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AvIAtIOn WEEk & SPACE tEChnOlOgy/SEPtEMBEr 2, 2013 3
September 2, 2013
Contents
Volume 175 Number 30
AVIATION WEEK
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Departments

8

9
10-11
12
13
14
15
16
17
47
48
49
Feedback
Whos Where
The World
Up Front
Commanders Intent
Inside Business Aviation
Airline Intel
In Orbit
Washington Outlook
Classifed
Contact Us
Aerospace Calendar
36
With Runway 18 and its precision approach path indicator lights in the
background, wreckage from UPS Flight 1354 rests in a feld just shy of
the Birmingham, Ala., airport.
NTSB
the WorlD
10 Delta launch with classifed NRO

satellite uses new ignition
sequence to counter freballs
aeronaUtICs
21 nasa honing its focus on

six challenges that could lead
to quantum leaps in aeronautics
10 nasa helicopter crash test

evaluates improvements to seats
and belts, helps data collection
ation facility for C2 technologies

for UAVs and light aircraft
envelope for night fying around the

ship and ops in varying winds
attentionand supportfor a
series of F/A-18E/F upgrades
18 social media campaign against

Super Pumas could have impact
beyond North Sea oil industry
31 sukhois superjet enters new

territory as Mexicos Interjet
introduces its frst SSJ 100
32 aer lingus is big step closer to being
DeFense
24 Boeing fnally catches U.S. Navys
saFety
to create largest, most accurate

3-D model of the Milky Way
aIr transport
aVIonICs
23 nasa langley serving as an evalu -
11 two F-35Bs in trials designed to open
spaCe
30 european star-mapper expected
mosCoW aIr shoW
20 International research plan defned
28 t-50 being designed to carry heavy,
for icing study as Boeing and

GE test countermeasures
long-range missiles internally,

new engine under development
an independent airline, but fght

with Ryanair is likely to continue
33 India threatening to withdraw trafc

rights from two international airlines if Air India is barred from Star
34 Boeings frst stretched 787-9 is

undergoing initial ground tests in
preparation for its initial fight
CoVer storIes
21 New NASA strat-
36 The remnants of the tail section of
egy aligns aeronautics

research with six thrusts
shaped to help industry
avoid complacency.
UPS Flight 1354 lie near BirminghamShuttlesworth International Airport

in Alabama, its intended destination,
which is in the background of this
photo and the one above, both
from the NTSB. With back-to-back
widebody crashes in the U.S. in
June and Julyan Asiana Airlines
Boeing 777-200ER in San Francisco
and the UPS Airbus A300-600F in
Birminghamwe offer an in-depth
look at global safety initiatives.
4 AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/September 2, 2013
30 Gaia spacecraft
expected to survey the
brightness of 1 billion,
or 1%, of the stars and
other celestial bodies in
the Milky Way.
31 Russian aerospace
industry needs Superjet
100 to succeed in the international market.
aviationWeek.com/awst
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13
enGIneerInG
eDItorIal
35 research on albatrosses could help

optimize fightpaths and control
surfaces of gliders and UAVs
38 testing with simulators is part of gov-
efort eyes practical steps to

upgrade defcient piloting skills
40
NASAs aeronautics strategy,

to counter complacency
ernment and industry efort to reduce potential for runway incursions
40 push to enable airport ops in
FlIGht saFety
36 Grassroots industry monitoring
50 Industry must embrace and support
near-zero visibility spurs technology work for fight segments
10
41 embry-riddle students create

low-cost taxi tool to win FAA
competition in runway design
42 Faa and U.s. airline industry team

members use data-mining
or proactive safety approach
44 easa working to improve quality

of the safety data from mandatory
occurrence-reporting system
45 several initiatives budding across

Africa to improve safety of airline
ops and air transport supply chain
On the Web
A round-up of what youre reading on AviationWeek.com
Senior Pentagon Editor Amy Butler was onboard the USS Wasp to get details on how the F-35Bs night
fights are progressing. Go to our Ares blog to read about what she learned, and view photos and videos
of the short takeofs and vertical landings on the amphibious assault ship. AviationWeek.com/Ares
Indias Kiran Ganesh won an honorable mention in the American Helicopter Society
Internationals student design competition for this tailless, rotor-in-wing Kurara. Read
about the contest and view more photos at: ow.ly/onxv5 AviationWeek/thingswithwings
kiraN GaNeSh
mro europe
Aviation Weeks MRO Europe conference
is fast approaching, with nearly 2,500 attendees signed up
for the London event. View the agenda and learn how
to follow the show on our live blogs. ow.ly/onyb4
Keep up with all the news and blogs from
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Follow @AviationWeek or like us at Facebook.com/AvWeek
Follow
On the article ISS Cargo Candidates Ready

For Fly-Off, DeweyV surveyed the missions
to come this year and wrote: Letting the
ISS mission slip a few weeks to get some new booster
performance data and experience seems smart to me.
reaDer
Comment
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Aeroholics Anonymous
There a very bizarre quote in William Garveys recent Inside Business
Aviation column (AW&ST Aug. 19,
p. 20) in which George Antoniadis said
he wanted to disprove . . . the belief
that aviation destroyed billions of dollars of value every year.
I should like to know who holds such
a view, just what they consider to be
value and what is their evidence.
Antoniadis was apparently paraphrasing someone else.
Destroy is such a big word, and to
generalize that to an entire economic
sector takes my breath away. Somebody out their is really out of touch.
John D. Brinton
SpokAne, WASh.
(Perhaps it was based on a 2002 interview in the London newspaper The

Telegraph: [T]he airline business . . . has
eaten up capital over the past century like
almost no other business because people
seem to keep . . . putting fresh money in.
Youve got huge fxed costs, strong labor
unions and commodity pricingnot a
great recipe for success. I have an 800
(toll-free) number I call if I get the urge
to buy an airline stock. I say: My name
is Warren [Bufet] and Im an aeroholic.
And then they talk me down.Ed).
government constraints, the last one

is standing and the customer and the
nation be damned! Government, therefore, plays a critical role in maintaining
airline service and pricing rationale.
The Justice Department is correct
in challenging the AA-US Air merger.
Indeed it should have opposed the
UnitedContinental and the Deltanorthwest mergers as well.
Karl Kettler
FleMInGTon, n.J.
move To The reAr

Bill Sweetmans commentary Commanders Intent belongs in the back
pages of your magazine. I subscribe
for technically oriented storiesnot
opinionated, vitriolic ramblings.
his musings are better suited in the
space usually reserved for editorials.
In Save the JSF. Really? (AW&ST
Aug. 19, p. 19) dragons, stolen gold,
civilian goblins and treasure are referenced in just one paragraph.
Technical articles have been the
hallmark of AW&ST for the 25-plus
years Ive been reading it. please
keep it that way.
U.S. Navy Capt. (ret.) Michael V. Rabens
SoloMonS, MD.
end merger mAdness

Regarding the editorial Airline
M&A Sense and nonsense (AW&ST
Aug. 26, p. 54), a great to-do is made
about the mediocre fnancial history of
these so-called legacy carriers but no
one bothers to mention how destructively costly deregulation has been to
the airline industry, airline and airlinerelated employees, shippers, investors,
creditors, communities and the nation.
The airline industry isnt some Mom
and pop store that can be merged or
go out of business. It is a utility vital to
the commerce of the nation. Deregulation threw a monkey wrench into
that industry from which it has yet
to recover, hence the merger mania
desperately seeking the magic that
will solve all the problems and as Rep.
Bill Schuster (R-pa.) characterized the
American Airlines-US Airways merger
make it whole.
how many more mergers will it take
to make that industry whole? probably no amount. Mergers are not about
making things more efcient and reducing costs for passengers. Mergers are
about personal egos seeking to create
market power until eventually, without
Aviation Week & Space Technology welcomes

the opinions of its readers on issues raised in
the magazine. Address letters to the Executive
Editor, Aviation Week & Space Technology,
1200 G St., Suite 922, Washington, D.C. 20005.
Fax to (202) 383-2346 or send via e-mail to:
awstletters@aviationweek.com
Letters should be shorter than 200 words, and
you must give a genuine identification, address and daytime telephone number. We will
not print anonymous letters, but names will be
withheld. We reserve the right to edit letters.
aircraft procurement. We cant reduce

force structure (much), so we need X
new aircraft yearly bought with Y
dollars.
With JSF that equation does not
balance. The death spiral of smaller
budgets to buy fewer aircraft, resulting
in higher unit costs, leading to even
fewer aircraftand ultimately hollow
squadronsawaits us.
like every ex-military pilot, Id love to
see us fying the latest, greatest aircraft.
But the reality is we face serious funding constraints, and we must preserve a
robust tactical air force structure.
U.S. Navy Cmdr. (ret.) David Tussey
neW YoRk, n.Y.
ouT of PlAce
Recently, I have been fnding inaccuracies in your magazine. A photo
caption with Terrain Aware (AW&ST
Aug. 5/12, p. 51) states: AFDDs
JUh-60A Rascal fies . . . through
canyon country west of San Jose, Calif.
The mountains west of San Jose are the
Santa Cruz Mountains and they are covered with green vegetation, the Diablo
Range, as shown, is east of San Jose.
I am neither an engineer nor a scientist, so I wonder what I havent caught.
Jim Jellison
pleASAnTon, CAlIF.
hAPPy chAnce encounTer
dissension in The rAnks

Bravo for Bill Sweetman. If I were still
in Defense Departments cost assessment and program evaluation division,
as I was in the late 1980s, his proposal
for the Joint Strike Fighter (AW&ST
Aug. 19, p. 19), would be exactly what I
would recommend: kill the B and C
models, preserving the U.S. Air Forces
F-35A.
This is not about parochialism or
threats and capabilities. It is about
balancing budget, force structure and
I have no knowledge nor even interest in aviation but picked up your magazine by chance. I perused it because of
the inherent quality evident on every
page. The writing, reporting and presentation all add up to a near-perfect
package. every other publication and
periodical I look at these days is rife
with errors as copy editors are replaced
by computers.
even highly respected technical journals have been dumbed down. Thank
you for having such high standards and
for soliciting suggestions on how to
improve (AW&ST April 22, p. 58). You
have gained a reader.
Kathy Duby
MIll VAlleY, CAlIF.
Whos Where
ouglas E. Scott has become

senior vice president/general
counsel of AeroVironment Inc.,
Monrovia, Calif. He was head of the
legal department at the Science Applications International Corp.
David Yu has been appointed Beijingbased executive director of business
development-Asia for the International
Bureau of Aviation. He will continue as
managing director of Inception Aviation. Yu was Libra Groups chief China
representative and vice president-Asia.
Stephen M. Nolan (see photos) has
been named senior vice presidentstrategy and business development
and Jay Tibbets senior vice president
and president of the Sporting Group of
Arlington, Va.-based ATK. Nolan was
interim senior vice president-business
development and had been vice president/general manager of the Advanced
Systems Div. Tibbets was his groups
senior vice president-business development and had been vice presidentstrategy and business development for
ATK Armament Systems.
Brian C. Mooney has become interim CEO and Ultan OBrien has been
named sales, marketing and product
consultant at Las Vegas-based Allegiant Systems. Mooney succeeds Andrew Kemmetmueller, who has left
the company. OBrien was a sales and
marketing director at Retail inMotion.
James F. Hankinson has been named
chairman of Montreal-based CAE. He
succeeds Lynton R. Wilson who has retired from CAEs board.
Luiz Sandler has been appointed
vice president-sales for South America
for the Gulfstream Aerospace Corp.
He succeeds Bill Arrazola, who has
retired. He was sales director for International Jet Traders, Gulfstreams
sales representative for Brazil.
Allan Dunne has become head
of fight training at Cardif Aviation
in Wales. He was head of training at
Spain-based Flight Training Europe.
Phillip Wade has been promoted to
vice president-business development
from manager of the quality and R&D
groups of Smiths Group company Titefex Aerospace, Laconia, N.H.
Sam Jantzen has been named vice
president-marketing for Blackhawk
Modifcations, Waco, Texas.
Peter Hokanson (see photos) has
To submit information for the

Whos Where column, send Word
or attached text files (no PDFs) and
photos to: stearns@aviationweek.com
For additional information on
companies and individuals listed in
this column, please refer to the
Aviation Week Intelligence Network
at AviationWeek.com/awin For
information on ordering, telephone
U.S.: +1 (866) 857-0148 or
+1 (515) 237-3682 outside the U.S.
Stephen M. Nolan
been appointed CFO of Yankee
Pacifc Aerospace Inc., Rye, N.H.
Its Largo, Fla.-based Jormac
Aerospace subsidiary has named
Jerry Koh vice president-fight
sciences and Colt Mehler vice
president-project engineering.
been selected for promotion to
Hokanson succeeds Ron Moore,
rear admiral (lower half) and to
who was consulting CFO.
Jay Tibbets
succeed Sohl at Naval Air SysUSAF Lt. Gen. Robin Rand has
tems Command.
been nominated for promotion to
general and assignment as comHonors And ElEctions
mander of the Air Education and
Scott Hubbard, who led
Training Command, Joint Base
NASA Ames Research CenSan Antonio-Randolph, Texas.
ter, Calif., for four years and
He has been commander of the
conceived the airbag landing
Twelfth Air Force (Air Forces
Peter Hokanson
system of the Mars Pathfnder
Southern) of Air Combat Commission, is scheduled to be
mand, Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz.
inducted into the Kentucky AviaMaj. Gen. Russell J. Handy been
tion Hall of Fame in Lexington
nominated for promotion to lieuon Oct. 26. Hubbard, a Kentenant general and assignment
tucky native, is now at Stanford
as commander of Alaskan ComUniversitys Aeronautics and
mand, U.S. Pacifc Command/
Astronautics Department. He is
commander of the Eleventh Air
a member of the International
Force, Pacifc Air Forces/comJerry Koh
Academy of Astronautics and
mander, Alaskan North Amerireceived the Von Karman Medcan Defense Region, Joint Base
al from the American Institute
Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska.
of Aeronautics and AstronauHe has been director of operatics. Hubbard will be honored
tions, plans, requirements and
with Suzanne Guy Alexander,
programs at Headquarters Pawhose FAA career included
cifc Air Forces, Joint Base Pearl
supervision of the countrys
Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii.
Colt Mehler
busiest airspace; George GumBen Humbert has been
bert, founder of the Kentucky
named general manager of
Aviation History Roundtable,
Landmark Aviations facility at
later the Aviation Museum of
Gerald R. Ford International
Kentucky; and George LarAirport, Grand Rapids, Mich.
kin, one of 80 Army Air Force
He was a safety and training
volunteers who participated in
manager at Atlantic Aviation.
the April 1942 Doolittle Raid on
Greg Roberts has become
Japan in World War II.
vice president of U.K.-based
C. L. Gentemann
Chelle L. Gentemann (see
Curtiss-Wright Controls Avionics
photo), senior principal scienand Electronics. He was managtist at Remote Sensing System (RSS),
ing director in the U.K. for the C4ISR
has been named to receive this years
and UAV businesses of Northrop
Falkenberg Award from the AmeriGrumman, Defense and Security
can Geophysical Union on Dec. 11. The
USN Rear Adm. (lower half) Paul A.
award is given to a scientist under age
Sohl has been named commander of
45 who has contributed to the qualFleet Readiness Centers/assistant comity of life, economic opportunities and
mander for logistics and industrial operstewardship of the planet through the
ations of Naval Air Systems Command,
use of Earth science information. GenNAS Patuxent River, Md. He has been
temanns current research at RSS focommander of the Naval Air Warfare
Center, Weapons Division/assistant com- cuses on the extraction of accurate geophysical variables from measurements
mander for test and evaluation of Naval
of imaging microwave radiometers on
Air Systems Command (AIR-5.0), China
Earth observation satellites. c
Lake, Calif. Capt. Michael T. Moran has
AviATiON WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/SEPTEMBER 2, 2013 9
The World
Delta Uses new ignition sequence To Counter Fireballs
A classifed U.S. National Reconnaissance Offce KH-11 Keyhole satellite was successfully launched into low Earth orbit from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., on Aug. 28 by a
United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy.
The vehicle, which represents only the second Delta IV Heavy fight from the California site, was confgured with standard RS-68-powered, liquid hydrogen-fueled common
booster cores (CBCs). The launch used an ignition sequence recently developed by ULA
and engine maker Aerojet Rocketdyne to counter the formation of hydrogen freballs
that, in previous launches, have enveloped large parts of the frst stage of the rocket
during liftoff.
This occurs because just prior to launch, thousands of pounds of hydrogen are
pumped through the three CBC frst-stage engines to optimize the hydrogen/oxygen
mix for ignition. Excess gas is deliberately burned off by radial outwardly fring igniters, or spark generators, prior to ignition. However, due to the large volume of gas
and other factors, including the vehicles relatively slow initial ascent profle, some
gas burns in pockets of fame that scorch the insulation on the frst stage as it clears
the launch tower.
To mitigate the freball effect for this launch, designated NROL-65, the starboard
CBC was ignited at T-7 sec., 2 sec. earlier than the port and core units. The frst engine
entrained and ignited excess hydrogen from the other two, preventing the development of
signifcant freballs. Images of the vehicle climbing away from Vandenbergs Space Launch
Complex 6 appear to show substantially less scorching on the port and center CBCs as
a result of the procedural change. Longer-term design changes are planned, including
alterations to the timing of the valves in the hydrogen system and alternate chill-down
methods using cooled helium.
The NROL-65 mission was the second Delta IV fight in a month following the
launch of the U.S. Wideband Global Satcom satellite on Aug. 8. It also marks the
eighth ULA launch and third overall Delta IV fight for the year. The mission as well
marks what is thought to be the last launch of a KH-11 reconnaissance satellite,
becoming the 16th to be placed in orbit since the frst variant was deployed in 1976.
William G. Hartenstein
Air TrAnsporT
Bombardier, russians in Deals
A long-rumored agreement to build the
Bombardier Q400 regional turboprop
in Russia is a step closer to realization
with the signing of a memorandum of
understanding with state-controlled
Rostekhnologii (Rostec) to validate the
opportunity to set up a local assembly
line. Bombardier believes Russia is a

strong market for the slow-selling Q400,
which is losing ground elsewhere to the
cheaper ATR 72, because its greater
capacity, higher speed and longer range
are of value to Russian airlines. Rostec
also signed a letter of intent (LOI) for
50 Q400s, and a market development
agreement involving aircraft leasing
subsidiary Avia Capital Services to
nAsA Drops Helicopter

in Full-scale Crash Test
NASA Langley Research Center conducted a
full-scale crash test of a former U.S. Marine
Corps Boeing CH-46E helicopter on Aug. 28
to test improvements to seats and belts and
collect crashworthiness data. The drop set
the baseline for another test, planned for
next year, that will involve additional technology including composite airframe sections. Thirteen instrumented
crash-test dummies and two without instruments were
onboard the helicopter when it was released from 30 ft.
to impact a soil bed at 35 fps. horizontally and 26 fps.
vertically. By tracking the black dots of the speckled
paint scheme using high-speed camera imagery, NASA
will be able to calculate how the fuselage deformed
under crash loads.
provide an opportunity to place at

least 50 additional Q400s in the region.
Establishing a Q400 fnal-assembly line
is a key commercial requirement of both
the LOI and market development agreement, Bombardier says. Separately,
Ilyushin Finance Co. (IFC) has signed
an LOI for 50 Q400s to be assembled in
Russia by the joint venture. IFC already
is a customer for Bombardiers CSeries
airliner, with a frm order for 32 CS300s,
fve of which are to be leased to Moscowbased Vim Airlines. Bombardier has
also signed an LOI to begin exploratory
discussions with Irkut centered on potential collaboration customer support
for Russias 150-210-seat MS-21, which is
scheduled to enter service in 2017.
Lufthansa MD-11F phaseout
nasa PHotos
Lufthansa Cargo plans to phase out two

of its MD-11s next year in an efort to
limit capacity growth. The airline is taking delivery of its frst two of fve Boeing
777Fs on frm order, one each in October
and November. The carrier currently
operates 18 MD-11Fs. While it has not
grounded any aircraft during the past
two years of weak cargo demand, it has
reduced use across the feet.
For more breaking news, go to AviationWeek.com
2012 2013
30%
MARKET
AW Aerospace 25
40%
INDEX VALUE 8/28

2006.6
AW Airline 25
974.3
S&P 500
1635.0
as of 8/28/2013
YEAR AGO*
37.6%
24.0%
15.9%
U.s. marine CorPs
AW&ST/S&P Market Indices
WEEK AGO*
-1.0%
-2.7%
-0.5%
20%
Give Me The night
Switzerlands national security

policy committee has voted in favor of
purchasing 22 Saab JAS-39E Gripen
fghter aircraft to replace the countrys
aging feet of Northrop F-5 Tiger IIs.
The upper house of the Swiss parliament approved the purchase earlier
this year, but it halted the program
over concerns about payments, as well
as guarantees and safeguards in the
contract with Sweden. The deal still
requires parliamentary approval.
Two F-35B Joint Strike Fighters have

conducted 19 night sorties, including short
takeoffs (STO) and vertical landings (VL) on
the USS Wasp amphibious assault ship.
These are among the 94 STOs and 95
VLs conducted thus far in Developmental
Testing 2, a follow-on to a set of day-only
DT trials in 2011. The trials, slated to
end last week, are designed to open the
envelope to include night flying around the
ship, different approaches and headings for
landings and conducting these operations in
varying wind conditions. So far, testing has
been conducted in headwinds of 35 kt and
crosswinds of 15 kt, says Navy Capt. Kurt
Kastner, executive officer of the Wasp, which
was operating about 35 mi. offshore.
They have also flown with internal weapons
stores using inert AIM-120s, GBU-12s and
GBU-32s to alter the aircrafts center of gravity
for approaches, VLs and STOs. Pilots on deck
did not report any anomalies.
Peter Wilson, a BAE test pilot, was able
to test F-35 landings at four headings,
each 90 deg. apart. He says the testing
validates that the aircraft can conduct
VLs at any heading on the ship. They were
conducted on spots in the aft portion of the
ship that have been treated with Thermion,
a new heat-resistant coating that includes
ceramic and steel. It is considered a vast
improvement over the anti-skid coating
used on decks and might be applied to
other F-35 ships, says Joe Spitz, lead tester
on deck for Naval Sea Systems Command.
Though both F-35 BF-1 and BF-5 were
unable to fly owing to maintenance issues
during the 3 hr. reporters were on the Wasp
Aug. 28, Navy Capt. Erik Etz says the singleengine, stealthy aircraft have achieved 90%
availability since flying started early last
month. BF-1, which was scheduled to conduct
a demonstration for the media event, was
down owing to a faulty cooling fan in the
nacelle; this was repaired and the aircraft
conducted test flights later that day.
Correction: An article on page 40 of the

July 29 edition misidentifed a speaker
at a congressional hearing. Rep. Adam
Smith (D-Wash.) is the U.S. House
Armed Services Committee member who
should have been quoted.
Tap on the icon in the digital

edition of AW&ST to watch clips
of F-35B takeoffs and landings
on the USS Wasp, or go to
AviationWeek.com/video
10%
YEAR-TO-DATE*
29.5%
7.9%
14.6%
0%
-10%
8/29
9/12
10/24
PERCENTAGE CHANGE
11/21
12/19
1/16
2/13
Airbus in Titanium MoU

Airbus and VSMPO-Avisma, its major
Russian titanium supplier, have signed
a memorandum of understanding to
develop new alloys and manufacturing
processes. The deal was signed at the
Moscow air show. VSMPO-Avisma has
become one of Airbuss most important
suppliers of raw materials and semifnished products since the 1990s. It
currently provides 60% of the titanium
needed by Airbus and its parent EADS.
VSMPO-Avisma builds titanium forgings
for all Airbus programs and is delivering
the pieces for the A350.
outcry in Argentina
A government-issued 10-day notice to
LAN Argentina to vacate its 2,500-sq.meter hangar at Aeroparque airport in
Buenos Aires without any forewarning,
has provoked aviation labor unions to
threaten strikes on Aug. 30 if the notice
is not withdrawn. An Argentinean judge
blocked the eviction on Aug. 28, and the
CEOs of LAN and LAN Argentina met
with the governments vice minster of
economy on Aug. 29, who told the executives that LAN Argentina was welcome
to continue operating in the country.
spACE
Change 3 on Track
Chinas lunar exploration program will
meet its long-standing target to launch
the Change 3 sample-return mission this
year, but only just, according to a government authority with oversight of space
activities. The mission will launch at
year-end, says the State Administration
of Science, Technology and Industry for
National Defense. Change 3 is to demonstrate soft landing on the Moon, surveyAviationWeek.com/awst
3/13
4/10
5/8
5/29
6/5
7/3
7/31
*PERCENTAGE CHANGE
8/28
ing of the surface by rover, survival on

the lunar surface, communications for
long-distance monitoring and control,
and direct injection into a lunar transfer
orbit. Two previous Change missions
orbited and surveyed the Moon.
DEFEnsE
First Flight for Trainer
Turkish Aerospace Industries has
completed the frst fight of the Hurkus,
the countrys frst indigenously produced turboprop trainer. The prototype
became airborne from TAIs facility at
Akinci air base near Ankara on Aug. 29
for a 33-min. fight, which saw it climb
to 9,500 ft. Powered by a 1,600-shp
Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-68T
engine, Hurkus has been developed to
compete with other turboprop trainers.
TAI hopes to achieve EASA certifcation of the Hurkus at the end of 2014.
swiss panel oKs Gripen E
AviAtion Week & SpAce technology/September 2, 2013 11
Up Front
commentary
Off Course
Chinas aerospace strategy
squanders great promise
he latest delays to the Comac C919 single-aisle jetliner, along
with rumors that the jet is overweight and unlikely to meet
already underwhelming performance goals, provide an opportunity for China to rethink its plans to develop a civil aviation
industry. Factor in the unannounced death of the long-delayed
ARJ21 regional jet (see photo), and it is pretty clear the country
faces a stark choice: Does it want to create a successful aviation
industry, or lose billions in the name of national pride?
As a prospective new
entrant to the aviation
industry, its hard to be
better positioned than
China. The country
ofers the second biggest national market
in the world, one that
is growing ever larger
and more important and
benefts from plenty of
engineering talent. Its
difcult to believe China
will not eventually have
some kind of large aerospace industry
as long as it stays a national priority.
The problem is that creating a large
commercial jet prime contractor is a
dangerous way to start a new industry. There are many failed attempts at
doing this, and only one new successful player in the past 50 years. And
that one success, Embraer, illustrates
the faws of Chinas current strategy.
Embraers great strength has been
the complete freedom accorded to its
aircraft designers to source components. It shops globally, almost purely
on the basis of best value for money.
As a result, the company is not only
one of Brazils biggest exporters; it is
also one of the biggest importers.
China has taken the opposite approach by mandating technology
transfer and directing the countrys
aircraft designers to only source
equipment that Western companies
are willing to transfer. Since there is no
ReuteRs/Landov FiLe Photo
guarantee of intellectual property (IP)

protection, there is no guarantee that
Chinese aircraft are being designed
with the latest and best components.
An aircraft, of course, is just the sum
of these parts. Sub-optimal sourcing,
along with inexperience at program
management and process implementation, would help explain the ARJ21s
complete failure and the C919s very
troubled outlook.
The alternative to creating a national jet prime is to build an industry
from the ground up. This involves
selectively deciding where to innovate
and add value, creating a diversifed
portfolio of work that contributes to
the global supply chain.
Japan has long provided the best
example of this approach. The country has become the largest exporter of
civil aviation structures and parts in
the world. Intriguingly, Japans aerospace industry has only foundered in
By Richard Aboulafa
Contributing columnist
Richard Aboulafa is
Vice President of Analysis at
Teal Group. He is based in
Washington.
a prime-contractor role, as evidenced

by the YS-11 turboprop transport or
the F-2 fghter. The latest delay to the
Mitsubishi Regional Jetwith service
introduction now pushed back to
2017augurs nothing good.
Mexico ofers an example of a
developing nation that appears to be
succeeding in building an aerospace
industry. For many years, its output
was just a small fraction of Chinas. But
the past few years have seen strong
growth, in part because Mexico ofers
strong IP protection for industry partners and has not diverted resources
to a national airplane. Mexicos civil
aviation exports to the U.S. reached
parity with Chinas in 2008 and by last
year, were nearly twice as large ($750
million in structures and parts, versus
$390 million for China).
Given Chinas great strength as
a new industry entrant, there is no
reason why it should not be ahead.
The only explanation is the countrys
misplaced focus on replicating the
same jet that many other OEMs have
built for years. When assessing the
best approach for Chinas aerospace
future, it is important to remember
that this global supply role almost
always results in strong revenues and
profts. It also produces a diversifed
portfolio of work, rather than one or
two risky projects. The U.K.s aerospace industry has been much more
proftable and sustainable since the
country built its last commercial jet,
over a decade ago.
Imagine, by contrast, Chinas aviation future on its current path. The
$1 billion spent on the ARJ21 has
produced no income, and there are no
guarantees that the billions of dollars spent on the C919 will produce
any either, let alone profts. As many
have posited, China could solve the
problem in part by mandating that its
national airlines buy locally built jets,
something that Beijing has been intelligently reluctant to do. But forcing
airlines to source equipment that is not
best for their needs would only hobble
another industry.
If all of Chinas economy were run
this way, the countrys economic
growth would likely hit a wall. This is
no way for a country to join the developed world. c
Commanders Intent
commentary
Jammin
The U.S. plays electronic warfare catch-up

omeone in the U.S. Navy intel shop might have had a nasty
shock when photos showed up last October of a courtesy
formation near Malaysia. Hanging of the wingtips of the Royal
Malaysian Air Forces Su-30MKMs (see photo) were Knirti
SAP-518 electronic warfare (EW) pods, previously seen only
on Russian Su-34 bombers.
How well the SAP-518

works is hard to assess, but
it looks very serious, with
digital radio-frequency
memory (DRFM) technology and phased-array antennas at the front and rear. A
pair of SAP-518s can cause
all kinds of confusion in a
radar system, particularly
a small-aperture, batterypowered one like that in the AIM-120
missile, upon which U.S. air dominance
is almost entirely dependent.
U.S. experience in active EW for
combat aircraft self-protection is
patchy. U.S. Air Force F-16s have no internal active EW, and the F-15 system
is elderly. The F/A-18E/F Super Hornet
has active EW via its towed decoy, installed between and below the engines.
(Afterburner plumes and fber-optic
cables do not play nicely together.)
The most advanced U.S. self-protect
EW system is being funded by Saudi
Arabia for the F-15SA.
This has been policy, not an accident. In 1992, a senior engineer at
Lockheed Sanders (now part of BAE
Systems) declared that active jamming
was unnecessary and undesirable for
stealth aircraft and was accordingly
going the way of the buggy whip industry. I reminded Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (Darpa)
Director Arati Prabhakar about that
quote a few months ago. And hows
that worked out? she responded.
One of the frst surprises in the
early stages of Darpas Air Dominance
Initiative concerned EW. We knew
it would play a big role but it came
U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. JUStiN HaLLigaN
across as vital, Prabhakar said. It

was very interesting how far others
had come along, around the world.
Darpa is looking at fundamentally new
designs to leapfrog what others are
doing with globally available technology, she added.
Unable to aford F-22s and B-2s, the
rest of the world has been making better buggy whips. The EW systems on
the Rafale, Typhoon and Gripen led the
way in the 1990s, using several mutually supportive new technologies.
Interferometric receivers could
locate hostile emitters within one
degree, not 10 or more. This made it
practical to use narrow-beam, phasedarray transmitters. Together, they
could put a lot of energy on the target
without wasting power on empty air.
The B-1 used phased-array antennas in the 1970s, but the somewhatstealthy bomber tended to act like a
ninja sufering from Tourettesblasting out jamming signals that betrayed
its presencebecause the available
processors could not adequately
control them. By the 1990s, the plummeting cost, volume, power requirements and weight of processors made
it possible to envision a fghter-sized,
By Bill Sweetman
Read Sweetmans posts on
our weblog ARES, updated daily:
AviationWeek.com/ares
sweetman@aviationweek.com
automated system that would work.

DRFM added to those capabilities.
A DRFM module receives an incoming RF signal, converts it to digital
from analog, stores it and plays it back,
with latency in tens of nanoseconds. At
the same time, it can add the distortions that EW systems have always
used; the return from the target will
look like a perfect echo, and the range
and velocity data will be convincing
but fake.
Many DRFM performance parameters have improved by a factor of fve
or more in the last decade, allowing
the memory to defeat many electronic
counter-countermeasures (ECCM)
technologies. DRFM technology can
mimic the harmonics introduced
into the radar signal by an engines
compressor face, negating a longestablished way of identifying hostile
targets. Its no coincidence that a
number of fghter upgrade programs,
including those for the Rafale and F-22,
have been changed to give more priority to ECCM.
This would be enough of a problem
even without what you carry in your
pocket. High-performance RF circuitry
is not exotic. Its a consumer product.
Think where it is made.
This trend is one big reason why the
U.S. Navywhich seems to be getting aboard this particular clue train
faster than the Air Forceis starting
not only to think about an RF-denied
environment but also act as though it
is a serious possibility.
The frst step in this process is to
start integrating an infrared searchand-track (IRST) system on the Super
Hornet. We have reported (AW&ST
Aug. 26, p. 20) that the Navy has tested
a way to target ships, passively using
the EA-18G Growler, and that Boeing and the service are considering
adding IRST to the system for an airto-air test next year. Also underway
is an AIM-120-range infrared-homing
AIM-9X Block III. With luck, these
things (and anything out of Darpas
work) will arrive in time to avoid a
capability shock.
Bob Marley didnt agree with those
who thought that jammin was a
thing of the past. It looks as if he was
right, and that its part of a challenging
future. c
AviAtionWeek&SpAcetechnology/September2,2013 13
Inside Business Aviation
commentary
Business & Commercial

Aviation Editor-in-Chief
William Garvey blogs at:
AviationWeek.com
william_garvey@aviationweek.com
membership airline
Orphan Ascendant
A lot of airplane for the money
nloved and abandoned by its creator, the outcast Hawker
4000 (see photo at right below) is being embraced as a
valued member by at least one adoptive family. Talon Air, an
aircraft management and charter operator, now has nine of the
super-midsize twins on its FAR135 certifcate.
Beechcraft corp. photos
Since only 69 of the big Hawkers

were built before its manufacturer
halted production and went through
a bankruptcy that included cancelling
their owners warranties, Talon Airs
feet is by far the largest. And it is
delighted with that distinction.
The 4000s are efcient, fast and
comfortable planes, says Paul St.
Lucia, director of sales and marketing
for the Farmingdale, N.Y., operator.
Theyre easy to sell. And thanks to the
models fat foor, straight vertical sidewalls, transatlantic and transcontinental U.S. range, good feld performance
and double club, Wi-Fi-equipped cabins
(see photo at left above), People do not
mind paying a premium. Indeed, he
says charter rates for the Hawkers are
on parity with its Challenger 300, which
puts them at the higher end of the
super-midsize pricing spectrum. We
get top dollar.
All of Talon Airs 4000s have undergone the block upgrade program.
While he declined to provide a range
of prices paid for the aircraftTalon
Air owns two 4000s outright and operates the rest for their respective ownersit is an open secret that Hawker
Beech sold for them for well below their
$23 million list price, and unloaded its
By William Garvey
remaining inventory early this year

at even deeper discounts. Aircraft
Bluebook reports average retail prices
for Hawker 4000s from $6 million for a
2008 model to $9 million for those built
in 2012, its last production year.
Part of the reason for those depressed prices is the question of parts
availability and pricing, along with the
maintainability of an orphaned feet.
However, St. Lucia quickly dismisses
such concerns, saying availability has
not been a problem. Parts may be a
little more expensive, and there might
be a little more down time, he says,
but everybody is happy.
Moreover, Talon Air is a FAR145
service center whose technicians are
well-involved in the upkeep of the
Hawker 4000s and probably the most
well-versed maintenance staf to keep
them up and running. Unmentioned
was the fact that Beechcraft is evaluating proposals for taking over the
models type certifcate, tooling and
spares.
Were in a very good position, St.
Lucia asserts, the best any Hawker
4000 owner can be in.
And to underscore that view, he says
Talon Air plans to add another three
Hawker 4000s by year-end. c
Birthplace of the iPhone, e-ticket

and McDonalds, California has another frst: a fy-all-you-want membership airline. Following a tsunami of
pre-launch publicity, Surf Air began
operations in June.
Founded by brothers Wade (see
photo) and David Eyerly, the atypical
airline sells memberships for $500 and
then charges each cardholder $1,650 a
month. For that investment, members
can ride Surf Airs three Pilatus PC-12s
as often as they would like on the operations 16 daily fights linking Burbank,
San Carlos near Palo Alto and Santa
Barbara. A fourth, yet unnamed, destination is to be revealed this week.
CEO Wade Eyerly (his brother now
fies the line, his intention all along)
says Surf Air signed 150 members in
June, 100 more in July and anticipated
that to repeat in August.
The service operates out of Atlantic
Aviation bases in Burbank and Santa
Barbara and the municipal terminal in
San Carlos. Since the eight-passenger
aircraftall purchased from fractional
operator PlaneSenseweigh less than
12,500 lb., no TSA security check is required. Passengers move from terminal
entrance to aircraft in a matter
of seconds, as a
result.
The airline,
which operates
under FAR135
commuter
authority, has
68 employees,
including 25
pilots, and
plans to expand
surf air
steadily, within
California frst, and beyond, once the
Transportation Department awards it
interstate authority.
The decidedly unorthodox airline in
a way refects its 34-year-old leaders
credentials, which include working in
Dick Cheneys vice presidential press
ofce, serving as a Defense Department
intelligence operative in Iraq, and for
the National Security Agency.
While mum about his intel work, he
is quite candid about his role relative to
his brothers. Oh, you dont want me in
the cockpit, he says. I have ADD. c
Airline Intel
By Bradley Perrett
Asia-Pacifc Bureau Chief
Bradley Perrett blogs at:
commentary
AviationWeek.com/thingswithwings
perrett@aviationweek.com
Not Too Healthy
Quiet Trading in EUAs
Daily Emissions Price Assessments

May August 2013 EUA, CER Prices
outright price ( per metric ton)
8
7
EUA
8.0
CER
PD
7.0
6
6.0
5
4
5.0
4.0
3.0
1
8/23
8/9
8/16
8/2
7/26
7/19
7/5
7/12
6/28
6/21
6/7
6/14
5/31
5/23
5/9
5/1
differential ( per metric ton)
European Union carbon dioxide allowance (EUA) prices under

the EU Emissions Trading System made modest gains in August,
trading in low volumes as expected during the summer lull.
December 2013 EUAs averaged 4.42 per metric ton Aug.
1-27, up from 4.24 in July, according to Platts daily closing
assessments.
The market this year has been increasingly driven by EU
policy, as lawmakers grapple with European Commission
proposals to withhold short-term primary supply in a bid to
support the price.
With Brussels on holiday, the market lacked key policy-driven headlines in August, and technical trading came to the fore.
Prices rose to 4.53 on Aug. 22, a climb which appeared to
be driven by a short-covering rally as speculators scrambled
to cover those positions.
The slight overall gains in August also refected increased
bidding interest in primary auctions, which ofered a lowerthan-usual total of just 33.6 million tons of spot EUAs in the
month, compared with a year-to-date average of 70 million
tons per month.
The average bid-to-cover ratio seen at EU, U.K. and German
carbon auctions rose to 4.68 in August, up from 3.2 in July,
and a year-to-date average of 3.0, according to exchange data
compiled by Platts.
December 2013 EUA prices eased back slightly to 4.45 at
the close on Aug. 23, according to Platts assessments.
Traders continue to await the results of German elections
expected on Sept. 22, which may provide more clarity on the
countrys position on the ECs backloading proposal.
countrys business environment may

be weaker than generally thought.
China Southern carried 6.5% more
passengers in the frst half of this year
than it did a year earlier. For an economy at Chinas stage of development,
with average income of only about
$6,000 per person, air trafc should be
rising somewhat faster than GDP.
The economy may not be the only
factor, however. The quality of Chinese
air services has been declining because
carriers have been increasingly incapable of making their fights leave on
time. An international survey conducted by fight data provider FlightStats
fnds that Beijing Capital and Shanghai
Pudong airports have the worlds least
punctual services. The air forces restrictive control of airspace is usually
blamed, although the military recently
seems to have tried to assign fault to
shoddy airline management (AW&ST
Aug. 5, p. 36). c
oriented, Air China, reports a 15% decrease in domestic yields for the same
period, even as pricing for its services
to other countries held steady.
The economy has probably slowed
faster than the airlines expected when
they placed their aircraft orders, says
ICF SH&E analyst Guo Yufeng. For
this year, he suspects, the airlines set
their capacity on the basis of central
government forecasts for economic
growth that turned out to be optimistic. The main Chinese airlines are
controlled by the central government,
giving them an incentive to follow offcial guidance.
Gross domestic product grew 7.5%
between the second quarters of 2012
and 2013, well below the rates of 10-11%
commonly seen until a few years
agoand more or less permanently so,
in the opinion of most economists. Indeed, China Southerns fgures, if taken
as an economic indicator, suggest the
5/16
Demand for Chinese domestic air

travel is looking sickly. China Southern Airlines, reporting a surprisingly
large 10% drop in passenger yield for
the frst half of 2013, complains that
competition has become all the more
ferce because of slowing demand,
rapidly increasing capacity of the
airline industry and expansion of the
national high-speed rail network.
One factor that China Southern
does not mention is one that would occur to almost any air passenger in the
country: the increasing unreliability
of Chinese air services, encouraging
travelers to look for alternative means
of transportation, or deterring them
from leaving town at all. An explosion
of media coverage of this issue over
the past few months does not augur
well for future demand.
China Southern is the most domestically focused of the three big Chinese
carriers. The most internationally
2.0
PD = Price Differential, euros per metric ton

EUA = European Union Emissions Allowances for December 2013 delivery
CER = U.N. Certifed Emission Reductions for December 2013 delivery
Source: Platts
The European Parliament on July 3 backed the ECs proposal to backload up to 900 million EUAs from auctions in
2013-15returning them to market later in Phase 3. The
proposal is now expected to go for assessment by the EU
Council.
Germanys position is likely to be key, as other non-decided
EU member states may take a lead from Europes industrial
powerhouse.
U.K. energy and climate change secretary Ed Davey on
July 15 said the country is working to gain enough support in
the EU Council for the backloading plan to pass. c
Frank Watson/Platts/London
For further information, please visit:
platts.com/ElectricPower/Resources/News Features/emission/index.xml
In Orbit
By Frank Morring, Jr.

Senior Editor Frank
Morring, Jr., blogs at:
AviationWeek.com/onspace
morring@aviationweek.com
commentary
Take a Look
Ecliptic targets proximity operations
any of us have enjoyed spectacular video of rocket launches

from the rockets point of view, with the launch pad reced
ing rapidly and strapon boosters falling away as the black sky of
space shows up around Earths curve. The RocketCam videos
are a staple on YouTube, but they have a value that far exceeds
entertainment. In the highstakes spacefight business, video
shots of rockets and other space hardware in action give engi
neers a much better view of system performance than even the
most detailed numeric telemetry.
Ecliptic
There is the old saying that a pic

ture is worth a thousand words, says
Rex Ridenoure, a founder of Rocket
Cambuilder Ecliptic. We would
argue that a video is worth a million
words. Theres so much you can see in
a typical video feed that you just cant
see in still images, especially in basic
telemetry. Thats in nuts and bolts
what were selling.
Sales have been pretty good in the 12
years since the company started, and
Ridenoure and his colleagues expect it
to remain that way as spacecraft op
erators fnd new uses for onthescene
moving pictures. This 2008 sequence
from a RocketCam video of a 12meter
(39ft.) antenna unfurling on the Space
Systems/Loral ICO G1 satellite is a
good example (see photos). It allowed
SS/L engineers to see exactly how the
deployment went and confrm that the
antenna remained stable.
With robotic satellite servicing on
the horizon, Ecliptic already has sup
plied the cameras for the Robotic Re
fueling Mission testbed on the Interna
tional Space Station (ISS) that NASA
is using to check out satelliteservicing
techniques (AW&ST July 29, p. 38). But
for that application, Goddard Space
Flight Center engineers took on most
of the job Ecliptic normally does for its

customers.
For any of this stuf to work you
need a system, says Ridenoure. Its
not a camera. You need a system that
can handle what the camera does, so
its really an avionics and software
and telecom kind of a problem. Thats
what we spend 90 percent of our time
on, and thats where 90 percent of our
revenue comes from.
Ecliptic expects future commercial
spacecraftservicing outfts to be good
customers of their whole systems, as
well as at least some of the commer
cial companies providing transport
and logistics to the ISS. The company
will provide context video for the up
coming frst fight of Orbital Sciences
Corp.s Cygnus vehicle to the station,
keeping an electronic eye on the sta
tion as Cygnus fies close enough to be
grappled by the main robotic arm.
Like many small aerospace compa
nies, Ecliptic has a mottled history. Rid
enoure and the rest of the companys
frst engineers came from a dotcom
startup called Blastof that failed when
the dotcom bubble burst. Blastof
planned to put a robotic lander on the
Moon and sell the data it generated,
most of which would have been video.
That was going to be streamed

back to the Internet and turned into
money, Ridenoure says. Instead, he
and some of his laidof colleagues lo
cated a billionaire backer and founded
Ecliptic, with an eye to developing a
productoriented space business
drawing on their experience engineer
ing the commercial Moon lander. In
a lucky break, they were able to buy
the RocketCam name and intellectual
property from a Colorado company,
Crosslink Inc., that was moving in a
diferent direction.
Since then, Ecliptic has had 313
contracts with 78 customers, includ
ing 11 new clients since 2011. Counting
the 14 RocketCam missions under
Crosslink, the technology has fown
rockets to low Earth orbit (LEO) 79
times, plus 22 suborbital rocket fights
and nine spacecraft missions in LEO,
geostationary and lunar orbit.
The lunar mission few on NASAs
twin Grail lunargravity mappers as
a piggyback organized by the late
Sally Rides educational organization.
Ecliptic sold its system to Sally Ride
Science, which mounted fxed camera
arrays on both spacecraft and allowed
middle school students around the
country to select targets on the lunar
surface (AW&ST Jan. 9, 2012, p. 16).
NASA also came calling after the
Columbia accident, when investiga
tors realized there was a dearth of
video that might hold clues to what
went wrong. Ecliptic video systems
were standard equipment on all sub
sequent space shuttle missions, and
on the frst of them it caught a large
piece of insulating foam falling of the
external tank despite a major engi
neering efort to prevent a recurrence
of the event that fatally shattered the
heat shielding on Columbias left wing.
That sort of phenomenology is a
target for RocketCam video, along
with mechanical actions and proxim
ity operations. And early on, Ecliptic
digitized the analog signal gener
ated by the system it bought from
Crosslink, pointing the way to a
fourth source of businesscontrol
ling sensors in addition to its camera.
Ecliptics avionics controlled all of the
sensors on the Lcross lunarimpact
mission, and Ridenoure is looking for
more. c
Washington Outlook
By Michael Bruno
Senior Policy Editor
Michael Bruno blogs at:
AviationWeek.com/ares
michael_bruno@aviationweek.com
commeNtAry
Syria and Sequestration

Forget the demand for weapons,
think of the demand for U.S. forces
any ironies are at play in the debate here over potential
U.S. military strikes in Syria, chief among them Republican
infghting and assertions of congressional prerogatives in warmaking, as well as an anti-Iraq War president leading the charge
based on intelligence of weapons of mass destruction. But in a
more subtle albeit signifcant twist, the greatest irony inside the
Beltway may be the efect of Syrian strikes on national security
budgets. There will be winners and losers, for sure, but dont
place your bets too fast.
For instance, it is not that the amount

of weapons and munitions expended
would cause a bump up in defense
spending. Like with Libyan operations
in 2011, any U.S. strikes in response to
the Assad regimes purported use of
chemical weapons against its people are
expected to be limited, led by Tomahawk Land-attack Missiles (TLAMs),
and the Defense Department can absorb them under current and planned
inventories. Later restocking would
be nearly imperceptible to an industry
used to more than a half-trillion dollars
in annual spending.
From a hard-nosed revenue and
proft perspective, we see minimal
impact on most U.S. or EU defense
companies, say RBC Capital Markets
analysts.
We estimate that expenditure and
replacement of 200-300 TLAMs would
be immaterial to Raytheon in 2014-15
and potentially total 0.4%-0.8% of new
sales in over a two-year period, echoes
Capital Alpha Partners analyst Byron
Callan. That presumes [the Pentagon] replaces TLAMs used in a Syrian
strike.
Rather, the long-term budgetary impact of strikes will be the fact
thatSyriaplus recent U.S. embassy
closings due to al Qaeda-based threats,
Egypts ongoing turmoil, recent U.S.
moves to bolster Jordans defense and
the memory of Libyais playing out
as Washington fnally begins to seriously mull the makeup of the military
July when the choices were publicly

outlined, assuming the budget law
isnt amended in their favor, then the
Pentagon wants to focus on capability,
making sure U.S. forces always have
an unfair edge over an adversarys
weapons. The key sacrifce is that
it means not having enough forces
to deploy worldwide at a moments
notice for contingencies like Syria or
Libya, because force size would be the
bill payer, and especially as the U.S.
pivots to the Asia-Pacifc. Also, there
is the fact that most contingencies do
not rise to the level of near-peer war.
F-35s, new bombers and other highend military equipment for fghting
advanced conventional conficts would
be irrelevant to a response to another
al Qaeda attack, Callan notes.
To be sure, no U.S. politician will
ever declare a fnal decision publicly;
the optics would be bad. But there
will be road signs indicating what
path Washington is taking, and budget
fghts over the next six months will
provide many. c
NASAS NebuloSity
U.S. Navy
We see minimal impact

on most U.S. or EU
defense companies.
Financial analysts on Syria
in the next few decades. As noted on
this page since summer began in the
Northern Hemisphere, defense ofcials
are talking up their options for remaking the armed forces and defense agencies under the full limits of the 2011
Budget Control Act and its threats of
annual sequestrations unless Congress
mandates otherwise. Two main choices
have emergeddescribed as capacity
(size) versus capability (technology)
and at some point Washington will
have to favor one over the other.
As the vice chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staf let it be known in late
NASA supporters may hate the

restraints of the 2011 Budget Control
Act (BCA) and annual sequestrations
brought in part by tea party demands
for lower federal spending, defcits and
debt, but with the law looking increasingly likely to stay, space boosters
might want to pay more attention
to the Houses related spending and
NASA authorization bills this year.
That is because when it comes to the
nations space and aeronautics agency,
Republicans who control the House
at least have outlined priorities and
bill payers, unlike in the Democraticrun Senate, and that puts them ahead
this year in lawmaking. The Senate
authorizers have marginalized themselves . . . the House authorizers and
appropriators will be together because
they have discussed where their priorities are, claims Scott Pace, a former
NASA associate administrator and
White House Science and Technology Policy ofcial in the George W.
Bush administration. Still, Pace, now
a professor at George Washington
University, did not necessarily endorse
House decisions in a teleconference
with reporters last week. c
SAfety
Damaged Confdence
Social media campaign against Super Pumas
could have impacts beyond the North Sea
Tony Osborne London
he sobering images of wreckage foating in the waters of

the Shetland Islands are a stark reminder of the dangers
faced by ofshore oil workers traveling by helicopter.
But the deaths of four workers

following the crash of a CHC Scotiaoperated Eurocopter AS332L2 Super
Puma on Aug. 23 have sparked an unprecedented public outcry that could
end up having a dramatic effect on
both the oil and gas industry and the
helicopter operators that support it.
While the fight suspension for the
AS332L2 model and other variants of
the Super Puma has now been lifted,
almost 40,000 people have given their
support to a social media campaign

dubbed Destroy the Super Pumas
set up within hours of the tragedy, calling for the removal of the aircraft and
its variants from operational service in
the North Sea.
The Facebook page says oil workers
are fearful of fying in the type after the
ffth accident involving the helicopter
in four years. Two of those accidents
have claimed a total of 20 lives.
Oil executives are concerned that if
Painful History
The North Sea oil industry pioneered the concept of oil and gas support operations. Companies such as Bristow introduced new aircraft
and technologies into ofshore fight operations, but the evolution has
been painful, with North Sea accidents accounting for the loss of more
than 90 passengers and crewmembers since the worst one in November
1986. This table shows accidents and incidents that resulted in the loss
of an aircraft, lives or both.
Nov. 6, 1986: A British International Helicopters
(BIH) Boeing 234 Chinook (G-BWFC) crashed
on approach to Sumburgh, Shetland Islands,
while returning workers from the Brent Field.
The aircraft suffered a transmission failure in
the forward mast which desynchronized the rotor system, killing all 45 onboard. The accident
remains the worst North Sea helicopter crash
in history.
July 13, 1988: A BHI-operated Sikorsky S-61N
(G-BEID) ditched into the sea 29 nm northeast
of Sumburgh following an engine fre. There were
no fatalities among the 21 passengers and crew.
Nov. 10, 1988: A BHI-operated S-61N (G-BDES)
crashed 2 nm east of the Claymore platform after
a loss of oil pressure in the main gearbox. The
aircraft was ditched into rough seas, and all 13
passengers were rescued.
July 25, 1990: A BHI-operated S-61N (G-BEWL)
the campaign gains traction, the move

could result in widespread disruption
of oil production in the North Sea, as
well as the industries that support it.
In line with a request from the Helicopter Safety Steering Group (HSSG)
a committee formed in response to
previous North Sea helicopter accidentsCHC, Bond Ofshore Helicopters and the Bristow Group halted operations with the Eurocopter AS322L2
and other Super Puma variants in the
U.K., including the older AS332L/L1
models and the more modern EC225,
within hours of the accident.
The EC225 had been just returning
Norway, to the Norne oilfield suffered a catastrophic main gearbox failure and crashed, killing all 12 aboard.
July 16, 2002: A Bristow-operated Sikorsky
S-76A+(G-BJVX) crashed near the Leman Foxtrot
Platform in the North Sea after a blade previously
struck by lightning disintegrated in fight, sending
the aircraft crashing into the water. There were
no survivors among the nine passengers and two
crew.
was heading toward the Brent Spar platform but

as it approached, the tail struck a crane and
crashed onto the helideck. Before passengers
could escape, the aircraft fell over the edge of
the deck, into the sea. Four passengers and two
crew died, while the seven others escaped.
Feb. 18, 2009: A Bond Offshore-operated Eurocopter EC225 (G-REDU) struck the surface of
the North Sea 500 meters (1,650 ft.) from the
planned landing point on the ETAP production
platform in the North Sea. All 18 passengers and
crew onboard were rescued.
MArch 14, 1992: A Bristow-operated Aerospatiale AS332L Tiger Super Puma (G-TIGH) lost
control in poor weather while shuttling personnel
from an oil platform to a foating support vessel.
The aircraft crashed into the North Sea near East
Shetland Basin with the loss of 11 of the 17 passengers and crew onboard.
April 1, 2009: A Bond Offshore-operated

AS332L2 (G-REDL) suffered a catastrophic failure
of the main gearbox 11 nm northeast of Peterhead, Scotland, and crashed into the sea. There
were no survivors among the 14 passengers and
two crew.
JAN. 19, 1995: A Bristow-operated AS332L

(G-TIGK) ditched into the North Sea, suffering a
loss of tail rotor control after being struck by lightning. All passengers and crew escaped unhurt.
MAy 10, 2012: A Bond Offshore-operated EC225

(G-REDW) ditched into the North Sea 20 nm east
of Aberdeen, Scotland, following the failure of the
bevel gear vertical shaft in the main gearbox. All
14 passengers and crew escaped unhurt.
Sept. 8, 1997: A Norwegian Helikopter Serviceoperated AS332L1 (LN-OPG) from Bronnoysund,
oct. 22, 2012: A CHC-operated EC225 (G-CHCN)

ditched 32 nm southeast of Sumburgh following
to service after a nine-month halt from

fight operations over water following
problems with the bevel gear vertical
shaft in the main gearbox.
The fight suspension on all four rotorcraft variants was eventually lifted
Aug. 29 following a two-day meeting
of the HSSG. However, the group says
that, given the sensitivities around the
accident, the AS332L2 should only initially return to non-revenue operations
such as training.
The HSSG says it is satisfed that
there is no reason to believe there is
an inherent mechanical problem with
any of the AS332L/L1, AS332L2 or
EC225 helicopter types. CHC, which
returned AS332L2s to operations outside the U.K. Aug 29, says: From what
we know so far about the Sumburgh
incident, as well as tens of thousands
of hours of experience with this aircraft,
it is apparent there is not a fundamental
problem with AS332L2 aircraft that led
to this accident.
But workers unions remain dissatis-
the failure of the bevel gear vertical shaft in the

main gearbox. All 19 passengers and crew escaped unhurt. This incident and that of G-REDW
resulted in the grounding of the EC225 from overwater operations for nine months.
Aug. 23, 2013: A CHC-operated AS332L2

(G-WNSB) experienced a sudden loss of power
and ditched into the North Sea 2 nm west of
Sumburgh Airport. The cause is as yet unknown.
Four passengers were killed. However, both crewmembers and 12 passengers were rescued.
CHC Scotia operates

Eurocopter AS332L2s
alongside EC225s
and Sikorsky S-92s in
Aberdeen.
Tony osborne/AW&sT
fed, saying that workforce confdence

in the Super Puma type aircraft was
severely dented after the two ditching
events of last year and the fatal accident
in 2009. They urge that the helicopters
not restart operations until the cause of
the Aug. 23 accident is found.
Operators and the British Airline
Pilots Association (Balpa) have reaffrmed their confdence in the rotorcraft, urging oil workers not to judge
it or draw early conclusions about the
accident, since investigators have not yet reported

the cause.
Twelve passengers and the
two pilots managed to escape
from the Super Puma within
minutes after it ditched into
the misty waters of Fitful Head at the
southern tip of the Shetland Islands.
The helicopter, registered as G-WNSB,
was just minutes from landing at Sumburgh Airport after flying from the
drilling platform Borgsten Dolphin on
behalf of the oil frm Total when it apparently sufered a catastrophic loss of
power, sending it tumbling into the sea.
Investigators say the approach to
Sumburgh appeared normal until 3 mi.
out, when the airspeed decreased and
the helicopter descended rapidly. They
believe the rotorcraft landed intact and
upright, but rolled over in the water and
was broken up by repeated contact with
the rocky shoreline.
Within hours, emergency services
recovered three bodies; a fourth was
reportedly found still trapped within
the helicopters cabin. The wreckage of
the rotorcraft has since been salvaged
and brought aboard an oil and gas support ship, Bibby Polaris. The fight data
recorder was found on Aug. 29.
Since the accident, Total has reportedly chartered several ships to conduct
platform-crew change operations with
the expectation that some workers will
Poor weather hampered searchand-rescue eforts in the waters

of Sumburgh Airport in Shetland,
Scotland, following the Aug. 23
crash of an AS322L2 operated by
CHC Scotia.
royAl nATionAl lifeboAT insTiTuTion
Source: U.K. Air Accident Investigation Branch/

Norwegian Aviation Authority
SAfety
refuse to fy to platforms on any model
of helicopter. Other companies extended
staf rotation periods on platforms and
reduced manning to minimum levels.
Of the 16,000 people ofshore at any one
time, some 12,000 were afected by the
disruption caused by the suspension.
Using ships is not a long-term solution: While helicopter transfer missions
take just a couple of hours, ship transfers can take up to 10 times as long,
and transiting passengers from vessel
to platform presents its own dangers.
Some in the support-helicopter
industry believe the HSSG may well
have been backed into a corner by
the workers unions. By calling for the
grounding of all Super Puma variants,
the HSSG inadvertently associated
the crashed AS332L2 model with the
EC225, even though the two types are
distinctly diferent in terms of operation
and engineering. The EC225 was only
grounded after investigators linked the
two incidents in May and October 2012,
neither of which resulted in any fatalities (AW&ST July 22, p. 51).
Only a handful of the EC225s operating from Aberdeenthe main base of
the North Sea helicopter companies
have returned to operations since interim fxes were certifed in July. Some
of the larger oil companies have been
consulting with the operators to ensure
they have the capabilities to conduct
the interim procedures mandated by
regulators for potentially up to two
years, as Eurocopter works on a permanent fx to the issue.
There is a need to arm workers with
the facts about these aircraft, says one
helicopter operator executive. But not
all the oil companies realize this.
Oil companies and the helicopter
operators fear a ripple efect not just
across the North Sea, but in other areas of the world where helicopters are
relied on for crew-change missions.
Eurocopter, which in the days after the
accident sent top executives including
new CEO Guillaume Faury to Aberdeen, has been quick to point out that
the AS332L2 involved in the accident
was equipped with a main gearbox
with a carburized vertical shaft, not a
nitrided (hardened) shaft, like the one
involved in the two EC225 ditchings.
Operators, trade unions and regulators will engage with the offshore
workforce to rebuild trust and confdence, and a sympathetic approach
will be taken with any worker who feels
unable to fy, the HSSG says. c
Frozen Foe
International research plan defned for icing

study as Boeing and GE test countermeasures
Guy Norris Los Angeles
ruising in darkness at 41,000 ft.,

on July 31 near Chengdu, China,
the crew of an AirBridge Cargo
Boeing 747-8F were beginning to prepare for the descent into Hong Kong
when they deviated to avoid a thunderstorm clearly depicted on the weather
radar.
Even if they had been able to visually check their surroundings, they
would not have noticed anything unusual about the area they penetrated
in the outfow region of the anvil cloud
trailing the relatively distant storm.
There was no sign of airframe icing,
nor any echoes from the radar.
Yet the cloud was full of undetectable ice crystals thatwithin minutes
of the encountercaused significant
damage to three of the aircrafts four
engines, one of which lost thrust while
another surged. The AirBridge Cargo
(ABC) crew had unwittingly come faceto-face with core engine icing, a poorly
understood phenomenon that has been
striking a wide variety of aircraft and
engines on a growing scale since the
1990s. As well as surges and mechanical
problems, the previously unrecognized
form of icing inside engines causes
thrust loss, or power roll-backs, with
virtually no warning.
According to Russian federal air
transport authority Rosaviatsia, chief
investigators of the 747-8F event, the
crew saw at least one typical clue to
the phenomenon. Entering the area
of ice crystals, the total air temperature (TAT) rose by 20C to -34C for 86
sec. The crew reacted by switching
the engine ice-protection system from
automatic to manual for about 10 min.
But approximately 22 min. after fying
boeing
The most recent engine core icing

event hit an AirBridge Cargo-operated Boeing 747-8F en route from
Moscow to Hong Kong on July 31.
through the warmer sector, the aircrafts
No. 2 (inboard left) engine surged and
automatically restarted. The No. 1 engine then experienced a speed reduction
of 70% of N1 (low-pressure rotor speed).
After landing at Hong Kong, inspections
revealed damage to the high-pressure
compressor blades of the Nos. 1 and 2
engines, as well as to the No. 4.
Within weeks of the latest event,
Boeing and General Electric flight
tested an engine software upgrade
specifically designed to counter the
ice-crystal buildup. GE says the software changes to the GEnx-2B fullauthority digital engine-control unit
will help the engine itself detect the
presence of ice crystals when the aircraft is flying through a convective
weather system. If detected, the new
algorithms will schedule variable bleed
valves to open and eject ice crystals
that may have built up in the area aft of
the fan, or in the fowpath to the core.
The modifcation to the GEnx control
logic leverages similar changes made
to improve the ability of the CF6 to operate in similar icing conditions.
The AirBridge Cargo event is the latest in a growing number of engine-icing
incidents, which have triggered recent
changes in international certifcation
requirements. Unlike traditional engine icing, in which supercooled liquid
droplets freeze on impact with exposed
outer parts of the engine as the aircraft
flies through clouds, engine core ice
accretion involves a complex process
where ice particles stick to a warm

metal surface. These act as a heat sink
until the metal surface temperature
drops below freezing, thereby forming
a location for ice and water (mixedphase) accretion. The accumulated ice
can either block fow into the core or
shed into the downstream compressor
stages and combustor, causing a surge,
roll-back or other malfunction.
Until relatively recently, it was assumed that ice particles would bounce
off structures and pass harmlessly
through bypass ducts, or melt inside
the engine. Now, there is evidence of
an environment where a certain combination of water, ice and airflow is
susceptible to accreting ice. Like many
of the other known core icing events,
the ABC 747-8F incident occurred near
convective clouds. When incidents
were frst reported, investigators initially assumed supercooled liquid
water, hail or rain were responsible
because they had been lifted to high
altitudes by updrafts. Yet most events
have been recorded above 22,000 ft.,
which is considered the upper limit for
clouds containing supercooled liquid
water.
According to investigators studying fight data recorders and crew observations from previous engine-loss
events, all took place at high altitudes
and cold temperatures. Incidents
struck regional jet aircraft at median
altitudes and temperatures of 29,000
ft. and -32C, while for larger jet transports, medians for most events were at
altitudes and temperatures of around
26,000 ft. and -21C. All events occurred
near convective clouds and/or thunderstorms, in air signifcantly warmer
than the standard atmosphere and in
clouds or visible moisture. Common
to all were anomalous TAT readings
with no signifcant airframe icing and
no weather radar returns.
To fnd out exactly what is happening inside the convective systems that
most frequently cause core icing, particularly in mid-latitude and tropical
regions, an international team plans
to conduct the High Ice Water Content
(HIWC) test campaign in Darwin, Australia. The team includes NASA, FAA,
Environment Canada, Transport Canada, Airbus, Boeing, the U.S. National
Center for Atmospheric Research and
the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Also joining the efort will be the
European Unions High Altitude Ice
Crystals (HAIC) project, which will
be contributing a specially confgured

Falcon 20 research aircraft.
The European efort also builds on
the European Aviation Safety Agencys
(EASA) High Ice Water Content program, which itself used data collected
on a series of fight-test campaigns conducted by Airbus in 2010 in the wake of
the Air France 447 A330-200 accident
in June 2009. The investigation determined the chain of events leading to the
crash began with the likely obstruction of the pitot probes by ice crystals.
As part of its safety recommendations,
the French air accident investigation
agency, BEA, proposed in July 2012 that
EASA undertake studies to determine
with appropriate precision the composition of cloud masses at high altitude,
and based on these results, modify certifcation criteria for air data probes.
The HIWC/HAIC campaigns are therefore intended to provide better understanding of glaciated icing conditions
that could also afect air data probes.
Originally planned for early 2013,
the timetable for HIWC was slipped to
2014 after delays to the modifcation
of the NASA Gulfstream IIoriginally
designated as the primary test platform. However, further delays to the
Gulfstream modifcation have forced
HIWC planners to consider contingency plans under which the Falcon
20 will become the primary aircraft,
possibly fying with a scaled version
of a research instrument originally intended for the larger NASA aircraft. c
AeronAuticS
Sharper Vision
NASA focuses on six thrustsfrom autonomy to
supersonicsin pursuit of leaps in aeronautics
Graham Warwick Los Angeles and Washington
s NASA refocuses its aeronautics research on key challenges
facing aviation, its inspiration
is coming from two non-aerospace
entitiesEastman Kodak and Otis
Elevator.
Together their divergent stories
convinced the agencys associate administrator for aeronautics, Jaiwon
Shin, that NASA needed a vision to ensure its aviation research continues to
lead the worldand beneft industry.
The new strategy aligns aeronautics
research with six thrusts shaped to
help industry respond to three global
megadrivers: growing demand for
mobility; severe challenges to sustainability; and technology developments
in information, communication and
automation. It is a vision intended to
avoid the complacency that doomed
Kodak and to tap the creative thinking that transformed Otis.
Kodak dominated the photographic market into the 1990s, but resisted
moving to digital imaging because
it threatened its film business. Now
the 121-year-old company is about to
emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy
protection a shadow of its former self.
Otis, meanwhile, saw its share of the

edition of AW&ST to read our
account of NASAs late-1990s
cut to aeronautics funding,
kiiling supersonic and subsonic transport
research programs, to cover cost overruns on
the International Space Station, or go to
AviationWeek.com/nasaaero
global market squeezed by low-cost
competitors, but responded in 2000 by
launching the Gen2 machine-roomless
elevator, which is now the 160-year-old
companys fastest seller.
To Shin, the story of one company is
a lesson for NASA and the U.S. aviation industry, while the other could be
a model. In 1991, Kodak dominated the
global market for flm, and was wiped
out by digital imaging. They had the
money and the talent to compete, but
failed miserably, he says. Otis is the
complete opposite. They gave a multidisciplinary team the most compelling
problem statement in the businessget
rid of the machine room at the top of
the elevator. They broke more than 100
years of tradition in elevator design.
Shin likens the U.S. civil-aviation
industry to Kodak at its peak, blessed
AeronAuticS
A low-boom demonstrator would

measure public response to
shaped shockwaves and gather
data to support rule changes to
allow supersonic fight over land.
with growing demand, record orders
and increasing deliveries, but facing
global competitors, affordability and
sustainability challenges, and an industry-shaking technological revolution.
We are the Kodak flm of 1991. NASA
aeronautics has the most talent in government R&D, the most money and
the best facilities. But we are not invincible. Yet, if we adopt the [Otis] model
. . . adapt our mindset, our way of doing
business, [we could] be invincible.
U.S. aviation is not in danger of a
demise as dramatic as Kodaks, which
saw its revenues plunge from a high
of $16 billion in 1996 to $6.2 billion in
2011. But it takes 20 years to field a
new technology in aviation, so the aim
is to create a burning platform long
before the fre ignites. It is not that
anything is broken, but we face global
competition in R&D and we have got to
start running again, Shin says.
After declining to a low of $450 million in fiscal 2008, the year Shin assumed his post, NASAs aeronautics
budget has recovered steadily to $560
million in fscal 2013still just a third
of what it was in real terms in 1998. A
restructuring in 2006 to focus the limited funding on foundational research
has paid dividends; several promising
technologies are moving into largerscale, more integrated testing.
But wind-tunnel and fight testing is
expensive and, absent extra funding,
the agency has been forced to choose
between which technologies to mature.
NASAs budget is not tiny, but the aeronautics piece is miniscule, Administrator Charles Bolden acknowledged to the
American Institute of Aeronautics and
Astronautics Aviation 2013 Conference
in Los Angeles last month.
Unveiling the new strategic vision,
he chided the aviation industry for not
talking about aeronautics enough . . . If
I got half as much pressure from this
community as I do from one congressman about going to a distant planet,
just think what we could do. In his
four years as administrator, Bolden
said, he has been to zero congressional hearings on aeronautics and
that is not a good trend.
NASAs new vision is an efort to provide an Otis-like problem statement to
nAsA ConCepT
focus its aeronautics research on the

challenges and opportunities that face
aviation. My predecessors did not have
the luxury of taking the time to look
ahead at where we should be going in
the next 20-40 years. My management
team has stayed intact long enough for
us to [focus on] this. We hope it will be
a lasting legacy, says Shin.
Strategic trends identifed by NASA
include the shift in the global economy
to the Asia-Pacifc region, the growth
of the middle class in India and China,
and exploding urbanization worldwideall factors behind Airbus and
Boeings bullish forecasts for air traffc and aircraft deliveries in the next
20 years. But the same factors are also
clear to others who view building an
aviation industry as a national priority.
Countries that are not yet major
players see the same trends and will
not sit on the sidelines, Shin says. The
scary part about Chinas aviation industry is that they have a domestic market
to support the industry and dont have
to rely on exports. If we only worry
about the [Comac] C919, we are being
short-sighted. Better, more advanced
models will follow, he warns.
Another megatrend is what NASA
calls technology convergencethe
ability to coalesce technologies from
other sectors. It is imperative to do this
effectively, Shin says. Non-aerospace
sectors are already capitalizing on
advances in information, communication and automation technologies. But,
complexity, capital intensity, safety and
scrutiny work against the aviation industry, he notes.
But for NASA and industry to stay
leaders, I am a frm believer this is critical, Shin says. If we do not know how
to bring all those technologies together,
extract their essence, combine and apply
them to aviation to spur advances and
new capabilities, then we will not sustain
our lead. We will be left on the platform
with dust on our faces if we insist on going through the traditional way of developing and infusing technologies.
The new strategy aligns civil aeronautics research under six thrusts:
safe, efficient growth in operations,
low-boom supersonics, ultra-efcient
subsonic commercial aircraft, lowcarbon propulsion, real-time systemwide safety assurance, and assured
autonomy. Now we need to get an idea
of where our investment is too high,
and where we have to start growing.
We will go through this process over
the coming months, says Shin.
Organizational and investment
changes are expected to be refected
in NASAs fscal 2015 budget request,
which will be presented early next year.
The bulk of NASAs $560 million annual investment in aeronautics research
is in the safe, efcient operations and
ultra-efficient aircraft thrusts. We
need to start doing more in low carbon
and autonomy, he says. Assured autonomy could bring a transformation,
far beyond just unmanned aircraft systems, in manned aircraft and operation
of the National Airspace System.
We are on the right track with safety and efciency, but we need to bring
more to sustainability, continues Shin.
To truly transform aviation, we need
to look at automation, intelligence and
electric aircraft, so it will be possible to
start thinking about on-demand operations, such as cargo that is more than
just scheduled.
NASA is pushing for funding to
build a low-boom supersonic flight
demonstrator as a fagship for the new
vision. We are not developing technologies to enable a supersonic civil
transport, but we are trying to make
sure that a low-boom standard can be
established, Shin says. We want to
develop the data to show regulators
that a certain level of boom will allow
supersonic fight over land. c
Avionics
Manning for
Unmanned
NASA markets sim-to-fight testbed
John Croft Newport News, Va.
ASA Langley Research Center
is now open for business as a
third-party evaluation facility
for command-and-control technologies
for safng unmanned and light aircraft.
Ofcials see the capability as a necessary commodity in the unmanned aircraft sector, where sense-and-avoid
(SAA) safeguards will be needed to
meet a 2015 congressional deadline for
integrating UAVs into civil airspace.
Our job was to get the capability developed that we knew the community
would need, says Andy Lacher, UAS
research strategist for the Mitre Corp.,
a partner with NASA in developing and
ofering the simulation-to-fight testbed.
Lacher and Frank Jones, Langleys
associate director of research services,
provided a close-up view of the capabilities to Aviation Week on Aug. 15.
Three years in development, Langleys sim-to-flight capability allows
researchers or companies to frst run
SAA algorithms with a test-verifed dynamic simulation developed by Mitre,
followed by fight testing in Langleys
UAV surrogatea highly modifed Cirrus SR22 with VHF links to a simulated
ground station. NASA is also installing
a Globalstar satellite phone system in
the SR22 for over-the-horizon testing.
The simulation and the Cirrus can
host a variety of surveillance technologies, including automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B),
ADS-rebroadcast and trafc information services (TIS-B). Jones says the
testbed can also accommodate radar
sensors. He notes that if it cant work
with ADS-B, its unlikely it can work
with other surveillance technologies.
The fight-test portion is critical due
to the inherent limitations of simulations. We added uncertainty in the
simulation by varying some parameters, but we will never match the
uncertainty of real life, says Lacher.
The dynamic environment was obvious during a 1.5-hr. observation fight
with Langley chief pilot Rick Yasky in
the left seat of the Cirrus and engineer Josh Carbonneau operating the
fight-control computers from the right
rear seat. Modifcations to the Cirrus

include the general purpose computer
in the back seat, a bolt-on autothrottle
that drives the Cirruss single power
lever, and a flight-test multifunction
display that shifts ADS-B-out surveillance altitude of intruder aircraft down
by 2,000 ft. The bias allowed the Cirrus and a NASA Cessna 206 intruder
aircraft to safely demonstrate three
SAA algorithms with ample vertical
separation. Scenarios included one aircraft overtaking the other; head-on ap-
safe distance from the intruder while

maintaining the original fightpath.
Yasky and the team recently completed a multiyear cooperative automatic SAA demonstration project with
Mitre, the University of North Dakota
(UND) and Draper Laboratory, showcasing NASA and Mitres simulation
and flight-testing capabilities while
generating data for the FAA, industry
and military. Overall, more than 380
encounters were completed with the
three algorithms, one each from Mitre,
UND and Draper, along with millions
of encounter simulations.
Lacher says one key fnding is that a
2-nm, 500-ft. protection puck around
the aircraft is feasible and that ADS-B
is a good surveillance source, though it
is critically important for algorithms
to be robust with respect to losing sensor inputs. When we had a gap in in-
NASA Langley Research Center

is ofering a manned SR22 to test
UAV technologies as part of a new
sim-to-fight testbed.
John Croft/AW&St
proaches; and orthogonal encounters,

some with the intruder aircraft turning in toward the Cirrus. The SAA system automatically takes over aircraft
pitch and roll through the autopilot
and speed through the autothrottle.
Setting up the encounters was an
exercise in aerial ballet, with Yasky and
the 206 pilot coordinating waypoint arrivals and turns to position the aircraft
where the SAA algorithms could be activated to generate the required data.
Unlike traffic-alert and collisionavoidance systems, which give pilots a
vertical speed command to avoid other
aircraft, the SAA algorithms allow the
aircraft to alter its fightpath in roll control, vertical speed and airspeed. The
fexibility was noteworthy as the algorithm commanded full throttle early in
an encounter in an attempt to keep a
truder information, we found that some

algorithms worked reasonably well,
depending on the length of the gap.
He also notes that small differences
in initial conditions can drastically
change the direction that the aircraft
automatically turns, and there should
be damping to keep the solution from
fip-fopping.
Along with mature discussions
with the FAA for using the sim-to-fight
option for testing its next-generation
airborne collision avoidance system
for UAVs (ACAS-Xu), Jones is also in
talks with the U.S. Air Force regarding
testing for its UAV applications. NASA
does not plan to spin of the venture into
a separate business, but will work with
companies or other government agencies via Space Act Agreements, contracts through Mitre or other means. c
Defense
New conformal fuel tanks are

optimized to reduce the frontalaspect radar cross section for the
Super Hornet, while bard stacks
(between the canted tail fns) were
redesigned for the upgraded aircraft
to reduce its thermal signature.
Boeing
Domestic Partner?
Boeing fnally catches Pentagons eyebut not
yet fundingwith Super Hornet upgrades
Amy Butler St. Louis
fter years of courting from afar,

Boeing seems to finally have
caught the U.S. Navys attentionand supportfor a series of upgrades for the F/A-18E/F designed to
improve its stealthiness and keep it relevant against threats well beyond 2030.
With 25 hr. of flight time on new,
stealthy F/A-18 fuel tanks and more
upgrade trials planned, the company
has shed any pretense of targeting the
Defense Department.
This is no longer something we consider to be just an international play,
says Paul Summers, Boeings F/A-18
and EA-18G director. The upgrades ft
the domestic market better right now,
adds Mark Gammon, program manager for Super Hornet and Growler
advanced capabilities.
The upgrade project began under
the nebulous F/A-18E/F International
Roadmap moniker, a 2010 rollout of a
menu of improvements for the twinengine fghter. The company briefed the
capabilities to foreign customers, showcased them at air shows abroad and
simply kept the Navy in the loopas a
courtesy, ofcials say. Until now, Boeing
executives have been quick to correct
any suggestion that Super Hornet improvements were ultimately trained on
its largest Super Hornet customer, the
Pentagon. But the strategy of shopping

them around the globe was clearly to
whet the Navys appetite.
The ultimate prize for Boeing would
be to unseat the F-35C as the Navys
future fghter. The services interest coincides with its cautious support of the
F-35C project. While the Marine Corps
plans to declare initial operational capability (IOC) by December 2015, and the
Air Force a year later, the Navy is more
measured with its intention for an IOC
in 2019. Boeing ofcials stopped short
of suggesting the Advanced Super Hornetwith its optional engine upgrade,
frontal-aspect stealth improvements
and situational awareness addscould
be an alternative to Lockheed Martins
F-35C. But the upgrades target a threat
in 2030 and beyond, well into the sweet
spot for which the F-35C is designed to
operate. We based our design on [a]
good enough [approach], aimed at value
rather than incorporating higher levels
of all-aspect stealth, says Mike Gibbons,
vice president of the Super Hornet and
Growler programs for Boeing.
Though the Navy is not yet funding
the upgrades, it is onboard with the concept. The service is allowing Boeing to
lease one of its new Super Hornets for
demonstration fights and is requesting
some specifc design tweakslike im-
proved fuel load in stealthy fuel tanks.

Ofcials on the Super Hornet industry
team suggest funding for at least some
of the upgrades, such as the engine enhancement, could come as early as the
2016 budget, which will be drafted next
summer.
Lockheed Martin has yet to conduct
ship trials with the carrier variant; the
company was forced to redesign its tailhook, which bounced over the wire during taxi tests. So fight testing for some
of the Advanced Super Hornet components, started Aug. 5 on the company
dime, come as the Navy is still open to
options.
The entire array of upgrades could
be developed for less than $1 billion,
says Gibbons. If the service were to buy
new F/A-18E-Fs with the upgrades, the
fyaway cost would be roughly $56 million, or 10% higher than the most recent
fyaway price$51 millionin the third
multiyear buy as cited by the company
(this includes the aircraft, both engines
and electronic-warfare gear).
Modifying existing aircraft is an option, though the kit and installations
would cost slightly more than the 10%
cited for new-builds, Gibbons says.
Plumbing and wiring would need to
be installed to support the conformal
fuel tanks (CFT) and external weapons pod. The Navy owns 491 of 563
Super Hornets planned and 90 of 135
Growlers, and Pentagon support could
prompt more commitments from export customers.
Though not discussed by company
ofcials, Boeing is likely to heavily incentivize the Navys interest in newbuild aircraft in an efort to impel the
service to pursue the strategy used by
the Royal Australian Air Force of delaying F-35 purchases in favor of ongoing F/A-18E/F gap-fller buys.
We didnt chase this specific set
of technologies because of the F-35,
Gibbons told reporters during an Advanced Super Hornet briefng. Afordability is the key diferentiator for us.
Based on recently announced lowrate, initial production contracts 6 and
7, the F-35C cost is estimated at $137.7
million and $132.9 million, respectively
(AW&ST Aug. 5/12, p. 30). Included in
this tally are the price of the airframe,
engines and retrofts expected to be
added to the aircraft based on the
fndings of ongoing fight testing. Ultimately, the average F-35A is expected to cost $80-90 million, Air Force
Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan said
Super Hornet Upgrade Options

Improvement
How Its Done
50% Frontal Radar Cross-Section Reduction
Conformal fuel tanks carrying a total of 3,500 lb. of fuel also produce
260-mi. range improvement while carrying medium load of external weapons
Centerline weapon pod carrying up to 2,500 lb. of payload
100 lb. of radar-absorbing/scattering materials
New radar-blocker design for engine inlet, including new radar-scattering material
F414 Engine Enhancement

10% higher airfow in same size engine
50% reduction in shop visits
3% lower fuel consumption at current thrust
Optional 20% thrust increase
Three-stage fan with all-blisk design

High-pressure compressor stages reduced to 6 from 7
Shrouded blisk in Stage 1 fan
High-effciency 3-D aerodynamic design tools used for both compressor and fan
Improved Situational Awareness
11 X 19-in. touchscreen cockpit displays

Low-profle, internally mounted infrared search-and-tracking sensor
Source: Boeing
last year; the C is likely to be slightly

higher due to unique equipment and a
notably smaller anticipated buy.
Summers says the Navy can avoid
about $5 billion of cost into the 2040s
if it opts for the F414 engine upgrade
alone, owing to its expected efciencies; General Electric is in direct talks
with the Navy on options. Meanwhile,
the CFTsabout 24 ft. long by 4 ft.
widehave shown very little drag
on the aircraft between Mach 0.6
and 0.84, says John Murnane, head of
Northrop Grummans CFT program.
He says the performance is better than
a clean aircraft in transonic or supersonic operations. Though the Growler
electronic-attack aircraft will operate
as a standof asset, the Navy is considering adding CFTs onto the platform
for improved range.
With more than $100 million of GE
investments in various components
of the upgraded engine over the past
decade, the program is ready for an offcial start next year, says Dan Meador,
manager of Navy and Marine Corps
programs for GE. Company officials
say the shrouded blisk fan hardware
is fnished and testing is set for fourthquarter 2013. The high-pressure compressor and turbine have also been
demonstrated. The company hopes to
garner Navy funding to continue trials and move forward with qualifcation work. Meador suggests that the
improvements can be added as the
engines are rotated for depot maintenance; GE handles such work on about
300 engines annually.
The company expects a 50% reduction in scheduled and unscheduled
shop visits, improved resistance to forAviationWeek.com/awst
eign object damage, 20% more thrust

and 3% lower fuel consumption than
the current F414.
The frst upgrades to be fight tested are the aerodynamic qualities and
radar-cross-section performance of the
two conformal, top-mounted CFTs as
well as a low-observable, centerlinemounted internal-carriage weapons
pod. Boeing has leased a Navy Super
Hornet fresh of the production line until the end of October for these trials.
The demonstrator aircraft also includes
about 100 lb. of radar-absorbing or scattering coatings at specifc locations.
For fight-testing purposes, the prototype Advanced Super Hornet CFTs
are nonfunctioning and weigh about
1,500 lb., simulating the production
tank at a low-fuel state, says Summers.
The objective tanks, being developed
with funding from and to be built by
Northrop Grumman, would weight
870 lb. and the two together would carry 3,500 lb. of fuel, 500 lb. more than
the CFTs envisioned only a few years
ago in the International Roadmap. The
additional fuel was added at the request
of the Navy, Summers says.
Likewise, the prototype external
weapons pod being fown on the Super Hornet demonstrator is nonfunctioning. It weighs about 2,050 lb. The
objective version, built by Boeing,
would weigh 900 lb., and carry about
2,500 lb. of weapons in various loadout confgurations.
The upgrades designed for low
observabilityincluding the CFTs,
weapons pod and a redesigned radar
blocker for the engine inletwill deliver a 50% improvement over the current Super Hornets frontal-aspect low

edition of AW&ST for a video
of the F/A-18E/F demonstrating
new conformal fuel tanks and a weapons pod
designed to optimize frontal aspect stealth
qualities, or go to AviationWeek.com/video
See Boeings briefng on the Advanced Super
Hornets features at: ow.ly/onGVv
observabilty, Gibbons says.
Both flew in a short flyby demonstration Aug. 27 at Boeings fighter
production facility in St. Louis; the
event was attended by media as well
as onlookers from Brazil and Denmark,
both potential customers for the Super
Hornet and its upgrade program.
The aircraft is now being prepared
for four fight trials at NAS Patuxent
River, Md. Two are slated to include
operations with the CFTs only, and
the remaining two are set to include
at least one, but up to four, externally
mounted Raytheon AGM-154 Joint
Standof Weapons (JSOW). The Navy
selected the weapon with which to
conduct these tests. The goal of these
fights is to validate the signature work
already performed at Boeings nearfeld radar chamber and to run similar radar cross-section analyses of the
aircraft loaded out with JSOW.
Boeing has begun conceptual work
to determine if weapons pods could
also be mounted on each wing of the
Super Hornet to increase the internal
carriage payload, Summers says.
Boeings current Super Hornet backlog allows for work through 2016, so the
pressure is on to obtain Navy backing
to avoid having to underwrite the cost
of keeping the production line open. c
MoscoW Air shoW

tion Week. To reduce the engines infrared (IR) signature, the nozzle features a
new air-cooling system. Also, the thrustvectoring nozzles can be deflected to
provide partial line-of-sight blockage
to the rear of the engine, with the aircrafts aerodynamic controls being used
to counter the resulting pitch moment.
The 117S has an inlet diameter of
New radar-absorbent material

applied to the Su-35s UEC 117S
engine was shown at MAKS, but
protected from curious fngers.
AW&ST /Bill SWeeTmAn PhoToS
Cloak and Dagger

Stealth and counter stealth on show at MAKS
Bill Sweetman Moscow
ore details of the Sukhoi T-50
stealth fghter emerged at the
MAKS air show at Zhukovsky,
outside Moscow, last week. It was confrmed that the T-50 is being designed
to carry heavy, long-range missiles
internally, its engines incorporate
built-in features to reduce radar crosssection and infrared signature and a
new engine for the aircraft, offering
improved supercruise performance,
is under development.
The initial service-entry engine for

the T-50 is the United Engine Co. 117.
It was not shown at MAKS but a UEC
engineer confrmed it is very similar to
the 117S engine for the Sukhoi Su-35S,
that was. Both engines are derived from
the AL-31F series used on the Su-27 and
other members of the Sukhoi family. In
particular, the stealth technology applied to the 117S will be carried over
and improved for the 117.
The inlet casing and guide vanes,
as well as the spinner of the 117S, are
coated with a new
radar-absorbent material developed by
the Russian Academy
of Sciences, the UEC
engineer tells Avia-
The Kh-58UShE
high-speed, longrange, anti-radar
missile will give the
T-50 an ofensive
electronic-attack
capability.
932 mm (36.7 in.) versus 905 mm for

the AL-31F, providing more thrust
(32,000 lb. maximum versus 27,500 lb.
for the basic AL-31F), and has a digital control system. UEC has also
developed an upgraded AL-31F, the
29,750-lb.-thrust Series 42 variant for
the Su-27SM upgrade program being
implemented by the Russian air force.
The aerodynamic design of the
T-50s 117 engine is similar to the 117S,
the UEC engineer says, but it is further
uprated to 33,000 lb. thrust, has a new
digital control system and incorporates
new materials. The weight is reduced,
but the most important change is that
the hot-end temperature limits are increased, to allow the engine to sustain
maximum non-afterburning thrust
to higher speeds. Combined with the
T-50s aerodynamic design, this is intended to meet the fghters supersonic
cruise goal. The 117 also features additional signature-reduction measures.
The 117 will be used on initial production T-50s, but an all-new successor engine identifed as Type 30 is in
full development. It will be lighter, more
powerful and fuel-efcient than the 117,
and offer a further improvement in
supersonic cruise speed. Other details
remain secret, including whether the
Type 30 incorporates variable-cycle
technology.
It was also confrmed at MAKS that
the T-50 has been designed to carry
larger weapons than will fit in the
Lockheed Martin F-22 and F-35. Tactical Missiles Corp. showed a video of
the T-50 carrying the Kh-58UShE antiradar missile, a highly modifed version
of a weapon in service since the 1970s,
with folding wings for internal carriage.
It has a shorter radome than the original Kh-58, inertial mid-course guidance
and a broadband seeker where earlier
Kh-58s were ftted with diferent seekers for diferent targets.
Also likely to be carried internally
A dual-layer visor on the T-50 helmet-mounted display allows the

outer layer to be optimized for protection, and the inner layer for optics. Bumps on the helmet are light sources for an optical head tracker.
by the T-50 is the RVV-BD (long-range

air-to-air missile), a modernized version
of the Vympel R-37 that was designed
for the MiG-31M Foxhound-B but never
put into production. Its total external
dimensions are within centimeters of
the Kh-58UShE with wings folded. It
seems likely that the T-50 forward bay
has been designed around the minimum-risk RVV-BD, with the Kh-58 being modifed to ft the same envelope.
Both weapons are long-range types.
The Kh-58UShE is a 1,400-lb., Mach
4 weapon with a range up to 130 nm
from a 65,000-ft. launch altitude, and
the RVV-BD has a claimed maximum
range of 110 nm against a head-on
target. This indicates a diferent operational philosophy from U.S. stealth
aircraft, for which a key principle has
been to use stealth to permit the use of
short-range, low-cost weapons.
Also exhibited here was the T-50s
helmet-mounted display (HMD),
comprising a module attached to the
custom-fitted pilots helmet and incorporating light sources for the optical head-tracking system. A unique
feature is that the HMD has two
visorsa seamless outside visor for
physical protection, and an inner visor
on which binocular, wide-angle symbology can be projected. The Zvezda
company exhibited the T-50s ejection
seat, the K-36D-5, which incorporates
a fully electronic control system and
an improved parachute-deployment
mechanism that is designed to meet
the same expanded-pilot population
standards as recent Western seats, accommodating pilots weighing 55-125 kg
(121-275 lb.).
Future air-launched weapons for the
T-50 and other combat aircraft may
have new propulsion systems, according to Tactical Missiles Corp. General
Director Boris Obnosov. Responding
to questions about the companys ramjet effort, Obnosov said it is moving
away from ramjet/scramjet propulsion
because it is not possible to design a
universal propulsion system, a simple,
scalable technology for different missile requirements and

flight profiles. Asked whether
this meant the company was
looking at higher-energy solid
propellants (Russia in the Cold
War era had a large program to
produce such a fuel, ammonium dinitramide or ADN), Obnosov told Aviation
Week, We dont have enough scientists
for that and said the company is looking at new liquid-fuel systems.
Liquid fuels have higher energy
than solid propellants, but complexity,
storability and harsh carriage environments have precluded their use in tactical air-launched weapons. Obnosov
declined to say what approach Tactical
active, electronically scanned array

(AESA) radars. The VHF unit has an
antenna area of 235 sq. meters (2,530
sq. ft.), carrying 168 VHF transmit-receive modules, and is claimed to be able
to detect a target with a radar crosssection of 1 sq. meter at 510 km range
and 30,000 meters altitude in jamming
conditions. The radars can be deployed
in 15 min., NNIIRT says.
The new 55Zh6UME has a smaller
VHF array (with a 430-km range under
the same conditions) with an L-band
AESA trailer-mounted on the same
structure, facing the opposite direction.
Stealth targets that claim radar
cross section of less than 1 sq. meter do not achieve those numbers in
NNIIRTs 55Zh6UME radar system combines two AESA radar antennas

VHF and L-bandoperating back to back. The smaller antenna below
the VHF array is an identifcation-friend-or-foe interrogator.
Missiles Corp. is taking to solve those
problems.
While pursuing development of its
own stealth fighter, Russias defense
industry is maturing counter-stealth
radars. The Nizhny-Novgorod Research Institute (NNIIRT) brought the
newest confguration of its multi-band
55Zh6ME radar complex, designed to
support the Almaz-Antey S-400 Triumph surface-to-air missile system. It
also used the show to unveil the new
55Zh6UME, a single-unit, dual-band
system designed for customers with
more modest needs and budgets.
The 55Zh6ME comprises three
truck-mounted radar modules, operating in metric (VHF), decametric
(L) and centimetric (S) bands, all with
the VHF band, according to NNIRT

engineers. For instance, the Chinese
Dongfeng-15 short-range ballistic missile has a 0.002-sq.-meter radar cross
section in X-band, but is a 0.6-sq.-meter target in VHF, company ofcials
tell Aviation Week. This is because
radar waves are scattered by a resonant mechanism (rather than specular refection, which stealth shaping is
designed to manage) when the dimensions of the target, or its parts, are
similar to the wavelength of the radar.
They are not afected by shape or by
surface coatings.
The S-400 and the 55Zh6ME are in
service with the Russian armed forces,
while the 55Zh6UME is now on ofer for
export. c
SPACE
Galaxy Charter
European star-mapper to create largest,
most accurate 3-D model of the Milky Way
Amy Svitak Paris
ince its 1989 launch, Europes

pioneering Hipparcos Space Astrometry Mission has provided
unprecedented detail of the Milky Way
galaxy, charting stars and other celestial bodies with a precision akin to
measuring the height of an astronaut
standing on the Moon when seen from
Earth.
The European Space Agency (ESA)
ended the Hipparcos campaign in 1993,
but the data it cataloged on positions,
distances, motions, brightness and
colors of more than 100,000 stars
10,000 times as many as Hipparcos.

The resulting census will allow astronomers to determine the origin and
evolution of the galaxy while uncovering
tens of thousands of previously unseen
objects, including extrasolar planets,
brown dwarfs, quasars, asteroids and
comets, and other galaxies, monitoring each target object up to 100 times
to precisely chart its characteristics.
Over the course of its five-plus year
mission, Gaia will observe more than 40
million objects per day, collecting 100
terabytes of raw data and yielding 1 pet-
comprising 106 charge-coupled devices (CCD), each of which is efectively a

miniature camera.
Given the size of the spacecrafts focal
plane, and the mass and volume limits of
its Soyuz launcher, Gaias design afords
only minimal radiation shielding of its
focal arrays, the performance of which
will degrade near the end of the mission. This efect was well-recognized
at the beginning of the program and
is normal for all CCDs fying in space,
ESA explains. However, in Gaia, the effect is very much visible due to the high
measurement accuracies required.
ESA says it will attempt to operate
the CCDs at an optimum temperature
and rely on specifc operational modes.
More important, the agency adds, are
complex ground tests aimed at characterizing Gaias CCD behavior under the
infuence of radiation. To this end, Astrium started a dedicated test program
in 2005 that was completed earlier this
year with the support of E2v Technologies and a handful of academic institutions. ESA spent 3 million on the test
program but says it is confident the
Gaias sun shield will shade the

astrometry observatory, keeping its
instruments around 133C.
Astrium
has paved the way for Europes nextgeneration star-mapper, a 940 million
($1.25 billion) mission known as Gaia.
Equipped with twin silicon-carbide
telescopes built around a single 1-billion-pixel focal array, the largest ever
built, Gaia will measure the angular
position of stars between 7-300 microseconds of arc100 times the accuracy
of Hipparcos and equivalent to a terrestrial measurement of an astronauts
thumbnail on the lunar surface.
From its intended orbit around
the L2 Lagrange point 1.5 million km
(930,000 mi.) from Earth, the 2,030-kg
(4,475-lb.) spacecraft will survey the
brightness of 1 billion, or 1%, of the stars
and other celestial bodies in the galaxy,
abyte of processed and archived data.

Built by EADS Astrium under a 317
million contract awarded in May 2006,
Gaia was shipped Aug. 23 to Europes
equatorial spaceport in Kourou, French
Guiana, in preparation for launch. Slated to lift of Nov. 20 atop a European
variant of Russias Soyuz rocket, the
mission is running nearly two years
behind and roughly 16% over budget.
ESA officials say much of the cost
growth resulted from technical issues
that extended manufacturing and testing of the spacecraft subsystems, notably the polishing of Gaias 10 mirrors,
including two large primary mirrors,
and assembly and test of the focal plane,
a 0.38-square-meter (4-sq.-ft.) camera
problem is resolved and Gaias performance requirements will be met.

In addition to manufacturing and
tests, ESA says 4% of Gaias cost growth
stems from issues associated with the
spacecrafts launch, including an increase in the cost of the Soyuz.
When ESA approved Gaia in 2000,
it was planned to launch on a European Ariane 5. A subsequent funding
reduction de-scoped the mission to ft
on Russias mid-sized Soyuz Fregat
2-1a, operated by the Starsem afliate
of European launch provider Arianespace from Baikonur Cosmodrome,
Kazakhstan. When the launch contract
was later awarded in 2009, it called for
lofting Gaia on a new European variant
of the Soyuz STB/Fregat-MT, which began operations in Kourou in 2011.
This year, Arianespaces crowded
Soyuz manifest has postponed the mission twice. Between Gaias development
and launch delays, ESA says it is paying
an additional 3 million per month, with
another 2 million being racked up by
Gaias data processing teams at European research institutions and computing
centers, which account for 200 million
of mission costs. c
Air TrAnsporT
Cauceglia says. We have not sufered,
and we will not sufer, any [sales] consequences from the crash. . . . The
market is waiting to see how well we
perform [in Mexico]. What is important is aircraft performance.
Mexican low-cost carrier Interjet

unveiled its frst Superjet 100
Aug. 22. It plans to put two of
the jets into revenue service this
month.
Out West
Superjet enters new territory as Mexicos
Interjet introduces its frst SSJ 100
Aaron Karp Mexico City
f there is one project the Russian aerospace industry needs

to succeed in the international market, it is the Superjet 100,
which is about to enter service with Mexican low-cost carrier
Interjet.
We cannot fail, which is why were

putting so much into the Interjet
launch, says Superjet International
CEO Nazario Cauceglia. A team of
Sukhoi Civil Aircraft Co. (SCAC) engineers has been in Toluca, the capital of
Mexico State, for more than a month,
training Interjet maintenance personnel, and SCAC is establishing what
it describes as an extensive SSJ 100
spare-parts inventory in both Toluca
and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to support
the Mexican carriers services.
Interjet has added two SSJ 100s to
its operating feet of 39 Airbus A320s
and will put them into domestic service this month.
Superjet International, the marketing and sales joint venture of Sukhoi
and Alenia Aermacchi, is confident
Western airlines will quickly warm
to the SSJ 100 once it is proven in the
Mexican market because it contains
state-of-the-art Western system technology, says Cauceglia.
SCAC and Superjet International
are pinning their Western sales strategy largely on Interjet demonstrating
the aircrafts viability. Superjet is an
international project, SCAC President
Andrey Kalinovskiy notes. From the
beginning, the project was aimed for
more than the domestic [Russian] market. Thats why entering the Mexican
market is so importantbecause this is
America, and Bombardier and Embraer
have always prevailed in America.
In addition to Alenia, other Western
aerospace companies involved in the
project comprise: Frances Snecma, a
partner in the Powerjet joint venture
(with Russias NPO Saturn) that produces the SSJ 100s SaM146 engines;
Thales, provider of the fly-by-wire
avionics; and Honeywell, which builds
the auxiliary power unit. Boeing has
served as a consultant.
Superjet sales efforts were likely
dampened by the May 2012 crash of
an SSJ 100 demonstration fight near
Jakarta that killed all 45 onboard,
including four crew members. Indonesian authorities have blamed the
accident on human error, reporting
that the aircrafts terrain-awareness
and warning system (TAWS) was
switched of by the pilot. Indonesian
ofcials determined the pilot mistakenly believed several TAWS alerts
were inadvertent.
The result of the investigation
showed very clearly there was no connection between the design of the aircraft and the cause of the accident,
When you hear Russian airplane,

its natural to have doubts for various
reasons, Interjet CEO Miguel Aleman
Magnani conceded at an unveiling ceremony for the carriers frst SSJ 100
at its maintenance hangar in Toluca
last month.
But Aleman Magnani asserts that
the spotty safety record of Russian
civil aircraft is mostly owing to the
fact that so many carriers have operated older, Soviet-era aircraft much
too long. At the beginning of the Cold
War, Russia sold a lot planes to allies
and then, after 40 years, those planes
were crashing, he tells Aviation Week.
But they were not crashing because
they were Russian; they were crashing
because they were very old.
Interjet was founded in 2005 and is
100%-owned by the prominent Aleman
family (Miguel Aleman Valdes, the Interjet CEOs grandfather, was Mexicos
president in 1946-52). It has 18 more
SSJs on firm order, all of which are
slated for delivery by early 2015, with
10 options.
The carrier chose the SSJ 100 to
expand connectivity in the growing
Mexican market, having deemed its
A320s and the 40 A320NEOs it has
on order ill-suited for many of the
shorter domestic routes it wants to
serve. We have a conviction that this
country needs more connections than
it has today, Interjet Director General
Jose Luis Garza says. With the Superjet, we will reach cities that today have
average or below-average service.
Interjets SSJ 100s are confgured
with 93 seats in a single-class layout.
The airline plans to operate the SSJ
100 on 10 domestic routes from Mexico
City, starting with fights to Torreon,
followed by another 10 domestic routes
from Toluca. By early 2015, it plans to
launch international SSJ 100 fights to
Miami and Central America.
Only 5% of Mexicans were flying
[annually] when we started in 2005,
Air TrAnsporT
Aleman Magnani notes. Today, 15% of
Mexicans are fying and the market can
easily grow to 35%. Interjet expects to
carry 10 million passengers this year,
which would be a 24% increase over
2012. It has an estimated 28% share of
the Mexican air passenger market.
Superjet International received
a boost last week from the Russian
Interstate Aviation Committees certifcation of the long-range version of

the regional jet (SSJ 100LR), which
extends its maximum range to 4,578
km (2,845 mi.) from 3,048 km.
Over the next 20 years, SCAC
aims to produce and sell 800-1,000
SSJ 100s. The type has accumulated
more than 20,000 fight hours since
Up in the Aer
U.K. Competition Commission decision raises
questions about further industry consolidation
Jens Flottau Frankfurt
Aer Lingus operates Airbus A320family aircraft on its European

network in strong competition with
minority shareholder Ryanair.
Joepriesaviation.net
er Lingus is a big step closer to

being the independent airline it
wants to be. But the fght with its
unwanted shareholder, Ryanair, is likely
to continue.
As expected by most observers and
the airlines themselves, the U.K. Competition Commission (UKCC) last week
ordered Ryanair to sell down its 29.8%
stake in the Irish carrier to address
long-standing concerns about the impact of the current structure on competition on routes between Ireland and
the U.K. While Aer Lingus welcomes
the UKCC final report, Ryanair CEO
Michael OLeary says his company will
launch an appeal.
The UKCC confirmed the preliminary fndings issued in May, ordering
Ryanair to reduce its Aer Lingus shareholding to no more than 5%, no longer
seek representation on the board and
assure that it will not aim at increasing
its stake later.
The final report lists numerous
reasons why the UKCC believes the

combination of the two airlines harms
competition. We were particularly
concerned about Ryanairs ability, either directly or indirectly, to impede
Aer Lingus from combining with another airline to build scale and achieve
synergies to remain competitive, the
UKCC report states.
An important facet in the case is
the UKCCs mention of consolidation.
Many European airlines are for sale
and most are in much worse shape
than Aer Lingus, which has seen improved proftability in recent years after its near collapse in the aftermath
of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks
in the U.S.
Aer Lingus stands out among midsize European airlines in having attracted an investor, albeit one that it did not
like and that would have changed the
business model if it had been allowed
to do so.
The sectors big playersLufthansa,
32AviAtionWeek&SpAcetechnology/September2,2013
entering commercial service in April

2011, all in Southeast Asia and Russia.
Kalinovskiy says there are more
potential customers in the Americas
for the SSJ 100. At the moment, everyone is waiting to see the Superjet
enter service with Interjet. All of the
other [potential] customers are watching what Interjet does. c
Air France-KLM and International Airlines Group (IAG)are preoccupied

with their own restructuring programs
and show no appetite for more acquisitions. That and the apparent regulatory opposition to further takeovers
evidenced in the UKCC and European
Commission decisions against Ryanair/
Aer Lingus leave only a very limited
group of investors that would consider
buying into European airlinesand
that may be allowed to do so. Most of
these are outside the European Union.
Aer Lingus has not actively promoted that issue publicly, though it is seen
as another potential target for Etihad
Airways, which holds less than 3% of
the Irish carrier already. Former Aer
Lingus CEO Willie Walsh, who now
heads IAG, told the Irish Independent
newspaper in June that if somebody
thought Etihad is a better shareholder
than Ryanair, Id love for them to explain why and how that would be the
case. I see it as quite the opposite.
Ryanair wants Ireland and, whatever
you say about [Ryanair CEO] Michael
OLeary, hes proud to be an Irishman,
lives here and has created one of the
most valuable airlines in the world.
How is that less attractive to Ireland
than Abu Dhabi?
Other foreign investment cases include Czech Airlines (Korean Air) and
Air Serbia (Etihad)Serbia is not a
European Union member state. All of
the rumored investor candidates to buy
Adria Airways, LOT Polish Airlines,
Croatia Airlines and TAP Portugal are
non-European.
In the Ryanair/Aer Lingus case, the
UKCC argues that there is a tension
between Ryanairs position as a competitor and its position as Aer Linguss
largest shareholder, and Ryanair has
an incentive to weaken its rivals efectiveness as a competitor. It concludes
that the shareholding has resulted or
may be expected to result in a substantial lessening of competition between
the airlines.
Ryanairs appeal could take years to

be decided, observers say, but that may
not preclude regulators from enforcing
the sale before a fnal decision.
OLeary slammed the report as bizarre and manifestly wrong, but also
entirely expected. . . . This prejudicial
approach to an Irish airline is very
disturbing, coming from an English
government body that regards itself

as a model competition authority. He
accused the UKCC of a misguided
pursuit of their pre-determined conclusions. OLeary argues that even
the European Commission has found
no evidence of lessening competition
between the two airlines since 2007 as
part of its decision on the full takeover.
Negotiating Tactics
Government appears to be pressuring
Star Alliance to accept Air India
Jens Flottau Frankfurt
he tactics are well known by now:

India is threatening to withdraw
traffic rights from international
airlines to defend its interests. The
countrys government was not shy in
applying that approach when it came
to Europes planned emissions trading
system (ETS). This time, the issue is
not politics per se; it is the future of Air
India, the struggling fag carrier.
Austrian Airlines and Swiss International Air Lines, both subsidiaries
of Lufthansa Group, are being investigated by the Indian Aviation Ministry
to determine whether they comply
with the substantial ownership and
efective control clause that has historically formed the basis of bilateral
air service agreements. Ofcials have
indicated to Swiss and Austrian executives that the airlines might soon fnd
themselves barred from services into
India if they are found to be operating
in violation of those terms.
Or this could be a bullying tactic. Ac-
cording to airline industry sources, India has also unofcially outlined a way
to avoid a withdrawal of trafc rights:
Star Allianceof which both Austrian
and Swiss are memberscould fnally
allow Air India into the global group
of airlines.
What looks like a blatant and inappropriate mixing of unrelated issues is
also only the latest sign of an aviation
market in turmoil.
As far as the legalities are concerned, India now appears to be meddling with a situation that it has lived
with for years. Swiss has been a fully
owned subsidiary of Lufthansa Group
since 2004, and Austrian was added to
the conglomerate in 2008. To ensure
efective control remains in Switzerland and Austria, respectively, the in-
Air India, facing intense competition from Persian Gulf area carriers, seeks alliance membership to
stabilize its position.
Aer Lingus, by contrast, points out

that it was unacceptable that our principal competitor was allowed to remain
on our share register . . . and interfere
with our business despite the European
Commission blocking both Ryanairs
frst hostile takeover attempt six years
ago and its most recent hostile takeover
attempt earlier this year. c
volved companies established locally

controlled foundations. These were
created to ensure that both airlines
continue to comply with bilateral air
service agreements in cases such as
India, where the long-standing, traditional nationality clause has not yet
been replaced by the European Union
ownership and control defnition. Austrian, Swiss and Lufthansa say the
airlines are in full compliance of the
required ownership and control limits.
In September 2008, India and the EU
signed a horizontal aviation agreement,
in which India de facto accepted the principle of the EU designation. India made
implementation of this pact conditional
to negotiating trafc rights with member
states on a bilateral basis, a process that
is ongoing, a European Commission offcial confrms. India is stretching out the
process for reasons one can only speculate notes the individual.
But sources close to the discussions
believe there is a deeper issue at play.
Indias airline industry has been in fnancial distress for years. Air Indias
merger with the formerly domestic
carrier, Indian Airlines, has become a
well-known failure in terms of its integration eforts. Air India now lags behind SpiceJet, IndiGo and Jet Airways
in domestic market share.
While some fnancial improvements
are now evident, the national carrier
must fx its inefective business model
while it simultaneously tackles a host
of other problems. These include whittling down $9 billion in debt, ameliorating its fractious labor groups and
fending of political interferenceeven
though it is beholden to the government for funding.
Many believe that a Star Alliance
membership would trigger a reversal
of fortunes. But experience has shown
that alliances are not powerful enough
to fx the more fundamental problems
their members face.
Indias airline malaise also includes
the demise of Kingfsher. And Jet Air-
Joepriesaviation.net
Air TrAnsporT
ways, the other large private legacy carrier that has become a key competitor
of Air India in recent years and has
surpassed it in size, is in the process
of being partially acquired by Etihad
Airways. Mounting losses in past years
have given rise to the belief that Jet
would not have been able to survive on
its own in the long term.
The Jet/Etihad deal is coming at a
pricepolitically frst, and then economically. As part of the agreement,
the government has in principle
agreed to triple Etihads weekly seats
into India to 36,000. Emirates, Qatar
Airways and Gulf Air are arguing that
they should be given more access to
India as well. According to the International Air Transport Association,
Dubai-Mumbai is already the busiest
route between a Middle Eastern and
Asian destination, and carriers such
as FlyDubai are serving the lower-yield
market of labor trafc to many destinations beyond Mumbai.
The infux of Middle East capacity
into the Indian aviation market has
hurt local carriers. For Air India in

particular, a combination of the Jet/
Etihad deal and even more Gulf carrier seats into India appears to be a
recipe for disaster.
The idea to bring Air India into Star
Alliance is not new. The airline was announced as a candidate for membership in 2008. The integration process
that was supposed to lead it to comply
with the so-called minimum joining
requirementsa list of hundreds of
demands to ensure comparable quality standardswas initiated under the
sponsorship of Lufthansa. The German airline has had a keen interest
in more access to India and has been
code-sharing with the national carrier
for years. Lufthansa also hopes India
will eventually allow it to fy the Airbus
A380 into New Delhi or Mumbai.
But after more than three years,
the application was put on hold in
2011. Jaan Albrecht, who was then
CEO of Star Alliance and now heads
Austrian, said at the time that Air India had failed to meet all conditions.
787-9 TesT Time

Guy Norris Los Angeles
oeings frst stretched 787-9 is

undergoing initial ground tests at
Everett, Wash., in readiness for frst
fight, which is expected to take place this
month.
Trials began in late August with evaluations of the fuel system and the aircrafts
gross weight processor, following a
low-key rollout in front of employees and
customers on Aug. 24. The auxiliary power
unit in the aircraft, a 20-ft.-longer derivative of the baseline 787-8, was started
for the frst time on Aug. 28. Assuming
no issues are discovered during system
activation and initial gauntlet testing,

taxi tests and frst fight are likely to take
place around the middle of the month. The
frst 787-9 is scheduled to be delivered
to launch customer Air New Zealand in
mid-2014.
Boeing is allocating three dedicated
test aircraft to the approximately sixmonth-long certifcation and test efort,
and will introduce a fourth fully confgured
aircraft late in the program for function
and reliability work.
The frst aircraft, ZB001, is the 126th
787 to roll of the combined Everett and
Charleston, S.C., production lines. Boeing
says the second and third 787-9s, ZB002
and ZB021, are already in fnal assembly.
With Cathy Buyck in Brussels.
After the extreme challenges and

delays encountered with the 787-8, the
pressure is on the manufacturer to ensure
the 787-9 fight-test efort goes far more
smoothly. However, despite the ambitious requirements of the design, which is
confgured to carry 40 more passengers
an additional 300 nm than the 787-8,
Boeing appears quietly confdent of meeting performance guarantees as well as
program schedule.
Compared with the 787-8, the -9 is
extended with two fve-frame stretch sections on either side of the wing. Maximum
takeof weight is 553,000 lb., or just over
50,000 lb. more than the baseline -8,
while empty weight is reportedly as much
as 2% better than specifcation.
Boeing currently holds 376 orders for
the 787-9, or 40% of the total 787 frm
orderbook of 936. c
Boeing
Other alliance sources say talks

about whether and when the process
could resume have taken place since
then. These sources indicate, however,
that they see little progress as far as
key performance parameters of Air
India are concerned. In their view, the
airline still does not meet the punctuality and quality requirements needed to
qualify for alliance membership.
These officials claim that the alliance will take a tough stance in dealing with political pressure surrounding
Air Indias alliance plans. But, given
the Indian carriers relative retrenchment in both international and domestic markets, its value to Star has
diminished, too. On the other hand,
Star has limited options as far as Indian partners are concerned. The only
other airline that it would have liked
to bring on board appears to be frmly
tied to unaligned and alliance-averse
Etihad nowbarring any last-minute
policy changes. c
ENGINEERING
Flying Economy
Tap the icon in the digital edition of AW&ST for a video of

albatross aeronautics, or go to AviationWeek.com/video
Read the article by Sachs, et al. at bit.ly/17RD89j
Engineers seek lessons from

birds with huge wingspan
Johannes TraugoTT
navigation engineer Johannes Traugott, who did the sensor

optimization and data analysis, and Nesterova, who studies
king penguins and internal navigation. She is noted for her
expertise in bird-handling.
They set out from a tiny French military and science station
Michael Dumiak Berlin
on Kerguelen and set up on Cape Ratmanof, the easternmost
point of Courbet Peninsula, an 8-hr. hike away. Its primitive.
he giant-winged, wandering albatrosses that live on
Very windy. No trees or bushes. Quite bare, Nesterova says. A
the Kerguelen Islands, a speck in the southern Indian
mile-long penguin colony stretches over
Ocean, are built for distance. Their
the beach, and up against it is the colony
fights can range for thousands of miles
of albatrosses. They nest on the ground,
as the birds glide low on winds over the
using the fats as runways to take of into
open ocean for weeks at a time.
the wind. Bird pairs take turns foraging
Such long flights require energy efover the sea and incubating a single
ficiency. Aerospace engineers and reegg. Traugott and Nesterova tracked 20
searchers in Germany and France are
birds; the longest log was for the frst six
gaining a better understanding of how
days and 3,000 mi. of a 30-day forage.
these birds soar with seemingly little efTo track the birds, Traugott and
fort. Insights from their research could
Nesterova used global-positioning
help optimize flightpaths and control
sensors from Italian and German team
surfaces of gliders and unmanned air
partners Technosmart Europe and
vehicles, craft novel uses of ever-smaller
Mirroring the waves of the ocean,
E-Obs GmbH, both specialists in tagglobal positioning systems and point the
the wandering albatross glides in
ging birds. Traugott then generated
way to a more precise understanding of
an energy-efcient pattern
data with post-processing software.
fight habits and patterns.
for thousands of miles at a time.
By sifting through the source data
Study results show wandering albawith custom software, the team was able to measure albatross
trosses rely on a fight mode called dynamic soaring, which
maneuvers with a resolution of 4 in., down from an original
enables them to draw energy from moving air in the layresolution of 3 ft. Current geodesy-grade satellite navigation
ers of horizontal wind shear just above the sea surface. The
systems are not rugged enough to work strapped to a birds
foraging birds, tracked using ultra-light global positioning
back under the conditions of Kerguelen. Post-processing the
devices, never fy in straight lines. Instead, they make use of
GPS data became vital in building the teams total energy
a repetitive curved trajectory, climbing windward from sea
plots for the birds, and it may be the source of the most interlevel to about 30 ft., turning leeward and descending back to
esting aspects and lessons regarding aeronautics.
sea level, where they skim along at low altitude, curving back
The teams studies,
to a windward position.
published in peer-reThis cycle takes about
viewed, open-source
15 sec. The birds speed
journal PLOS One,
varies between 20-70 mph,
conclude that the
and researchers calculate
albatross gains its
the albatrosses gain encyclic energy boost
ergy during the windward
100 mi.
in the upper curve of
climb on the order of
60 km
its dynamic-soaring
360% in relation to their
maneuver. The difstarting point. Even when
ference in wind speed
a bird reaches the top of
between high and low
its maneuver, the energy
altitudes is key for the
level continues to increase,
albatrosses dynamic
reaching maximum during
soaring, Traugott
the descent and then slowKerguelen Islands
says. The birds awed
ly dissipating through the
the team in other
skim below.
German and French researchers studied albatrosses nesting and
The research hinges
fying from the Courbet Peninsula (black) in the Kerguelen Islands. ways, too. It takes
amazing offshore
on fieldwork done a few
navigation skills for them to fnd their nests after four weeks
years ago on the islands of Kerguelenaptly known also as
of foraging over open water, he says.
the Desolation Islandslocated in the middle of a triangle
Sachs continues to work with birds, conducting precision
between Australia, Africa and Antarctica. Its a little less
studies of intermittent fight patterns and studying why birds
isolated because you can get phone calls now, says biologist
do not need a vertical fn. Flap-glide-fap has advantages
Anna Nesterova.
over continued fapping, he says. Applying engineering math
Gottfried Sachs, a fight-system dynamics expert at the
to that fying technique might shed even more light on birds
Technical University of Munich, assembled the research
energy-efcient motion. c
team, which included then-doctoral candidate and integrated
FLIGHT SAFETY
Data Driven
Grassroots industry efort eyes practical steps to

improve pilot monitoring
Sean Broderick Washington
n informal industry working group is producing a data-rich

study to convince airlines that defcient pilot-monitoring
skills are a widespread safety threat, and it will provide
straightforward recommendations for carriers to help remedy
the problem.
Tap the icon in the digital edition

of AW&ST for 10 case studies of
incidents and accidents presented
in the U.K. Civil Aviation Authoritys monitoring awareness guidance, or go to
AviationWeek.com/monitoring
Qualitative evidence of pilot-monitoring defciencies goes back at least
two decades. A 1994 NTSB study on
37 fight crew-involved U.S. airline
accident sequences found monitoring errors in 31 of them, or 84%. That
prompted NTSB to issue its first
monitoring-related recommendation
to FAA. The bad news is, all those accidents occurred, Sumwalt said during a monitoring panel at the recent
ALPA Safety Forum. The good news
is, if were looking to improve safety,
when youve got a bar on a bar chart
saying 84 percent of something [needs
improvement], that gives you a great
opportunity to target in that area.
A group of government and

industry specialists is seeking to
improve safety by helping pilots
become better monitors of aircraft
performance.
Airbus/H. Gousse
The Active Pilot Monitoring workshop (APM) grew out of a November

2012 human factors meeting. Robert
Sumwalt, an NTSB member and former airline pilot, challenged fellow
attendees to do what regulators have
not: devise a focused method to help
pilots become better monitors.
Representatives from 20 organizations, notably airlines, labor groups
and regulators, have outlined an ambitious agenda. The objective: go beyond studies that analyze monitoring
deficiencies and offerpeer to peer,
not regulator to regulatedsimple,
efective tactics to improve pilot-monitoring skills.
We structured this as a grassroots
effort emanating from the airlines,
says Steve Dempsey, a Delta Air Lines
Boeing 737 captain and the APMs colead. We are reaching out to government and to labor for resources to
solve an industry problem.
The group, embracing a perfectis-the-enemy-of-the-good approach,

gave itself until the end of 2013 to
break new ground in a maturing area.
Weve talked about monitoring in the
past, but weve never taken as comprehensive a look as this group has, says
Helena Reidemar, the APMs co-lead
as well as a Delta 757/767 pilot and the
Air Line Pilots Associations (ALPA)
human factors director.
Effective monitoring means maintaining a big-picture view of what is
happening on the fight deck and with
an airplanes state, including heading,
airspeed and altitude. It sounds easy,
but pilots know better. It turns out
that effective monitoring is a tricky,
error-prone task for pilots to consistently achieve, says Dempsey, who also
chairs Deltas Human Factors Working
Group. Solutions will require airlines
to review their operating cultures, policies, procedures and practices.
NTSBs study examined accidents

from 1978-90, which encompassed the
dawn of crew resource management
(CRM) programs. Among CRMs key
tenets: respectfully questioning colleagues is part of a solid safety culture.
Before CRM, monitoring defciencies were easily masked by an industry
culture that did not promote questioning ones superiors. Investigators probing crew-related fatal accidents often
did not know if a crewmember did not
notice the captains mistake, or simply

did not challenge a more seasoned colleague.
Operators began embracing CRM
training in the 1980s. The FAA mandated it for scheduled airlines in 1995,
while non-scheduled commercial operators faced a March 2013 deadline
to implement it.
Efective CRM practices make defcient monitoring easier to spot. As
CRM programs took hold, it became
clear that, despite numerous benefts,
monitoring was not adequately addressed.
The FAA responded by updating
CRM guidance (but not the rules),
adding emphasis on monitoring. But
in 2003, the agency, taking a cue from
several carriers, replaced the term
pilot not fying with pilot monitoring in guidance on developing fightdeck standard operating procedures.
It is increasingly acknowledged that
it makes better sense to characterize
pilots by what they are doing rather
than by what they are not doing, the
agency reasoned. [T]he term pilot
not fying misses the point.
As regulators moved forward, human performance specialists examined the issue in the context of fying a
modern aircraft. Among the fndings:
Reliable automation makes monitoring more challenging. The human
brain just isnt well designed to monitor for an event that very rarely happens, explains Key Dismukes,
the former chief scientist for
aerospace human factors at
NASA Ames Research Center.
Humans also struggle to
detect minor changes in their
environments, Dismukes says. While

master caution lights present enough
contrast to be noticed quickly, for instance, subtle changes on instrument
panels do not grab a pilots attention.
Were not well designed to monitor a
little alphanumeric [indicator] on the
panel, even though when that alphanumeric changes, it is telling us something important.
While industry has learned much
about monitoring, operators are struggling to translate that knowledge into
effective procedures. In February
2007, the NTSB concluded that the
flight-crews failure to monitor airspeed was a causal factor in the 2005
crash of a Cessna Citation in Pueblo,
Colo., that killed eight. The board, going beyond its 1994 recommendation,
said the FAA should require monitoring in pilot-training programs. The
FAA responded that CRM guidance
adequately addressed the subject.
Over the next three years, inadequate monitoring would play a key role
in one fatal accident and one high-profle incident. In February 2009, Colgan
Air Flight 3407 went down near Buffalo, N.Y., killing 50. The NTSB determined that the crews failure to notice
a low-speed warning contributed to
the stall that caused the Bombardier
Q400 to crash. In February 2010, the
overrun of an American Airlines 757 at
Jackson Hole, Wyo., was set up in part
by a lack of pilot training emphasizing
monitoring skills.
Then came Asiana Flight 214, which
is developing as a rich case study in
monitoring deficiencies. Facts released by NTSB Chairman Deborah
Hersman just after the July 6 accident
revealed that the Boeing 777-200ERs

fnal approach airspeed was too slow,
falling below the crews targeted landing speed at least 30 sec. before impact. Three pilots on the fight decka
captain fying the approach, a check
airman in the right seat serving as
the pilot-in-command (PIC), and a
frst ofcer in the jumpseatdid not
see the deviation until it was too late
to recover.
The PIC told investigators he had
expected the aircrafts autothrottle to
maintain a safe speed. Even if the 777
malfunctionedand nothing released
suggests this is the caseit would not
explain why the pilots took so long to
detect the problem.
The crew is required to maintain a
safe aircraft, Hersman said three days
after the accident, which killed three
passengers. That means they need to
monitor.
The NTSBs initial Asiana briefings were enough to make the human
factors community, and some airline
training managers, lean forward.
Was [inadequate monitoring] a factor in Asiana Flight 214? Well have
to wait for the fnal accident report
to know for sure, Dempsey says.
Nevertheless, initial reports . . . have
increased the level of interest and, I
think, a sense of urgency for the APM
report.
Completed probes of recent monitoring-related incidents found at least
one common factor. While inadequate
monitoring alone did not cause any
of them, profcient monitoring might
have prevented each one. The FAAs
CRM guidance updates suggest that
monitoring initiatives were headed
Monitoring skills are

particularly essential
on landings to help the
pilot who is fying to
remain within stabilized
approach criteria.
LuftHAnsA/udo Kroner
FLIGHT SAFETY
in the right direction, but the NTSBs
breakdowns of the Pueblo, Bufalo and
Jackson Hole accidentsand early
word from San Franciscopaint a
diferent picture.
We felt like, OK, good, were on the
right path, says Sumwalt. But we are
now reminded that this is a problem
that never really went away.
Part of the challenge is that human
behavior is not the only obstacle for
efective monitoring. Environment is
another huge factor.
An oft-referenced example is the
1972 crash of Eastern Airlines Flight
401, caused by an undetected change
in altitude when the pilot accidentally
disengaged the altitude-hold function by bumping his control column.
The crew, believing the aircraft was
in a holding pattern, was fxated on a
landing gear warning light. The NTSB

determined they were not monitoring
their instruments and failed to detect
the deviation until just before the aircraft crashed into the Florida Everglades. A system design quirk allowed
the Lockheed L-1011s altitude-hold
mode to switch of without prompting
a disconnect warning light, adding to
the crews monitoring challenges.
Changing factors such as cockpit
layouts takes years. In its 1996 study,
The Interfaces Between Flightcrews
and Modern Flight Deck Systems, the
FAAs Human Factors Team made 51
recommendations, including evaluating
fight-deck design and systems from a
human performance perspective.
In May, the FAA issued new certifcation standards based in part on the
recommendation. Until now, little or
no guidance has existed to show the

applicant how they may address potential fight-crew limitations and designrelated errors, the agency explained.
The new standards require manufacturers to factor human abilities and
limitations into their designs.
FAAs standards and a nearly identical set adopted by the European Aviation Safety Agency in 2006 are the
clearest example of regulators mandating human factors elements into
certifcation requirements. While the
changes are big steps, it will be years
before they make a dent in the 20,000plus global airliner feet. Sumwalt is
advocating for bigger changes, sooner.
CRM taught industry that a pilots
core competencies cant be limited
to hand flying, Sumwalt explains. In
his mind, monitorings importance
Extra Eyes
NASA tests runway incursion preventatives
John Croft Hampton Roads, Va.
ith visibility down to 1,800
ft. due to fog, see-and-avoid
tactics are of no use in checking for trafc as we prepare to cross
Runway 36C from taxiway Papa at
the Memphis (Tenn.) International
Airport. A loud call-out annunciation
blares out, alerting us to stop on the
taxiway just as the landing traffic, a
regional jet, zooms by.
Though the encounter was virtual,
the visual of the high-speed near-miss
was realistic enough to make the aural
warning and associated safety information on an electronic fight bag all
the more relevant.
That simulator, mounted in a bay
with two other full-motion simulators
at the NASA Langley Research Center, is ground zero for testing a new
batch of algorithms and technologies meant to keep aircraft safer on
the ground by providing pilots with
real-time access to traffic alerts via
automatic dependent surveillancebroadcast technology.
The research is part of a much
broader government and industry effort to reduce the potential for runway
incursions, a problem that, despite FAA
actions, continues to grow. Incursions,
defned internationally as any occurrence involving the incorrect presence

of an aircraft, vehicle or person on a
takeof or landing runway, are recorded
in four categories at towered airports.
The number of Category A and B
incursions (the most severe) decreased
after FAA implemented initiatives
from its August 2007 Call to Action
Plan for Runway Safety, stated the
Transportation Departments Office
of Inspector General (OIG) in May
when announcing an audit of the FAAs
progress in runway safety efforts.
However, this trend is reversing. The
watchdog notes that reported serious
runway incursions increased from fscal 2010 to fiscal 2012, tripling to 18
from 6, and the total number of all runway incursions increased 21% between
fscal 2011 and 2012, to 1,150 from 954.
More concerning is that this increase
occurred during a period when total
air trafc operations declined slightly,
the OIG states. A second OIG runway
safety audit has been underway since
October, analyzing the FAAs efforts
to address an NTSB recommendation
issued in 2000 to provide incursion
alerts directly to pilots.
The longest running of the NTSBs
Most Wanted Safety Improvements, a

direct incursion notifcation to pilots is
an open sore between the two agencies.
The NTSB wants the alerts available
to pilots at all airports with commercial airline service, alerts it believes
would be best provided by automatic
dependent surveillance-broadcast
in (ADS-B in) avionics, a feature
the FAA did not mandate as part of its
2010 fnal rulemaking requiring ADS-B
out avionics by 2020. ADS-B in
brings GPS-based aircraft position and
identifcation information for all transponder or ADS-B-equipped aircraft or
vehicles into the aircrafts avionics for
use in surveillance applications, including surface indicating and alerting.
means it too should rank as a core

piloting skill. Yes, pilots have to have
good stick-and-rudder skills, and yes,
they have to have good CRM skills, but
they also have to have good monitoring
skills, he says. Thats the paradigm
shift were looking for.
The APM group will present qualitative data to establish inadequate
monitoring as a widespread problem.
Its report will break new ground by
presenting results derived from nearly two decades worth of real-world
observations from Line Operations
Safety Audits (LOSA).
The audits, used by nearly 50 carriers, place an observer in the jumpseat
to record specifc pilot performance
aspects on routine flights. LOSAs
widespread use means trends gleaned
from the data are more likely to garner
attention than examples from a small

set of accidents.
APMs conclusion is head-turning.
LOSA data reveals pilots with poor
monitoring skills are at least twice as
likely to make a mistake as are pilots
that monitor efectively.
Most airline managers use data
to drive operational changes, says
Dempsey. In simplistic terms, wed
like to get each airline manager to
admit, I have a problem at my airline
and if I choose to ignore this problem,
at some point, Im two to three times
more likely than my competitor to
make an error. Im confdent the data
in this report will get us there.
The reports deliverables are recommendations and ready-made training
aids. The recommendations are not
about ideology; they are about saying,
do this, Dempsey says. The aim is to

make them very specifc and easy to
implement.
One example: a sterile cockpit
policy for the last 1,000 ft. of any altitude change. Altitude deviations are
the most common fight-crew errors
observed. Encouraging pilots to set
aside non-essential tasks and focus on
leveling of could help to eliminate the
problem.
We are hoping that if we have motivated airline managers to act and have
provided them with enough practical
solutions, we can move the industry
monitoring needle in a positive direction, Dempsey says. No single report
will contain all the answers to such a
multifaceted problem, but Im hopeful
were going to take a big bite of the
apple. c
Airline pilots are taxiing a virtual

Boeing 757 at Memphis International Airport as part of a NASA
safety study.
ment. Both technologies are typically

only available at large airports.
The FAA in late July launched a
market survey to evaluate existing
technologies which may be applied, or
enhanced through additional research
to prevent runway incursions, with the

focus on small- or medium-sized airports without traditional surface surveillance systems including radar and
multi-lateration.
Though not mandated, work contin-
Show Update
Singapore Airshow
Introducing new theme
feature zones in 2014
nAsA
FAA interventions underway that

partially meet the NTSBs intent include runway status lights, a system
the agency plans to put in place at 23
airports by 2016. The status lights use
fused surveillance data to create red
lights embedded in the pavement of
certain runway entrance and threshold locations to alert pilots or vehicle
operators that a runway is or will be
occupied. A related concept the FAA is
testing is called fnal approach runway
occupancy signal (Faros). The system
uses the airport surveillance data to
fash the precision approach path indicators to warn landing pilots that a runway is occupied. The NTSB, however,
says Faros appears years from deployAviationWeek.com/awst
As the next Singapore Airshow takes ight, the organiser, Experia

Events will be introducing two new exciting feature zones on the
exhibition oor.
AVIATION TRAINING ZONE - The latest technological

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AVIATION SECURITY ZONE - Explore the future of aviation

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FLIGHT SAFETY
ues on ADS-B in applications. In 2009,
the FAA funded surface indicating and
alerting aircraft testing by avionics
companies Honeywell and ACSS in the
Seattle and Philadelphia areas, respectively, in 2009. The tests were successful from an algorithm standpoint, but
both revealed unexpected ADS-B signal
dropouts due to ADS-B signal disruptions caused by terrain and buildings
between the two test aircraft, an issue
the FAA continues to investigate but
expects to solve. The pilot programs
also fed information to an RTCA special committee that in 2010 published a
safety, performance and interoperability requirements document for surface
indicating and alerting (SURF-IA), a
precursor for building FAA-approved
SURF-IA equipment. The document
identifes alerts that should be issued
for aircraft and vehicles in the airport
maneuvering area as well as within
3 nm of the runway threshold and
1,000 ft. above the airport elevation.

That document is the basis in part
for the runway safety portion of NASAs
NextSafe 3 project, part of the agencys
Integrated Intelligent Flight Deck
Technologies program. Earlier projects
(NextSafe 2) focused on ADS-B and
enhanced vision systems for delegated
separation between aircraft and initial
concepts for 4-D (position and time)
surface operations (NextSafe 1).
Our objective is to develop data
and technologies which increase a pilots or crews ability to avoid, detect
and recover from adverse events that
could otherwise result in incidents or
accidents, says NASA Langleys lead
aerospace engineer, Randy Bailey, of
the NextSafe program. Our focus is
on the terminal maneuvering area op-
NASA is using an electronic fight

bag and ADS-B to alert pilots of
conficting trafc.
HeAd GeAr
T
he FAAs push to enable future airport operations in practically zero visibility is spurring a great deal of technology
work not only for the airborne segment but the ground portion
of a fight as well. The concept is to use sensors and displays to
give pilots a clear view of their path from the gate to the runway
and vice versa. Ideally, that presentation will also include alerts
for situations where there is threat of an incursion from another
aircraft or vehicle.
NASA continues to investigate a small solution to the big
problem in the form of a head-mounted miniature display (HMD)
to be worn by airline and business aviation pilots. Moving with the
head and tracked in the cockpit, the HMD removes the feld-ofview limitations of a fxed head-up display. Also, the technology
can display information in color rather than in monochromatically.
nAsA
NASA engineer Trey

Arthur wears an HMD
the agency is using for
runway safety testing.
nAsA
The agency sees HMDs as a potential tool for better-thanvisual (BTV) capability in the next-generation air transportation
system. The BTV operational concept replicates the capacity of
todays VFR [visual fight rules] operations and more importantly,
meets and improves on the safety of todays VFR fight in all
weather [conditions], says NASA.
In the 1990s, NASA used head-up and head-down displays
as part of its Taxiway-Navigation and Situation Awareness and
Runway Incursion Prevention Systems, work meant to increase
taxi times in poor weather to a rate approaching VFR capabilities while preventing typical taxi errors, including wrong turns
and getting lost. This research also noted that two of the major
[head-up display] limitations during ground operations were
their monochrome form and limited, fxed feld-of-view, says
NASA.
An HMD moving with the pilots head gets around those
problems, but brings with it a new set of challenges.
NASA Langley Research Center is in the midst of a fullmotion simulator study with airline pilots to test the maturity
of HMDs compared to head-up displays, particularly in relation
to head tracking. Results of the earlier study were promising
but revealed areas where improvements are needed, including
head-tracking accuracy, data latency and motion sickness. The
new HMDs were built by Thales subsidiary, InterSense.
Langleys lead aerospace engineer, Randy Bailey, says subject
pilots will fy identical scenarios with a head-up display and also
with the HMD in the Langley simulator to compare within-subjects performance and safety. Scenarios include low-visibility
approach and landings using a simulated, enhanced fight-vision
system (head-up display with forward-looking infrared sensor) down to 1000-ft. runway visual range (RVR) landings, and
300-ft. RVR takeofs with HUD-type guidance and symbology. c
erations and emerging [nextgeneration air transportation

system] issues.
In the simulator, NASA engineers are testing three diferent aspects of runway safety
during two-day simulator sessions with 12 airline pilot volunteers. Bailey is continuing
earlier tests of a head-worn
display with head tracker for
presenting alerts, and aerospace engineer Denise Jones is
testing confict detection and
alert scenarios as well as safety aspects of trajectory-based
operations on the tarmac. The
airline pilots spend one day
participating in Joness simulations and one day with the
head-mounted displays.
The full-motion simulator
is set up to emulate a generic
large twin-engine transport,
with cockpit display of trafc information (CDTI) presented on airport moving maps on two electronic fight bags
outboard of each pilot. The cockpit is
equipped with tracking devices to follow the pilots eyes and head. Surveillance information is modeled as ADS-B,
with no multi-path errors included, and
air trafc control commands are automated and audible. Jones uses seven
scenarios for the simulation, though
pilots are not able to predict the particulars of a scenario. The idea is to
determine which methods are safest
and which are acceptable for confict
prevention, she says.
In the scenario with the near-miss
with a regional jet, the pilot taxiing toward the runway frst sees its outline
on the CDTI light up in blue as the traffc closes in on the runway, indicating
a caution that requires no action other
than increased vigilance. An alert, however, requires immediate action. Having
InspIred YouTH
I
the CDTI was key to situational awareness as the outside visibility was simulated to be 1,800 ft. Data associated with
a caution include arrows showing the
horizontal/vertical movement of trafc,
the aircraft identifcation, ground speed
and distance. If the taxiing aircraft were
to continue onto the runway in front of
the arriving regional jet, the runway
outline turns red and two Warning,
Trafc! call-outs are sounded.
Jones also demonstrated a scenario
in which we departed Runway 18C as another aircraft taxied across our runway
beyond visual range. As the simulated
jet accelerated, a red alert fashed on the
CDTI with the accompanying call-out,
causing Jones to reject the takeof with
ample room to spare. Per the RTCA
document, the algorithm currently inhibits alerts above 80 kt. on takeof.
Jones expects the simulation effort to be completed by the end of this
month. c
Watch video of the Virtual Cable system in action on

our ThingsWithWings blog: ow.ly/olzeU
grated avionics platforms installed in ERAUs training feet. The
idea is that the pilot receives taxi instructions from the tower
and repeats them back to the toweras well as to the voice recognition systemwhich then provides progressive, head-up taxi
instructions to the HUD via the G1000.
The team looked at a variety of HUD technologies, many from
the automobile sector, but ultimately opted for an intriguing
laser-based augmented reality technology that San Franciscobased MVS-California is developing for the automotive industry.
Called Virtual Cable, the dashboard-mounted system produces
a colored line that appears to extend ahead of the vehicle pointing
along a pre-programmed route, in this case on the taxiways around
an airport. The team estimated that it would cost $6,400 per
aircraft for a feet of 20 Cessna 172s to purchase and install the
equipment. Certifcation costs were not addressed. c
VirtuAL CAbLe
n casting a net far and wide seeking solutions to the runway

incursion problem, the FAA is particularly interested in the brand
of unencumbered creativity that tends to spring from the minds
of college students. That optimism in part is what is behind the
safety agencys annual design competition, now in its eighth year.
This years winner in the runway safety category, EmbryRiddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) students, devised an aid
for the worst ofenders in the runway incursion problemgeneral
aviation pilots.
The basic idea was to get the pilots head up and out of the
cockpit while still presenting the types of information required
to navigate around the airport, and all at a very low cost. The students solution does not address the NTSBs long-standing recommendation to the FAA to directly alert pilots of an impending
collision, but it will
in theory prevent
A laser light that leads drivers to
pilots from gettheir destination could also make a
positive contribution at the airport,
ting lost or making
say Embry-Riddle students.
wrong turns that
can result in serious
incursions. Based on FAA data from 2011, ERAU says 65% of all
incursions were made by pilots, and 75% of those were from the
general aviation community.
The project, titled Navigation System for the Prevention of
Incursions in the Runway Environment, or Inspire, focused on
the most popular aircraft in the general aviation training feet,
the Cessna 172. The basic system, which the students developed but did not build, includes a head-up display (HUD) system, a speech recognition system, and the Garmin G1000 inte-
FLIGHT SAFETY
Recasting CAST
FAA and U.S. airline industry employ
data-mining for proactive safety approach
John Croft Washington
everal years ago, something jarring and potentially dangerous

was happening to airliners on
the way into Oakland, Calif. Pilots letting down through the mountains en
route to Oakland International Airport
were receiving terrain awareness and
warning system (TAWS) alerts in an
area where there were no actual terrain hazards.
The FAA learned of the nuisance
alerts at an InfoShare meeting, a
twice-annual closed-door gathering
of more than 600 pilots, airline executives, government and industry
ofcials.
Pilots reported nuisance TAWS
alerts, which correspond to negative
training, says Peggy Gilligan, the
FAAs associate administrator for aviation safety of the cry wolf potential of
a false alarm. Then the one time you
need it, you slam into the mountain.
The InfoShare intelligence, in the
hands of the retooled Commercial
Aviation Safety Team (CAST) comprised of FAA and industry safety
ofcials, ultimately led to changes in
TAWS software as well as FAA air
trafc procedures last year, with an
associated drop in nuisance alerts.

The path from complaint to change
is a trademark of the new CAST, which
depends heavily on databases and
query tools the FAA is using to move
from a forensics-driven, reactive safety
organization to one that is increasingly
consensus-driven, data-rich and proactive. Chief among the data tools is
the FAAs Aviation Safety Information
Analysis and Sharing (Asias) program.
The CAST process of late has
been taking on more broad and serious threats, including aircraft state
awareness, runway excursions and
problematic performance-based
navigation departures. Aircraft state
awareness includes pilot interaction
with automation and the handling of
aircraft energy, issues which are likely
to be top contenders as the primary
or causal factors in the Asiana Airlines Boeing 777-200ER crash at San
Francisco International Airport on
July 6. Based on preliminary evidence
provided by the NTSB, the three pilots on the Asiana fight deck allowed
that aircrafts speed and altitudeits
energy stateto decrease to critically
low levels during the visual approach
NTSB
to Runway 28L. The aircraft hit the

seawall ahead of the runway.
The heavy focus on proactive data
versus forensic discovery distinguishes the new CAST from the original
program of the same name launched
in 1998. CAST then was created to decrease the fatality rate when fying on
an airliner by 80% by 2008, a goal the
FAA says it met with a 3% margin in
large part due to safety enhancements
and rulemakings that were based on
analysis of past crashes as part of the
CAST process.
We have it nailed for historic accidents and were starting to understand
potential precursor events, says Ken
Hylander, senior vice president of
corporate safety, security and compliance at Delta Air Lines, and co-chair
of CAST along with the FAAs Gilligan.
CAST has made its name from being
a data-driven process that is very traceable, where we develop mitigating strategies and make sure the residual risk
gets down to acceptable levels. The expansion of our scope for forward-looking and prognostic requires a change in
mind-set, but its one that matches what
airlines are doing with risk-based safety
management systems.
The reformulated CAST, rolled out
in December 2011 with a goal of cutting
the commercial airline fatality rate by
an additional 50% by 2020, is attempting to meet its target through a combination of new safety enhancements as
well as a retrospective focus on keeping
up with the 76 enhancements already
deployed. In either case, the Asias program is the backbone of the new CAST.
Important to CASTs success is that
the group has consensus among the
members and does not work in a vacuum, ignoring solutions that may already
exist. Part of the process is to identify
all other organizations in the world
that are focused on the same task,
says Pardee. We identify all the other
related activities, interact with them
and stand on their shoulders where we
can. At a minimum, we have to consider
their work as part of our fnal product.
For the aircraft state-awareness
study at CAST, Hylander says, the
list was very longand we took every
bit of that and put it in our analysis.
(See diagram.)
CASTs aircraft-state awareness

task will likely address issues that
emerge from the June crash of
Asiana Fight 214 at San Francisco.
In the past, if we had enough complaints, someone would contact Honeywell [the original developer of TAWS]
and say, Could you look at this box
and fx it to not get nuisance alerts?
says Gilligan. This time, we had a lot
more data sources that we could bring
to bear. So we looked at FOQA and
found they were getting a lot of alarms
in some places, though it was not obvi-
on the approach, while other changes

were made to Honeywell software.
From start to fnish, the analysis efort
took about eight months. We have had
the reduction in alerts that we expected, says Jay Pardee, the FAAs chief
scientifc and technical adviser for vulnerability discovery, noting that about
80% of operators have upgraded their
TAWS software with the fx.
How the Commercial Aviation Safety Team Fixed a False-Alarm Problem

InfoShare
Eight months
But that level of review can take

years, which is part of the reason
CAST is a strategic rather than tactical safety tool. There are no other
groups that go through the development, consensus-building and endproduct process the way CAST does,
says Hylander, noting that airlines in
the past few years are getting an even
stronger voice in the process which
leads to more buy-in when safety
enhancements are rolled out. We put
out a report with consensus around it,
and thats why it takes a little time to
get it done.
The FAA says Asias now has access
to 185 sources, with voluntarily supplied
safety data inputs from 43 airlines and
six corporate operators. Safety data in
large part is coming from the fight operations quality assurance (FOQA) and
aviation safety action program (ASAP)
reports from the carriers and operators. Both programs allow an approved
airline to avoid penalties for errors by
sharing de-identifed data on safety incidents with the FAA.
FOQA provides performance data
from the aircraft and ASAP is a narrative description of an event or incident by pilots, mechanics and other
employees. FAA air traffic controllers have a similar narrative program
called Atsap, which is also included in
Asias. As of July, there were 164,000
ASAP reports, 56,000 Atsap reports
and FOQA data from 12 million fights
in the database.
Access to the data is a sensitive issue, with limits placed on who can see
what data. The Transportation Departments Ofce of Inspector General
recently completed a one-year audit of
the Asias program, in part to determine how the FAA plans to grant its
airline safety inspectors and analysts
access to the data, a requirement imposed by Congress in 2010. The results
have not yet been published.
In the case of the TAWS nuisance
alerts, CAST members, based on what
they heard at InfoShare, decided to
launch a study during their next meeting. The CAST executive committee
and board meet every other month, deciding what issues to analyze and which
interventions to recommend for deployment. The bulk of the work is completed by three teams (see diagram)the
joint safety analysis teams (JSAT), joint
safety implementation team (JSIT) and
joint implementation measurement and
data analysis team (Jimdat).
CAST Executive
Committee
Joint Safety Analysis
Teams
Semi-annual closed-door government/industry safety meetings

More than 600 attendees
FAA made aware of problem
Six yearly government/industry meetings
22 voting members, 15 board members
Decision to investigate
Government/industry teams
Investigated false alarms using Asias
Developed/evaluated intervention strategies
Joint Safety
Implementation
Teams
Government/industry team
Determined feasibility of intervention strategies
Developed detailed action plan
Joint Implementation
Measurement and
Data Analysis Team
Government/industry team
Monitor effectiveness of safety enhancements
using Asias
Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing (Asias) program

Identifed safety data from 185 sources, including:
43 airlines and two corporate operators participating
Flight operations quality assurance data from 26 airlines and two corporate operators
Aviation Safety Action Program text reports from 43 airlines
Air Traffc Safety Action Program text reports from FAA controllers
Source: FAA
ous if the alerts were nuisance alerts or

not. Since FOQA reports are de-identifed to protect the identity of the airline
and pilots, there was no information on
the where, when or why of the alert.
However, using software tools built
by Mitre Corp., the FAA can now look
across radar track data to determine
where TAWS alerts might be occurring.
This was the frst time we did it, says
Gilligan. We found a location where
there were a lot of alerts, and for different reasons. Some aircraft were on
tracks they needed to be on, but closer
to land mass than the [TAWS] box expected. It really was a nuisance alert.
In other cases, the alerts were occurring where the FAA hadnt designed the
minimum descent altitude (MDA) correctly. Gilligan says MDAs are typically
based on the highest object, a mountain
peak for example, in a 30-50-mi. radius.
In this case, she says the high points
were buttes, so the MDA did not take
you far enough away.
Some of the fxes were made on the
FAAs side, including fne-tuning of
the MDAs and changes to vectoring
CAST is also working through the

implementation stage of certain upgrades to procedures and equipment
for nuisance-resolution advisories
from trafc-alert and collision avoidance systems (TCAS) at high-altitude
airports, including Denver. Analysis of
the issues began using Asias in 2008.
As with the TAWS complaints, the
FAA frst learned of the TCAS problems at InfoShare.
After an InfoShare meeting, [CAST]
gets a briefng where folks have said,
Here were the key things that came
out of InfoShare that maybe we didnt
know about and were going to go take
a look, says Hylander. Theyll go use
the Asias process to fnd out if this is
just a problem at Airline A, or a systemic issue.
The latest significant interventions, which CAST expects to reveal
later this year and early in 2014, in
part emerged from problems aired at
InfoShare. Safety enhancements will
include proposed solutions for pilot deviations during waypoint-based area
navigation (RNAV) departures at key
FLIGHT SAFETY
airports, including Dallas-Fort Worth
International; improper handling of
aircraft with respect to airspeed, altitude, confguration and automation
(the aircrafts state); and runway
excursions, including overruns.
Pardee says the airplane-state
awareness task was identified by
CAST because analysts routinely
monitor its safety portfolio against
worldwide hull-loss accidents. Using
the Asias databases, the analysts set
out to validate whether there was a
correlation with a spate of accidents
internationally with what was happening in the U.S. CAST was able to
determine that we have a U.S. vulnerability, says Pardee. Then [Hylander]
and [Gilligan] chartered the airplanestate awareness work in CAST.
A primary indicator of faulty aircraft-state awareness is an aerodynamic stall. CAST is mining the data
for precursors, including excessive
pitch and roll angles. Are they happening? Where are they happening?
What is the crews situational awareness and response? And how can we
prevent the error? says Hylander.
Included in the analysis and interventions are automation, training, displays
and equipment, he says.
gations are still in place or handled by

some other mechanism. We dont want
to reintroduce the risk.
Hylander says CAST has found
pretty good continual compliance at
airlines, including their regional partners, despite the fact that compliance
is usually voluntary.
In the near future, the group hopes
to be able to search narrative reports
with the same speed
and efficiency that it
Were coming very close
can search FOQA data
using a conversion
to being able to condition
called auto-classification.
[narrative] data as effectively as
For a typicality
analysis, we can model
digital data with text-mining
TAWS and TCAS and
detect occurrences
anywhere in the country, measuring the frequency at every
In addition to looking forward,
airport and runway and for every arCAST is also looking back at the 76
rival procedure, says Pardee. That type
safety enhancements rolled out over
of search has not been the case for narthe past decade or more. As far as
rative data, including ASAP and Atsap,
time gone by, its not inconceivable that
given the hundreds of thousands of docpeople changed process or procedures
uments in the database. Over the past
for good and valid reasons but may not
12 months, however, were coming very
have understood the origin of that proclose to being able to condition that
cess, says Gilligan. We just put out
data as efectively as digital data with
guidance to airline inspectors to reach
text-mining routines, says Pardee. c
out to their carriers, to see if risk mitiThe FAAs Gilligan says CAST is reviewing a set of safety enhancements,
but no decisions have been made. A
handful of mitigations [for aircraftstate awareness] are under review that
could be presented in fnal form close
to the end of this year, she says. The
same is true for runway excursions,
with RNAV departure safety enhancements following early in 2014.
CohEsivE CrossovEr
Cathy Buyck Brussels
uropean Union countries must operate a mandatory occurrence-reporting system to comply with a 2003 European
directive and two regulations from 2007. Aviation authorities
collect occurrence reports and feed them into the European
Central Repository (ECR). Based in Ispra, Italy, at the European
Commissions in-house Joint Research Center, this central database is accessible to all member states aviation authorities and
the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).
In reality, the exchange of data has some big limitations. The
quality of the occurrence data is inconsistent, its integration is
not harmonized or structured, member states are allowed to fle
reports in their own languages and there is too much information. The ECR currently contains 665,000 occurrences.
EASA has been working to improve the quality of the safety
data. It also has established a Network of Safety Analysts with
the purpose of improving the exchange of information between
the diferent aviation authorities in Europe. Still, the European
Commission in 2011 deemed that the existing systems need
improvements, and in December it proposed an EU occurrencereporting regulation to replace the previous directive. (An EU
regulation is a stronger piece of legislation than a directive.)

The regulation maintains the obligation to establish mandatory
occurrence-reporting systems, imposes the establishment of
voluntary systems, and it will strengthen across the EU the
Just Culture the U.K. has championed, which allows employees to report occurrences without fear of retribution.
The proposed regulation will also extend access to all occurrence data and information contained in the ECR. The
European Commission contends that the detection of actual
or potential hazards will be greatly enhanced when information
on occurrences is actively exchanged across the EU.
Under the current regulatory framework, national aviation
safety authorities in one member state are neither alerted of
nor provided exact information on incidents in their national
airspace concerning aircraft belonging to an airline certifed in
another member state. Since an airline may be a major operator
in a member state but have no reporting obligation there, the
proposed regulation would help to ensure that member state
authorities receive information about events taking place in
their airspace. c
Palpable Progress
Tap the icon in the digital

edition of AW&ST for IATA data
on accident rates and hull losses
in recent years, or go to
AviationWeek.com/safetyrecords
of it, IATAs senior vice president for
safety, operations and infrastructure,
Gunther Matschnigg, cautioned during the IATA annual general meeting
in Cape Town, South Africa, in June.
Africa renews push to improve

its safety performance
Cathy Buyck Brussels
fricas poor air safety performance is an old sore, but

there are some hopeful signs that the approach of all
talk, no action is being reversed. Several initiatives
are budding across the continent to improve safety of airline
operations and the air transport supply chain.
Many initiatives and programs are induced by the Abuja
Declaration on Aviation Safety in Africa and the Africa Strategic Improvement Action Plan, 2012-15, which aim to achieve
a safety performance on a par with the global average by the
end of 2015. The plan was developed by the International
Air Transport Association (IATA) and the International Civil
Aviation Organization (ICAO) in partnership with the African
Airlines Association (Afraa) and other stakeholders in May
2012. Its targets include:
Establishment of independent and sufciently funded aviation authorities.
Implementation of efective and transparent safety oversight systems by all African states.
Completion of the IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA)
by all African airlines.
Implementation of safety management systems (SMS)
by all African airlines, air navigation service providers and
airports.
Adoption of accident prevention measures and training,
particularly focusing on runway safety and loss of control.
Implementation of fight data analysis and exchange by all
African operators.
The three-year plan is ambitious, Afraa Secretary General Elijah Chingosho admits, but he believes it is realistic.
With the will and partnership between African governments and industry, I am optimistic that we will witness
major improvements in aviation safety on the continent, he
says. The project has garnered high-level political support.
African transport ministers approved the Abuja Declaration and associated Africa Strategic Improvement Action
Plan, 2012-15, in July 2012 in Abuja, Nigeria, and the heads
of the 54 states of the African Union endorsed the objectives in January 2013.
Its a piece of paper; we need to make a commitment out
Cote dIvoires new national

airline, launched in 2012 with the
assistance of Air France, is committed to achieving a safety level
which is compliant with IOSAs
stringent international standards.
While the result of the new safety
drive remains to be seen, several
Oliver GreGOire/AirlinersGAllery.cOm
African authorities appear to have
embraced the action plan.
Ugandan Transport Minister Stephen Chebrot recently
said the planned upgrade of Entebbe International Airport
was partly necessitated to meet the 2015 deadline on a set
of ICAO-IATA safety standards. The Ugandan government
has earmarked $450 million for redesigning and modernizing
the airport and last month signed an agreement with the Korea International Cooperation Agency (Koica) to undertake
the project. It entails building a state-of-the-art cargo and
passenger terminal complex, strengthening and widening
runways and taxiways and redesigning and reequipping the
control tower to support new aviation technologies. It also
calls for the enhancement of civil aviation training.
Another reason the safety action plan might actually
gain interest from stakeholders is its focus on tackling the
key contributing factors to accidents in Africa: inefective
regulatory oversight and the lack of SMS and fight data
analysis. The correct implementation of SMS and tools
such as fight data analysis could have pinpointed precursors to the major accident types such as runway excursions
and loss of control, notes Matschnigg. An analysis of 56
air transport accidents in Africa in 2006-10 showed that
runway excursions alone accounted for about a quarter of
African accidents.
The continent has a bad safety record: Its Western-builtjet hull loss rate is consistently higher than the worlds average of one accident for every fve million fights in 2012.
Africa lost one jet for every 270,000 fights last year, according to IATA data. There were 75 accidents involving
all aircraft types and levels of damage in 2012, 13 of which
were in Africa. The continent has about 3% of global air
trafc and 17% of accidents.
The total accident rate (including all Western- and Eastern-built aircraft) for Africa in the frst four months of this
year has improved compared to last year, but at 7.98 accidents per million fights, this is still more than four times the
global average of 1.73 accidents per million fights.
However, no IOSA-registered carriers based in Africa were
involved in accidents in 2012 or the frst four months of this
year. In contrast, non-IOSA-registered African operators had
the worst safety performance of all regions.
FLIGHT SAFETY
A pillar of the safety action plan and the Abuja Declaration
is making IOSA mandatory across the continent. The safety
record of African carriers on the IOSA registry tells us that
the key to this is integrating the best safety practices of the
industry as captured in the IOSA standards, says IATAs
Director General and CEO Tony Tyler. Twenty-fve airlines in
sub-Saharan Africa are on the IOSA registry. IOSA certifcation is compulsory for IATA and Afraa membership.
It is quite possible that there will still be some airlines that
may not be IOSA-certifed by 2015, says Chingosho. Those
carriers could potentially lose their air operators certifcates
starting in January 2016. However, these are likely to be
the exceptions, and there is likely to be a lot of pressure on
them to conform or lose a lot of business, as they will be the
only ones not adhering to industry best practices in safety,
security and operations. Airlines are realizing that IOSA
certifcation is an important investment rather than looking
at it as a cost.
ICAO, IATA and Afraa are working together to assist
non-compliant airlines to prepare for the IOSA audit, which
comprises over 900 standards. Last year, regulators from 40
African states attended IOSA-awareness workshops, indicating the widespread acknowledgment of the need to improve
safety standards. IATA also conducted several workshops
to inform airlines about the process of obtaining IOSA certifcation.
Thirty-three airlines have attended IOSA workshops and
70% of them submitted applications for further assistance
with IATA and International Aviation Training Fund-sponsored in-house training. IATA identifed 10 airlines advanced
enough in their IOSA preparations to complete the process
by 2015: Afric Aviation, Gabon; Asky Airlines, Togo; CAA
Compagnie Africaine dAviation, DR Congo; Camair-co, Cameroon; Air Cote dIvoire, Cote dIvoire; Aero Survey (Starbow), Ghana; Mauritanie Airlines, Mauritania; Senegal Airlines, Senegal; Equajet, Republic of Congo; and RwandaAir,
Rwanda.
The implementation training is in the middle of Phase 2,
and eight operators have completed the gap analysis; one is
scheduled for September and one for October. According to
the plan, seven operators should complete Phase 3 this year
and three in the frst quarter of 2014,
IATA confrms.
Chingosho hopes the mandatory IOSA certification and
implementation of the Abuja Declaration will also lead to

the removal of African countries and operators from the
European Unions list of airlines subject to an operating ban
or operational restrictions within the 28-member-state bloc.
Afraas secretary general and IATA are intensely critical of
the EU blacklist, which Tyler says lacks transparency and
tars almost all African airlines with the same brusheven
those with excellent safety records.
The blacklist was drawn up by the European Commission
in March 2006, and the most recent update in July contains
a full ban of all passenger and cargo carriers certifed in 20
states, 15 of which are in Africa. The list also includes 10
airlines subject to operational restrictions, seven of them
African.
Chingosho is adamant that the EU blacklist and the European Community Safety Assessment of Foreign Aircraft (SAFA)
programwhich gives the European Aviation Safety Agency
(EASA) the authority to inspect third-country aircrafthave
not resulted in concrete initiatives to improve safety.
EASA does not share his views, pointing out that it carried out 15 technical-assistance missions in Africa to address
safety issues and another two are scheduled. One good illustration of positive impact of the EU safety list and the
assistance provided afterward is the case of Mauritania, a
spokesman notes. The country was removed from the EU
blacklist in December, the only African country so far.
The EU has established assistance programs with a number of African countries to enhance safety oversight capacity,
which is more positive that issuing ban lists, Chingosho
says. One example is the Safety Oversight Facilitated Integration Application (Sofa), an information technology tool to
harmonize and streamline safety oversight activities that is
operational within the fve partner states of the East African
Community: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.
As part of the Africa Strategic Safety Improvement Action
Plan, 2012-15, IATA is driving the expansion of membership of
its fight data exchange across the continent. IATA is working
on a new loss-of-control prevention toolkit to be integrated
with ICAO, Boeing, Airbus and Flight Safety Foundation guidance materials and implemented via loss-of-control prevention workshops in Africa in 2014. c
Explore the full IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA)
Registry at: ow.ly/ocTNg
Togo-based Asky Airlines is in the process of getting

the IATA-sponsored IOSA certifcation.
AntOny J. Best/AirlinersGAllery.cOm
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AviAtiOn Week & SpAce technOlOgy/September 2, 2013 49
NASA
Editorial
The Time Bomb

Of Complacency
Surprisingly, at least for those of us close to the

industry, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden
told the Aviation 2013 Conference last month
that he gets less pressure from the entire aviation community than he does from a single congressman with a pet space project. Perhaps that
is a sign of complacency. After all, times are good.
The NASA administrator

says he gets less pressure from
the entire aviation community
on aeronautics than he gets
from a single congressman on
a pet space project.
hen the sector you serve is doing very nicely, thank you,
it is hard to sound an alarm about the future. And when
lawmakers see bulging order books stretching years-out
for commercial aircraft and engine manufacturers, it is hard to
make the case for government funding of research that will not
produce results for a decade or more.
So NASAs unveiling of a new strategy for aeronautics research
is a bold and welcome move from a bureaucratic agency that often
seems to have lost its sense of direction (see page 21). The aeronautics reset is based on the fundamental assumption that U.S. leadership in civil aviation will be at risk in as little as 20 years unless the
nation acts to keep the pipeline of new technologies fowing. The
revitalization planspearheaded by the associate administrator
for aeronautics, Jaiwon Shinwas inspired by the story of Kodak,
which through complacency and lack of vision saw its domination
of the photographic flm and camera market wiped out by digital
imaging and smartphones.
Based on a comprehensive analysis, NASA is refocusing its aeronautics research on six thrusts shaped to help industry respond to
three global mega-drivers: demand for mobility from the growing
middle classes of China and India; energy and climate issues challenging the afordability and sustainability of aviation; and technology advances in information, communication and automation that
already are transforming other sectors more agile than aerospace.
This is hardly new. These same factors have underpinned Airbuss and Boeings bullish forecasts for aircraft demand over the
next 20 years, and the international airline communitys drive to
limit emissions and their costs. But those factors are also seen by
nations that have made development of an aviation industry a national priority. Unlike the U.S., those countries do not have skeptical lawmakers looking to cut government R&D spending. Nor do
they have the burden of a massive and aging infrastructure that
must be modernized.
Global economic growth has shifted to the Asia-Pacifc region,
and with it, the demand for aircraft, increasing the incentives for
countries to manufacture locally. And where manufacturing goes,
R&D follows, as the experience gained developing one product
leads inevitably to the nextand bettergeneration. What NASA
really fears is this looming global competition in R&D, which could
pit its roughly 2,000 aeronautics researchers against perhaps 10
times as many government engineers in China alone.
At a recent conference on propulsion, a senior strategist for engine manufacturer General Electric warned that if the U.S. government was not willing to invest in aviation R&D, GE as a global
company would go where funding is available. Such statements are
a threat to NASAs preeminence in aeronautics, and should be a
wake-up call to Congress. In 1998, NASA devoted the equivalent of
$1.7 billion to aeronautics research. This year, it will spend a third
of that, just $560 million. That is shameful. The good news is that
even that small amount is generating outsized returns in maturing
key technologies such as laminar fow control, quiet faps and landing gear, and ultra-high-bypass engines.
Boeing Commercial Airplanes recorded nearly $5

billion in operating profts last year.
The situation is not peculiar to the U.S. Europeans in the industry speak of the poor public image of aviation there, with the perception
that it damages the environment and does little
to beneft society. That makes it more difcult to
persuade regulators and politicians to remove
unwarranted barriers to the industrys growth.
Bolden wants the U.S. aviation community
to speak up and defend aviations profound and
myriad contributions to economic activity and
aerospaces role in creating high-paying jobs and
powering billions in exports.
But unless Congress is convinced of aviations
beneftsand understands that U.S. leadership
really does face challengersNASA will fnd it
hard to protect aeronautics research from cuts,
let alone increase funding. While there is room to
quibble about some elements of NASAs new visionif there will ever be a market for low-boom
supersonic transports, or on-demand air taxis
the strategy is encompassing enough to be embraced and supported by industry.
An alarm needs to be sounded. A vital and vigorous aeronautics research program is essential.
Thankfully, that is just what Associate Administrator Shin and his team are trying to provide. c
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Volume 175 Number 30

Digital Extras Tap this icon in articles

10 Delta launch with classifed NRO

21 nasa honing its focus on

10 nasa helicopter crash test

ation facility for C2 technologies

envelope for night fying around the

18 social media campaign against

31 sukhois superjet enters new

32 aer lingus is big step closer to being

24 Boeing fnally catches U.S. Navys

to create largest, most accurate

23 nasa langley serving as an evalu -

11 two F-35Bs in trials designed to open

30 european star-mapper expected

mosCoW aIr shoW

20 International research plan defned

28 t-50 being designed to carry heavy,

for icing study as Boeing and

long-range missiles internally,

an independent airline, but fght

33 India threatening to withdraw trafc

34 Boeings frst stretched 787-9 is

21 New NASA strat-

36 The remnants of the tail section of

egy aligns aeronautics

UPS Flight 1354 lie near BirminghamShuttlesworth International Airport

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Aerostructures | Electronic Systems | Geospatial

35 research on albatrosses could help

38 testing with simulators is part of gov-

efort eyes practical steps to

NASAs aeronautics strategy,

ernment and industry efort to reduce potential for runway incursions

40 push to enable airport ops in

36 Grassroots industry monitoring

50 Industry must embrace and support

near-zero visibility spurs technology work for fight segments

41 embry-riddle students create

42 Faa and U.s. airline industry team

44 easa working to improve quality

45 several initiatives budding across

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