Spirit AeroSystems will pay Triumph Group $160 million to take on the former’s Gulfstream wing work packages in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The companies announced a deal Dec. 9. “This transfer continues Spirit’s transformation and allows us to further focus on our core markets of aerostructures for commercial and defense aircraft,” Spirit CEO and President Larry Lawson says. Triumph says it becomes a “major” provider of wings to Gulfstream, supplying the G280, G450, G550 and G650.
The U.S. Defense Logistics Agency has named its best-performing suppliers for 2014 as part of the Pentagon’s effort to name-and-shame industry into helping achieve better acquisition outcomes. Forty of the agency’s 153 parts and commodity suppliers with the largest contracts, together accounting for more than $5 billion in annual contract spending, have been listed in three tiers of favorites. They include primes like Boeing and Lockheed Martin in the top tier, as well as small businesses like I-Solutions Direct.
Orbital Sciences Corp. says it will resume Cygnus cargo carrier flights to the International Space Station in September 2015 with the United Launch Alliance Atlas V 401 standing in while its Antares launcher is upgraded. A reengined Antares will resume flights to the ISS for NASA in early 2016, and Orbital says it expects to accomplish all remaining cargo deliveries under its $1.9 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA by the end of 2016 at no extra cost to the agency, using a long-planned upgrade to the Cygnus.
Controllers at the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory are checking out NASA’s New Horizons probe after a successful pre-programmed reactivation Dec. 6, preparing for an unprecedented flyby of Pluto and its five known moons on July 14. The 70-meter Deep Space Network antenna at Canberra, Australia, received the signal indicating the 478-kg (1,050-lb.) nuclear-powered spacecraft had switched from hibernation to active mode for the 18th time since it was launched on Jan. 19, 2006. It will remain active until after it passes within about 6,000 mi.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden took advantage of an international air traffic control conference in Beijing last month to meet with Wang Zhaoyao, director of the China Manned Space Engineering Office. Jaiwon Shin, associate NASA administrator for aeronautics, is chairman of the 23-nation International Forum for Aviation Research that met in Zhuhai, China, so the visit apparently fell within the exemption for multilateral conferences in the congressional ban on space cooperation with China.
A 30-ft. long, multi-bay box test article made out of a low-weight, damage-tolerant, stitched composite structural concept called Pultruded Rod Stitched Efficient Unitized Structure, or Prseus, has been delivered to the NASA Langley Research Center for evaluation.
The Pentagon has selected F-35 development partners Italy and Turkey to handle major maintenance, repair, overhaul and upgrade work for the single-engine, stealthy fighter in Europe, with facilities operational by 2018. The U.S. Defense Department plans to announce the location of maintenance for the Pacific region this week. Japan and Australia are expected to fare well in those assignments. Italy’s Cameri Air Base will be the site for heavy airframe maintenance. Turkey will initially handle the heavy engine maintenance for the Pratt & Whitney F135.
Renewed discussions around deliveries of the A350 and the future of the A380 along with a less than enthusiastic outlook for future profits left their mark on the Airbus share price last week. The stock was down more than 10% on Dec. 11, the worst decline in six years.
The global airline industry is forecast to benefit significantly from the drop in fuel prices, but part of the improvement will be passed on to consumers as lower fares, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) forecasts. The association believes airlines will post a combined profit of $25 billion in 2015, up from $19.9 billion this year, $10.6 billion in 2013 and $6.1 billion in 2012. “We see falling oil prices giving a great boost both to the industry and consumers,” IATA Chief Economist Brian Pearce said last week.
A $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill designed to keep the U.S. government open for the remainder of fiscal 2015 includes $18 billion for NASA for the year.
An item in the Nov. 24 Washington Outlook column (page 20), “Size Doesn’t Matter,” misstated the type of judge who ruled in a dispute over a UAV fine by the FAA. The story should have stated that an administrative law judge initially ruled on Raphael Pirker’s case. The NTSB overturned it.
Correction: . The Dec. 1/8 article “Uncivil 737s” (page 49) incorrectly stated some of the capabilities of the P-8A. The Navy says it has not seen a “current active plan” to test depth charge capability, and notes that the SLAM-ER is no longer part of the program of record. In addition, the rank of VP-30’s officer in charge of fleet integration for the P-8A and MQ-4C was misstated. He is Cmdr. Andrew Miller.
With the clock ticking toward the first run of the GE9X core in 2015, and manufacturing of the first full engine core components getting underway, GE is counting on these materials to play a critical role in reducing weight and boosting efficiency.
France is slowly replacing its aging Boeing KC-135Rs with Airbus A330 multirole tanker-transports, though defense budget constraints are hindering the transition.
London Bureau Chief Tony Osborne and International Defense Editor Bill Sweetman discuss the U.K.'s recent trouble hunting for a possibly Russian submarine and what it says about their state of readiness.
Will Boeing repeat history by using the parallel 757-767 development model to answer the long-running 737/757 replacement question and, if so, why? The answers lie in the way the 757 and 767 satisfy vastly different markets yet share key design features.
Display electronics were the culprit in the April 19 airborne smoke emergency on a Flydubai Boeing 737-800 (A6-FEK) at 15,000 ft. that was descending into Kiev.
NASA’s new Orion crew capsule flew its first test in space with clocklike precision Friday, using two unmanned orbits that took it deeper into space than any human spacecraft has gone since Apollo 17, and then achieved a bull’s-eye splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
Aviation Week's John Croft and Sean Broderick discuss the NTSB's 787 battery recommendations with Jim Asker. Learn how Boeing fail-safed the battery and listen as we discuss how the aircraft was certified and still experienced serious problems.
