Yannick d’Escatha, director of the French space agency CNES, says NASA has agreed to benchmark launch operations at Europe’s French Guiana spaceport and the Kennedy Space Center in order to compare operational and technical experience. Michel Eymard, the French launcher director, says NASA wants to benefit from certain technical similarities between its new Ares launch vehicles and Europe’s Ariane 5 heavy lifter.
Martin Zelman (see photo) has been appointed vice president-internal audit of the Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman Corp. He succeeds Carolyn Pitman, who now leads the company’s Enterprise Shared Services organization. Zelman was vice president/controller of the Mission Systems Sector.
The British government has finally decided to proceed with the sale of the rotary-wing element of its Defense Aviation and Repair Agency to Canadian third-party maintenance company Vector. The £17-million-pound deal will see the transfer of DARA’s Fleetlands and Almonbank sites to the Canadian company. The acquisition will double the staff count at Vector, and boost its revenue by a third. The two sites provide support for British Chinook, Lynx and Sea King helicopters.
Aer Lingus and JetBlue Airways have signed a deal giving passengers for the Irish carrier single-booking access to the U.S. low-fare carrier. JetBlue has a big presence at Boston Logan International Airport, which is a key destination for Aer Lingus. However, the duration of the deal is uncertain with Lufthansa taking a 19% stake in JetBlue and looking to link its long-haul flights with JetBlue’s U.S. domestic operations. Aer Lingus could begin talks with several other U.S. carriers by year-end to extend the online booking model that will go live with JetBlue in April.
Japan’s ATD-X Shinshin stealth demonstrator could potentially be developed as a combat aircraft, should Tokyo so choose, thanks to an airframe that appears to have been designed with a production version in mind. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the country’s fighter specialist, is now confirmed as a key player in developing the aircraft. One of the latest official photographs shows a radar cross-section model of the ATD-X being wheeled out of a Mitsubishi plant.
Very few satellite-based services are available for the vast areas covered by the Royal Australian Air Force and Navy, but help is on the way. The Australians bought into the U.S. Wideband Global Satcom program by spending enough to provide the constellation with an additional satellite (for a total of six). Australia will have access to 10% of the communications bandwidth provided by USAF’s first satellite, which is now on orbit. Eventually it will have a 16% share of the entire constellation’s capability.
British Airways is proving that not even the prospect of a tightening transatlantic aviation market will deter it from rolling out innovative strategies for new services. Hard on the heels of launching a subsidiary carrier to operate between Continental Europe and New York, BA is again raising eyebrows with plans to fly Airbus A318s across the Atlantic carrying just 32 business-class passengers.
Lufthansa hopes to broaden its product portfolio as it enters significant partnerships with TUI and DHL. Late last month, Lufthansa and travel concern TUI signed a memorandum of understanding to merge their low-fare and leisure subsidiaries Germanwings and TUIfly into the country’s second-largest low-fare carrier after Air Berlin. Also, Lufthansa revealed more details about its new cargo joint venture with DHL, AeroLogic.
Although the overall earnings outlook for European airlines is uncertain, network carriers believe their key premium long-haul traffic could weather a downturn, whereas yields on short-haul operations are already under pressure. The U.S. economic slowdown could spread to Europe and that, coupled with soaring fuel prices, is causing consternation throughout most of the airline sector. Capacity and stage-length growth also are adding pressure to financial returns while labor issues continue unabated.
The U.S. Army has begun pilot instruction using two OH-58D Operational Flight Trainers as part of its Flight School XX1 program. The OFTs allow Kiowa Warrior crews to train for the first time on a full-motion, high-fidelity simulator, according to Lenny Genna, vice president of Army programs for L-3 Communications’ Link Simulation and Training division. He says the Flight School XX1 initiative is aimed at improving the readiness of operational units, and the OFTs provide OH-58D crews with individual or networked training.
The $50.5-billion U.S. Homeland Security Dept. budget request for Fiscal 2009 includes $1.3 billion for counter-IED (improvised explosive device) measures, more than $1.1 billion for Transportation Security Administration (TSA) explosives detection technology at airports, $30 million for training of TSA security officers and $9 million for the department’s Office of Bombing Prevention.
French armaments agency DGA has concluded a contract for basic helicopter training that will be the country’s first major private financing initiative (PFI) in the defense arena. Inspired by PFIs introduced in the U.K. such as the Skynet 5 telecom satellite program, the 22-year contract, which was awarded to Defense Conseil International and Proteus Helicopters, will enable the French defense ministry to replace its aging fleet of 54 Gazelle rotorcraft on a flight-hour service basis, without dipping into its overstretched procurement budget.
SAS Group, in an ongoing effort to ensure long-term financial viability, has decided to shed its Spirit Air Cargo Handling unit, one of three subsidiaries it was considering for divestment. SAS Technical Services will remain part of the group, but the heavy maintenance of Boeing 737 classics will shift from Scandinavia to a lower-cost site. SAS Ground Services will have another 1.5 years to prove itself, with a goal of improving its cost base by 400 million Swedish kronor ($62 million).
A recent article says 182 U.S. Air Force F-15s remain grounded due to a longeron manufacturing defect (AW&ST Jan. 14, p. 28). The article also says it would cost about $260,000 per fighter to bring them back to operational status. USAF says this grounding illustrates the need to purchase more F-22s because repairing the F-15s is too expensive. Rudimentary math concludes that repairing all 182 grounded F-15s would cost a total of $47.3 million, to extend their service life 20 years beyond current projections. A single F-22 Raptor will cost $339 million.
The European Space Agency has inaugurated a space astronomy center near Madrid. The European Space Astronomy Center (ESAC) will be in charge of operating astrophysics and solar system missions, including the existing XMM-Newton, Integral, Mars Express, Venus Express, Rosetta and Akari observatories and upcoming initiatives such as Herschel-Planck, Gaia, Lisa Pathfinder, James Webb Space Telescope and the BepiColombo Mercury probe (AW&ST Jan. 28, p. 403).
I had to chuckle when I read the USAF rationale for new F-22s as a result of F-15 Longeron defects. For a relative costs basis, here’s a good analogy: Say the owner of a fleet of pickup trucks, which have been reliable through the years, finds out there is a safety issue (the wheels might fall off). The new part costs only $10 apiece, but installation costs $200 for each truck.
Lockheed Martin received a $123-million add-on contract from the Navy and USAF to develop and integrate reprogramming and verifications capabilities in support of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter development and demonstration program. The reprogramming capability is expected to allow the aircraft to counter an enemy’s advanced electronic warfare capabilities as well as sensor-detected targets and threats.
There’s more foot-dragging on the KC-X future tanker program. The Defense Acquisition Board will not take up the tanker replacement contract until Feb. 25-26 instead of Feb. 13 as earlier expected. The tanker has been renamed the KC-45 and the program starts with a 179-aircraft increment, the first of three.
Many senior civilians in the Defense Dept.—once bedazzled by military transformation plans—either have fled the Pentagon or turned away from some of the programs needed to digitize and network the military, contend industry critics of the proposed Fiscal 2009 budget. Others say that’s not so, and the Pentagon has simply prioritized and streamlined its investments.
The U.S. Army has awarded AeroVironment a $45.8-million contract to provide Special Operations Command with Raven UAVs and spares. Delivery is expected to be completed by the end of January 2009. General Atomics Aeronautical Systems won a $30.9-million Army pact to support operations of I-Gnat, Warrior Alpha and Sky Warrior UAVs.
Toronto Pearson International Airport is testing a short-term weather forecasting system developed by Environment Canada that could provide more accurate weather forecasting. The Canadian Airport Nowcasting Project relies on existing weather information including numerical weather prediction output; satellite observations; site climatologies; radar, surface and lightning network observations; and on-site routine sensors, including wind, precipitation, visibility, ceiling and temperature.
The second Texus sounding rocket in two weeks has been launched from the Esrange Space Center in northern Sweden. Texus 45, containing fluid physics and biology experiments funded by German aerospace center DLR, lifted off on Feb. 7, a week after Texus 44, equipped with an ESA metal alloy and biology payload. The microgravity missions, the first to use a new parachute recovery system, highlighted the importance of Europe’s Columbus orbital lab, which was launched atop the U.S. space shuttle on Feb. 7 (see p. 34).
DepartmentsLettersWho’s WhereMarket FocusIndustry OutlookAirline OutlookIn OrbitNews BreaksWashington OutlookClassifiedContact UsAerospace CalendarU.S. airline industry rifewith merger talk, yet againNews BreaksFrench sending Rafale F2 fourth-generation strike fighter back to AfghanistanSES appears to have failedin a bid to acquire SpaceCommunicationsIndian air force interestedin purchasing 40 more Hawk jet trainersCessna unveils Citation 850Columbus—a large-cabin, 4,000-naut.-mi.
Robert Sturgell, President Bush’s nominee to head the FAA, is having a rough time winning Senate confirmation. Democrats and Republicans on the Commerce Committee last week grilled Sturgell, the acting FAA chief since September, about passenger rights during long delays, air traffic controller staffing, near misses and runway incursions. Shortly after the session, which Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) called “excruciating,” Sturgell learned New Jersey’s two senators have placed a hold on the nomination, preventing it from coming to the Senate floor for a vote. Sens.
