PUBLICATIONS
THURSDAY 7•12•2012
Vol. 44 No. 23
Farnborough Airshow News
TM
Big Orders for Big Two
New Euro-Russian Helicopter
AIN Flies Concorde
ScanEagle for Singapore
Airbus and Boeing notched up more sales on the third day of the show, with orders led by the leasing companies while engine companies were also delighted at the work bonanza.
AgustaWestland and Russian Helicopters signaled their intention to design and build a new singleengine helicopter. The British-Italian company has a strong presence at the show. Page 10
Flying the Concorde is still possible thanks to Brooklands Museum in nearby Weybridge, where the British Airways simulator for the type has been brought back to life.
It is confirmed now that Singapore is a customer for Insitu’s ScanEagle unmanned aerial system, which has come a long way since being developed for trawlers looking for schools of fish. Page 19
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AINtv
Sir Richard Branson talks about his desire to be among the first space tourists.
MRJ90 gets boost from SkyWest
DAVID McINTOSH
by Gregory Polek
“Launch Customers Wanted:” Sir Richard Branson was here yesterday to introduce LauncherOne, his satellite launching program. See story on Page 5.
Watchkeeper is late, but still in play by Chris Pocock Anglo-French cooperation on MALE UAVs may have stalled, according to reports from Paris and from informed sources AIN spoke to at the Farnborough
International airshow yesterday. However, it appears that the proposed joint UCAV study will still be sanctioned when French defense minister Jean-Yves Le
Drian visits London on July 24. Meanwhile, some progress can be reported on the recently troubled Thales Watchkeeper, which was the third (and least visible)
UAV program discussed at the last Anglo-French defense summit in February. The Thales Watchkeeper display is prominent here at the show. A company official told AIN that there had been “a lot of French [military] visitors” to the display. At the February
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Log onto AINonline.com for the latest coverage from the Farnborough Airshow.
Mitsubishi Aircraft received a huge dose of credibility at the Farnborough International airshow yesterday by announcing a 100-aircraft commitment for MRJ90s from the largest regional airline holding company in the world–SkyWest Airlines. The agreement in principle, signed just this week, potentially raises the MRJ regional jet family backlog to 170 airplanes and gives Mitsubishi its second major U.S. customer. “This is the market we’ve been targeting all along,” Mitsubishi Aircraft vice president of sales, Hank Iwasa, told AIN. Restrictions in U.S. major airline union contracts that limit the size of airplanes that regional airlines may operate have long hindered the company’s efforts to break into the U.S. market, but Iwasa expressed confidence that one or more of SkyWest’s major airline partners would negotiate less restrictive scope clauses by the time the first MRJ gets delivered. The MRJ90 holds 92 seats in a single-class configuration, but SkyWest could opt for a dualclass cabin that would likely hold closer to 80 seats, said Iwasa. U.S. scope clauses typically limit the size of regional jets to 76 seats. The contract, which gives SkyWest the option to convert part of
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