Ramon Lopez/NEW YORK
ISRAEL AIRCRAFT Industries (IAI) is expected to select by the end of the year the new fuselage and empennage subcontractor for production versions of its Astra Galaxy Mach 0.85 wide body twin-engine business jet.
The company held a bidder's conference in October, attended by candidate subassembly manufacturers, which include Spain's Gamesa, Romania's Romaero, Fokker Aircraft and Northrop Grumman's Vought operation. IAI is expected to produce a shortlist of contenders in early December and to ask for final bids. Roy Bergstrom, president of Astra Jet, the US-based business aircraft marketing arm of IAI, says that the fuselage-vendor selection is due within weeks.
The Galaxy project is nine months behind schedule, in part because of the decision to shift fuselage and empennage production to Tel Aviv from Yakovlev in Russia. The fuselage work was falling behind schedule, but Yakovlev had completed all drawings for the major subassembly.
Work on five pre-production Astra Galaxys has begun. Wing skins machined and formed in California will soon be shipped to Tel Aviv, where aircraft tooling is set up. The replacement vendor must deliver production fuselage assemblies beginning in 1997.
The first flight of the twinjet, powered by Pratt & Whitney Canada PW306A turbofans, is due in the fourth quarter of 1996, leading to certification and first deliveries a year later. IAI hopes to produce two aircraft a month.
The eight-seat executive jet, which has a transoceanic range of 6,850km (3,700nm), can be converted to a 19-seat, three-abreast, corporate shuttle. Plans are for a family of Astra Galaxy's including stretched 30- and 50-seat regional aircraft.
Bergstrom says, that Astra Jet holds more than 30 deposits on the $14 million Galaxy, as well as five firm orders.
Source: Flight International
