All Safety News – Page 1307
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News
Lufthansa confirms talks with struggling Air Namibia
Hilka Birns/CAPE TOWN Lufthansa has confirmed that it is negotiating with TransNamib, the state holding company of Air Namibia, which is looking for an alliance partner in order to stem alleged serious financial loses on its intercontinental services. "Talks have taken place. They were held in a positive ...
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JARs could scupper 'virtual airlines' in Europe
British Airways' "virtual airline" arm Airline Management (AML) has been advised by the UK Civil Aviation Authority to make its management structure more accountable. If it cannot do this it will fail to meet European Joint Aviation Requirements-Operations (JARs) Rules when they take effect on 1 April, 1999. The ...
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European free flight demonstrated in Berlin
Chris Yates/BERLIN The first live trial of the prototype Airborne Separation Assurance System (ASAS), jointly developed by the Eurocontrol Experimental Centre as part of the Free Route Experimental Encounter Resolution programme, and Carmenta of Sweden, has been successfully completed. Initial results were demonstrated at the Global Navcom 98 ...
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Sakha ATC update
Airsys-ATM has clinched a deal to modernise and equip the air traffic control (ATC) systems of the Sakha Republic (ex-Yakutia) in north-eastern Siberia, over which many trans-Siberian and planned cross-polar airways are routed. Under the contract, details of which have not been revealed, the joint venture between Thomson-CSF and Siemens ...
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EC eyes tougher noise policy
Alan George/BRUSSELS A significant tightening of European emissions and noise controls is foreshadowed in a European Commission (EC) consultation paper, which is intended to help formulate a new environmental policy while incorporating the decisions of the United Nations Kyoto conference on climate change. The consultation paper, entitled Air ...
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Counting chickens
Manufacturing mergers and corporate consolidations have been dominating the aerospace industry in the USA and, belatedly in Europe, for several years. The amalgamation of Lockheed and Martin Marietta, Boeing and McDonnell Douglas and the continuing debate about an Airbus Industrie single corporate entity had been observed from Asia with apparent ...
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Mooney Eagle programme advances towards its target
Mooney Aircraft's worst fears for development of its new M20S Eagle piston single have failed to materialise, and it is on schedule to begin delivering the entry-level aircraft in January, after US approval around 1 December. Soon after Mooney launched the Eagle early this year, company sources confided that ...
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Bul Aero's all-composite Zulu ultralight enters production
Bul Aero,the Avions Robin sister company, has started production of its Zulu single-engined ultralight aircraft. The Zulu, which achieved French certification in July, has clocked up more than 100h of flight testing at the company's Darois base. The all-composite Rotax 912-powered Zulu offers a maximum take-off weight of 550kg ...
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FAA examines insulation rules after MD-11 crash
Ramon Lopez/WASHINGTON DC Within six months, the US Federal Aviation Administration is to produce a tougher burn test specification for aircraft internal insulation blankets. The action results partly from investigations into the 2 September crash of a Swissair Boeing MD-11 off Nova Scotia. Although the cause of the fatal ...
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Airbus stands by safety regulations
Airbus has insisted that existing safety regulations are adequate for large aircraft such as the 480/660-seat A3XX now on the drawing board. Speaking at the Very Large Transport Aeroplane (VLTA) conference at Noordwijkerhout, the Netherlands, on 13-16 October, Wolfgang Didszuhn, vice-president for product integrity at Airbus, said: "There is ...
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Boeing targets year end for assessment of 747 stretch
Guy Norris/LOS ANGELES Boeing expects to complete windtunnel tests of a stretched, 500-seater 747 by the end of the year and, pending the successful conclusion of business case studies and sufficient customer commitments, says it could launch the aircraft by mid-1999. Boeing, which celebrated 30 years of 747 assembly earlier ...
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Russia and USA sign to commit to safety
Russia and the USA have signed two agreements aimed at improving aviation safety relations between the two countries. The deals were signed last month by US State Secretary Madeleine Albright and her Russian counterpart, Yevgeni Primakov (who has subsequently become prime minister). The main part of the first ...
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Virgin to grow single-aisle fleet
Günter Endres/LONDON Virgin Atlantic is to boost its Airbus A320 fleet in the next few months to accommodate the expansion of its European scheduled and charter flights. Initial expansion is expected later this year, with the opening of the London Heathrow-Moscow service, followed by the start of the new ...
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'Intranet in the sky' is planned
Graham Warwick/WASHINGTON DC Two European airlines are leading the drive to link aircraft on the ground and in the air with the airline's "intranet" information technology systems. Lufthansa charter affiliate Condor and Swissair plan demonstrations of systems to allow Internet-style exchanges of information with aircraft using low-power datalinks ...
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Southern African airlines struggle to survive as profits plunge
By Hilka Birns/CAPE TOWN Dangerously low profit margins are threatening the future of airlines in Southern Africa as low yields from domestic services and excessive levies imposed by government-owned monopolies take their toll, according to the Airline Association of Southern Africa (AASA). Airlines in the region are reporting ...
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Space rescue
Tim Furniss/LONDON On 26 September, 92 days after being lost in deep space, the European Space Agency (ESA)/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) began sending back images of the sun again. The spacecraft's remarkable rescue owes much of its success to the initial location work completed by the large radio ...
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FAA performs a U-turn on non-US pilot-training rules
David Learmount/LONDON The US Federal Aviation Administration has performed a dramatic policy U-turn, allowing non-US schools to train pilots for an FAA licence. The policy change was prompted by the fear of an imminent ruling by the European Joint Aviation Authorities, which would curtail the use of US pilot ...
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JetProp converted Malibu gets US go-ahead
Pilots no longer have to wait until 2000 to fly a turboprop-powered Piper Malibu. Customers with an aircraft and $589,000 to spare can now have the piston single converted to a Pratt &Whitney Canada PT6A-34 engine by JetProp. The Spokane, Washington-based company is owned by the same person who is ...
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Rutan to launch Boomerang after production agreement
Graham Warwick/WASHINGTON DC Burt Rutan's unconventional, asymmetric piston twin, the Boomerang, is set to enter production. Oregon-based Morrow Aircraft has reached an agreement with Rutan under which the one-off design could be certificated within three years - provided that sufficient financing is secured. Under the agreement, Rutan's Scaled ...
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GE90-powered Continental 777 hits ETOPS proving flight hitch
This new General Electric GE90-powered Continental Airlines Boeing 777 had to carry out a precautionary diversion following a starboard engine low oil-quantity alert during a transpacific extended range twin engine operations (ETOPS) proving flight for the airline. The aircraft, en route on a nonstop New York-Tokyo flight on 7 October, ...