All Safety News – Page 1239
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Mars exploration discussed
Representatives from four international space agencies met at the British National Space Centre in London this month to discuss their plans for Mars exploration. NASA intends to launch a Mars orbiter and lander next January, but these plans may change as a result of last year's investigations into the ...
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DoT earmarks $11 billion for FAA from record $55 billion allocation
The US Administration has earmarked a record $55 billion for US Department of Transportation (DoT) spending in fiscal year 2001, nearly $5 billion higher than the figure finally agreed for the current year. The US Federal Aviation Administration's share of the request is $11 billion, including $6.6 billion for ...
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Bad company
Asia's poor safety performers tarnish airlines in the region with good records David Learmount/LONDON By the end of the 1990s, South Asia and Asia Pacific had earned a poor reputation for airline safety, although not all of the region's airlines deserved it, but they suffer for the sins of others, ...
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Coolant leak caused NMD test failure
A leak of nitrogen gas used to cool two infrared sensors on the US Ballistic Missile Defense Organization's experimental National Missile Defence (NMD) interceptor's exoatmospheric kill vehicle (EKV) was the cause of the failure of a $100 million test firing on 18 January. A problem with the infrared sensors ...
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Lengthy service
The world's longest airliner, the 777-300, has been working for 18 months. Some of its key operators assess its progress Andrzej Jeziorski/SINGAPORE Max Kingsley-Jones/LONDON Although Airbus Industrie pioneered the widebody twinjet concept in the early 1970s, its rival Boeing has developed the configuration to its ultimate size and weight, with ...
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Road to recovery
The gloom of the past two years has been replaced by a cautious optimism Chris Jasper and Max Kingsley-Jones/LONDON When the aerospace industry last gathered in Singapore, for Asian Aerospace '98, the sense of gloom was almost palpable. Subsequent events fully justified that pessimism. Only now are Asian orders beginning ...
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Airbus lines up huge MAS order
Andrew Doyle/MUNICH Paul Lewis/WASHINGTON DC Malaysia Airlines (MAS) is in the final stages of negotiations with Airbus Industrie on an order for up to 80 aircraft, including 18 A340-500/600 widebodies and up to 62 examples of the A320 family. Industry sources say the aircraft types have been agreed ...
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BA and KLM post third-quarter losses
Chris Jasper/LONDON Frits Njio/AMSTERDAM British Airways has announced third quarter results which suggest it is on the way to a big full year loss, although a rise in yields suggests its new premium passenger strategy is paying off. European rival KLM has posted even poorer figures, but unlike BA ...
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Japan suffers another launch failure
Japan's space programme has suffered another severe blow with the failure of an M-5 rocket launch and the loss of the Astro-E astronomical observation satellite on 10 January. The failure is being attributed to a first-stage nozzle malfunction, and comes three months after the ¥34.3 billion ($320 million) in-flight ...
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WAAS delayed as safety tests run into difficulties
Raytheon and US Federal Aviation Administration officials have held the first of a series of meetings to determine the impact of problems uncovered during acceptance testing of the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS). A 60-day stability test of the key satellite-based navigation system, intended to improve the accuracy, availability ...
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Russians attach strings to opening up Polar routes
Paul Lewis/Washington DC The Russian Federation has agreed to a limited opening of the new transpolar and transSiberian routes to scheduled traffic, but is making full and open access conditional upon receiving international assistance to modernise its air traffic management system. At a recent International Civil Aviation Organisation-chaired ...
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SIA's Star acceptance gives Thai a codeshare headache
Andrzej Jeziorski/SINGAPORE Thai Airways International is considering quitting the Star Alliance as a result of rival Singapore Airlines' (SIA) entry into the group from April. Thai president Thamnoon Wanglee has reportedly warned that it could lose $10 million a year in codesharing revenues that will have to be ...
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Airports
The completion of a $250 million reconstruction of Domodedovo Airport in Moscow is due by the middle of this year, says the airport's operator, East Line group. The reconstruction includes nearly doubling the size of the passenger terminal. The international section of will be opened next month, to be followed ...
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SpaceDev/Boeing link for exploration
SpaceDev and Boeing have agreed a teaming arrangement to investigate opportunities of "mutual strategic interest" in commercial deep-space exploration and exploitation. They will use as the basis for the study a variety of small low-cost missions formulated by SpaceDev, the world's first commercial space exploration company. The two firms ...
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China Airlines and EVA emerge from Asia's downturn
Brent Hannon/TAIPEI Taiwan's two largest carriers have reported a financially sound 1999. China Airlines (CAL) pulled out of the Asian downturn and posted a pre-tax profit after making a loss a year earlier, and rival EVA Air turned in healthy net earnings. CAL's $91 million pre-tax profit compares with ...
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BM acts as US/UK bilateral talks fail
Chris Jasper/LONDON Ramon Lopez/WASHINGTON DC Airlines in the UK and USA are coming to terms with the failure of bilateral air services talks. British Midland (BM) - worst hit by the collapse of negotiations - has responded by filing a joint codeshare application with partner United Airlines that suggests it ...
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P&W abandons work on PW4173 engine
Pratt & Whitney is understood to be suspending development of the growth PW4173 engine and is no longer offering the powerplant to airlines as an option to power the Airbus A330-300 after encountering technical delays and poor market demand. The engine is a 73,000lb-thrust (325kN) growth development of the ...
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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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Kenya Airways takes first step towards all-Boeing fleet
Kenya Airways has finalised its long-term fleet renewal plans with a $750 million five-year programme that will see the airline move to an all-Boeing fleet. The decision to acquire a mix of Boeing 737-700s and 767-300ERs was taken two days before the loss of one of its four Airbus ...