Aviation Week & Space Technology

A small number of people made outsize contributions to the early development of stealth, working under intense secrecy.

Average altitude performance would greatly limit the Chinese market for the proposed Sino-Russian AHL helicopter. So Avicopter proposes a design that would fly far higher than most heavy rotorcraft.

Oct. 6-7—SpeedNews 20th Annual Business & General Aviation Industry Suppliers Conference, Los Angeles. Oct. 13-15—MRO Europe. London. Nov. 3-5—MRO Asia-Pacific. Singapore. Nov. 3-5—AerospaceDefenseChain. Scottsdale, Arizona. Jan. 21-22, 2016—MRO Latin America. Lima, Peru. Feb. 3-4, 2016—MRO Middle East. Dubai. Feb 15, 2016—ATW’s Airline Industry Achievement Awards, Singapore.March 3, 2016—Aviation Week Laureate Awards. Washington.

The CAAC certified the ARJ21 in December, but 14 months will pass before Comac subsidiary Chengdu Airlines puts it into service.

COMMERCIAL AVIATION An uncontained high-pressure compressor failure is suspected in the left General Electric GE90-85B engine of a British Airways Boeing 777-200ER that caught fire, prompting the crew to reject takeoff at Las Vegas McCarran Airport on Sept. 8. All 159 passengers and 13 crew on BA Flight 2276 to London Gatwick evacuated the aircraft.

ULA, Blue Origin announce production deal in wake of Aerojet’s offer to buy rocket manufacturer.

Directed energy an MDA priority; states filling void on UAV rules; FAA modernizes rules for amateur rockets and increased costs for a GPS system.

Minimum fleet size, including minimum aircraft ownership, is one of the regulations already on the books the Ministry of Transport will begin enforcing more strongly.

Sept. 19-22—World Routes 2015. Durban International Convention Center. Durban, South Africa. See routesonline.com/events/175/world-routes Sept. 22-23—JEC Forums 2015. Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. Boston. See jeccomposites.com/events/jec-forums-boston-2015 Sept. 22-24—AHS International Conference on Environmental Sustainability in Air Vehicle Design and Operations of Helicopters and Airplanes. Hotel Bonaventure. Montreal. See vtol.org/events/sustainability-2015

Layoffs at Lockheed; Global Hawk deployment; Slovakia buys Black Hawks and new pilot training facility.

New simulator system will allow for fewer live flights for fighter pilot training, saving costs and aircraft wear.

Though new bomber will replace the B-52 and B-1, today’s fleet needs incremental upgrades to stay in the fight.

The new shape of the Air Force’s bomber fleet relies on the outcome of a secretive project to lay the foundation for a new generation of U.S. stealth aircraft.

What is a company to do if it can’t get rights to a competitor’s coveted product? If you are Aerojet, just offer to buy that competitor.

An international fleet of spacecraft is providing scientists and weather forecasters with new insight into precipitation, its effects, and its causes.

The new rocket, based largely on an upgrade of the Falcon 9 v1.1, will launch four missions next year, including two for commercial customers.

Science experiments may help extend the life of satellites, evaluate environmental damage and monitor fallout from nuclear disasters.

Fantastic earnings, a large backlog, high entry barriers and fortuitous timing. What isn’t to like about this deal? I have several important concerns.

Sustaining the ISS is an ongoing challenge that creates new problems and spurs creative solutions.

VivaLatinamerica, with two regional carriers already launched, is aiming at Central America as its next Viva brand and looking forward to further expansion.

The Malaysian carrier cuts orders as it struggles to prove the long-haul, low-cost model can be profitable.

People laughed when forecaster Adam Pilarski said that oil prices would collapse. Now he’s warning about an aircraft order bubble.

Airlines around the world are realizing they need to offer Internet access network-wide, not only on long-haul flights.

Hackers are earning top-dollar to find security gaps in computer systems, but companies are slow to patch them, and government protections are uneven.

In this rapidly expanding information-technology-driven environment, the NTSB is adjusting its methods to take advantage of the details of incidents captured by the public on PDAs to enrich their investigations.