Boeing 787 Test Priority Shifts to ETOPS

Boeing' s 787 certification focus is shifting from aircraft tests to
qualification for long-range ETOPS at
entry-into-service in the aftermath of
last November' s electrical fire, says Boeing CEO James McNerney. Despite the delays caused by the fire
on ZA002, the 787 program has
completed 75% of the flight testing
required for delivery, but the redesign
of software prompted by the incident
is threatening the timing of Boeing' s ETOPS qualification program. Without
FAA approval for ETOPS at entry-into-
service, early long-range operations
by launch customer All Nippon
Airways (ANA) and others will be
severely limited. Speaking to analysts on a 2010
earnings call, McNerney adds that as
787 flight hours pass the 2,500 flight-
hours mark, qualification testing for
ETOPS at entry-into-service is the
growing priority.

Civil aviation industry grew by 400% in six yrs: Patel

Civil aviation minister Praful Patel on
Friday said the airline industry in India
has grown by 400% in a short span of
about six-and-a-half years. "Civil
aviation in India since 2004 and now
has grown by 400% in the span of about six-and-a-half years," he said
while presiding over a foundation stone laying ceremony for the Kannur
International Airport at Mattannur. He said in 10 years Indian market will
be the third largest aviation market
after the US and China.

Air India Express to shift base to Kerala

Nedumbassery: The headquarters of Air
India Express is set to be shifted from
Mumbai to Kerala, with the Chairman
and Managing Director of Air India,
Arvind Jadhav, issuing the order.
A press release from the airline on Thursday said the headquarters of Air
India Charters Ltd., the wholly owned
subsidiary of the national carrier that
operates the no-frills Air India Express
flights, would be shifted to Kerala in
pursuance of a decision taken at its board meeting on October 8. While the
operational and administrative offices
would be in Kochi, the engineering
hub would be in
Thiruvananthapuram.
The airline officials said the move to Kochi was expected to begin by
January 15, while the engineering hub
would be shifted when the
maintenance hangar became
operational in the State capital.
For Air India Express, Kerala is an important market in terms of capacity
and air-connectivity. Seventeen of its
21 Boeing 737-800 aircraft operate
out of the three airports in the State.
The shift will help release spare aircraft
fast if any flights encounter snags. The company is now renovating its
office on Durbar Hall Road here to seat
nearly 50 employees to be transferred
from Mumbai. In the State capital, 200
employees will have to be
accommodated.

Glass Cockpit

The new full-color, flat panel
Multifunction Electronic Display
Subsystem (MEDS) is shown in the
cockpit of Atlantis. The "glass cockpit"
offers easy-to-read graphical views of
key flight indicators such as attitude display and mach speed. Technology first used in
military, commercial aircraft When NASA astronaut Fred Gregory
learned that the cockpit in Shuttle
Atlantis was slated for a total
technology update, he advised Shuttle
managers to talk with the agency's
aeronautics experts. So it should be no surprise that Atlantis' new cockpit
looks a lot like a future airliner cockpit,
with colorful multi-function computer
displays stretched from one side to the
other. The radical new look is an
accurate reflection of the cockpit's radical new capabilities. Gregory, originally from NASA Langley
and now NASA Associate
Administrator for Safety and Mission
Assurance, knew that Langley had
pioneered the "glass cockpit" concept
in ground simulators and demonstration flights in the NASA 737
flying laboratory.

Indian Scientists Developed Technology to Reduce Aircraft Maintenance Cost

Technology By NAL And CSIR Allows Aircraft To Be Tested While Still Airborne
Peerzada Abrar BANGALORE

TWO of the country's top scientific and avionics research centres have successfully tested a technology that can reduce the cost of running and maintaining an aircraft by nearly a third.
The technology, called structural health monitoring (SHM), developed by the National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has the ability to predict cracks or damages on an aircraft even when it is airborne.
"We successfully tested this technology, which is probably the first flight trial of an SHM system on an unmanned aerial vehicle," said Dr A R Upadhya, director of NAL.