All aerospace news – Page 1747
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Schweizer denial
Schweizer Aircraft, the pioneering family-held US light helicopter manufacturer, is not for sale, says president Paul Schweizer. His denial follows the mysterious distribution of a prospectus which indicates that the Elmira, New York-based concern seeks a buyer. Source: Flight International
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Cleaning up the act
The increasing risk to spacecraft from debris is causing concern in the space industry Tim Furniss/LONDON Space debris is a perennial problem. About 8,700 man-made objects larger than tennis balls - of which only about 700 are operational satellites - can be tracked in Earth orbit. Of these, ...
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CarterCopter rebuilds for new flight tests
CarterCopter, the Texas-based maker of a proof-of-concept hybrid autogyro and fixed-wing aircraft, is rebuilding and modifying the prototype after it crash-landed on its twelfth flight. The innovative gyroplane, designed by company president Jay Carter, is designed to take off and land vertically and fly at low speeds like a ...
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Eurocopter delays EC145 sales effort
Eurocopter has put back commercial sales of its EC145 medium-twin utility helicopter for around 12 months, until the production backlog, totalling 40 machines for the French security forces, has been cleared. Advertising and promotion of the Turboméca Arriel 2E1-powered machine has also been delayed temporarily. Eurocopter president Siegfried Sobotta ...
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Fractional ownership to be a click away
Kate Sarsfield/LONDON TransJet.com, an Internet-based business aircraft and helicopter fractional ownership venture believed to be the first of its kind, will start operations on 15 February in the USA. The operation, owned by 3wVentures.com, a California-based Internet funding subsidiary of venture capitalist Web Capital of Florida, plans to launch ...
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US distributor first to order Socata TB GT
Julian Moxon/TARBES Socata has launched its TB Generation Two (TB GT) range of light aircraft with a major US order for 79 aircraft. The deal, signed with recently appointed West Coast distributor New Avex, includes up to 10 TBM700 single-engined turboprops. The Aerospatiale Matra general aviation subsidiary has also ...
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American eyes aircraft for Asia
American Airlines is looking at its aircraft acquisition options to extend the range of its fleet to open planned new non-stop routes from Chicago and Dallas/Fort Worth to Asia. The US carrier has applied to the US Department of Transport to operate to Beijing and Shanghai under a revised ...
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Airbus slips delivery plan for A3XX
Paul Lewis/WASHINGTON DC Airbus Industrie is targeting October 2005 for first production delivery of the A3XX-100 if it can muster sufficient market support by mid-year for the consortium's supervisory board to commit to a simultaneous launch offer of passenger and cargo variants of the ultra-large aircraft. The October ...
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Air France/Delta to raid rival groups
Emma Kelly/PARIS and ATLANTA Air France and Delta Air Lines are identifying members of competing alliances to join their unnamed airline grouping, which they aim to unveil in the second quarter. The partners are tight-lipped on potential alliance members following disappointment over their public courting of British Midland ...
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FAA issues MD-11 inspection ADs
The US Federal Aviation Administration is proposing to issue eight additional airworthiness directives (ADs) calling on the inspection of Boeing MD-11 electrical system wiring. The move follows the 1998 crash of a Swissair MD-11 near Halifax, Nova Scotia. An electrical fire is suspected. The FAA says that the ADs ...
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SIA Overrun
Singapore Airlines (SIA) has replaced the nose landing gear of one of its Airbus A310-300s after a runway overrun at Kuching International Airport in Malaysia on 29 January. The aircraft landed in heavy rain, coming to a stop on soft ground about 20m (65ft) past the end of the runway. ...
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Helicopter training
Helicopter Adventures of the USA has signed a training agreement with the Hellenic Police Department of Greece. Training of eight police officers on specialised infrared equipment will span three months, starting in March. The Hellenic Police force operates three Eurocopter BO105s and plans to add two new generation EC135s this ...
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NEAR near
NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous NEAR spacecraft is approaching the asteroid Eros for the second time. The first rendezvous attempt was thwarted by a spacecraft fault in December 1998. It is hoped that the NEAR will be in orbit around Eros on 14 February. The craft is sending back images ...
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Cassini tested
Many of the science instruments aboard the Cassini spacecraft en route to Saturn in 2004 have been calibrated and tested during a 1.5 million kilometres flyby of the asteroid Masrusky. Cassini was launched in October 1997 aboard a Titan 4B en route to Saturn via flybys of Venus and the ...
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Virgin deal raises doubts over SIA's role within Star
DAVID KNIBB SEATTLE Sir Richard Branson, newly knighted in the UK's millennial honours list, calls the deal between his Virgin Atlantic group and Singapore Airlines (SIA) a "marriage made in heaven", but Star alliance members in Australasia are having heartburn over its implications. The codeshare access that SIA gains ...
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US-UK mini deal threatens to sideline cargo
PETER CONWAY LONDON The latest in the seemingly unending round of open skies talks between the USA and UK in Washington on 4-5 January failed to produce the widely predicted "mini deal" over access to London Heathrow. But most observers still expect some kind of interim compromise to emerge when ...
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Lending a hand
JACK SELLSBY LONDON Fuelled by intense competition, financing from Airbus and Boeing, backed by the export credit agencies, is running at record levels. Europe and the USA have been squabbling for years over the support given to their rival civil aerospace champions Airbus and Boeing. With the manufacturers now neck-and-neck ...
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Cargo on-line
PETER CONWAY LONDON A new system aims to bring air cargo into the Internet age. But is the model right for the market? For the past year, former McKinsey consultant Todd Morgan, together with his colleague Doug Ash, ex-managing director of global freight forwarder MSAS, have been touring airline and ...
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Ahead of the game
PETER MORRELL & CHERIE H-Y LU CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY The 1990s have seen substantial improvements in productivity and costs in the airline industry, even if the gains have not been uniform. When Cranfield University last probed the productivity and efficiency of the industry five years ago, the emphasis was on lean ...
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Australian challengers faced with airport constraints
Severe airport capacity constraints are a major obstacle to plans by Virgin Australia, Impulse Airlines and Spirit Airlines to take on Australia's established carriers. Their problems date back to 1988, when Australia still operated its tightly-regulated Two Airline Policy. At that time Canberra granted Ansett and Australian Airlines (later ...