Aviation Week's Bill Sweetman discusses the key takeaways from the recent China Airshow with Joe Anselmo. In addition to China's development of military aircraft, Sweetman details the tremendous push toward missile systems, radars and other command and control systems.
Overweening Assumptions Two factors stand out in “Revolutionary Roadmap” ( AW&ST Nov. 3/10, p. 29). First, Chinese weapon developments may allow them to challenge U.S. air superiority. This isn’t surprising.
The new subsidiary, Fuzhou Airlines, will compete at one of the two key bases of China’s sixth-largest carrier, Xiamen Airlines, which plans a big lift in capacity next year at Fuzhou. The new carrier has begun flying to Beijing, and other early destinations will be Shanghai, Xian, Haikou, Taiyuan, Chongqing, Hefei, Kunming and Tianjin.
The airline’s board of directors is replacing Wolfgang Prock-Schauer after less than two years at the helm of Air Berlin; veteran German airline executive Stefan Pichler will take over from him in February. Prock-Schauer is to stay on as head of strategy. The carrier’s operating loss in the first nine months widened to €114 million ($142 million).
Airbus is launching the second generation of the outsize cargo aircraft that will be based on the larger and heavier A330-200. Five new Belugas will be built, the first of which will enter service in 2019 after a five-year development phase. They will progressively replace the current fleet and take over all special cargo flying for Airbus by 2025.
The danger of a hobbyist or troublemaker flying a small, light, remotely piloted aircraft into the path of a commercial aircraft may be overblown due to the rigorous certification standards already in place for other unidentified flying objects—birds.
Increasing the assembly rate to 10 aircraft per month seems minute compared to Boeing and Airbus, but it is confirmation of ATR’s renaissance in the past decade.
Studies by the Japanese defense ministry’s Technical Research and Development Institute that point to the advantages of big fighters with the fuel capacity and aerodynamic optimization to keep them on station longer. Range alone is not enough, however. The aircraft also should be networked.
M ichael Rossell has been appointed deputy director general of Montreal-based Airports Council International. He was director of ACI relations with the International Civil Aviation Organization and has been the U.K.’s permanent representative to ICAO and its first vice president. Rossell succeeds Craig Bradbrook, who has become vice president-aviation services at the Greater Toronto Airports Authority.
Although the FAA has not yet completed rules for how UAVs should be operated in U.S. airspace, it can fine commercial operators for “careless or reckless” flying of unmanned aircraft—even those that cost less than $200. That is the upshot of what being perceived as a “win” for FAA regulators: an NTSB ruling this week on Raphael Pirker’s promotional video for the University of Virginia—shot from a remote-control aircraft.
Unspecified U.S.-government spacecraft have been detecting the fireballs generated when small asteroids have hit Earth’s atmosphere for the past 20 years at least, and apparently measuring the energy they generate as they burn up.
NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (Maven) orbiter relayed this surface image from the Curiosity rover before placing itself in a safehold state Nov. 19 that the agency says was triggered by a “timing conflict between commands.” The spacecraft, which initiated full science operations Nov. 16, remained in high-data-rate communications with controllers, who were developing a plan to return it to normal operations.
An article on page 44 of the Nov. 17 issue mischaracterized funds Boeing has dedicated to building a worldwide finance information technology system. Not all of the cost is new spending.
XCOR Aerospace has used its unique piston-pump technology to move two cryogenic propellants in a hot-fire test of the XR-5H25 engine it is developing as a pathfinder for a potential advanced upper-stage powerplant for United Launch Alliance (ULA). It will be in the same class as the RL-10 used on the Atlas and Delta launch vehicles. The Mojave, California, company says it hot-fire-tested the engine’s regeneratively cooled thrust chamber using liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen (LH2) pumped with the proprietary technology.
Three materials-science projects will share $800,000 in grants from the non-profit Center for the Advancement of Science In Space (Casis) to flight-test their concepts on the International Space Station. Casis says Alexei Churilov of Radiation Monitoring Devices, Inc. of Watertown, Massachusetts, will grow scintillator crystals; St. Petersburg, Florida-based Eclipse Energy Systems Inc.
