Stepped-up production of 737s and 777s allowed Boeing Commercial Airplanes to deliver 115 aircraft in the first quarter, nine more than in 2007. First-quarter deliveries included 87 for all models of the 737 (83 in 2007); four 747s (3); three 767s (3); and 21 777s (17). Meanwhile, Boeing Integrated Defense Systems reported fewer helicopter deliveries in the first quarter than last year; no Apache new-builds were delivered, compared to four in the first quarter of 2007. Two Chinook new-builds were delivered (five last year).
Emirates Airline, which is preparing for route expansion, will begin recruiting pilot first officer candidates in the U.S. this week. The Dubai-based carrier’s Career Center will host programs Apr. 7 in Detroit, Apr. 8 in Cincinnati and Apr. 9 in Atlanta.
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Talks between Air France-KLM and takeover target Alitalia have broken down, leading to the resignation of the latter’s CEO, Maurizio Prato, and an uncertain future for the Italian carrier. Air France would only buy Alitalia if unions agreed to certain terms, but they balked even after the prospective buyer sweetened the offer. Alitalia may now be headed for Italy’s version of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, although Rome is mounting a last-ditch effort to get Air France back to the table.
David A. Fulghum (Washington), Douglas Barrie (London)
A stealthy F-22 Raptor, carrying modified Amraam-derivative missiles, could accelerate into supersonic flight at 60,000 ft., zoom into a steep climb, and threaten almost any satellite in low Earth orbit, says a U.S. Air Force general.
Days after revealing possible underground seas on the moon Enceladus, NASA’s Cassini Saturn probe has discovered evidence pointing to the existence of a subsurface ocean of water and ammonia on Titan. The discovery was made by collating measurements of Titan’s rotation obtained by Cassini’s synthetic aperture radar during 19 passes over Titan between October 2005 and May 2007. Scientists inferred that a 30-km. shift in the expected positions of prominent surface features over the period could only be explained by the existence of an ocean under the moon’s icy crust.
Northrop Grumman has proposed a demonstration to the U.S. Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center in which U.S. military users would be able to tap Israel’s new TecSar/Polaris 1 imaging radar satellite for a period this summer. Under the proposal, U.S. users would submit imagery requests that would then be sent through the Israeli ground station in Tel Aviv.
Astronauts on board the International Space Station can count on a new means of resupply following the docking of Europe’s first Automated Transfer Vehicle last week.
Carl R. Smith (see photo) has been named vice president-infrared countermeasures for the Northrop Grumman Corp. ’s Defensive Systems Div., Rolling Meadows, Ill. He was vice president-engineering and manufacturing.
Don’t expect the Air Force to move out on a bomber beyond the one it hopes to put into service in 2018. There has been talk that the “future bomber” now in the works might be a mere interim step on the way to a true next-generation platform. “There’s no future bomber beyond that,” says a senior Air Force general overseeing requirements for the design. On the other hand, the “2018 [effort ] is a real program with real hardware and software milestones.
Avionics integration promises to be one of the biggest hurdles in the next few months as Eurocopter and its Chinese partners try to achieve first flight on their EC175 helicopter venture in late 2009. Major supplier selections are now being wrapped up for the 16-passenger rotorcraft, and all major long-lead items are in production. Joseph Saporito, head of commercial programs at Eurocopter, says the EC175 project is on schedule, and the structural work being performed by the Chinese partners is advancing particularly well.
Final assembly begins in Boeing’s Renton, Wash., factory for the first U.S. Navy P-8A patrol aircraft, as its 737 derivative fuselage is lowered into place. The Poseidon fuselage was built by Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, Kan., using a Boeing digital construction system that was pioneered on Australia’s Wedgetail AEWC program, which also uses a 737 airframe derivative. Changes to the airliner design are built in digitally so no reconstruction is required once the fuselage leaves the assembly line.
James R. Waddington, Jr., who is director of operations for Lockheed Martin Mission and Combat Support Systems, has been elected chairman of the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia .
Japan has completed its ballistic missile defense system for the Tokyo region, with the final battery of Patriot Advanced Capability 3 missiles installed at the Kasumigaura Ground Self-Defense Force base in Ibaraki prefecture, northeast of the capital, on Mar. 29.
An aerospace and defense government-industry cooperative is using Exostar to provide common standards for the international exchange of sensitive electronic information by industry and governments.
Three months after Boeing tasked Orion Propulsion Inc. (OPI) to work on producibility issues for the reaction control system (RCS) for the Ares I launcher, the two companies signed a NASA-sponsored Mentor-Protege agreement at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. The accord will make OPI—a small engineering and testing specialist from Madison, a Huntsville suburb—more visible in the Boeing supply chain and open the door for it to move into RCS hardware work, says OPI business development director Shar Hendrick.
U.K. investigators continue to seek clues to the Mar. 30 crash of a Cessna Citation Model 500 (Citation I), registration VP-BGE, into a residential neighborhood near Farnborough, Kent, England. Early reports indicate the five people on board were killed, and no one on the ground was injured or killed. The U.K. Air Accidents Investigation Bureau (AAIB) is leading the probe, aided by the U.S. NTSB, FAA, aircraft manufacturer Cessna Aircraft Co. and engine-maker Pratt & Whitney Canada.
Faina Zaslavsky (see photo) has been named director of the Microelectronics Solutions unit of Crane Aerospace & Electronics , Redmond, Wash. She has been a senior process engineer. Honors and Elections
The first flight of the Kawasaki C-X military transport has been delayed again, this time until summer, because of newly found defects. The C-X, which was supposed to fly in September 2007, failed static structural tests last July. Now it has been decided that strengthening is needed for the mid and aft fuselage sections, where the landing gear is attached, and for the rear cargo ramp, the Defense Ministry says.
As the space-industrial complex spins up its pitch for more funding from the next occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. (see p. 34), oddsmakers at the 24th National Space Symposium see New York Sen. Hillary Clinton as the strongest space supporter in the three-way presidential race as it stands today. Illinois Sen. Barak Obama’s support for civil space is considered weakest, given his early call for diversion of NASA funding into education and subsequent lack of specifics on his position. The presumptive Republican nominee, Sen.
South Korea will develop a ground-surveillance radar for a large medium-altitude drone to be fielded as early as 2013, aiming to build the aircraft with almost completely domestic technology. Coupled with indigenous electro-optical and infrared sensors, the Korean radar should make the surveillance drone a viable option if the country cannot buy the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk, which will not be allowed unless the international Missile Technology Control Regime is changed.
As the Pentagon studies what its military satellite communications architecture will be in light of dwindling funding, engineers at Lockheed Martin are preparing the first new-generation anti-jam military communications satellite for launch early next year. The initial Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite will mark a dramatic change in the capacity of secure communications available to Pentagon users between 65 deg. N and 65 deg. S latitudes. It’s expected to be launched on an Atlas V next January.
Lockheed Martin has completed the last satellite in the U.S. Air Force’s GPS Block IIR modernization program (GPS IIR-M), including a demonstration payload to transmit the new L5 civil signal. The last spacecraft is scheduled for shipment from King of Prussia, Pa., to Cape Canaveral in time for a June launch.
