FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
2004
2004-09 - 1983.PDF
AIR TRANSPORT CONSTRUCTION Heathrow tower takes shape Construction of the glass cab for London Heathrow's new air traffic control tower has been completed on the south side of the airport, and it is being repositioned to its permanent location, adjacent to Terminal 3 and east of Terminal 5, later this month. Early next year the 30m (98ft)-tall cab, which weighs 862t, will be progressively raised to top out the 87m-high tower complex using a hydraulic jack ing system that will allow five 12m-long mast sections to be installed. The structure will be almost twice as tall as Heathrow's existing tower located in the central terminal area. Heathrow airport operator BAA says the new tower is due to become operational "towards the end of 2006", around two years before the new Terminal 5 is scheduled to open. Hawk The fuel system on each aircraft is unique. Test them all with the DE8490. BCF Designs' fuel system test set tracks down faults in the time it takes other test sets to warm up. It calculates pass/fail limits automatically and downloads results onto PC for trend analysis. It is remarkably easy to operate, with new users trained in less than 30 minutes. The DE8490 Use it on any aircraft www.testbcf.com For more information, call +44 (0)1285 642434 or email: sales@bcfdesigns.co.uk /» NAVIGATION DAVID LEARMOUNT / LONDON Safety issues add to capacity woes Eurocontrol identifies runway and airport concerns Eurocontrol has predicted that by 2025 air traffic movements in its airspace will increase by a factor of 2.5 and that there will be a sys tem capacity shortfall of 25% compared with demand, with air ports identified as the capacity pinch point. * Meanwhile, the agency has revealed that its centralised safety reporting system shows that Europe's runway safety is far more fragile than previously realised, with more than one unauthorised runway incursion incident hap pening somewhere in the Eurocontrol region every day. The capacity figures have come from a continuously running Eurocontrol system for assessing capacity against demand, known as the constraints to growth (CTG) study. The runway incur sion data is emerging from a grad ually maturing centralised European reporting system for all kinds of air traffic management (ATM) incidents. These are just two of the issues that will be examined fully at Eurocontrol's 27-29 October Airport Operations Conference and Exhibition, set to take place at the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium. The agency says it has called the conference to try to kick-start awareness of how unprepared the region's air ports are to face future capacity and safety challenges, and what remedies can be applied to make them more efficient at dealing with both issues. The 25% system capacity short fall has been calculated on the assumption that traffic growth is at the higher end of the predicted band, but that airports have improved the utilisation of exist ing or already-approved addi tional runways to the maximum extent possible, which Euro- control says is 50 movements an hour - a figure that is well above the rate ever achieved by all but two or three of Europe's airports. COMPOSITES JUSTIN WASTNAGE / AUGSBURG EADS invests hopes in vacuum EADS Military Aircraft's aerostructures facility in Augsburg is investing in its vacuum-assisted process (VAP) for large-panel composite parts as it seeks to take a larger share of Airbus civil production. EADS Augsburg is the largest external structure supplier to Airbus, pro ducing parts for the entire product range. It is also extensively involved in production for military aircraft such as the Airbus A400M, as well as the Panavia Tornado and Eurofighter Typhoon. However, Gerd Berchtold, vice-president for commercial aerostructures at EADS Augsburg, says the plant aims to grow through civil projects to combat the uncertainty created by military spending cycles. The plant has finished its parts production for Tranche 1 Typhoons, for example, and is redeploying workers while it waits for a firm commitment for Tranche 2, he says. The company is to extend its patented VAP technique, used on the pro duction of panels for the flap tracks of the Airbus A380 and for Eurofighter components, once the process is certificated. Hans-Wolfgang Schroder, composites production director at the site, says: "We need to be able to build composites cheaply, but we also need to demonstrate reliability." EADS Augsburg estimates a cost advantage of around 30% with vac uum-produced parts compared with traditional prepreg components. The plant estimates that large composite parts will be around 20% lighter than metal structures. "In principle all parts we make we intend to make available in VAP com posite, if Airbus demands it," says Schroder. 16 12-18 OCTOBER 2004 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL www.fliqhtinternational.com
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
