Long ago I learned to be wary of words ending in “st” when describing a particular model of aircraft. Identify at your peril any as being the fastest, quietest, longest-ranging, widest, or for possessing the highest cruise altitude, largest storage capacity or lowest SFC. Inevitably, someone will point to a forgotten one-off or a footnote that will prove your remark not quite right.
Next up for Swiss airframer Pilatus: a twinjet. Company executives are confirming that their PC-24 will be a twin business jet—their first twin and the first business jet. The company, which specializes in single-turboprop business aircraft and military trainers, has acknowledged development of the PC-24 over the past couple of years, but has kept quiet on details. The company verified that the aircraft would be a twin-jet as part of its announcement that COO Markus Bucher was named CEO, succeeding Oscar Schwenk.
Last week, Boeing topped 1,000 orders for the first time in a single year, with completion of a previously announced deal by Singapore-based SilkAir to buy 31 737-8s and 23 737-800s. The 737-8 will be the first MAX model, scheduled to enter service with Southwest Airlines in 2017. Boeing now has 969 MAX orders.
Your recent articles on the Iranian nuclear threat left out the possibility that Iran could put Hezbollah and others under its nuclear umbrella. Even if the world is not sure Iran could deliver on its nuclear threat, the threat that an attack on Hezbollah—or an attempt to open the Strait of Hormuz after Iran tried to close it—would be met with nuclear retaliation and would have to be taken seriously. It would surely make Israel and others think long and hard before defending themselves.
U.S. Marines are known for being blunt and getting straight to the point, verbal or kinetic. But when USMC Lt. Gen. Richard Mills spoke to the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association's TechNet Land Forces East conference in Baltimore in August, his openness about cyberwarfare came as a shock. Mills, of the Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command (MarForCyber), made no attempt to disguise the fact that his service has been using offensive cyberweapons on the battlefield—a capability that is usually shrouded in secrecy.
Cessna is continuing to revamp its business-jet line, introducing an update to the mid-size Citation Sovereign that increases range by 150 nm, to 3,000 nm, and introduces winglets, a Garmin G5000 integrated flight deck and uprated Pratt & Whitney Canada PW306D engines. Deliveries are to begin in the third quarter of 2013. Cessna is also test-marketing a composite-fuselage light-jet concept with a wider cross-section than the Mustang, M2 and CJ-family light jets.
When it comes to your recent Middle East Conflict coverage (AW&ST Oct. 22, pp. 48-60), I would like to point out that another strategy for retarding the progress of Iran's nuclear program might be to buy them off with aid dollars and give the U.S. State Department a fighting chance to keep a lid on things. If some Iranians hate our guts, well so do lots of people we help. As long as it keeps the peace.
China's second known stealth aircraft, the Shenyang J-31 fighter, made its first flight Oct. 31. The first sight of the aircraft's planform view confirmed its similarity to the Lockheed Martin F-22 and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, with a clipped delta wing and stabilizers mounted well aft on twin tailbooms. Comparison with a J-11 chase aircraft supports earlier estimates that it is in the same size class as the JSF. Like the F-35, the J-31 generated prominent visible vortex wakes from its wingtips, even in low-energy flight.
Today's unmanned aircraft are often mistakenly characterized as autonomous, but the most independent thing they do is take off and land automatically. Beyond that, it takes many hours of meticulous planning to program the vehicles to perform their missions and cope with any foreseen contingencies.
Hawker Beechcraft, which plans to emerge from bankruptcy as just Beechcraft and build only pistons and turboprops, is testing the market for a single-engine turboprop that could be available in 2016. The 8-11-seat aircraft would have a range with four passengers of 1,750 nm and a high-speed cruise of 300 kt. The company is also planning to introduce a new twin-turboprop and piston products over the next five years.
Timothy A. Fey has been promoted to director from assistant director of the Structural Engineering Department in the Mechanical Engineering Div. at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.
U.S. Navy Capt. (ret.) Robert W. “Brick” Nelson (see photo) has been appointed director and corporate lead executive of Northrop Grumman's business in the San Diego region. He has been deputy and director-business development for the Strike and Surveillance Systems Div.
Capt. Suleiman Obeidat has been appointed chairman of Jordanian flight training academy Ayla Aviation in Amman. He was chief commissioner of the Jordan Civil Aviation Regulatory Commission.
The Arab Air Carrier Organization has summoned its members to Algiers this week to attend the annual general meeting. This marks a distinct change from the group's usual choice of venue. In times past Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates or Qatar hosted the upscale parties and showcased their strength. Algeria, in contrast, is a part of the Arab world that has not experienced much liberalization in air travel, nor has it demonstrated the same growth as the Persian Gulf countries.
Bob Schick has been appointed director-safety and risk management of Dallas-based Truman Arnold Companies (TAC Air). Tristiene Pickett has become director of administrative services and Joel Miller director of properties. Pickett was customer service supervisor at TAC Air's FBO in Knoxville, Tenn., and Miller has handled real estate development.
Airlines in the next decade will face what might be an unprecedented direct or indirect requirement for equipping their aircraft with communications, navigation, surveillance and safety kits in order to gain access to the NextGen system's most efficient routing and operations.
Competition is fierce among regional jet manufacturers to secure customers that serve London City Airport, into which only a few aircraft types are able to fly. But of the three legacy airline groups operating there—British Airways, Lufthansa (through its Swiss subsidiary) and Air France (under the CityJet brand)—only CityJet has not taken steps to replace its aging RJ fleet.
The European Space Agency plans an early 2013 introduction for its third deep-space tracking station near Malarque, Argentina. Equipped with a 35-meter dish antenna and super-cold low-noise amplifiers, the desert site will be used to complete a global network that includes the agency's Deep Space Antenna-1 in New Norcia, Western Australia, and Deep Space Antenna-2 in Cebreros, Spain. The tracking network features use of a “delta Differential One-Way Ranging” (delta-DOR) technique to establish spacecraft locations with accuracies of a few meters.
Raytheon could be able to deliver its first Tamir missile built in the U.S. within 15 months if American and Israeli officials work out a deal to coproduce the Iron Dome interceptor stateside, according to industry officials. One official estimates U.S. production of about 3,000 missiles, half of Israel's anticipated buy, could provide for about 650 manufacturing jobs in the U.S. A slow production rate at Rafael and the proximity of its plant to Lebanon, coupled with high unemployment in the U.S., is prompting some American officials to push for rights to produce Tamir.
Deanna White (see photo) has been promoted to president from VP-finance and administration of Dallas-based Flexjet. She succeeds Fred Reid, who is retiring.
