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UPDATE 
Week ending September 6, 1998
+++ 229 die in Swissair MD-11-crash +++ Boeing 717-200 makes maiden flight +++ 32 Eurocopter BK 117 C2 for the French "Sécurité Civile" +++ Eurofighter gets named Typhoon for export +++ Woodard fired after production problems +++ Northwest Airlines and Air Canada grounded by strike +++ News in brief +++

229 die in Swissair MD-11-crash
Absturz einer Swissair-MD-11 vor Kanada fordert 229 Menschenleben

Canadian coast guard and navy personnel have been joined by a fleet of volunteer searchers who are gathering debris from the crash of a Swissair jet killing all 229 people on board. Swissair Flight 111, a 7-year-old MD-11 that was headed for Switzerland from New York, had 214 passengers, including two infants, and a crew of 15 when it went down about 9:20 p.m. EDT Wednesday near Halifax, Canada. Lt. Cmdr. Glenn Chamberlain of the Halifax rescue efforts said they have recovered 17 bodies, but have not found any survivors.
Swissair confirms the pilot reported smoke in the cockpit and attempted an emergency landing at Halifax, but 30 miles south of the airport the aircraft disappeared from radar screens. Residents of the area near the crash site, some 40 miles away from the Halifax airport, reported a low-flying plane and then a loud noise. Canadian authorities immediately launched a massive search-and-rescue mission. Mike Myett, of the Emergency Measure Organization, says aircraft remnants were found a few miles off the coast in the Peggy's Cove area. One report from the scene described a huge wreckage field in which human remains and plane sections were floating. Counseling centers have been set up in both airports in New York and Geneva, Switzerland, for the families and friends of the people who were on board the Swissair plane. In Atlanta, Delta Airlines confirmed that some of its passengers were on the flight, which the two airlines shared in a partnership.

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Boeing 717-200 makes maiden flight
Erstflug der Boeing 717-200 in Long Beach

The 717-200, Boeings newest 100-seat jetliner, flew for the first time On September 2. Painted in Boeing red, white and blue colors, the 717-200 took off at 12:35 p.m. from the Long Beach Municipal Airport, located near the company's Long Beach Division. At the controls were Capts. Ralph Luczak and Tom Melody, who flew the airplane west toward Santa Catalina Island, located off the California coast. Also on board was Will Gibbons, the 717-200 flight-test conductor. After the airplane flew over Catalina, it headed southeast toward Arizona before landing at the Boeing flight test center in Yuma, Ariz.
During the four hour, seven minute flight Luczak, Melody and Gibbons performed a series of tests on the airplane's engines, control surfaces and systems. The crew transmitted both verbal and recorded data back in real-time to flight test personnel in the Flight Operations and Test Center at the Long Beach Division. Wednesday's flight officially marked the beginning of the 717-200's flight-test and type certification program. Four airplanes will be used in the program; three of the airplanes will carry flight instruments and the fourth, a customer production model, will have a complete AirTran interior. The customer production model will be used to evaluate the function and reliability of equipment that is used during revenue flight, such as galleys and the air conditioning system. Testing will be based at the company's Yuma facility over the next nine months, followed by concurrent certification by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and Europe's Joint Airworthiness Authority in the third quarter of 1999.

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32 Eurocopter BK 117 C2 for the French "Sécurité Civile"
Franzöisisches Innenministerium bestellt BK 117 C2

The French Ministry of Interior's has announced the purchase of 32 BK 117 C2 helicopters through a contract worth 170 millions USD with Eurocopter. This new dedicated version of the twin-engine BK 117 will be used to cover the entire spectrum of Public Safety rescue and human transport requirement over flat country, water or mountainous terrain. The BK 117 C2 will be powered by 2 Turbomeca Arriel 1E2 turboshafts and will feature a new generation cockpit allowing the use of night vision goggles (NVG's). Deliveries will spread from 2000 untill 2005. These helicopters will gradually replace the existing Alouette 3's fleet.

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Eurofighter gets named Typhoon for export
Zusätzlicher Name für den Eurofighter

Eurofighter has now officially unveiled an additional name for its Eurofighter: the aircraft will be called the Typhoon - but only on the export markets outside Europe! The naming, announced at a small ceremony at British Aerospace headquarters at Farnborough just days before the air show, is to fit in with the global marketing effort for the multirole fighter. It should have been bestowed on the EF2000 months earlier, but at the last moment the customer air forces said "no", as they had not been consulted properly by the industry. After some formal consultations, approval was finally received with the restricitons that Eurofighter remains the offical name in Europe (that is in the campaigns in Norway and Greece as well) and that Typhoon will not automatically be the EF2000s name with the four partner air forces when it enters service in 2002/3. The Luftwaffe for once has no intention for a change.
In the meantime, flight numbers have now risen above 800, and the fatigue test airframe in Germany is close to the 18000 hrs required to prove a 6000 hr service life. Contract signature for the first batrch of 148 aircraft is still expected in the autumn.

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Boeing replaces Ron Woodard
Woodard muß nach Produktionsproblemen gehen

The ongoing severe "financial and production issues" have led to the replacement of Ron Woodard, long-time president of Boeing Commercial Airplane Group, by Boeing Senior Vice President Alan Mulally, formerly president of the Information, Space & Defense Systems unit. "We have experienced unsatisfactory financial performance with our commercial airplane operations. Our expectations are that commercial airplane operations produce significant, double-digit operating margins," Boeing-boss Condit stated. "We concluded there must be significant changes in the composition of the management team at this time. Alan Mulally's years of experience in commercial airplanes and his success during the past year in organizing the Information, Space & Defense Systems operations of the company have been outstanding," Condit said. "I am confident Alan and his new team will bring a level of intensity and focus to commercial airplane operations that will achieve the results our employees, customers and shareholders want."
Mulally's team will include Jim Jamieson, (717, 737, 757, MD80/90 and MD-11 airplane programs), Jim Morris (747, 767 and 777 programs), Fred Mitchell (responsibility for airplane components and procurement activities), Walt Gillette (engineering and product development) and Scott Carson (chief financial officer).
Regarding the Information, Defense & Space Systems unit, this will now be the Space and Communications Group, headed by James F. Albaugh as president, based in Seal Beach, California. The group contains the Information and Communications Systems unit headed by James W. Evatt. Michael M. Sears has been named president of the newly formed Military Aircraft and Missile Systems Group headquartered in St. Louis.
On the company-wide level, President and Chief Operating Officer Harry Stonecipher also will be the company's acting chief financial officer until a successor is in place for Boyd Givan, who retired effective September 1.

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Northwest Airlines and Air Canada grounded by strike
Nach Northwest Airlines jetzt auch Air Canada von Streiks lahmgelegt

Air Canada is working to make alternative arrangements for thousands of travelers as the airline's 2,100 pilots walked off the job in a strike for more pay. The strike began Wednesday, after talks between the Air Canada Pilots Association and the company broke down shortly before midnight on Tuesday. Jean-Marc Belanger, the chief of the association, says the talks foundered over three percentage points in the pay rise demand, with the pilots holding out for 12 percent, and Air Canada sticking to a 9- percent offer. Belanger says the talks had earlier appeared to be going well after the company agreed to the union's other demands, including shorter hours and better working conditions. At Toronto's Pearson International Airport today, crisply-dressed pilots walked a circular picket in full uniforms and peak caps, holding placards to their chests. Air Canada, meanwhile, asked stranded passengers to form queues and has tried to make alternative travel arrangements for them. The strike affected 60,000 travelers in Canada and around the globe. Some were put on board trains to the United States and told to take flights from U.S. cities to other destinations.
The strike came as a separate strike by 6,200 Northwest Airlines pilots in the United States was in its fifth day, causing major disruptions in northern U.S. cities such as Detroit and Minneapolis. Northwest announced it has canceled its flights through Monday, Sept. 7. 1,700 daily flights have been affected by the strike which began shortly after 11 p.m. CDT on Friday, Aug. 28. In-bound flights from Europe and Asia are also canceled through Tuesday, Sept. 8, one day beyond the announced domestic schedule.

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NEWS IN BRIEF / KURZMELDUNGEN

On September 1, the third Boeing 767 Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft has successfully completed its first flight with the distinctive 30-foot rotodome mounted atop its fuselage. The flight marks the beginning of a Production Acceptance Test program to evaluate whether the aircraft's radar, identification friend-or-foe electronics, navigation, computers/displays, mission systems and communication systems perform as designed. Air vehicle number three is one of four 767 AWACS that have been sold to the government of Japan. The first two aircraft were delivered in March 1998; the second two will be delivered in early 1999.
+++
Delta Air Lines has announced that it is no longer proposing to code-share with United Airlines. Delta dismissed the Air Line Pilots Association's demand for a pilots' voting seat on the board and was unable to gain the support of the union for the code-share. Other portions of the marketing alliance will go ahead as planned.
+++
Beginning March 28, 1999, Lufthansa will offer new daily, nonstop service from Detroit's Wayne County Metropolitan Airport and Philadelphia International Airport to the carrier's international hub in Frankfurt, Germany. Lufthansa's new nonstop Detroit-Frankfurt flight LH443 and Philadelphia-Frankfurt flight LH427 will operate with four-engine wide body Airbus A340 aircraft. The new service marks the airline's return to the Philadelphia area after a five-year absence.
+++
The ASTRA 2A satellite of Luxembourg-based Societe Europeenne des Satellites (SES) was successfully launched with a Russian Proton D-1-e rocket from the Cosmodrome of Baikonur (Kazakhstan) in the early morning hours of August 30th, 1998 (06.31 am Baikonur time; 02.31 am CET). ASTRA 2A is the eighth SES satellite in the ASTRA series and the first to be permanently located at the orbital position of 28.20 East. The spacecraft was built by Hughes Space and Communications of El Segundo (California). ASTRA 2A is an HS 601 HP type spacecraft (HP = High Power), carrying up to 32 active transponders (for the first five years, 28 thereafter) with a TWTA (Travelling Wave Tube Amplifier) output power of 98.5 Watts. The satellite is equipped with XIPS (Xenon Ion Propulsion System) for in-orbit station keeping manoeuvres as well as conventional bi-propellant thrusters. Gallium arsenide solar cells provide ASTRA 2A with 7 kilowatts of electrical power. The satellite also has an advanced antenna design, using two large lightweight reflectors featuring Hughes' contoured-surface technology. The spacecraft weighed 3.635 kilograms at
launch and is designed for 15 years of lifetime.
+++
Four European astronauts have joined 14 others from the United States, Canada and Brazil in the Astronaut Class of 1998 which began Mission Specialist training at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, on 24 August. After successful completion of the 12-month basic training programme, they will be eligible for assignment to future missions on the US Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. The four - Leopold Eyharts (France), Hans Schlegel (Germany) and Paolo Nespoli and Roberto Vittori (Italy) - will take part in courses ranging from an indepth study of the Shuttle and Space Station's systems to simulations and to survival training in remote areas. The four joined the European Space Agency (ESA) over this past summer in the first phase of the creation of a single European astronaut corps. Existing astronaut programmes in individual European countries are being merged into a single one under ESA management in order to allow Europe to respond in a cost-effective manner to the mission opportunities that will become available.
+++
The Progress M-39 cargo spacecraft, which had undocked from the orbital station Mir in mid-August, redocked with the station in an automatic mode. The supply spacecraft will remain in orbit until October when a new cargo spacecraft Progress will be launched towards the station. Until then, the fuel remaining in the motors of the spacecraft will be used to the full to adjust the Mir station's orbit. Besides, the Progress spacecraft will shield the docking assembly -- the station's only soft spot, which lacks a thermal insulation coating -- from the Sun.
+++
The prototype L 159 Advanced Light Combat Aircraft with a Boeing-designed avionics suite made its first flight Aug. 18 at the Aero Vodochody airport near Prague in the Czech Republic. During the 28-minute flight, piloted by Aero Vodochody chief test pilot Miroslav Schutzner, the single-turbofan aircraft performed positive 6 G and negative 1 G maneuvers, with the aircraft, engine and systems performing as expected. Boeing is the avionics integration subcontractor to Aero Vodochody, the aircraft prime contractor, for L 159 avionics equipment which includes crew station, communication, navigation and weapons management systems. Under a five-year contract awarded in 1997, Boeing will deliver 72 integrated avionics kits to Aero Vodochody. The first production delivery will occur in November 1998 and continue through 2002.
+++

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Previous updates are still available:
Die News der letzten Wochen sind weiter abrufbar:

*August 30, 1998 *August 23, 1998 *August 16, 1998 *August 9, 1998 *August 2, 1998

*July 26, 1998 *July 19, 1998 *July 12, 1998

*January to June 1998 *January to December 1997 *September to December 1996

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