Jet Aviation Basel Completes ACJ319 VIP Interior

by  DAVID A. LOMBARDO

Jet Aviation recently finished an interior for a private Airbus ACJ319 created by the Jet Aviation Design Studio and completed at Jet Aviation Basel. The ACJ319 is managed by Austrian operator MJet and is certified to accommodate 19 passengers on charter flights.

September 17, 2014, 6:00 PM

Jet Aviation recently finished an interior for a private Airbus ACJ319 created by the Jet Aviation Design Studio and completed at Jet Aviation Basel.

The ACJ319, managed by Austrian operator MJet and originally built to accommodate up to 23 passengers and six crew, is certified in its new configuration to accommodate 19 passengers on charter flights. It features a private bedroom and en suite bathroom with shower, a guest lavatory, and crew, staff, lounge and dining areas in addition to spacious double “wet” and “dry” galley areas.

The interior is finished with veneer and hardwoods accentuated by the upholstery and leathers. The design features a combination of high-gloss American black cherry and Santos rosewood veneers, with fine stitch detailing on leather seats and upholstered divans. The bathroom has a real glass mirror and an over-mounted basin of moulded Corian.

Executive Dreamliner To Get Bubble Wall

y  JAMES WYNBRANDT

The curved interior space in the 787-9 "captures the owner's feeling of the expression of flowing water," said the owner's representative.

September 5, 2014, 2:35 PM

The world’s first private airliner incorporating a “bubble wall” is about to begin completion, according to London’s VIP Completions, which will provide the bubble wall for a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner for the undisclosed customer. The bubble wall uses the contrasts of light, water and Swarovski crystal to create a relaxing experience, adding its glow to the cabin lighting. Built into the cabin’s lounge, the bubble wall creates the visual effect of moving water, and the color can be changed through a smartphone app. LED lighting on the wall provides the mood-enhancing color changes. The owner’s representative said the curved interior space “captures the owner’s feeling of the expression of flowing water, and provides an area that is removed of straight lines and immediately relaxing.”

Boeing, Ryanair Launch 737 Max 200

by  GREGORY POLEK

Ryanair's 737 Max 200s will carry as many as 197 passengers in a 30-inch seat pitch. (Image: Boeing)

September 8, 2014, 11:44 AM

Boeing finally answered Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary’s call for a higher-capacity 737 Max 8 with last Monday morning’s official launch of the 737 Max 200 and, in the process, won a commitment for as many as 200 airplanes. The commitment calls for a firm order for 100 airplanes and options for another 100, together worth as much as $22 billion. The Irish low-fare airline expects to take delivery of its first 100 Max 200s from 2019 through 2023.

Plans call for Ryanair’s airplanes to come in a single-class, 197-seat interior configuration, meaning they will hold eight more passengers than Boeing designed the standard Max 8 to carry. Boeing’s new design allows for as many as 200 seats by incorporating a mid-exit door to increase the exit limit, giving the airplane the potential to offer 20-percent better operating cost efficiency than the current 737-800NG delivers.

Meeting in New York on Monday with Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Ray Conner, O’Leary quoted estimates that, apart from the fuel savings benefits the Max promises to deliver over the NG, the eight extra seats could generate $1 million per aircraft a year in additional revenue for Ryanair.

“I feel like a child who’s woken up on Christmas morning, unwrapping his presents and finding that Santa Claus has given him exactly what he asked for,” said O’Leary. “We’ve been pushing Boeing and, to a lesser extent, Airbus for the last ten years to try to get close to 200 seats into the Boeing 737-800 series aircraft. Two hundred seats is the sweet spot we believe in the short-haul market.”

O’Leary noted that the removal of unneeded front and rear galley space and the repositioning of lavatory space to the rear of the airplane means Ryanair’s 197-seat Max 200s will allow more leg room than the airline’s current 800NGs now offer. Seat pitch, he said, will expand to slightly more than 30 inches. “Some of the toilets are moving into where the rear galley is now,” he explained.

Following the press conference in New York, Conner and O’Leary planned to travel to Seattle to celebrate first delivery of Ryanair’s next batch of 180 Boeing 737-800s, 175 of which it ordered in March 2013. Now flying 300 of the narrowbodies, Ryanair plans to increase the size of its fleet to 520 Boeing jets over the next decade, said O’Leary. Schedules call for delivery of the 180 NGs into 2019.

Europe Outlines Action Plan For UAV Policymaking

by  IAN SHEPPARD

European regulators have expressed concern about a potential disruption to airline traffic posed by small UAVs such as this Elevated Horizons Agri6 "multicopter."

September 12, 2014, 9:34 AM

European regulators are increasingly concerned about the safety risks associated with integrating unmanned aerial systems (UAS) into civil airspace, and they are especially worried about the risks posed by smaller unmanned aircraft operating alongside airliners. This was the key message from the UAS 2014 conference held in London last week.

“It’s similar to the mobile phone or the Internet coming in [to aircraft cabins],” said Matthew Baldwin, who is director of aviation and international transport affairs with the European Commission (EC). “The question for me is how you promote these activities but with a regulatory framework that addresses the safety and privacy concerns.”

“At present,” Baldwin said, “we have a patchwork of national regulations, with eight [EU] member states having taken the first steps to allow commercial [UAS] activities. It is a global business and we risk missing out if we don’t promote it in Europe, but it is a very fragmented framework at the moment. A global market needs global rules, so we will take part in ICAO activities and Jarus, which the U.S. and Israel are involved in as well.” Jarus, based in the Netherlands, stands for Joint Authorities on Rulemaking for Unmanned Systems.

Giving an example of the fragmented, inconsistent regulatory framework, Baldwin said that the current European cut-off point where a vehicle is deemed to be a UAS (not a light UAS) is 150 kg (330 pounds), and the boundary below which they are deemed “small UAS” is 20 kg (44 pounds) in the UK but only 2 kg (4.4 pounds) in France, and various numbers in between in other member states. In Baldwin’s view, these weight thresholds are “absurd and arbitrary.”

In the safety arena Baldwin said, “We believe that EASA [the European Aviation Safety Agency] is best placed to develop rules, and we envisage an EC proposal early next year to cover safety, liability and insurance, security privacy and so on.” He added that “Sesar JU [the Single European Sky’s joint undertaking organization] has the experience of how to integrate RPAS [remotely piloted aerial systems] in to the ATMMaster Plan…they will develop a working program and work packages to develop and validate new policies.”

The EC issued a policy document this year (available on its website) that laid down the foundation for the envisioned EC Regulation that is expected to be in place by early next year.

Russian Sanctions Avoid Direct Hit on Civil Aerospace

AINONLINE

by  CHARLES ALCOCK

The Superjet 100 airliner built by Russia's Sukhoi is not subject to new European Union sanctions against parent company United Aircraft Corp., but restrictions on access to capital markets have squeezed the wider Russian aerospace sector. (Photo: Superjet International)

September 19, 2014 - 11:58am

The latest round of economic sanctions imposed against Russia by the U.S. and European Union (EU) did not directly target the civil aerospace and air transport sectors, but they might yet inflict collateral damage on those industries. TheU.S. sanctions, announced on September 12, included the Rostec defense group, which harbors ambitions in the civil sector, such as its planned joint venture with Canada’s Bombardier to build Q400 regional airliners in Russia.

On the same day, the latest wave of EU sanctions specifically named United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), the state-backed conglomerate that encompasses most of Russia’s military and civil aviation ventures. However, in both cases, the small print in the complex sanctions documentation indicates that the bans on exporting technology to those ventures do not relate to non-defense-related programs, such as the SSJ-100 airliner marketed by the Superjet International joint venture between UAC subsidiary Sukhoi and Italy’s Alenia Aermacchi group.

“We don’t see any effects on the civil aviation sector,” said a Superjet spokesperson. “As a consequence, this will not affect Superjet International’s activities. For the time being, we have not suffered any particular restrictions.”

A Bombardier spokeswoman pointed out that Rostec does not appear on the list of Russian companies covered by existing Canadian government sanctions. However, she acknowledged that the company recognizes the implications of the increasingly strained political atmosphere between Russia and Western countries over the military crisis in Ukraine, even as it continues discussions aimed at agreeing plans for a Q400 assembly line in Russia. “We are meeting with [Rostec] on an ongoing basis, and we remain optimistic that we’ll be able to conclude [negotiations] in 2014,” she told AIN. “However, considering all of the developments of late, we’re now being realistic in that the timeline could shift.” So despite the immediate absence of Canadian sanctions targeting Rostec, Bombardier must contend with what the spokeswoman referred to as “other barriers in the way” and “ongoing sensitivities we need to be mindful of.”

What seems clearer is that sanctions are significantly affecting the ability of leading Russian banks to raise new capital in U.S. and EU markets, raising great concern within Russian industry, including aerospace. UAC president Mikhail Pogosyan told Russian news agencies this week that the squeeze on credit is constraining the group. “It is not easy,” he commented. “On one side, there are not any catastrophic consequences that may stop everything tomorrow. On the other, the cost of borrowed money is rising and lending mechanisms have become notably more complicated.” UAC often acts as the guarantor of loans to fund developments by subsidiaries such as Sukhoi and Irkut.

At the same time, Russia’s rouble has collapsed in value on currency markets, last week dropping to a low point against the dollar not seen since the country’s banking crisis in 1998. If the situation continues, it will weaken the buying power of Russia’s aerospace industry for importing Western equipment. Meanwhile, the domestic economy is clearly suffering, potentially manifesting itself with weakened demand for air transport.

It remains unclear whether or not U.S. and EU authorities purposely avoided the direct targeting of civil aerospace with their sanctions, mindful of their potentially negative effects on leading airframe makers Boeing and Airbus and their many suppliers. By contrast, the sanctions directly targeted the oil and gas industries. So far, Russia has not followed through on its threat to ban European airlines from using its airspace for flights to and from the Asia-Pacific region in retaliation. 

F135 Engine Failure Investigation Makes Progress

AIN DEFENSE PERSPECTIVE » SEPTEMBER 19, 2014

by  CHRIS POCOCK

A Pratt & Whitney F135, the engine that powers the F-35 stealth fighter. (Photo: P&W) The inset shows the location of the plate seal, between the second and third fan stages, that rubbed excessively to cause an engine failure.

September 19, 2014, 8:20 AM

Root-cause analysis of the F135 engine failurethat grounded the Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter fleet in July will be completed by the end of the month. Meanwhile, the problem is already sufficiently understood for Pratt &Whitney to have devised an interim fix. F-35s are flying again, but with borescope inspections mandated every three flying hours. The flight envelope restrictions that were previously imposed now vary, with four key development aircraft cleared for greater maneuverability.

“Pratt & Whitney has put its ‘A-team’ on this problem and has taken accountability,” Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan, F-35 program executive officer, told the Air Force Association conference this week. The company has agreed to pay for modifications to the fan section of the 150 engines already delivered, he added.

Bennett Croswell, P&W president for military engines, said that “there’s more movement of the engine” within the F-35 airframe “than we thought when we designed it.” Both Bogdan and Croswell emphasized that some movement is normal. The problem had not been identified earlier in the development program, because at the time the aircraft had not been cleared for “more aggressive maneuvers,” Croswell said. The problem could not possibly have been detected during engine ground testing, he added.

The problem is excessive rubbing of a polyamid plate seal between the second and third stages of the F135’s fan. The rub strip is flat when a new engine is built, Croswell explained, but during acceptance tests it is designed to be abraded into a groove, or trench. This method ensures that air does not leak forward, a migration that wouldreduce engine efficiency. But in the engine incident that happened while an F-35 was taxiing at Eglin AFB on June 23, the plate seal heated to 1,900 degrees C, causing microcracks to form and propagate in the arm, which eventually failed and penetrated a fuel tank, causing a fire. During inspections, three more engines (out of 165 delivered) were found to have “hard rubbing” that could potentially lead to a similar failure.

“We are validating the root cause on a ‘rub rig’ at our West Palm Beach facility,” Croswell continued. “We’ll test different densities of polyamid, and the orientations that occur in its formation.” P&W and subcontracting supplier Cobham are “pre-trenching” some stators before engine assembly, to determine whether efficiency is significantly affected. Another approach could be to specify a uniform set of flight maneuvers to “burn in” the trench, Croswell said.

Airliner Makers Collect $7.45 Billion in New Orders

Lufthansa plans to assign 10 A320s on order to its Eurowings low-fare subsidiary. (Photo: Airbus)

September 17, 2014, 6:01 PM

A series of new order announcements involving no fewer than three major civil airframe makers signaled the end of a late-summer sales lull on Wednesday, as airlines went on a new buying spree reminiscent of July’s Farnborough airshow. The value of the day’s orders totaled some $7.45 billion at list prices and involved 86 airplanes ranging in size from the Embraer E175 regional jet to the Boeing 787-9 widebody. 

A pair of contracts between Airbus and Lufthansa covering a total of 25 A320-family jets led the day’s order windfall in terms of dollar value. Worth $3.25 billion, those contracts call for delivery of 15 A320neos to Lufthansa Group member Swiss and another 10 current-generation A320s to low-fare subsidiary Eurowings. Lufthansa plans to send another 13 A320s from its current backlog to Eurowings starting next year, as it seeks to expand its budget offering in Europe in much the same manner Air France plans to challenge discount incumbents on the continent with its Transavia subsidiary.

For its part, Boeing finalized an order for six 787-9 Dreamliners and five 737 Max 9s with Irish leasing company Avalon. Worth $2.1 billion at list prices, the deal closes on a commitment announced at the Farnborough show and introduces the first 787s into Avalon’s portfolio. It also raises the number of 737 Max narrowbodies on its books to 20.

As a result of yet another $2.1 billion deal, Brazil’s Embraer padded its backlog of E-Jets by 30 airplanes after Republic Airways of the U.S. offset a 20-airplane order cancellation by the UK’s Flybe with a firm order for 50 E175s. Republic, which has agreed to fly the airplanes in United Airlines colors, expects deliveries of its latest batch of E-Jets to start during next year’s third quarter and extend into 2017. Having already taken delivery of 34 of a firm order for 47 E-175s it placed in January last year, Republic also retains options on another 32 of the 76-seat jets.

Under the terms of an amended capacity purchase agreement with United, Republic will begin to remove its 31 Bombardier Q400 turboprops in January; it then plans to sublease 24 to Flybe. The UK airline's fleet restructuring plan calls for a recommitment to the Canadian turboprops and de-emphasis on the Brazilian jets, delivery of 24 of which it had deferred before ultimately canceling 20. Now flying 45 Q400s and 11 E175s, it plans to take the 24 additional turboprops over a two-year period starting in March next year and the four remaining E-Jets in 2018.