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Aviation History
1994
1994 - 1020.PDF
HEADLINES Iridium bonanza for McDonnell Douglas McDonnell Douglas has won its largest-ever com mercial space-launch contract, for 40 communications satel lites for the global wireless Iridium telecommunications network which is being built by Motorola. The $400 million contract with Motorola's Arizona-based Satellite Communications divi- Airbus A310s are bound for Argentinas Aerolineas Argentinas has acquired its first Airbus Industrie aircraft — three A310-300s for use on services to the USA. The Pratt & Whitney PW4152-powered machines in three-class, 192-seat configura tion are ex-Delta Air Lines aircraft on six-year leases from an unidentified lessor. Aerlineas indicates that a major factor in their selection was the type's cargo capacity, which is important in the rap idly growing Latin American freight market. Airbus has completed an ex tensive sales tour of Latin America with the A320 and sees the region as one of the most promising markets in the near future. D NEWS IN BRIEF FRANC ADMISSION The French minister of transport, Bernard Bosson, has revealed that Air France will make losses of Fr8-9 billion ($1.4-1.5 billion) in 1993. The previous estimate had been Fr7.5 billion. Air France, which is due to pub lish its annual report at the end of this month, will not confirm the figure. If veri fied, it would mean that the carrier has lost more than Frl3.5 billion in the past four years. See Air Transport, P8. sion covers the use of eight Delta 2 launch vehicles. These will deploy the lightweight sat ellites in low-Earth orbit in 1996, with commercial services starting in 1998. The Iridium system will pro vide global-telecommunication services, including voice, fac simile, data and paging. All data will pass via satellites ar ranged in six orbital planes, with 11 satellites in each plane. The remaining 26 satellites in the $3.37 billion constella tion will be launched by the Russian Khrunichev State Re search and Production Space Centre and China Great Wall Industries of China. The deal with McDonnell Douglas is a major commercial boost for the Delta 2 and a blow to the small-satellite- launcher industry, which had hoped to win launch contracts for the Iridium. • A test firing of the Vulcain cryogenic liquid-oxygen/liquid- hydrogen first-stage engine for the new Ariane 5 was stopped by a fire at T+15s on 11 April. The incident, on the test stand at Societe Europeenne de Propulsion, Vernon, France, caused "considerable damage" to the engine's liquid-oxygen turbopump, says the European Space Agency. It is not known how the incident will affect the test schedules leading to the maiden flight of the Ariane 5 from Kourou, Guiana, officially set for October 1995. The Vulcain has ammassed 44,730s of burn time from 13 engines, including the flight- definition M8 model which has accumulated 10,000s of testing, over 15 times the nominal flight- burn time. • Delta 2: record order boost Baltic DC-9 escapes Gatwick disaster BY DAVID LEARMOUNT ABaltic International Air lines McDonnell Douglas DC-9-15 scheduled passenger flight from Riga, Latvia, came close to disaster following a bad-visibility approach at Lon don Gatwick Airport, UK, on 23 November, 1993, according to an official report. The disaster was averted when a supervisory training captain took physical control from the jump-seat to order and carry out a go-around fol lowing failure of the aircraft's instrument-landing-system (ILS) receiver. Subsequent inquiries into the airline's operating structure by the UK Transport Depart ment's Air Accident Investigat ing Branch, with the co operation of the Latvian au thorities, revealed that limited funding for the new company had led to "inadequate" initial crew training and "poor engi neering back-up resources". The two-pilot crew was car rying out early line training under the supervision of a UK Civil Aviation Authority-li censed training captain con tracted from a UK airline — although the UK carrier subse quently withdrew from the deal, citing poor maintenance. The crew chose to carry out an autopilot-coupled ILS ap proach for runway 26L, using Category I minima. The visibil ity was 1,000m (3,300ft) in fog, which was within limits. On the ILS approach, the co-pilot's glideslope receiver failed. Distracted by trying to restore it, he omitted altitude calls. At about 500ft, the autop ilot rolled the aircraft 20° left. The training captain called "go around", but the pilots, "...both of whom were looking out of the aircraft for visual cues, did not respond". The training captain called: "I have control — going around," and leaned forward, disconnected the autopilot, ap plied full power and rotated the aircraft to 15° nose up. The co-pilot then mistakenly se lected the flaps fully up, but the training captain quickly reselected them to 20°. Investigations revealed that the aircraft dipped a little below 200ft and passed close to maintenance hangars on the south side of the airfield. The two Latvian pilots, who had long experience with Aer- oflot on Russian types, had just completed DC-9 type-conver sion courses in the USA. Since then, they had under gone two days of base training and their line training had started nine days before the incident occurred. • A-7s for Thailand T hailand's Government has approved plans to acquire 18 Vought A-7 Corsairs from the United States Navy, for Baht 2.04 billion ($81.6 mil lion). The A-7s will be oper ated by the Royal Thai Navy over the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea. The cabinet also instructed the Navy to re-submit a proposal to buy six Sikorsky Sea Hawks. • 6 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 20 - 26 April, 1994
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