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Aviation History
1979
1979 - 0004.PDF
2 FLIGHT International, 6 January 1979 W rid news Iran pulls out of Bell helicopter project ONE of Bell Helicopter's two opera tions in Iran, the co-production of helicopters in a new factory, has been terminated by the Iranian Govern ment. Work had already stopped at the new factory and residential com plex at Isfahan after Iran failed to make a scheduled advance payment in October. The wholly owned Bell sub sidiary company known as Bell Opera tions Corporation was to have built 50 Bell 214s and 350 214STs under IBERIA, the Spanish flag carrier, last week ordered four A300s from Airbus Industrie and placed options on a further four. Iberia has chosen the 2,700-mile-range A300B4-100 for de livery in February and March 1981. The aircraft on option would be de livered a year later. Iberia's A300s will be laid out with 251 seats (includ ing 26 first-class) and will be able to carry a full payload from Madrid to the Canaries, or a full complement of THE NETHERLANDS Parliament has approved the Cabinet decision to buy 13 Lockheed P-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft, worth around $300 mil lion. This endorsement of the Decem ber 5 decision spells an end to French hopes of a Dutch order for the Atlanr tic Nouvelle Generation. The Orions, which will be equipped to the current Update II standard, will replace the Lockheed SP-2H Neptunes operated by the Royal Netherlands Naval Air Service. Lockheed will assemble the Orions SNECMA has announced a cropped- fan version of the CFM56 which com petes directly with the Rolls-Royce RB.432. Designated CFM56-DR-18, the new engine is rated at 18,0001b thrust and is intended for airliners in the 90/120-seat class. Snecma says that data are being provided to aircraft manufacturers for inclusion in presen tations to airlines. The only immediate application for a powerplant in this thrust category is the Fokker-VFW F.28 Super, which already has the RB.432 as prime engine. Snecma had not revealed the development time- scale or cost of the cropped CFM56 contracts valued at $575 million be tween 1979 and 1985. Bell Helicopter says that it will continue development and civil certification of the twin- engined 214ST with its own money. Bell's other Iranian operation, Bell Helicopter International, continues to train Iranian pilots and engineers and to operate a major supply centre under US-Iranian government-to- government contracts. Of the com pany's 3,400 employees and 2,900 passengers plus seven tonnes of freight from Frankfurt to Tenerife. The Spanish airline is the twentieth A300 customer, and Airbus sold 70 of the type in 1978, its best annual total yet. 1978 also saw the launch of the smaller A310, for which Iberia also has a requirement. Airbus has now signed up all the major western Euro pean flag carriers (with the exception of British Airways, KLM and Sabena) as actual or potential customers. at its Burbank, Calif, plant. The first aircraft will be delivered in 1981, and the remainder at a rate of three a year. The contract is worth $150 mil lion to the company. Fokker-VFW was offered a final assembly line for the aircraft, which would have given the country complete overhaul facilities for the Orions, but this was considered too costly and inefficient. Instead, the company has negotiated $60 million- worth of offsets covering local goods and services. The emphasis will be on areas of high technology. at the time of writing, nor the manu facturers which it is approaching. Fokker is likely to be the first target for Snecma salesmen, although chances for French participation in the F.28 Super have faded since the Netherlands announced that it would buy Lockheed Orions in preference to Atlantics (see Flight for December 16, page 2155). Fokker would still like to share the cost of developing the F.28 Super with the French, and a con dition in any such agreement may be the use of a French engine. The CFM56-DR-18 would then be an obvious choice. dependants, some 300 were repatriated during September, after the unrest in Iran began. Some of the 40 British engineers and technicians recruited for Bell Helicopter International have now returned to Britain, and no new recruits have been sent out since the end of October. The closure of Bell Operations seems to be part of a more general shift of Iranian spending priorities from defence and into social projects. Challenger moves to Mojave FOLLOWING a brief visit to Ottawa Uplands Airport on December 20, the prototype Challenger flew via Omaha to its permanent flight-test base in California on December 22. At that point the business jet had completed 42-2 test-flying hours in 25 flights. The aircraft is now being fitted with 7,5001b-thrust Lycoming ALF502L turbofans in place of the original 6,7001b ALF502HS. The prototype will complete the major part of its test programme at Canadair's flight-test base at East Kern County Airport in the Mojave desert, where it will be joined in the spring by the second and third Challengers. Ganadair tells us that it was the fuel control unit of the Garrett auxiliary power unit which was changed a few weeks ago, not the entire APU, as reported in Flight for December 16. Venus 10 and 11 on target TWO more Russian interplanetary probes, Venus 11 and 12, have suc cessfully landed on Venus. Designed to return further information on the planet's hostile surface, each space craft consisted of lander and fly-past portions. Venus 12 made its soft landing on December 21 and transmitted surface pressures, temperatures and several pictures during its HOmin life on the surface. The fly-past craft acted as a relay station for these signals, which it amplified and retransmitted to Earth. Surface pressure on Venus is known to be about 90 atmospheres and the temperature is nearly 500°C. The pictures showed a flat, rocky landscape. Sister craft Venus 11 made its land ing on Christmas Day. It also trans mitted surface information for more than an hour after landing. Iberia buys Airbus A300s Dutch Orion deal approved Snecma crops the CFM56
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