Nobody has to remind British Airways how cutthroat the transatlantic aviation market has become. Even as it prepares to launch a subsidiary to infiltrate its rivals’ key routes, the airline is seeing fresh competition emerge in its own backyard.
Bombardier is betting on Pratt & Whitney’s geared turbofan (GTF) technology to power its CSeries narrowbody as the aircraft maker heads into a critical year for its big bet in the commercial aircraft market. The company selected the 23,000-lb.-thrust engine over offerings from CFM International and Rolls-Royce. The Pratt engine promises to help the CSeries deliver a 20% fuel-burn advantage over current aircraft, says Bombardier Aerospace President Gary R. Scott.
Democrats on the House Science Committee are pressing NASA Administrator Michael Griffin to speed up the agency’s release of aviation incident data mined from a controversial $11-million pilot survey. Griffin promised last month to release a version of the confidential National Aviation Operations Monitoring Service survey’s data, once it had been scrubbed of identifying information. He said that could take two months.
The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery plans to collaborate with British museum authorities in recovering what may be the oldest P-38 in existence: a Lockheed “Lightning” that has been all but buried in sand on a Welsh beach since 1942. A fuel problem forced the pilot to make an emergency landing. Based on the aircraft’s serial number, Ric Gillespie, who heads the U.S.-based nonprofit group, said the fighter could be the oldest surviving 8th Air Force combat aircraft of its type. It is nearly intact, and recovery work is expected to begin next spring.
Capt. Scott Markle has won the U.S. Air Force ’s Mackay Trophy for operational achievement. Markle was prevented from using used his A-10’s weapons because U.S. special forces troops were intermingled with Taliban forces. Instead the 81st Fighter Sqdn. pilot flew low passes over the engagement, firing his self-protection flares. The aerial light show distracted the Taliban from its attack and gave the special forces team time to pull back so Markle could bring his 30mm. cannon into action against the enemy.
A U.S. Air Force General Atomics MQ-9A Reaper, the service’s big, new, missile-firing unmanned strike and reconnaissance aircraft, has dropped its first precision-guided bomb in Afghanistan. The Reaper fired a Hellfire missile during its first combat strike on Oct. 27 and has dropped two GBU-12 500-lb. laser-guided bombs.
Elbit Systems captured a $30-million unmanned aerial vehicle order for the Israeli Defense Forces. The three-year contract involves development and manufacturing of new UAVs (which may include the new, larger Hermes 900 or its variants) as well as upgrades to existing designs.
Mitigating the risk of fatigue remains on the NTSB’s Most-Wanted List of safety improvements—but the FAA’s implementation of the board’s recommendations is progressing slowly, according to the NTSB, which this month upated the list. The Air Line Pilots Assn. has long urged that flight and duty time limits be revised. The FAA’s “outdated patchwork of rules” was developed decades ago and fails to reflect “current science, flight schedules, aircraft equipment and travel distances,” says Terry McVenes, executive air safety chairman of the Air Line Pilots Assn.
A request for proposals (RFP) to create a 10-year major advertising display program at Miami International Airport has been released by the Miami-Dade Aviation Dept. (MDAD). The deal will cover 320 indoor and outdoor advertising locations. The RFP includes a minimum annual guarantee of $1.4 million a year for MDAD.
The competition between Boeing and Northrop Grumman to provide the U.S. Air Force with a new aerial refueling tanker aircraft—the KC-X—has become intense due to potential size of the program to replace the worn-out fleet of KC-135s. The increasing fierceness of claims in the news media and use of one-line histrionics to denigrate one side or the other tend to draw attention away from what’s important to men and women who will win America’s battles.
Processing the space shuttle for launch enables one to see it as much as art form as flight hardware. Sadly, scenes like this at the Kennedy Space Center will occur for only the next three years, as the shuttle program flies into history in 2010. Atlantis (left and above) first flew in 1985 and has perhaps only 2-3 more missions before retirement. But on STS-122, as early as Dec. 6, it is to launch the much-anticipated European Columbus laboratory to the International Space Station.
Correspondence on the global warming debate provided lots of name-calling and hand-waving, but no data (AW&ST Sept. 24, p. 10). One letter disputed the notion of using Mars for a baseline because it has “different orbital mechanics, internal thermal dynamics, atmospheric dynamics and water cycles.”
The search is on for a director of the new Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Iarpa), now officially open for business. Iarpa is designed to focus the intelligence community’s research efforts on developing disruptive technologies, much like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency does for the Pentagon. The President signed off on its first classified budget along with other intelligence and defense Fiscal 2008 appropriations on Nov. 13.
A new wave of military modernization programs is sweeping the Middle East, although many are still in formative stages and unlikely to firm up for some time. Two areas expected to see heavy activity in the near future are airlift and air and missile defense. Both have attracted much attention among military planners in recent months and feature prominently in strategic reviews done throughout the region in the wake of the war in Iraq and a changed strategic balance.
Europe’s Galileo satellite navigation program continues to receive a pounding on several fronts. Despite a call from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy to find a solution quickly, finance ministers last week failed to resolve a funding impasse with Germany. This prevented the EU from agreeing to a proposal to fund full development and deployment of Galileo with public money.
Inmarsat has concluded an agreement with the European Space Agency to operate an advanced L-band payload on the agency’s AlphaSat large telecom satellite technology mission, but has yet to decide on an S-band system that could offer more bandwidth for mobile TV, digital radio and other applications.
Artist concept shows what a Boeing Business Jet pilot will see when the Rockwell Collins Enhanced Vision System (EVS) is certified early in 2008 (see p. 46). The Head-up Guidance System symbology shows the aircraft is 100 ft. above the ground on a 3-deg. approach path. This symbology photo is combined with an artist rendering of a typical EVS infrared image from the new BBJ EVS sensor during a nighttime approach. The conformal green image from the infrared sensor shows the warm runway and taxiways against the cooler—darker—grass.
Thales Aerospace and PowerJet, the Snecma-Saturn consortium producing the SaM146 engine to power the Sukhoi SuperJet 100, say the regional aircraft is still on track for a first flight by year-end, though they admit the schedule is tight and could slip to January.
NASA loses out as the latest attempt by sympathetic Senate lawmakers to add $1 billion to the agency’s budget request fails in conference with the House, according to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.), one of the amendment’s co-sponsors. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) has spearheaded the “NASA Restoration Amendment” two years in a row, along with Hutchison and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), as a one-time emergency reimbursement to help the agency recover from the lingering financial effects of the Columbia accident and Hurricane Katrina.
Northrop Grumman, whose Litening advanced targeting pod was recently a key element in Israel’s attack on a suspected nuclear site in Syria, won a contract to develop and deliver a new generation of data links for the system.
Northrop Grumman Corp. and Mubadala Development Co. of Abu Dhabi have signed an agreement to collaborate on a series of high-technology aerospace and aviation educational and training programs as part of an effort by the United Arab Emirates to strengthen its economic development strategy. Areas of technological interest include UAVs, composites and program management.
Ethiopian Airlines has ordered 10 Cessna Skyhawk TDs equipped with optional Thielert turbo-diesel engines that can operate on Jet A-1 fuel instead of aviation gasoline. Plans call for the four-seat 172s to be operated as ab initio training aircraft, and Ethiopian Airlines is the first carrier to order the new Model 172S, says Bob Gibbs, Cessna’s director of international propeller aircraft sales. The engine, which develops 155 hp., is manufactured in Germany by Thielert Aircraft Engines.
South Korea will ask foreign partners to share development costs for its proposed KFX stealth fighter, moving beyond technical collaboration previously described. The foreign companies would pay for up to 30% of the program, says air force colonel Daeyeol Lee, head of the air system development team at Korea’s Agency for Defense Development. BAE Systems has expressed interest in developing the radar for the aircraft, Lee told a conference in Seoul.
The recent return of its DC-8 airborne science laboratory signals a consolidation of flight research aircraft by NASA Dryden Research Center in California. The DC-8’s assignments vary but often center on Earth and environmental observations. Its instrument package includes an early synthetic aperture radar developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that was used to observe the reentry of the Stardust comet sample return spacecraft when it arced across the Western U.S. night sky and settled into the Utah desert in January 2006.
