EADS vows to keep self financing drone project

VILLEPINTE, France – The CEO of EADS' defense and security division said Wednesday that the European company will keep financing its drone project until cash-strapped governments are able to commit.

EADS will keep ploughing its own funds into the project because to fall behind in this technology would mean being excluded from large parts of the defense industry, Stefan Zoller told The Associated Press.

The unmanned aerial vehicle or UAV business is currently dominated by the U.S. and Israel.

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Pilots question airspeed sensors' troubled history

PARIS — Airbus knew since at least 2002 about problems with the type of speed sensor that malfunctioned on an Air France passenger plane that went down in June, the Associated Press has learned. But air safety authorities did not order their replacement until after the crash, which killed all 228 people aboard.
The tubes, about the size of an adult hand and fitted to the underbelly of a plane, are vulnerable to blockage from water and icing. Experts have suggested that Flight 447's sensors, made by French company Thales SA, may have iced over and sent false speed information to the computers as the plane ran into a thunderstorm at about 35,000 feet (10,600 meters).
The exact role the sensors – known as Pitots – played in the crash may never be known without the flight recorders, which have not been recovered and which have stopped emitting signals. Investigators insist sensor malfunction was not the cause of the crash, but many pilots think false speed readings may have triggered a chain of events that doomed the plane.
Fernando Alonso, head of Flight Operations at Airbus, maintains the doomed Airbus A330 plane was "totally airworthy."
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Acrobatics at Paris Air Show

The focus at the Paris Air Show on Friday swung away from the wheeling and dealing of industry executives and back to the products they are peddling _ with aviation geeks lined up outside the Le Bourget airfield as the gates opened to the public.

After four industry days, The Associated Press looked back on the airlifter acrobatics and Airbus pioneers that marked the show, which is open to the public through Sunday.

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AIRFLIFTER ACROBATICS:

When Lockheed-Martin took the press up in their C-130J, the aging airlifter they are hoping will steal European business from the delayed Airbus A400M, the ride was a lot smoother than the nimble acrobatics performed by the Hercules cargo aircraft earlier this week.

French aviation authorities insisted that the pilot had a special aerobatic license to perform in a so-called "fighter box," a small patch of sky designated for flying displays for the much smaller fighter jets. Awed plane spotters cheered as the hulking gray turboprop banked at 90-degree angles _ a maneuver otherwise banned at the show for other multiengine aircraft.

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Autopsy results suggest midair breakup of jet

SAO PAULO, Brazil - Autopsies have revealed fractures in the legs, hips, and arms of Air France disaster victims, injuries that - coupled with the large pieces of wreckage pulled from the Atlantic - strongly suggest the plane broke up in the air, experts said yesterday.

With more than 400 bits of debris recovered, the top French investigator voiced optimism about determining what brought down Flight 447, but he also called the conditions - far from land in deep waters - "one of the worst situations ever known in an accident investigation."

French investigators are beginning to form "an image that is progressively less fuzzy," Paul-Louis Arslanian, who runs the French air accident investigation agency BEA, said at a news conference outside Paris.

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Probe focusing on speed measuring instruments

PARIS (AP) — Air France had not acted on a recommendation to change airspeed-detecting instruments on Flight 447 before the plane crashed in turbulent weather, the French agency investigating the disaster said Saturday.

The French accident investigation agency, BEA, found the doomed plane received inconsistent airspeed readings by different instruments as it struggled in a massive thunderstorm on its flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris with 228 people aboard.

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2 bodies, ticket found near Air France crash site

RECIFE, Brazil – Searchers found two bodies and the first confirmed debris — a briefcase containing an Air France Flight 447 ticket — in the Atlantic Ocean near where the jetliner is believed to have crashed, a Brazil military official said Saturday.

The French agency investigating the disaster, meanwhile, said airspeed instruments were not replaced as the maker recommended before the plane disappeared in turbulent weather nearly a week ago during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris with 228 people aboard.

All were killed, the world's worst commercial air accident since 2001, and Air France's deadliest plane crash.

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French, Brazilians still on hunt for downed Airbus

PARIS — French and Brazilian search teams have found no debris confirmed to have come from the Airbus A330 that vanished over the Atlantic, officials said Friday.

Confusion broke out after Brazilian officials said Thursday that a helicopter had plucked from the sea an airplane cargo pallet from the Air France flight — only to retract the claim hours later.

France's Transportation Minister, Dominique Bussereau, suggested Friday that searchers were back to square one in the hunt for Flight 447 bound from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, which went down off Brazil late Sunday.

"French authorities have been saying for several days that we have to be extremely prudent," Bussereau told France's RTL radio. "Our planes and naval ships have seen nothing."

A French Defense Ministry official, speaking only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said French teams "cannot precisely confirm the zone where the plane went down."

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Sub that explored Titanic to aid Flight 447 search

PARIS—A mini-submarine that explored the undersea wreckage of the Titanic is being whisked across the Atlantic to help retrieve the flight recorders of Air France Flight 447.

The French marine research institute Ifremer said Thursday it has pulled the ship Pourquoi Pas? (Why Not?) off a research mission in the Azores to help find the remains of the Airbus plane. Flight 447 disappeared Sunday night en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris after flying into a dangerous band of thunderstorms over the Atlantic Ocean.

On board the research ship is the Nautile, an 8-meter (26-foot) long deep ocean submarine that has made multiple dives to the Titanic and a remote-controlled robot called Victor 6000.

"The priority for us is to find the black boxes," said Vincent Rigaud, head of Ifremer's underwater system department. "We will do everything we can to find them."

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Families pay tribute to Air France victims

PARIS -- Three young Irish doctors, all close friends, enjoying a two-week vacation together in Brazil.

That's how their families want to remember Aisling Butler, 26, Jane Deasy, 27, and Eithne Walls, 29 _ three of the 228 passengers who met with tragedy as Air France Flight 447 ended up in the Atlantic Ocean.

The women boarded the flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on Sunday night after a reunion with a larger group of former students who graduated in 2007 from Trinity College medical school.

Aisling's father John Butler paid tribute to his daughter Tuesday from his home in Roscrea, County Tipperary.

"She was a truly wonderful, exciting girl," he told Irish reporters. "She never flunked an exam in her life _ nailed every one of them _ and took it all in her stride as well."

He initially thought Aisling was booked on Monday's flight and had to retrieve her itinerary from his deleted e-mails to check.

"When I opened it up, a nightmare opened up as well," he said.

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Airbus, Boeing heading for tough 2009

For many of us, the New Year is about making resolutions -- but for rival planemakers Airbus SA and Boeing Co., 2009 will be about keeping promises.
Both face production challenges in getting their delayed flagship jets to airline customers who are eager to put newer, less fuel-hungry jets into service.
The Chicago-based planemaker is beset by problems with its 787, which analysts say look greater than the troubles Airbus faced with its A380 superjumbo.
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Airbus CEO: Insider-trading probe a 'show trial'

DOGMERSFIELD, England — Airbus CEO Thomas Enders dismissed a French insider trading investigation as a "show trial" and said a probe into his sale of shares in parent company EADS have not affected the way he runs the European planemaker.

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Enders the next day: "You are the lady who asked me the question that got me into trouble."

Boeing, Airbus Backed Up

TOULOUSE, France, Jan. 16 -- The problem for Airbus and Boeing isn't too few customers, it's making planes fast enough to meet demand.

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Sales Battle Is On at World's Biggest Air Show

PARIS (AP) - The world's biggest air show is bigger than ever this year but the main story hasn't changed: trans-Atlantic rivalry between Boeing and Airbus will dominate the 47th Paris Air Show which opens Monday at Le Bourget, north of the French capital.

In contrast to the last Paris show in 2005 when Airbus shone, this year the European plane-maker will be struggling to regain ground from its American rival.

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