Inc., P.O. Box 273, Ft. Deposit, Ala. 36032.
Ronald J. Hollas has been appointed communications marketing manager and Michael S. McClelland marketing communications administrator of IFR Systems Inc., Wichita, Kan.
EUROPEAN AIRLINES POSTED A RECORD DELAY RATE in September and preliminary figures for October indicate little relief is on the way for passengers. Statistics from the Assn. of European Airlines show delays of more than 15 min. had risen from 17% of departures in the third quarter of 1994 to 20.4% in 1995. The rate hit 25% in September.
Lockheed Martin's Joint Advanced Strike Technology team has settled on a conventional-looking baseline aircraft with three internal variations tailored to meet unique service needs. Designated ``Configuration 200,'' the company's basic JAST design reflects a minimum-risk, affordable approach consistent with today's constrained budget environment, its program officials believe.
AEROSPATIALE, ALENIA and British Aerospace will form a joint company in China, in an effort to promote a business agreement with China and South Korea in the regional aircraft market. Aero International Asia (AIA) is scheduled to support the three European manufacturers' joint proposal currently submitted to Aviation Industries of China (AVIC) and the Korean Commercial Aircraft Development Consortium (KCDC). Philippe Lebouc, an Aerospatiale executive, will head AIA.
THE FEBRUARY FLIGHT OF COLUMBIA is expected to be the first in which flight controllers handling ascent and reentry phases of the mission will work from NASA's new Mission Control Center in Houston. It is being made possible by a new telemetry command and control system containing high-speed Loral and IBM processors recently installed by Loral. Those phases of flight are the riskiest, most complex parts of shuttle missions and, therefore, the last that are being switched over from the 1960s-vintage control center.
The CDE-3000 processes digital signals from infrared images to sharpen video in real time, meeting a need of the aerospace/defense community. It is the latest member of the V-LACE line of infrared signal processing devices. Earlier V-LACE products handled analog signals. The CDE-3000 can sharpen images and enhance contrast to make more details of IR images visible. DigiVision Inc., 5626 Oberlin Drive, San Diego, Calif. 92121.
AIRLINES AND OTHER FLIGHT SIMULATION ORGANIZATIONS should upgrade their cockpit resource management syllabuses to include less serious aircraft malfunction scenarios, according to a recent assessment of flight crew performance. The review, based on 230 reports to NASA's anonymous Aviation Safety Reporting System, found pilots almost always followed prescribed procedures and demonstrated good coordination when faced with a major problem. However, procedural usage and crew cooperation fell off when dealing with less serious aircraft malfunctions.
The digital revolution, increased demand for imagery and declining resources all played major roles in the decision by the Pentagon and CIA to create a U.S. National Imagery and Mapping Agency. The new Defense Dept. agency, called NIMA, is scheduled to consolidate imagery and mapping support to both national intelligence and military customers under one roof by Oct. 1 (AW&ST Nov. 27, p. 19). About 7,000 of the new agency's 9,000 employees are expected to come from the Defense Mapping Agency.
This image was taken with an uncooled infrared focal plane array based on microbolometer technology that uses a proprietary silicon readout integrated circuit. It will be incorporated in Amber's new Sentinel camera. The uncooled sensor is a 320 X 240 bolometer focal plane array operating in the 8-12 micron range. Such uncooled focal plane arrays have promise for reducing the cost of military and commercial infrared imaging and making the technology more accessible. Amber, a Raytheon Co., 5756 Thornwood Drive, Goleta, Calif. 93117-3802.
William C. Broquist has been appointed director of operations for Wyle Laboratories Inc., Norco, Calif. He was senior laboratory manager for AlliedSignal AiResearch, Torrance, Calif.
