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SP's Aviation - ISSUE No 07-08

Issue Features

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  Allure & Reality
  By LeRoy Cook, Missouri, USA

  Rather than competing with scheduled commercial flying, general aviation is an adjunct that increases opportunity for business and personal travellers.

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  Flights of Fantasy
  By Air Marshal (Retd) V.K. Bhatia

  The cosmos beckons the travel bug and every endeavour is being made to ensure safety and affordability even as more aspiring space tourists queue up for the out-of-the-world experience.

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  Infrastructure - Facelift for Pune
  By Air Marshal (Retd) B.N. Gokhale, Pune

  As one of the 10 future cities of India, Pune will hopefully have its own state-ofthe-art civil airfield at Chakan in the not too distant future.

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  Farnborough - Fuelling Optimism
  By Alan Peaford, London

  At the Farnborough International Airshow 2008—amid the ominous reverberations of rising fuel prices—there were many familiar outlines gracing the skies, but little that was new. The excitement was far more about agreements and technology than airframes, reports ALAN PEAFORD from London.

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  Picture Incomplete
  By Group Captain A.K. Sachdev, Bangalore

  Considering the large number of business aircraft crowding the skies—especially small, fast jets—the time may have arrived when outsourcing business aviation safety may be the most viable solution.

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  JSF Programme - Fast forward mode
  By Air Marshal (Retd) V.K. Bhatia

  Production activity for Lockheed Martin’s JSF F-35 Lightning II is entering the start of an intense phase that will dominate the scene for the next 18 months.

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  MMRCA Deal - Qualitative Inputs
  By SP’s Team

  August 4—the deadline for submission of the offset proposals by the participating vendors in response to India’s 126 Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) deal—witnessed two of the global manufacturing giants in the field of military aviation, namely EADS and Boeing, offering lucrative offset proposals of such dimensions as to take industrial participation to hitherto un-scaled heights.

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  Readying for Red Flag
  

  For the first time in history, the Indian Air Force (IAF) is at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho to train with US fighters prior to participating in Exercise Red Flag at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, from August 9 to 23.

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  Steve Estill
  

  Steve Estill, Chief Marketing Officer, World Sales and Vice President, Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation outlines his companies strengths and elaborates on plans for the Indian market in reply to queries put forth by SP’s Aviation.

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  Competitive Advantage for Business Aviation
  

  Founded in 1927, Cessna has delivered some 190,000 airplanes to nearly every country in the world.

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  Douglas Bader (1910 – 1982)
  

  Douglas bader is not the kind of role model one would recommend lightly to a young, impressionable mind.

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  A Word from Editor
  By Jayant Baranwal - Publisher & Editor-in-Chief

  Coming to terms with rising fuel prices and hurriedly implementing damage control measures, the business of flying—and buying— carries on with remarkable tempo, as was evident at Farnborough. For the IAF, the F-35 could prove irresistible.

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  Astra Test for DRDO
  By Air Marshal (Retd) B.K. Pandey

  Indian defence scientists may be preparing to test the Astra—an indigenously developed beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile. Reports suggest the test flight could be conducted from an Indian Air Force Sukhoi-30MKI fighter aircraft anytime in the next 45 days.

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  A Booster Dose for Hubble
  By Air Marshal (Retd) V.K. Bhatia

  By year-end, the world’s largest telescope should be able to see deeper into space and further back in time than ever before. According to media reports, if all goes as planned, it will be able to detect events closer to the big bang, explore the ‘cosmic web’ of galaxies and intergalactic gas that make up the large-scale structure of the universe.

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  Invoke Damage Control Measures
  By Air Marshal (Retd) V.K. Bhatia

  Faced with the spectre of rising fuel prices, airlines in India need to streamline operations and adopt non-airfare revenues. Unrelenting increase in crude oil prices and its deadly impact on aviation turbine fuel (ATF) seems to be killing the aviation industry, especially the airlines.

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  Minus All Thrills
  By Air Marshal (Retd) V.K. Bhatia

  End of the day, airlines in India will have to do the juggler’s act by somehow balancing factors like capacities and airfares, apart from adopting a slew of fuel-saving, cost-cutting exercises. At $147.27 (rs 6,259) a barrel on July 11, price of crude oil not only touched an all-time high by more than doubling in the past one year, but also came dangerously close to crossing the psychological barrier of $150 (Rs 6,373).

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  Piling on the Flab
  By Air Marshal (Retd) B.K. Pandey

  Estimates of losses incurred by Air India present a shocking commentary on the financial management of the company and the gross mismanagement of the taxpayer’s money. Once upon a time the pride of the nation, Air India seems to have now become a white elephant and a serious liability for the government.