FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1981
1981 - 0005.PDF
FLIGHT International, 3 January 1981 3 F-18 engine-parts reward outstanding PARTS of the General Electric F404 low-pressure turbine (LPT) disc, which, disintegrated causing the Sep tember 8 McDonnell Douglas TF-18 crash near Basingstoke, England, have still to be recovered. Bench tests, which suggest that the disc broke up because of material defects, lead GE to believe that the disc may be in three pieces. One fragment was recovered soon after the crash. The remaining pieces are still missing and the company is offering a reward for their recovery. The bounty is in three parts: £1.000 for the finder of each piece, £1,000 for the landowner on whose property the Fragment is discovered and £5,000 to a charity of the finder's choice—a total of £14,000 assuming two seg ments remain to be found. Other parts of the two-seat F-18, which crashed en route to Spain for a sales demonstration, are still being re covered, with a nominal reward of £25 being paid. Some 100 fragments have been handed in to Basingstoke police. New Year vesting day for British Aerospace Mk2? ALL the business of British Aero space Corporation is expected to have been vested in a new company, British Aerospace Ltd, on January 1, as we go to< press. About half the shares will be offered for sale at the earliest opportunity, says Industry junior minister Adam Butler. There will be no immediate change to the Government's control over BAe while the company remains nationalised. A memorandum of understanding is to be drawn up among BAe, its directors and the Secretary of State covering the basis for control over BAe borrowing and investment. Shares will be issued to the Industry Minister to bring BAe nominal issued share capital to £40 million. The company's commencing capital is ex pected to be set at £158 million, equal to the compensation paid to former A P&W engine by any other number . . . PRATT & Whitney Aircraft has adopted a new engine-numbering system, which it claims is simpler than its previous sequence. The system applies only to new engines, so tradi tional workhorses like the JT9D are unchanged. Two P&W engines alreadv have new numbers: the JT1GD* family becomes the PW2000 series, while PT7 changes to PW100. Each number is prefixed PW; three figures following the prefix identify engines made by Pratt & Whitney Canada, while four digits indicate US- company types. The designations also identify engine power and applica tion. Last two figures indicate engine power: shaft ^horsepower (X100) in the case of Canadian engines and thrust (X 1,0001b) for American powerplants. Engines designed in the USA are identified as military or com mercial units by odd or even initial US derivatives are identified by their second digit, while Canada uses a suffix letter. owners of the constituent companies. Under Section 2 of the British Aerospace Act it is expected that BAe's liability in respect of its capital will have been extinguished on December 31. Some £10 mil lion has been paid to BAe to cover interest liability on the com mencing capital to the end of 1980. The Industry junior minister feels that "this limited remuneration will produce the best overall outcome" for the Government and the new company. The Government has received £14-2 million in interest and divi dends; for the years to 1980. Airbus subcontracts for Italy DEUTSCHE AIRBUS, the German partner in Airbus Industrie, has signed a £4-5 million subcontracting agreement with Italian aerospace companies for the manufacture of A310 and A300-600 rear fuselage com ponents (the aft fuselage is identical in these Airbus variants). Aeritalia is to co-ordinate the Italian companies, which include Aer- macchi and Agusta; further subcon tracts seem likely. The deal provides trade offsets for Italy following Ali talia's order for A300s (it already operates four, has four on order, and may buy A310s). Ironically, Aeritalia already carries out subcontract work for Boeing's 767, but no Italian airline has ordered these. • Italy's aerospace industry is ex pected to achieve a 1980 trade surplus of £38 million (L979^-£68 million). BRITISH aerospace industry exports for January-October 1980 were almost £1,500 million, some 40 per cent up on 1979. Sales of aircraft and parts reached £725 million, while engine sales were £613 million. Instrument exports were worth £71 million. Lead ing markets for aircraft, engines and parts remain USA, West Germany and France. at Commonsense" year for Shorts THE third successive annual "single- figure pay settlement" is announced by Shorts chairman Sir George Leitch in a year-end report. "This, together with a year substantially free of industrial strife." says Itavia crash radar film shows second aircraft WE have received additional informa tion about the Itavia DC-9 crash report since our original story went to press (see page 4). Flight under stands that the report, as yet unpub lished, states that film of the air traffic control radar screen at Mar sala (Sicily) shows that there was j another aircraft in the vicinity of the Itavia D09; the trace corresponds to an aircraft flying from west to east at 500-600kt. At the precise moment of the DC-9's disappearance from the screen, there is a break in the film, corresponding to eight minutes of radar viewing time. The Italian Air Force controllers' explanation is that the film was changed at this time during a "training session." There was some initial reluctance by Mar sala control to release film of the radar to the' inquiry. Leitch, "reflects well on the good sense of everyone concerned." Shorts has delivered 60 330s, and has a firm backlog of 14. "But we face a very hard competitive sell," Leitch says. He joins the other British ex porters in his concern about the high £, especially in a business which, he says, is 70 per cent export, mostly to the USA. "One 330 sale means a difference of £250.000 if the £ ex change rate is $2-40 compared with $2—a lot of money in anybody's language." The company continues to pursue its "triad" policy of balancing its work evenly among civil aircraft (commuter airliners and 757 and other airframe-component subcon tracting), engine-podding (mainly RB.211s) and military work including Blowpipe, which is "on the point of an important export breakthrough." Leitch also has high hopes of the 360, which has deposit-paid firm orders for six aircraft before the first flight. This, he says, "is most un usual in an aircraft in this class and we believe we are ahead of the com petition, whose deposits as far as we know are refundable. Refundable deposits are meaningless, and we don't take them." Shorts workforce stands at 6,800, up from 5,300 in 1974.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
