Final assembly of the first S-70i international version of the S-70 Black Hawk twin-engine helicopter has begun at PZL Mielec, a subsidiary of Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. in Poland. The aircraft is scheduled to be completed in 2010. Plans call for deliveries to be made directly from Poland to international customers, according to Bob Kokorda, Sikorsky vice president for corporate strategy and synergy. The S-70i will be capable of lifting up to 10 tons but sell at a price comparable with helicopters in the 6-8-ton lift class.
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It would seem to me that the “virtual gag order” by the Marine Corps Deputy Commandant concerning cost overruns of the CH-53K cited in “Mums the Word” (AW&ST Aug. 17, p. 25), would have been better handled by a continuation of a full and open disclosure of the issues and problem(s). Identification of causes and management insistence on accountability on both the government and contractor side would go a long way toward correcting or at least mitigating the leadership failures that were articulated in a recent Viewpoint column (AW&ST Aug. 24/31, p. 74).
A recent letter to this column “Recipe for Disaster?” (AW&ST July 20, p. 8) is the most cogent listing of how the 787 “Dreamliner” has become Boeing’s and the airline industry’s nightmare. If the engineers wanted to hear a cautionary tale about rushing into building things out of composites, all they had to do was talk to their dentist.
The first-flight A400M has completed final assembly and is to undergo ground tests before engine and auxiliary power units are installed. First flight, originally planned for this year, is now expected to be pushed back. EADS Chief Executive Officer Louis Gallois has indicated the milestone may slip into early 2010. The first-flight aircraft (MSN1) will now be put through fuel and pressurization tests, as well as navigation and communications checks, which are set to run two weeks.
Scaled Composites is using a fixed-base engineering development simulator to perfect the cockpit designs of White Knight Two (WK2) and SpaceShipTwo (SS2), as well as to train pilots for emergencies and other “off-nominal” procedures.
Three late-August failures serve as a reminder that more hurdles—technological and otherwise—remain to be cleared before Asia’s rising space powers can parlay their outsized political ambitions into global leadership in the space arena.
Scientists are covetously eyeing the suborbital seats being built for wealthy space tourists by Virgin Galactic, XCOR, Blue Origins and others (see p. 54). They plan a major conference in Boulder, Colo., next February to discuss what to do with them. The conference will bring together specialists in atmospheric, microgravity, planetary and space life science, solar physics and other disciplines for two days of meetings on the new vehicles’ capabilities and the researchers’ requirements.
A new study sponsored largely by business aviation interests argues that corporations using business aircraft deliver better financial performance than those eschewing that form of travel. “Business Aviation In A Changing Economy—An Enterprise Value Perspective,” was produced by NEXA Advisors, LLC, an Arlington, Va.-based corporate finance consultancy, for the National Business Aviation Assn. (NBAA), the General Aviation Manufacturers Assn. (GAMA), and others, including Aviation Week.
Growing numbers of airlines are starting to fall behind on payment commitments, signaling that even as passenger traffic declines level off, carriers are far from secure.
The new governing Democratic Party of Japan is rich with former members of the Liberal Democrat ic Party’s political machine that it replaces. Its momentum at the polls was generated by discontent with a decade-old recession, lack of economy-boosting initiatives from the ruling party, and evidence of “old-boy” networking that filled the coffers of a few.
Thales has concluded an agreement to market Xsight System’s foreign object debris (FOD) detection equipment worldwide. Known as FODetect, the system uses radio and electro-optical sensors integrated with runway edge lighting to detect debris while using existing power and communications infrastructure to minimize size and weight. A central processing system automatically generates an alert and investigates debris.
September is shaping up positively for Korean Air. Prebookings on higher-revenue international flights were up 21% over last year, while available seat miles increased 9%. Japan, South Korea’s long-time biggest country pair, is leading the charge with a 59% increase in demand, followed by the Americas’ 12%, Europe’s 10%, Southeast Asia’s 7% and Oceana’s 6% rise. But demand from China, a major growth area for much of the decade, is flat.
Bombardier Aerospace is coming under increasing pressure to revise production rates across its entire portfolio after recording 80 executive jet cancellations in its fiscal second quarter, and only one regional jet deal in nine months.
Raytheon struck a deal to acquire BBN Technologies, a privately-held, 700-employee security software companies that specializes in advanced networking, speech and language technologies, information technologies, sensor systems and cybersecurity. Founded in 1948 by two MIT professors, BBN played a key role in the early 1970s in the development of Arpanet, the forerunner to the Internet. The company’s current products include the Boomerang acoustic-based shooter detection system deployed with U.S. forces to detect incoming small arms fire.
Southwest Airlines and the FAA reached an agreement on Sept. 1 that will let the airline keep flying Boeing 737 aircraft with an unapproved part that came from a subcontractor, provided the part is inspected for wear and tear every seven days and is replaced on all of the aircraft by Dec. 24. The unapproved part is a hinge fitting for the exhaust gate assembly, which helps protect the aircraft flaps from engine heat, and Southwest says that by Sept.
The FAA expects its revised procedures for operating in or near the Hudson River VFR Corridor go into effect Nov. 19—to coincide with the release of revised aeronautical charts. The new procedures, many of which make current recommended operating practices mandatory, were recommended by the “New York Airspace Task Force” last week. The working group was convened by the FAA last month to review the region’s airspace procedures following the Aug. 8 midair collision of a single-engine aircraft and sightseeing helicopter over the Hudson River.
German geospatial information provider RapidEye says it has selected a half dozen distributors in the 12 months since its five-satellite constellation was launched, and expects to add another dozen over the next year. Distributors include MDA Federal and MakaLani of the U.S., Beijing Earth Observation, Russia’s Sovzond and Bufete de Ingenieria en Telecomunicaciones y Sistemas of Mexico.
The U.S. Navy has completed the final developmental test of the AGM-88E Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile (Aargm). During the eighth and final test Aug. 7, the missile was launched from an F/A-18C and flown in a short time of flight against heavy countermeasures. The missile destroyed the air defense target. Aargm is being developed by the U.S. Navy for its use and for Italy. The first production unit is set for delivery to the Navy in January.
Scaled Composites has reactivated the WhiteKnight One mothership in readiness for another flight test program. The aircraft has been in mothballs for around a year since flight testing an anti-Manpads infrared countermeasures pod under contract to the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security as part of Project CHLOE. Scaled Composites test pilot Pete Siebold took the WK1 for its first shake down flight from the Northrop Grumman-owned company’s base in Mojave, Calif., on Aug. 24.
The Pentagon’s new procurement chief says improving the relationship with aerospace contractors and shoring up program management are among his top priorities.
I read with interest this comment in a recent A European Perspective column concerning the Air France 447 accident (AW&ST Aug. 17, p. 37): “The end result, right or wrong, is to make decisions based on doubts and assumptions, not facts.” That sounds like what some are doing in their condemnation of the pitot tubes and their potential contribution to the accident. I’ve always wondered why aircraft manufacturers and aircrews, especially those that have flown aircraft equipped with angle-of-attack displays, have not clamored for aircraft with that feature.
Columnist Pierre Sparaco’s plea regarding replacements for pitot tubes is not so much science as psychology. Test pilots tuft wings in order to see the breakdown of the boundary layer flow on top of a wing, and undoubtedly there are many other existing technologies for monitoring boundary layer flow. Such a device corrects for ice and rain in ways that Angle of Attack indicators cannot.
NASA is putting the finishing touches on plans for its first new aeronautics research program in almost a decade knowing that any shift away from human spaceflight will increase the pressure to produce results aircraft manufacturers and operators can use.
Japan’s unmanned H-II Transfer Vehicle is in final preparations for liftoff from Tanegashima Space Center on its first cargo delivery mission to the International Space Station on Sept. 11 local time, having passed its NASA flight readiness review. Late last month, the encapsulated vehicle was transported to the Vehicle Assembly Building at Tanegashima in southern Japan, where it was mated to the second stage of its H-IIB rocket and had the final elements of its pressurized cargo installed.
