All news – Page 6889
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Fine Air gains credit
US cargo airline Fine Air Services has opened a $32.5 million line of credit to help finance expansion in South America, also raising the prospect of it exercising an option to acquire a leased Lockheed L-1011 freighter. Fine Air cancelled a public offering in August after one of its McDonnell ...
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Shugrue is eased out as Pan Am chief
Pan American World Airways has eased out its co-founder and chief executive, Martin Shugrue, to be replaced by airline veteran David Banmiller, who is charged with turning around the start-up's heavy losses and seeing through the merger of operations with Carnival Air Lines. Pan Am confirms that Shugrue has ...
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TRW/BDM To Merge
TRW has agreed a $1 billion cash acquisition of BDM International, a US systems integration house with major defence interests, which will boost the group's existing fast-growing space and defence division. The enlarged division will have sales of $4-5 billion, representing more than 40% of TRW, the rest of ...
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Frontier bids for WestPac
Graham Warwick/WASHINGTON DC A US bankruptcy-court judge will make a decision on 3 December between rival bids for Western Pacific Airlines. Frontier Airlines, which called off plans to merge with WestPac earlier this year, has switched tack and is bidding to take over its bankrupt would-be partner. WestPac ...
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Safe and sound
Once in a while, a proposal emerges that has so many clear benefits and so few potential dangers, that the only question is why it is still just a proposal. Within a few weeks, Europe's transport ministers will be faced with just such a compelling idea when they are asked ...
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Italians sign up for 18 C-130Js
Andrea Spinelli/GENOA The Italian air force has signed its long-awaited deal with Lockheed Martin for the delivery of 18 C-130J Hercules 2 transports. It is now considering a further order of C-130Js to meet an airborne-early-warning (AEW) requirement. At the same time, the US armed forces have ordered ...
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CH-60 completes first shipboard deployment
The Sikorsky Aircraft CH-60 fleet-combat-support helicopter has successfully completed its first shipboard deployment in the Atlantic as part of a US Navy test programme to demonstrate that it has enough performance for the required missions. The CH-60 combines features of the US Army's UH-60 Black Hawk and the USN's ...
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Hughes on target for F/A-18 FLIR
Ramon Lopez/WASHINGTON DC Hughes Aircraft has won the competition, worth nearly $1 billion, to provide a next-generation navigation-attack pod, the advanced-targeting forward-looking infra-red system (ATFLIR), for the Boeing F/A-18C/D/E/F Hornet family. The Hughes Aircraft Terminator II third-generation FLIR sensor and laser-designator pod will replace a navigation pod made ...
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German parliament finally clears EF2000 funding
The Eurofighter EF2000 has cleared the final political obstacle to a German signature on the production memorandum of understanding (MoU), expected to be signed later this month along with partners Italy, Spain and the UK. On 26 November, the German parliament passed the 1998 defence budget, giving the all-clear ...
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BAe tests helmet mounted sight
British Aerospace has test flown a Pilkington Optronics/Kentron helmet-mounted sighting system on a Hawk 200 light-fighter aircraft. Pilkington Optronics has developed the helmet sight, and South Africa's Kentron is providing the optical helmet-tracker. Flight trials are being carried out by a BAe Military Aircraft & Aerostructures Cockpit Research and Development ...
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Lockheed Martin eyes USAF role for KTX-2
Lockheed Martin is helping Samsung Aerospace to design and develop the KTX-2 light combat aircraft/advanced trainer with a view to offering a version to the US Air Force to meet its future Bomber Fighter Training System (BFTS) requirement. The BFTS programme will provide the USAF with an eventual replacement ...
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Turkey LANTIRN
Turkey has ordered 20 more Lockheed Martin LANTIRN targeting pods, worth $54 million, for delivery in 1999. Delivery of 20 targeting pods and 40 LANTIRN navigation pods was completed in 1993. Source: Flight International
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Polish Gripen
Polish air force commander-in-chief Kazimierz Dziok has become the first Polish pilot to fly the Saab JAS 39 Gripen, one of the aircraft being considered for Poland's new fighter requirement. The flight - in a two-seat JAS39B - took place during a visit to Sweden shortly before the arrival of ...
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Rafael tempts Australia
Douglas Barrie/LONDON Israel's national armaments agency, Rafael, is offering the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) an imaging infra-red (IIR) variant of its Python 4 short-range dogfight missile, alongside its baseline bid of a basic IR variant. The IIR seeker for the weapon, possibly known as the Python 4 ...
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Comanche and Apache ride out together
The Boeing/Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche, which resumed flight-testing with a new transmission in August at Sikorsky's West Palm Beach, Florida, test site has yet to undertake critical snap turns, but has reached a top airspeed of 171kt (316.4km/h). The single Comanche prototype (seen alongside the US Army's attack helicopter, the Boeing ...
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RNZAF upgrades
The Royal New Zealand Air Force plans to upgrade its primary-trainer fleet by replacing its 15 Pacific Aerospace (PAC) CT/4B Airtrainers with 13 leased CT4Es. The later model is powered by Avco Lycoming's AIO-540L1E5, delivering 225kW (300hp). Half the order is scheduled for delivery by August 1998, with the ...
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RAF Queen's Flight contractor comes under safety audit
A full safety audit of the civilian maintenance contractor employed on the Royal Air Force's Queen's Flight began on 24 November, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has confirmed. The check followed an investigator's interim report on a potentially catastrophic multiple-engine failure on a British Aerospace 146-100 C.Mk 1 on ...
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Phazotron offers China second alternative for its F-10 radar
Douglas Barrie/LONDON Russian radar design house Phazotron is offering China an electronically scanned phased-array radar for the Chengdu F-10 fighter aircraft alongside the mechanically steered variant of the Zhuk, or N-010, already on offer for the project. When Phazotron revealed its bid for the F-10 radar, it described ...
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Eagle Eye VTOL demonstrator gets airborne again
The Bell Helicopter Eagle Eye tiltrotor unmanned air vehicle (UAV) has resumed flying in preparation for the forthcoming US Navy vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) demonstration, which may lead to the fielding of an operational system. The USN's plans for a maritime VTOL UAV were shelved five years ago, ...
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F-18 wing-drop hitch still defies cure
Boeing and the US Navy are to report in mid-December on the prospects for curing a persistent wing-drop problem with the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. Fixes tested so far have failed to eliminate sudden uncommanded wing drops during manoeuvres, which have been described as "the toughest problem to date" in ...