NewsCivil
Aerolineas signs for 20 737-800s
Aerolineas Argentinas has formalised an agreement for 20 Boeing 737-800 aircraft in a deal valued at $1.8 billion at list prices. “This is a landmark order for our company, both in the number of aircraft and in what they signify for our fleet,” says Mariano Recalde, president of the Buenos Aires-based carrier.
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VivaAerobus orders 52 A320 family aircraft
Mexican low-cost carrier VivaAerobus has signed an agreement to buy 52 Airbus A320 family aircraft, and will shed its all-Boeing 737 fleet by 2016. VivaAerobus' order comprises 40 A320neos and 12 current generation A320s, and is worth $5.1 billion at list prices. It also has options for an additional 40 A320neos, the airline says later today. VivaAerobus now operates 19 Boeing 737-300s. The order is the largest Airbus purchase made by a single carrier in Latin America, says the airframer. VivaAerobus has not selected an engine for the aircraft. VivaAerobus will transition to the A320s in 2014, and will operate only Airbus narrowbodies by 2016 after it replaces its 737 fleet with the new aircraft.
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Air France Considering Alitalia Stake Dilution
Air France-KLM is considering diluting its stake in Alitalia if a deeper restructuring fails to take place, according to French newspaper Les Echos. Air France-KLM owns a 25 percent stake in Alitalia and appears willing to let this fall to 11 percent by not taking part in a EUR€300 million (USD$410.9 million) capital increase, despite having approved the share issue itself, the report said, citing one unnamed source.
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Flight recorder of crashed Lao ATR 72 located
Lao Airlines says it has located a flight recorder from its crashed ATR 72-600, but that strong currents are preventing rescuers and investigators from retrieving it. Vice-president Sengpraseuth Mathouchanh says that the river's muddy waters, strong current and depth have hindered effects to recover the device. It is unclear whether the airline has located the flight data recorder or the cockpit voice recorder. He adds that specific planning needs to be put into the recovery procedure, to "avoid any loss and damage" to the recorder.
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Nextant Aerospace announces Beechcraft King Air C90 upgrade
Nextant Aerospace has announced a partnership with GE Aviation to launch a comprehensive upgrade programme for the Beechcraft King Air family, starting with the C90 version. The upgrade project will seek to duplicate the success of Nextant’s remaking of the Hawker 400 light jet, but on a vastly larger scale, with tens of thousands of King Airs still in service. The King Air C90 upgrade program will replace the Pratt & Whitney Canada PT-6 turboprop engine with the GE Aviation H80, which is a modernized version of the Walter M601. Other upgrades will add a Garmin G1000 flight deck, including a digital stand-by display, a new interior and a refresh of all life-limited components.
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Dassault takes wraps off all-new Falcon 5X
Dassault Aviation has stolen the limelight on the eve of this year's NBAA convention by taking the wraps off the biggest Falcon business jet yet. The long range, large cabin Falcon 5X twinjet boasts a wider fuselage cross-section than the three-engined 7X and is capable of accomodating up to 16 passengers. Carrying eight passengers, the all-new aircraft will have a range of 5,200nm (9,360km). “The Falcon 5X is the new benchmark for the creative use of advanced technology in business aviation,” says Eric Trappier, chairman and CEO of Dassault Aviation. “Using design and manufacturing software and systems pioneered by Dassault, we have been able to build a larger, more comfortable and more capable aircraft that is also more environmentally friendly and much more economical to operate compared to other aircraft in its class.
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Scimitar winglets give Boeing BBJ a foil for long-range drag
Aviation Partners Boeing (APB) announced at NBAA it is launching a split scimitar winglet retrofit program for the family of 737NG-based Boeing Business Jets. The newly-patented technology, which adds a ventral strake and a scimitar cap to APB’s blended winglet, is now entering the business aviation market after being introduced in commercial service in July by United Airlines.
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Heathrow Earnings Rise On Asia, Middle East Traffic
British airport operator Heathrow reported a 22.1 percent rise in earnings on Monday, boosted by higher passenger traffic to Asia and the Middle East. The owner of Heathrow, Southampton, Glasgow and Aberdeen airports said adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) rose to GBP£1.035 billion (USD$1.68 billion) for the nine months to September 30, from GBP£848 million in the same period in 2012.
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ASUR Posts 25 Percent Jump In Q3 Profits
Mexican airport operator ASUR, which operates Cancun and eight other airports in southern Mexico, said on Monday its third-quarter profit rose 24.9 percent, boosted by rising passenger traffic. Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste, earned MXP510.9 million pesos (USD$38.8 million) in the quarter, compared with MXP409.1 million during the third quarter of 2012.
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Airbus CEO Says Japanese Politics Influences Orders
Airbus chief executive Fabrice Bregier said politics in Japan can influence new aircraft purchases by the nation's airlines. "It is clear the political environment has some influence on business as we can see here in Japan, or in Europe and the United States," Bregier said on Monday during a speech in Tokyo.
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Artificial insect eye may open path to sense-and-avoid UAVs
While they cannot match the resolution that humans and other vertebrates get from our single-lens eyes, the multi-lens compound eyes carried by insects are much better at providing a panoramic view with very fast image processing in a small package. That trade-off suggests a promising approach to the challenge of engineering small unmanned air vehicles with autonomous sense-and-avoid capability. Now, a team of Swiss, German and French researchers have built what they believe to be the first fully-functional curved compound artificial eye – and hope to have it flying indoors on a small quadrotor early in 2014. The device, detailed in the 4 June 2013 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, has been demonstrated to guide a small robotic rover along corridors and around corners disguised with a black-and-white checker board pattern that would severely test a human driver. Ramon Pericet-Camara of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) describes the rover test as a “very early” trial verifying the eye’s sense-and-avoid capability in a relatively simple environment.
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AeroVironment’s Puma gets 3.5h endurance
AeroVironment has made design improvements that extend the endurance of its RQ-20A Puma AE unnamed aerial vehicle (UAV) by 75%, to 3.5h. The tier I UAV, which previously had an endurance of two hours, now has a more efficient propulsion system with higher-energy-density batteries, the company tells Flightglobal on the sidelines of the Association of the United States Army’s 2013 annual conference in Washington, DC. Puma is a waterproof AUV used by the US Army and US Marine Corps. It can be assembled in minutes, is launched by hand and can land on water. The battery improvements added one additional pound (0.45kg) of weight to the aircraft, but engineers made aerodynamic improvements and reduced weight in other areas, says the Monrovia, California-based company.
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USAF places latest Reaper order
The US Air Force has finalised a delayed fiscal year 2013 order for 24 more MQ-9 Reaper unmanned air vehicles, in a deal with General Atomics Aeronautical Systems to be worth a maximum of $377 million. Placed by the USAF on 15 October, the order comprises 24 air vehicles worth $305 million – equating to an airframe unit cost of $12.7 million, plus spare parts and support equipment worth a further $72 million, the US Department of Defense says.
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Lycoming to overhaul, improve Aerosonde engines
Lycoming Engines has begun overhauling the heavy-fuel powerplants in AAI’s Aerosonde Mk 4.7 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and will make design changes intended to improve the engines’ reliability, say executives. Both Lycoming and AAI, which supplies the small Aerosonde UAV to the US Navy on a fee-for-service basis, are units of Textron. David Phillips, Textron’s vice president of small and medium endurance unmanned aircraft systems, tells Flightglobal the engine work was brought in-house largely because Lycoming meets processes and standards set by theUS Federal Aviation Administration for manned aircraft.
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Lockheed Martin’s ground sensor system now communicates with UAVs
A wireless ground sensor and communication system developed by Lockheed Martin can now be integrated with unmanned aerial vehicles, allowing UAV operators to lower monitoring costs and improve effectiveness, according to a Lockheed Martin media release. The monitoring system, called the self-powered ad-hoc network (SPAN), is composed of a series of small ground sensors arranged in a mesh pattern.The sensors can detect potential threats and signal a UAV to investigate, says Lockheed Martin.
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Bell unveils V-280 Valor mock-up
Bell Helicopter revealed the first full-scale mock-up of its V-280 Valor tiltrotor aircraft today to attendees of the Association of the United States Army’s annual meeting in Washington DC. The model allows Army procurement officers to see firsthand Bell’s answer to the Army’s request for an aircraft under the Joint Multi-Role (JMR)/Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program. The V-280 will have a composite fuselage made by Spirit AeroSystems, a large-cell carbon-core wing, fly-by-wire controls and a V-shaped tail.
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Bell boosts production at Ala. facility
Bell Helicopter, with the help of Northrop Grumman, has increased production of unmanned helicopters at its facility in Ozark, Ala. The company has reported that the facility now has 600,000 accident-free hours.
LinkMilitary
Israel could maintain F-35s under US supervision
An agreement to perform depot-level maintenance on Israeli air force Lockheed Martin F-35s in Israel under US supervision could solve an ongoing dispute about the issue. The service has previously expressed its opposition to the idea of such heavy maintenance activities being conducted on the stealthy type outside of the country. As part of the Joint Strike Fighter program, Lockheed and the US Air Force are planning to establish regional maintenance centres for the aircraft, including one in Europe. Col Shimon Tsentsiper, commander of the Israeli air force's depot 22, says the way the nation's F-35s will be operated will require "the best understanding of some major systems of the stealth fighter. That can only be achieved by maintaining them in Israel."
http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articl ... on-391946/]Link[/url]Space
Raytheon wins $3 billion missile contract
The Defense Department has awarded Raytheon a sole-source three-year $3 billion contract to supply missile systems that are part of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense Program. The contract covers manufacture and integration of more than 200 Standard Missile-3 SM-3 Block IB missiles starting in 2015.
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American will perform better with merger, CEO says
Tom Horton, the CEO of American Airlines, said the carrier will perform better if allowed to merge with US Airways. "American has been very successful," he said. "(But) it will have a stronger network and be more competitive globally with a merger."
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Analysts predict strong Q3 for Delta Air Lines
Analysts expect Delta Air Lines to report strong third-quarter results on Thursday. Analysts predict the carrier will report earnings per share of up to $1.35, compared to earnings per share of 90 cents in the third quarter of last year.
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TSA abdicating its responsibility on exit lanes
The Transportation Security Administration has informed U.S. airports that TSA staff will no longer guard exits from airports in 2014. The Airports Council International - North America said the TSA's decision will force airports to shoulder the cost of guarding exit lanes on Jan. 1. "ACI-NA strongly objects to TSA's attempt to abdicate its responsibility to provide staff to monitor exit lanes by imposing a costly unfunded mandate on U.S. airports," the group said.
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Blogger: Planes provide faster transit than trains
Blogger Josh Barro boasts about his recent flight from the Queens borough of New York City to Washington, D.C., which delivered him to the nation's capital in less than two hours. "If I lived in Manhattan, the ground transportation advantage might be 10 minutes in the other direction. Flying would still be way faster than taking the train," he writes.
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Survey: 5% of business travelers book travel on mobile phones
The majority of business travelers do not use mobile phones to book air travel, according to a survey by SITA and Air Transport World. Although 84% of business travelers carry mobile phones, less than 5% have used the devices to purchase airline tickets. However, 41% of respondents said they would be willing to use their cell phones to book travel.
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Boston airport terminals get digital facelift
Terminals at Boston Logan International Airport have received new technological upgrades including digital signage, way finding, ground transportation options and airport maps. Flat-screen digital signs are being placed throughout the airport over the next two years to enhance customer service to Logan’s nearly 30 million annual passengers.
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Honeywell partners with British firm to improve in-flight connectivity
Honeywell Aerospace has teamed up with satellite technology firm Inmarsat to develop a satellite-based wi-fi connectivity system that would enable passengers to reliably connect during flights.
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Wright Amendment expiration could spark Texas airfare sale
An airline battle is about to heat up in Texas thanks to a little-known law that is set to expire next year. The good news is that airline passengers should claim the spoils in the form of lower fares. The so-called Wright Amendment, championed by U.S. House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Fort Worth) in 1979, was intended to restrict airline traffic out of Texas’ Love Field and direct more growth toward the then-fledgling Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The legislation was supported by business interests in Dallas. The amendment has had direct consequences for Southwest Airlines, which is headquartered at Love Field and operates one of its biggest hubs at the airport. Over the years, many of the Wright Amendment’s restrictions have phased out. The last limit prohibits nonstop flights from Love Field to 41 states, plus the District of Columbia.
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Some airports choose not to participate in Airport Improvement Program
The nation’s airports once counted on billions of dollars in federal grants to upgrade their facilities, but in an increasingly uncertain fiscal environment, some would prefer to leave the money on the table and leverage their own resources instead. For three decades, the federal Airport Improvement Program has helped airports build new runways, make safety improvements and pay for planning and environmental studies, funded by taxes on airline tickets and aviation fuel. But Washington’s erratic approach to budgeting has tested airports’ traditional dependency on federal funds, and some airport directors have had enough. “We want the government out of this,” said Mark VanLoh, the director of the Aviation Department at Kansas City, Mo.
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Honeywell 10-year outlook expects bizjet deliveries to total $260 billion
Honeywell's most recent business aviation outlook predicts that business jet deliveries will amount to $260 billion from 2013 through 2022. While the value of business jet deliveries will increase over the next decade, the number of aircraft sold each year will decrease as demand for larger business jet models continues, the report said.
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Aviation Quote
No aircraft ever took and held ground.
— US Marine Corps Manual
On This Date
---In 1797... The modern parachute is born as Andre-Jacques Garnerin makes the 1st human parachute descent from the air. Garnerin jumps from a hydrogen balloon at a height of 2,300 feet in Paris.
---In 1898... Augustus Herring pilots a powered biplane based on Octave Chanute’s glider design.
---In 1955…First flight of the Republic XF-105 Thunder Chief.
---In 1956…First flight of the Bell XH-40 (UH-1 prototype), better known as the “Huey.”
---In 1977…First flight of the Antonov An-72 SSSR-19774.
---In 1996…Million Air Flight 406, a Boeing 707-323C with 4 people aboard, crashes into a Dolorosa neighborhood ripping off rooftops and crashing in flames into a restaurant, killing the 4 aboard, 30 in the neighborhood and injuring 50 Ecuador.
---In 2012…Swiss carrier Hello, ceases operations and files for bankruptcy protection.
Daily Video
Editor’s Choice
Humor
Blind Skydiver
A blind man was describing his favorite sport – parachuting. When asked how this was accomplished, he said that things were all done for him: "I am placed in the door and told when to jump. My hand is placed on my release ring for me, and out I go."
"But how do you know when you are going to land?" he was asked.
"I have a very keen sense of smell and I can smell the trees and grass when I am 300 feet from the ground," he answered.
But how do you know when to lift your legs for the final arrival on the ground?" he was again asked.
He quickly answered "Oh, the dog’s leash goes slack."
Trivia
Aircraft Name Game
1. Poseidon
2. Orion
3. Neptune
4. Avenger
5. Devastator
6. Provider
7. Lancer
8. Wild Weasel
9. Air Comet
10. Liberator
11. Freedom Fighter
12. Bronco
miamiair wrote:Dassault takes wraps off all-new Falcon 5X
Dassault Aviation has stolen the limelight on the eve of this year's NBAA convention by taking the wraps off the biggest Falcon business jet yet. The long range, large cabin Falcon 5X twinjet boasts a wider fuselage cross-section than the three-engined 7X and is capable of accomodating up to 16 passengers. Carrying eight passengers, the all-new aircraft will have a range of 5,200nm (9,360km). “The Falcon 5X is the new benchmark for the creative use of advanced technology in business aviation,” says Eric Trappier, chairman and CEO of Dassault Aviation. “Using design and manufacturing software and systems pioneered by Dassault, we have been able to build a larger, more comfortable and more capable aircraft that is also more environmentally friendly and much more economical to operate compared to other aircraft in its class.
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