New, higher-performance products, an improving global economy and record orderbooks portend a strong corporate aircraft market over the next five years. Challenges include containing high operator costs, climbing interest rates and proposed FAA reform. Rapid and reliable access to and transit within certain Asian airspace also is necessary to maximize the utility and value of increasingly capable business aircraft.
THE FIGHT IN CONGRESS OVER FINANCING two new wind tunnels for NASA may go into extra rounds if Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R.-Mo.) has his way. Bond, chairman of the Senate subcommittee on independent agencies, wants to restore $400 million approved for Fiscal 1995 but dropped by the House in a follow-up emergency supplemental appropriations bill. Although the White House agrees the tunnels are needed, it did not provide the additional $400 million in its Fiscal 1996 budget request required to keep the NASA projects alive.
TioTech 20/21 are solvent and water-free coatings designed for application on metal surfaces. TioTech 20 is a 100% solids coating applied in a liquid resin system that serves as the carrier and the film former by converting from a liquid to a high-quality solid film upon baking. TioTech 21 is an ultra-high solids version of TioTech 20 that uses a small amount of non-HAPs solvent. It allows users to reduce emissions by more than 50% while making minimal equipment changes. Tioga Coatings Corp., 1440 Huntington Drive, Calumet City, Ill. 60409.
Christopher Maddy has been named director of communications for the Cirrus Design Corp., Duluth, Minn. He was public relations chairman of Aviation Expo 1994.
Structuring by major airlines will help U.S. regional carriers grow in the coming year, but tougher federal safety regulations will make that growth more expensive to achieve. The shift of marginally profitable markets to smaller carriers from major airlines has been underway for more than a year. But the process will leap forward May 1, when Delta Air Lines overhauls its schedule to refocus on long-haul, high-yield flights in an attempt to improve its performance by at least $40 million a year.
NORTHWEST AIRLINES' SEATTLE-OSAKA route, begun in January, will be worth more than $150 million a year to the Seattle region's economy, according to Port of Seattle estimates. Upgrading the nonstop, thrice-weekly flights to daily service would bolster related tourist and business spending around Seattle to approximately $500 million annually. Osaka's new Kansai offshore airport services the sixth largest metropolitan area in the world, with a gross regional product larger than the combined economies of Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan.
NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System data base is now available on CD-ROM for IBM-compatible personal computers. The system collects, analyzes and responds to voluntarily submitted incident reports. Specialized indexing allows a user to search more than 140,000 reports in a matter of seconds. A user can select reports based on any combination of more than 50 data fields. One data base contains about 40,000 accidents that have been fully coded, including a full-text paragraph description of the event.
The City of Los Angeles plans to transfer about $54 million from Los Angeles International Airport accounts to the city treasury, after receiving grudging tentative approval from the FAA. Airlines, represented by the Air Transport Assn., are upset by the city's latest move to divert airport funds to the general treasury, though they have not decided what action to take (AW&ST Feb. 21, 1994, p. 45). The ATA filed suit in February to stop an unrelated $8.7 million transfer.
The French aerospace industry's downturn is expected to come to an end during the next two years and will be followed by a moderate business upswing. According to GIFAS, the French aerospace industries association, overall sales in 1994 decreased 3.5% to $21.1 billion. GIFAS member companies last year booked orders valued at $18.2 billion, a weak 2.2% increase (lower than the inflation rate), and generated an additional reduction of the companies' overall backlog.
The HPR family of high-current feedthrough capacitor filters carries ratings of 32, 63, 125 or 250 amps. They also are rated for 50, 100, 200 or 500 v. d.c. With a maximum capacitance of 10 milli-Faradays at 50 v. d.c., the HPRs can reduce noise over a range of 6 KHz.-1 GHz and higher. These filters are well suited for power supply input and output, computers, military electronics equipment, and test and measurement systems and other applications. NexTek, Inc., 439 Littleton Road, Westford, Mass. 01886.
U.S. carriers and Air Canada are inaugurating dozens of daily nonstop flights on new routes between U.S. and Canadian cities in response to the completion of a new bilateral agreement.
AMERICA WEST AIRLINES plans to cut another 700 employees, on top of 300 previously planned layoffs. The company's workforce of 11,500 will drop by 1,100 as a result. The recent cuts will be mainly administrative jobs, while the earlier ones were the result of closing one reservations center and outsourcing commissary functions.
A civil engine market worth as much as $200 billion in new products may evolve in the 17-year period following the commercial sector's emergence late next year from one of its deepest slumps. More than 30,000 jet engines may be needed to satisfy transport aviation demands during the period that began in 1993 and ends in 2013. However, because orders are firm only to 1998, fulfillment of these predictions is dependent on a substantial upturn in new aircraft orders in the last decade of the forecast.
The Permacable Horizontal Lifeline fall protection system uses an overhead synthetic fiber cable. The low-stretch, 5/8-in. cable provides several advantages over typical wire rope lifelines. It is designed for use in environments where no overhead anchorages exist. The Permacable system can be tensioned virtually in a horizontal plane. This allows the snatch block to roll freely along the cable above the worker, helping to avoid ``swing falls.'' The synthetic cable is resistant to weather, corrosive chemicals and electrical hazards.
Commercial transport builders are seeking to fine-tune their market forecasts to yield more precise data on the future demand for new aircraft worldwide. Depending on how successful they are, manufacturers may be able to eliminate some of the guesswork from suppliers' own strategic planning. That would be a welcome development, since the health of so many vendors is tied to the future market for new jetliners.
LOOK FOR FUJI HEAVY INDUSTRIES to begin development of a remotely piloted helicopter, the RPH-2, this spring. First flight is scheduled for December. Fuji has been conducting flight tests for five years of a smaller prototype, the RPH-1. The new vehicle is to be 31 ft. long, 4.2 ft. wide and 5.3 ft. high with a 16-ft.-dia. rotor. Takeoff weight will be 660 lb. including 220 lb. of payload. An 83-hp. EC8PL piston engine will provide power. Cruising speed is to be about 60 mph. with flight duration of an hour.
Minoru S. (Sam) Araki has been named president of Lockheed Missiles&Space Co. He was executive vice president of Lockheed Missiles&Space Systems Group and succeeds Vance D. Coffman, who is president-designate of Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Space and Missiles sector. Araki will be succeeded by Mel Brashears, who was vice president/assistant general manager of LMSC's Space Systems Div. Dain Hancock has been named president of Lockheed Ft. Worth Co., succeeding Gordon R. England, who will retire. Hancock was vice president-F-16 programs. And, John S.
NASA CHIEF DANIEL S. GOLDIN KEEPS BOWLING OVER the troops in the shuttle program with his blunt talk and odd timing. During the recent shuttle/Mir rendezvous, Goldin was so preoccupied with his televised budget briefing that he barely caught a glimpse of the climax of the orbital ballet. Then, during the most recent mission countdown, for Astro 2, he saw fit to initiate a televised discussion of likely job cutbacks. Mincing no words, he asserted, ``There will be pain. There will be job loss.'' He urged one and all to consider a buyout offer good until Mar.
AIR ASIA CO. OF TAIWAN will team with Bell Helicopter Textron to establish a maintenance center for civil and military helicopters using Air Asia's facilities at Tainan Airfield in southern Taiwan. Bell has more than 175 civil and military helicopters in service in Taiwan, including the 206B JetRanger, a candidate for the Taiwanese army's helicopter trainer program against the Enstrom 480.
HMS-EYE2 is a three-dimensional, stereoscopic head-mounted display. It can be linked to any video source. Features include instant on/off wearability, digital-grade earphones, pivot, focus, inter-pupil, bifocal and head-comfort adjustments, and robust shock resistance. Resolution ranges from 110,300 pixels per eye to full VGA quality. It offers a 70-deg. field of view with 85% overlap. It weighs less than 16 oz. Options include wireless audio and video input, and voice command hands-free microphone and software. RPI Advanced Technology Group, P.O.
John J. Sheehan (see photo) has joined the Spectrum Management Group, Wallingford, Conn., from Pratt&Whitney, where he was an operations management executive.
The FH-480 horizontal machining center is designed to handle large volume outputs without losing the flexibility for running changes in quantities and design. The base configuration offers a two-pallet shuttle system that can be expanded to 100 pallets. The 30-hp. drive features 180 lb. of torque and achieves metal removal rates of more than 40 cu. in./min. in steel with a No. 40 taper milling tool. Chip shedding and removal characteristics allow continuous operation with aluminum, steel and combinations of materials. The spindle reaches its full speed of 12,000 rpm.
Stevens Aviation, Greenville, S.C., has named Jim Amador and Mike Lucas (see photos) aircraft acquisition and consulting specialists. Amador was vice president-aircraft sales for JetCorp. Aircraft Sales in St. Louis, and Lucas worked for United Beechcraft in Los Angeles.
