AircraftNews.Com

CD plastic may improve aircraft avionics

HOUSTON, May 20  — A U.S. physics professor says he is using U.S. Air Force grants to create highly conductive nanocomposites to improve aircraft and other electronics.

University of Houston Associate Professor Shay Curran says he has demonstrated the ultra-high electrical conductive properties in polycarbonates, such as used to make compact disks, mixed with a type of carbon nanotubes could improve the integrity of computers, iPhones and aircraft avionics.

“While its mechanical and optical properties are very good, polycarbonate is a non-conductive plastic,” Curran said. “That means its ability to carry an electrical charge is as good as a tree, which is pretty awful. Imagine that this remarkable plastic can now not only have good optical and mechanical properties, but also good electrical characteristics.

“By being able to tailor the amount of nanotubes we can add to the composite, we also can change it from the conductivity of silicon to a few orders below that achieved by metals,” he added.

The findings appeared in a recent issue of the Journal of Applied Physics.

For more follow:http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2009/05/20/CD-plastic-may-improve-aircraft-avionics/UPI-83661242843989/

Textron Inc (TXT.N) expects deliveries of corporate jets to continue to decline next year, with recovery likely to trail corporate America’s return to profit growth by a year and a half, the diversified U.S. manufacturer’s chief executive said on Tuesday.

“I think deliveries will be slightly less next year than this year,” CEO Lewis Campbell told an investor conference in Florida that was monitored over the Internet. “Don’t read me as bullish on the return of business jets. I’m not bullish on it. We haven’t reached the bottom yet.”

Demand for business aircraft has collapsed this year, as a brutal recession left companies looking for any way to cut spending. The sector has been further hit by an image blow — private jets became something of a symbol of corporate excess after the heads of big Detroit automakers used them to fly to Washington to seek federal aid.

Textron’s Cessna unit, the world’s largest maker of corporate aircraft, now expects to deliver 290 to 300 planes this year, down from 467 in 2008. It is cutting its staff by about 45 percent, to a target of 8,900 people by the year’s end, and postponed plans for a new class of larger aircraft as it looks to cut costs

Cessna will face a large number of order cancellations in the second quarter as a result of the decision to suspend that larger aircraft, which would have been called the Columbus.

History shows that a rebound in demand for business aircraft tends to follow a recovery in overall corporate profits by six to eight quarters, Campbell said.

Textron’s competitors in corporate jets include the Gulfstream unit of General Dynamics Corp (GD.N) and Canada’s Bombardier Inc (BBDb.TO).

Full Articale at http://www.reuters.com/article/hotStocksNews/idUSTRE54I3PQ20090519

Federal investigators said today they believe two small aircraft involved in a midair collision over the Pacific Ocean departed from Long Beach Airport, but they have not confirmed the number of passengers aboard.

The search for victims and clues continued today, with a security zone established around two debris fields, authorities said.

The collision was reported by the pilot of a third aircraft, who told authorities he saw the crash at about 5:45 p.m. Monday, roughly five miles south of Long Beach Harbor, said Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.
Read more…

Ryanair charges passengers to print their own tickets

Ryanair, the European budget airline, has added another extra charge to its low base fares, after abolishing check-in desks in favour of on-line ticketing.

The Dublin-based company said everyone booking a seat on a Ryanair flight from May 20 will be required to print out their own tickets at a mandatory cost of 10 euro ($A17.85) per passenger per round-trip journey.

Anyone who fails to do this will suffer a 40 euro ($A71.40) penalty at the airport.

This fee policy replaces Ryanair’s previous practice of offering free on-line ticketing and charging extra for anyone who opted for face-to-face check-in. The old policy discriminated against passport-holders from outside the European Economic Area, who were barred until recently from checking in via Ryanair’s Web site.

Under the new policy, everyone will be treated the same because now nobody can avoid paying to check in.

Ryanair says the only exceptions will be on tickets offered at fee-included prices of five euros ($A9.03) or less.

From AP

Future Of Military Aviation Lies With Drones – US Admiral

WASHINGTON –Unmanned aircraft likely represent the future for U.S. military aviation, with next-generation bombers

and fighter planes operating without pilots onboard, the top U.S. military officer said Thursday.

“We’re at a real time of transition here in terms of the future of aviation, and the whole issue of what’s going to

be manned and what’s going to be unmanned,” Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a

Senate hearing.

“I think we’re at the beginning of this change,” Mullen said when asked about plans for developing a new bomber

aircraft.

The use of drones has dramatically expanded just in the past few years, he said.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the same hearing that military planners need to answer the question whether a

new bomber would have a pilot in the cockpit or operate as unmanned aircraft. Read more…

Safety experts testifying about a plane crash near Buffalo, N.Y., that killed 50 people say pilots should be warned earlier about dangerously slow aircraft speed.
An alarm that would warn pilots earlier of dangerously slow aircraft speed could have helped prevent a plane crash that killed 50 people in February, safety officials told an investigative panel Thursday.

National Transportation Safety Board member Debbie Hersman raised the idea on the third and final day of a hearing into the crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407, which went down near Buffalo, N.Y., killing all 49 people aboard and one person on the ground. She said the current warning system, which violently shakes the pilot’s control stick, goes off too late.
“I think this crew went from complacency to catastrophe in 20 seconds,” Hersman said. “The room is on fire at that point.”

NASA scientist and cockpit safety expert Robert Dismukes agreed, saying the evidence collected by the aircraft’s voice data recorder showed that pilot Marvin Renslow and co-pilot Rebecca Shaw were distracted. However, he said a better speed warning system would be “well worth looking at.”

Fatigue was also a factor in the crash, said safety expert Rory Kay of the Air Line Pilots Assn. Kay said the Federal Aviation Administration’s “duty and rest” rules were outdated, remaining nearly unchanged for 60 years.
The regulations say crew members must receive eight hours of rest within a 24-hour period, but evidence collected by the NTSB shows that Renslow and Shaw each had little or no sleep the night before the doomed flight. Both had commuted to Newark, N.J., their base for Colgan Air and where the flight originated. Renslow lived in Florida and Shaw in Washington state.

“An overhaul is absolutely past due,” Kay said.

Hersman also voiced concerns about regional pilots’ low salaries and companies’ relocation plans, which force crew members to commute long distances because they can’t afford to live closer to their base.

Kay said airlines should consider the human cost of their business decisions. He said pilots were treated “like migrant workers, moving around and chasing bases.”

To read the originla report see the L A Times 15 May

A MODEL aeroplane equipped with a camera attached with a rubber band has inadvertently captured graffiti artists at work, leading to their arrest.
The aerial surveillance was carried out over the Aldinga Bay Surf life Saving Club near Adelaide South Australia in March by an model aircraft enthusiast using what police described as a “slow -flying electric remote controlled aeroplane”.

AdelaideNow reports that the modified aircraft was rigged with a camera, attached with a rubber band, which had been set to capture images every 1.5 seconds.

The images returned more than was expected when it captured graffiti vandals at work.

The plane operator sent the pictures to South Coast police who used them to identify the offenders.

Read more on this story at AdelaideNow heralsun.com.au

Amid the deepest and broadest economic crisis since World War II, the near-term outlook for business aviation is taking a beating. Added to the inevitable cost-cutting by corporate customers is the populist fury over perceived misuse of corporate aircraft by “fat cat” Wall Street bankers and self-serving business executives.

Aviation industry analysts and operators say that the business need for corporate jets is as clear as ever and that the market will recover in due course. But, they add, the bottom has not yet been reached and it will likely take years to get back even to current levels, let alone earlier peaks.

Perhaps the clearest victims of the slump have been the start-up makers of “very light jets,” or V.L.J.’s, once seen as a market niche of quasi-revolutionary potential, and now dismissed as “irrelevant” by Richard Aboulafia, the vice president of Teal Group, an aviation industry consulting firm in Fairfax, Virginia.

In November 2008, Eclipse Aviation, founded in 1998 and developer of the Eclipse 500 V.L.J., went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, before being liquidated in February. Adam Aircraft, another V.L.J. start-up founded the same year, ceased operations and laid off all employees last month.

The disappearance of the Eclipse 500 prompted a decision, also last month, by Robert L. Crandall, formerly the chief executive of American Airlines, to shut down Pogo Jet, an air taxi project, of which he was chairman, and to return remaining corporate funds to investors.

Teal Group’s most recent annual 10-year forecast on global business aircraft, published last month, illustrates the depth and swiftness of the downturn. The forecast predicts deliveries of 12,678 business aircraft, valued at $195.7 billion, in the decade through 2018. A year ago, Teal predicted deliveries of 18,401 aircraft, valued at $270.6 billion, in the decade to 2017. Read more…

T has probably happened only once before – a US President trying hard to cut defence procurement waste by redefining, from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the way the military views the real world. That was just over 48 years ago when the outgoing White House incumbent Dwight D Eisenhower spoke of the dangers inherent in a ‘military-industrial complex’. Now Barack Obama is redefining the way the Pentagon will defend the US, prepare for future wars, structure its armed forces and work with Europe. Announced on April 6, the day some refer to as ‘Black Monday’, defence secretary Robert Gates began to build a list of changes that most agree are long overdue. And that is no bad thing, plus, it may work out well for transatlantic co-operation and the European aerospace industry. The net result may be gain rather than loss but in the clearout to effect major changes, a lot of sacred cows will be sacrificed.
With a 4% increase in the fiscal 2010 defence budget (the US financial year beginning October 1, 2009) and spending up $10bn on the draft budget from the outgoing Bush administration, President Obama is determined to redefine the defence structure of the United States. Read more…

May 08, 2009

U.S. air traffic control systems are at high risk of attack due to their links to insecure Web applications run by

aviation authorities around the country, according to a U.S. Department of Transportation audit.

Penetration testers found 763 high-risk vulnerabilities in 70 Web applications used for functions such as

distributing communications frequencies for pilots and controllers to the public and other applications used for

internal air traffic control (ATC) systems within the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the report said.

A high-risk vulnerability is classified as one where an attacker could take control over a computer, modifying

systems or stealing data. Testers also found 504 medium-risk and 2,590 low-risk vulnerabilities, such as the use of

weak passwords and unprotected critical file folders, the report said.

“In our opinion, unless effective action is taken quickly, it is likely to be a matter of when, not if, ATC systems

encounter attacks that do serious harm to ATC operations,” the report concluded. Read more…