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Aviation History
1992
1992 - 0854.PDF
HEADLINES BAe withdraws from Arab-British Dynamics BY ALAN GEORGE Under pressure from the UK Government, British Aerospace is withdrawing from its Egyptian joint venture, Arab-British Dynamics (ABD). ABD, in which BAe has a 30% stake, was established in the late 1970s to produce the Swingfire anti-tank missile. BAe's partner is the Arab Or ganisation for Industrialisation, a Cairo-based company backed by Gulf funds. Whitehall discovered early in 1991 that the joint venture was planning to produce com ponents for Egyptian-built Scud missiles. BAe has since been under Foreign Office pressure to restructure ABD. ABD's planned activities would not have violated UK export controls, since no equipment would have been exported from the country. The Government was neverthe less concerned that ABD's Scud plans might have undermined the credibility of the UK's com mitment to the Missile Tech nology Control Regime. It is understood that pro tracted negotiations have led to an agreement for ABD's disso lution. BAe has declined to comment on the affair. • Long-stay Mir cosmonaut returns The Commonwealth of Inde pendent States (CIS) cosmo naut Sergei Krikalyov returned to Earth aboard Soyuz TM13 on 25 March, after a mission lasting 312 days — the third-longest manned space mission so far. He was launched last May aboard Soyuz TM12, and was recycled routinely as the Mir flight engineer when a Novem ber mission on which he was to return was cancelled. It is not the first time a cosmonaut has been obliged to remain longer on a Mir, nor was Krikalyov ever stranded, as some reports have indicated. Krikalyov returned with fel low CIS cosmonaut Alexander Volkov, who was launched in October 1991, and with the Ger man, Klaus-Dietrich Flade, who was launched on a $26 million commercial mission on 17 March aboard Soyuz TM14. • DORNIER STARTS WORK ON Do.328 FUSELAGE The fuselage of the third Dormer 328 regional airliner is being completed at Hornier Luftfahrt's Oberpfaffenhofen factory near Munich. Italian Do.328 partner Aermacchi has delivered the fuselages for all three test aircraft. The first pre-production aircraft is expected to fly- in late July, and the second is scheduled to make its first flight later this month. The first production version of the 30- to 33-seat aircraft will be delivered in mid-1993. The wreckage has been recovered for examination by the NSTB Icing procedures under investigation times using Type I fluid in a mixture of 45% glycol and 55% water. Association of European Airlines figures suggest this fluid would protect against icing for around 15min in the prevailing conditions. Gel-like Type II flu ids could have provided protec tion for up to 45min, but are not used by USAir. The airline says Type I fluid has proved "perfectly accepta ble", and cites performance and environmental concerns sur rounding Type II. LaGuardia does not allow use of Type II fluids except for de-icing aircraft which have stood overnight. The airport is concerned that gel deposited on the runways during take-offs could affect braking performance adversely. USAir company procedures require the crew to check critical surfaces visually 20min after de- icing. The co-pilot says he checked the right wing several times during taxiing, but Fokker says the "very little contamina tion" sufficient to affect lift would not be visible from the cockpit, and adds that the left wing could have been checked only by the captain. F.28 windtunnel tests with wing contamination have shown a 25% reduction in maximum lift and a 6° lower stall angle of attack. The test, with contamina tion equivalent to ice particles l-2mm in diameter at about one particle/cm2, replicated a 1969 incident in which an F.28 force- landed when it failed to acceler ate after rotation and lift-off. • BY GRAHAM WARWICK IN ATLANTA The 22 March crash of a USAir Fokker F.28-4000, taking off from New York's LaGuardia Airport in snow, has called de-icing procedures into question. The captain, a flight attendant and 25 passengers were killed when the F.28 crashed into Flushing Bay. The co-pilot, another flight attendant and 22 passengers survived. USAir flight 405 was sched uled to leave for Cleveland, Ohio, at 20.35. The aircraft was de-iced at the gate at 20.29. The USAir de-icing truck then stalled behind the F.28, preventing it from departing. The truck was moved and the aircraft de-iced a second time at 20.59, leaving the gate a minute later. The F.28 then queued to take off for some 30min, as only one of LaGuar- dia's two runways had been cleared of snow. The tempera ture was -0.5°, and some 5cm of wet snow fell between 19.00 and 21.40, says the US National Transportation Safety Board. The F.28's lift-off from the 2,130m-long Runway 13, at about 21.30, was apparently nor mal, but there was pronounced buffet almost immediately and the aircraft rolled to the left. The left wingtip scraped the runway and the F.28 veered off, striking several obstacles. The aircraft began to break up and had caught fire by the time it stopped, inverted in water. The aircraft was de-iced both FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 1 - 7 April, 1992
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