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Aviation History
1991
1991 - 2550.PDF
MR TRANSPORT NEWS IN BRIEF PARIS HQ SOLD Air France has sold its head quarters in Paris for Frl.6 billion ($280 million) and plans to move to its opera tions hub at Charles de Gaulle Airport by 1995. The 30,000m2 office space in the 16 storey building near Montparnasse at present houses Air France's 1,600 administrative staff and top management. The company has drawn up plans to build a more functional headquar ters at the airport. Sikorsky tests civil VD tiltrotor BY KIERAN DALY IN STRATFORD Sikorsky is t to run wind-tunnel tests of a variable- diameter (VD) tiltrotor model for possible civil application in the future. The company plans to use a one-sixth-scale model of a half- fuselage with a single wing, na celle and tip-mounted rotor. Senior design engineer David Matuska says the rotor will have a maximum diameter of 2.5m with a minimum of about two- thirds of that. The project will incorporate remote control for both the na celle tilt and rotor diameter change mechanisms. Sikorsky is discussing its plans with the National Aero nautics and Space Administra tion (NASA) and hopes to obtain some NASA funding. The company first worked on VD designs in the 1960s but the programme was dropped in the early 1970s when the US Army Third major Taiwanese carrier starts Mandarin Airlines will start operating as Taiwan's third designated international carrier late in October, starting with a twice-weekly service from Taipei to Sydney. Mandarin, a partly-owned subsidiary of flag-carrier China Airlines, will start flying on 16 October, using a Boeing 747SP leased from its parent company. The airline was established in July to open up international routes barred to China Airlines because it is flag-carrier for the Republic of China. Because of the absence of dip lomatic relations with Taiwan, state-owned Qantas will recipro cate by operating Sydney-Taipei through a new subsidiary, Aus tralia Asia Airlines (AAA). A single Boeing 767-300 in AAA livery is already operating some regional Qantas sectors from Australia. China Airlines owns 67% of Mandarin, with the remainder held by the Hohsin Group, a Taipei-based financial conglom erate. In addition to Sydney, Mandarin plans to open a new route to Vancouver next month, in a joint-venture with Canadian Airlines. Mandarin is taking over an existing commitment from China Airlines, under which each carrier will sell 108 seats per week on the other's aircraft. Canadian flies to Taipei three times a week, while Mandarin will initially operate a single rotation with the 747SP. Mandarin chairman Liu Teh Ming says that a separate agree ment has also been reached with Air New Zealand (ANZ), under which Mandarin will sell tickets for ANZ's single weekly Boeing 767 service to Taipei. Mandarin has landing rights in New Zeal and, but will not operate there until at least next year, when an Airbus A300-600R is delivered. Liu says that Mandarin Air lines needs more aircraft, but that fleet decisions will have to wait until new landing rights have been obtained. Mandarin has requested rights to Vienna as its first stop in Europe, and may also request New York as an onward destination from Van couver, which would be permit ted under Taiwan's existing air services agreement. New aircraft under considera tion include a small number of Airbus A340s or McDonnell Douglas MD-lls. D Mandarin to start Sydney service to rival Taipea operation Soviet coup aviation minister resigns C oviet Union minister of civil been forced to resign along with all Soviet Government ministers as a result of the attempted August coup. Officials from all transport ministries and those from the 15 republics met in Tbilisi, Georgia, to discuss proposals for the re structuring of federal and na tional transportation policies and administrations. It appears likely that the min istry will be merged into a cen tral ministry of transportation of the Russian Federation and that the aviation authorities of the other 14 republics will be al lowed to affiliate or to enter commercial treaties with the central body. Those not affiliat ing will not be allowed to use the name or the licenses of Aeroflot or seek central funding for development. • abandoned high-speed rotor concepts in favour of conven tional helicopters. Matuska indicates that the technical question of the diame ter-changing mechanism is not particularly difficult. The Sikorsky design used a gear- driven jackscrew to slide the outboard section of the blade over a streamlined torque tube, which is exposed inboard when the diameter is extended. The jackscrew connects to the blade tip by two tension/torsion straps and has an internal, struc turally redundant strap for fail- safety. Sikorsky believes the VD con cept is a possible method of assisting tiltrotors to become commercially viable. Director of technical engineer ing Tom Sheehy says: "We are not convinced that the state of the art in materials gives the payload fractions high enough to support commercial operation. In addition he says that "...the military may be able to give up payload for speed but commer cial operators don't want to give up payload or speed. Addition ally, acoustic requirements will now probably be a problem for tiltrotors." Theoretically, VD overcomes or reduces many of the inherent drawbacks of tiltro tors. In particular, it improves payload/range, hover and en gine-out performance; it allows more lift for given power, lower downwash velocities and im proved autorotation and it re duces external noise. Passenger comfort benefits from: low tip speeds; greater blade/fuselage clearance; re duced longitudinal gust re sponse and easier vibration control, thanks to the single- engine rotation speed. The design can be more effi cient generally because of: the optimised rotor . sizes; single- engine rotation speed; simpler aeroelastic properties and higher cruise speeds. Drawbacks of VD include weight and complexity but ear lier Sikorsky work has suggested that the advantages over a baseline tiltrotor are likely to outweigh those factors. • FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 2 - 8 October, 1991
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