HELI-EXPO: AgustaWestland unveils new avionics suite for Grand light twin

HELI-EXPO: AgustaWestland unveils new avionics suite for Grand light twin
By Brendan Sobie

AgustaWestland today unveiled the Grand New light twin helicopter at Heli-Expo 2010 in Houston. The company also disclosed that Portuguese operator Vinair will be the launch custome for the new type, which recently became the first helicopter to use synthetic vision to secure single pilot IFR certification.

“With the Grand New we’re writing a new page in the way a helicopter flies,” chief executive Giuseppe Orsi said in a ceremony opening the AgustaWestland exhibit this morning, adding that while the Grand New looks on the outside exactly like the Grand inside it features “totally new avionics that allows safe navigation in (instrument meteorological conditions”.

With satellite navigation, synthetic vision and enhanced vision terrain awareness capabilities plus a full four-axis autopilot integrated as part of the state-of-the-art flight management system Orsi promises there will be “no more blind flights”. As a result, he says pilots will be able to safely operate point-to-point flights in any weather conditions, thereby improving the productivity of the Grand.

AgustaWestland says it has already secured eight or nine orders for the Grand New although it is only now formally launching a marketing campaign for the new configuration. “Until now we didn’t commercialise it too much,” chief operating officer Bruno Spagnolini tells Flightglobal, adding that now AgustaWestland has an actual helicopter to sell he expects the Grand order book will quickly swell to “70 or more orders in this configuration”.

Vinair this afternoon signed a contract for two Grand New VIP helicopters. The company, which already operates a fleet of AW109 Powers, will become the launch operator for the new configuration in May when the first Grand New is delivered.

AgustaWestland says the other six to seven orders already secured for the Grand New are from undisclosed customers for a mix of VIP, SAR and EMS configurations. The manufacturer also expects to sell the new helicopter to law enforcement and offshore operators.

Spagnolini says the production line in Italy will switch over from the Grand to the Grand New in the second half of this year. He says AgustaWestland now plans to produce 50 to 55 Grands this year with about 50% in the old configuration and 50% in the new configuration.

Last year AgustaWestland also turned out 50 to 55 Grands, including 10 in the special Da Vinci configuration, which features new avionics to support single pilot operations but not sufficient for flight in IFR conditions. The manufacturer to date has produced about 300 Grands and says an increase in production will be considered if the new configuration leads to a spur in orders as it hopes.

“We first want to see how the market will move in the future,” Spagnolini says.

The New Grand secured EASA certification in December. Spagnolini expects FAA certification by April and first US deliveries in the second half of this year. “We are moving with the FAA. It will be a matter of just a few weeks. The FAA has already flown the helicopter and is aware of the helicopter,” Spagnolini says.
Deliveries to markets including Latin America and Asia are also expected to begin by year-end.

Crashed Ethiopian 737's missing CVR section found

Crashed Ethiopian 737's missing CVR section found

By David Kaminski-Morrow

Recovery personnel at the scene of last month's Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737-800 crash have retrieved a crucial missing section of the jet's cockpit-voice recorder.

Part of the Honeywell recorder was recovered from the crash site, off the Lebanese coast, last week.

But a cylindrical memory unit from the device was missing.

The Lebanese defence ministry states today that "intensive efforts" by military personnel and divers have resulted in this additional section being found.

Search teams had already located and retrieved the flight-data recorder from the 737, which came down in the Mediterranean Sea shortly after taking off from Beirut.

This device has already been transported to France's accident investigation agency Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses.

Flight ET409 had been operating from Beirut to the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. None of the 90 passengers and crew members survived.

EASA not ruling out AD after Koito falsified seat test results

EASA not ruling out AD after Koito falsified seat test results
By Mary Kirby

European aircraft safety regulators are not ruling out the possibility of issuing an airworthiness directive (AD) after the stunning revelation from Japan that seat maker Koito Industries falsified test results on as many as 150,000 seats used by 32 carriers.

The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) withdrew production organisation approval for Koito in September 2009 after it was "no longer convinced that Koito was exchanging accurate information with its customers", says a spokesman for the agency.

This effectively prohibited Airbus from delivering aircraft equipped with Koito seats.

But in an interview with ATI today, the EASA spokesman said: "I am not excluding an airworthiness directive on this. The agency for its part at this stage cannot confirm the precise scale of the issue. Neither can it, with any degree of certainty, say to what extent safety is negatively affected. I can, however, say that on evidence we have from the Japan Civil Aviation Bureau (JCAB), three things are affected - 16g, 9g [test data] and flammability [data]."

He adds: "The scale of the issue would be visible in an airworthiness directive, if and when we publish one."

An EASA statement issued this week says the evidence from the JCAB relates to "irregularities in the design and production of Koito seats manufactured in Japan and installed in a number of aircraft types".

Airbus confirms that 130 aircraft or just over 2% of the worldwide Airbus fleet are equipped with Koito seats.

The European airframer is understood to be working on an operators information telex (OIT) concerning the Koito seat problem.

But with shipment of new Koito seats ordered stopped by Japan's transport ministry, operators are already starting to feel an impact.


Delivery to Thai Airways International of five new Airbus A330-300s has been delayed, as has the delivery to Singapore Airlines (SIA) of an 11th Airbus A380.

Koito is supplying the business class seats on SIA's A380s and the first class seats on the carrier's Boeing 777-300s, which are being retrofitted.

However, Koito could have fabricated test results on as many as 1,000 aircraft in the world fleet, according to reports from Japan that cite the country's transport ministry. As such, Boeing customers may face a much greater exposure than Airbus customers, in light of the European airframer's revelation that 130 Airbus aircraft are fitted with Koito seats.

Japan's All Nippon Airways has already delayed the launch of its new Boeing 777-300ER service - and its new "Inspiration of Japan' interior - on the New York-Narita route due to a delay in premium economy seats supplied by Koito.

A Boeing spokeswoman says the airframer learned of the Koito situation a year ago. "We worked with our customers at that time to rectify it. When the same issue cropped up again last fall, we sent a team to Koito to help them with their quality management system. Our engineering tests determined that it is not a safety of flight issue, so we notified our customers individually," she says, adding that Boeing is not "able to name them [customers] individually".

The Boeing spokeswoman says the Koito issue applies to all classes of seats - first, business, premium-economy and economy. "We have not yet issued an operator message," she notes.

Koito seats are one of the seat options in the 787 catalogue. Last week, Mark Larson, gallery technical manager at Boeing's 787 Dreamliner gallery, told ATI that Koito is currently under review for offerability, but that the airframer is still working with the Japanese firm.

For its part, the US FAA says is aware of the Koito situation and is "in touch with the Japanese civil aviation authorities about it".

"We're reviewing the situation and haven't made any decisions yet [on whether to issue an AD]. In general when one civil aviation authority issues an AD, generally the other follows suit in some way," says an FAA spokeswoman.

BA to use biofuel from planned new conversion plant

BA to use biofuel from planned new conversion plant
By David Kaminski-Morrow
British Airways is to assist in establishing a biofuel plant from which it has tentatively agreed to acquire all the fuel the project produces.

The carrier has reached the deal with Washington-based energy company Solena Group.

Under the agreement the new plant - which will probably be located in east London - will use waste biomass, otherwise dumped for landfill, to develop the fuel.

It will produce some 73 million litres of aviation fuel per year by converting waste into gas under high temperatures, and then into liquid hydrocarbons through the Fischer-Tropsch process. The conversion will also create raw naphtha components.

BA has signed a letter of intent to purchase all of the plant's fuel, and says it plans to use the fuel on part of its fleet from 2014.

"We believe it will lead to the production of a real sustainable alternative to jet kerosene," says BA chief Willie Walsh. The carrier has previously vowed to halve its carbon emissions by 2050.

Four locations in east London are among the candidate sites for the plant.