Capt. John A. Cameron, a former British Airways Helicopters Ltd. director, has been named a lifetime honorary member of the Helicopter Assn. International.
Saab has rolled out its JAS 39B, a two-seat version of the Gripen, which it believes will bolster the fighter's chances in its uphill fight in a hotly contested export market. Most air forces that are looking to buy new fighters want a two-seater version for training, Bengt Halse, president and chief executive officer of Saab AB, said. ``We offer a full-fledged [two-seat] combat aircraft that can also be used for training.''
Robert Michael, general manager of the Regional Airport Authority of Lousiville and Jefferson County, Ky., has received the Award of Excellence from the Air Transport Assn. in recognition of his 37 years' service to commercial aviation.
ETHIOPIAN AIRLINES concluded an order for five 50-seat Fokker F50 twin-turboprop transports, scheduled to be delivered in May-December, 1996. They will replace ATR42s and Twin Otters. The Dutch manufacturers also booked orders for four 70-79-seat F70 twinjets, two for Vietnam Airlines amd two for British Midland.
India, which has championed the use of remote sensing satellites to benefit developing countries, is about to initiate operations with three large new spacecraft that will expand its capability to monitor agriculture and provide communications to remote areas. The three new missions, set for launch in November and January, would be a challenge for even the largest space powers to coordinate in so short a time, space managers said at the Inetrnational Astronautical Federation conference in Oslo. The new flights are:
LOOK FOR FRACTIONAL OWNERSHIP programs to spread to helicopters. With a maximum useful range of about 350 naut. mi., helicopters would be easier and more efficient to manage than a far-flung jet network. A system of co-owned helicopter ``pools'' located at major cities could be developed, so shareholders easily could access helicopter transportation upon arrival by business jet or airline at just about any large airport.
ALLIEDSIGNAL IS DEVELOPING a low-cost terrain warning system for light, piston-powered general aviation aircraft. The unit, designated TWS-20, has an integrated radio altimeter and provides verbal close- and rising-terrain proximity callouts as well as warns of improper flap or gear position for landing. It also announces critical descent altitudes and reaching landing decision height. The TWS-20, to be built by AlliedSignal Aerospace's Commercial Avionics Systems unit, will have a 20-min. flight history capture.
Richard Y. Lyons has been named vice president-Houston operations for the Lockheed Martin Services Group's Engineering and Sciences Services. He succeeds James Adamson, who was promoted to vice president/general manager. Lyons was director of orbiter processing and shops for Lockheed Martin Space Operations at the Kennedy Space Center.
The PR-17 Microwave Reflectometer can be used to evaluate the condition of radomes without removing them from an aircraft. It measures surface reflectivity at swept frequencies of 4-18 GHz. with more than 30 dB. dynamic range typical, making the unit suitable for flight-line inspections of low-observable materials. It also can be used for evaluating repairs and for research. The unit incorporates digital microwave components, an internal data processor and an RS232 interface. Data may be stored in an HP200LX palmtop computer mounted on top of the unit.
Lockheed Martin's Sanders unit will develop production versions of the next-generation missile warning and infrared countermeasures system designed for use on 25 types of Army, Navy and Air Force aircraft.
Air France is negotiating a revised agreement with flight attendant unions to stop walkouts and restore social peace. In the last few weeks, seven 1-2-day-long walkouts by flight attendants heavily disrupted Air France's operations, further endangering the carrier's recovery plan.
Considerable testing is being devoted to the use of differential GPS for precision instrument approaches. Three of the most interesting are French tests with a wide-body transport, FAA exploration of Category 3 approach feasibility, and German efforts to meet availability and integrity requirements.
AIRBUS A340 OPERATORS ARE CONSIDERING the merits of lower-deck lavatories that would free main-deck space, allowing additional economy-class seats. Airbus Industrie is in a position to offer interested customers ``spacious and well-lit'' lower-deck lavatories, complete with a folding diaper-changing table in the four-engine transport's rear cargo hold. The rest rooms would be linked to the main deck by a staircase.
The U.S. and Russian Mars programs, which three years ago were converging toward major new joint flights, have begun to diverge because of Russia's space funding crisis and continuing management problems. The desire and potential for unmanned joint or coordinated flight activities remains strong. But Russia's problems have pushed major U.S./Russian Mars mission collaboration into the 21st century.
SITA, THE AIRLINE telecommunications organization, has restructured the SITA groups of companies to form a new commercial company with backing from Morgan Stanley Capital Partners. The new company, SITA Telecommunications Holdings, will make available SITA worldwide managed voice and data communications services, previously reserved for the air transport community, available to all users. Morgan Stanley has committed up to $300 million in equity for a significant minority stake in the new company and is to work with it to raise another $300 million in debt financing.
SOLOY MAY HAVE A NEW APPLICATION for its Dual Pac twin PT6 powerplant, which uses a combining gearbox to channel power from two Pratt&Whitney PT6 engines to a single propeller. Ayers Corp. of Albany, Ga., is planning to fit the Dual Pac to a version of its Thrush agricultural spray aircraft. The aircraft, with a 30% hopper capacity increase to 700-gal., would meet certain government requirements for twin-engine fire-bombing and pesticide application operations.
ALLIEDSIGNAL AEROSPACE plans to end all operations at its Stratford, Conn., facility by mid-1997, a move that will affect some 1,200 employees. The Stratford plant had been the main manufacturing site of Lycoming Gas Turbines, which AlliedSignal acquired from Textron in May, 1994. All work currently performed at the Stratford facility will be relocated to AlliedSignal Engine's Phoenix, Ariz., facilities.
United and American eye USAir's East Coast strength, but labor, antitrust issues and $7.9-billion debt and leases hobble merger plans USAir, cornered by unsettled labor issues and an uncertain future against low-fare competition, has been placed on the auction block.
Thomas M. Ramirez has been appointed president/chief operating officer of Corporate Jets Inc. of Pittsburgh and its parent company, FSS Airholdings Inc. He was president of Crescent Airways Inc.
Like the U.S., Russia plans to expand the use of its satellite navigation system by testing the next generation of satellites, adding differential ground stations and increasing the choices of user equipment. However, the two systems--Glonass and GPS--continue to evolve in some distinctly different ways. Glonass, the Russian system, offers civil users more precise geolocating capabilities, according to Col. Michael Lebedev. He is a space expert from the Russian Space Forces, Coordinational Scientific Information Center.
AAVID THERMAL TECHNOLOGIES HAS PATENTED a self-locking heat sink designed to cool surface mounted components. The heat sink makes mechanical and thermal contact to a surface mount package without the use of epoxy. Instead, four pre-installed, self-locking, spring-loaded pins snap into holes in the PCB. The heat sink floats on top of the component, relieving mechanical stress that differing coefficients of thermal expansion would normally impose, according to the company.
MITSUBISHI HEAVY INDUSTRIES is joining Bombardier as a risk-sharing partner in developing the de Havilland Dash 8 Series 400. The Japanese company will design, develop and build the fuselage and tail sections--essentially everything aft of the cockpit except the wing. Bombardier's de Havilland group in Downsview, Ontario, will design the cockpit and wing and assemble the aircraft. This is the second major project involving Bombardier and Mitsubishi. The Japanese company also is building the wing and center fuselage for the Bombardier long-range Global Express.
