F-35 PROGRESS WORRIES KEY US SENATORS
FIGHTERS The US Senate Armed Services Committee chairman and ranking member Carl Levin and John McCain expressed deep concern about the Lockheed Martin F-35 programme's "growing costs and apparent delays" following a closed hearing with Department of Defense cost experts who reportedly warned the programme faces a $16 billion cost overrun and a two-year delay. Lockheed says it shares the senators' concerns, but US Marine Corps Commandant Gen James Conway hints that an F-35B vertical landing test could be delayed by as much as a year.
JAPAN'S SPACE AGENCY HIT BY BUDGET CUTS
BUDGET Japanese government budget cuts have slashed 10% from Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency funding, hitting JAXA's International Space Station cargo spacecraft programme and axing its planned "GX" liquid natural gas fuelled rocket. Japanese ISS participation is not under threat.
PEMCO BUYS 757 CARGO CONVERSION ASSETS
FREIGHTERS Pemco World Air Services is to purchase from Alcoa-SIE Conversions assets including the Boeing 757-200 supplemental type certificate to retrofit passenger configured 757s as freighters. Pemco already performs conversion work on 737-300s and -400s.
BRUSSELS CLEARS AID FOR LIGHTWEIGHT CABINS
STATE AID European Commission regulators have given the go-ahead for €33.8 million ($49 million) of German government assistance to help fund Diehl Aircabin's efforts to develop a new generation of lightweight cabin linings and air ducts, as the private capital market had failed to provide money to a what the EC deems to be a valuable research and development project.
AUSTRALIA EASES QANTAS RESTRICTIONS
POLICY The Australian government has eased restrictions on foreign ownership in Qantas, which had limited any foreign carrier's stake to 35% and any foreign individual's to 25%. But according to the Australian white paper, a 49% cap on foreign investment in Australian international airlines will remain in place.
UK'S FLYGLOBESPAN CEASES OPERATIONS
AIRLINES UK carrier Flyglobespan ceased operations last week when parent company Globespan Group went into administration. The UK Civil Aviation Authority is stepping in to protect passengers who booked package holidays with the Scottish airline.
HUMPHREY WYNN
OBITUARY Humphrey Wynn, who has died aged 90, was one of a generation of journalists fortunate enough to work in the carefree camaraderie of Flight in the 1950s, a heyday for British aviation and the magazine, then very much focused on its domestic market. In a letter to the organisers of Flight's recent centenary reunion, he described the period he spent as a defence writer - often flying between RAF bases on Flight's own Gemini aircraft - between 1956 and 1962 as "one of the happiest of my working life". He was not able to recapture that spirit when he rejoined the magazine after a stint in public relations, complaining that the new owner, Mirror Group, "didn't understand" niche, technical magazines such as Flight. He left to continue his career with the Ministry of Defence, writing a history of RAF post-war bomber operations.
Source: Flight International
