News in brief

Radome

• On 22 May, a Pakistan International Airlines A320 airliner with 107 people on board crashed into the residential area of Karachi while on approach to landing. It had taken off from Lahore earlier in the day. As AEROSPACE goes to press, there are no reports yet of casualties on the ground.
• United Aircraft Corporation in Russia has resumed flight-testing the Irkut MC-21 commercial airliner while complying with the current social distancing requirements. The company says that it has developed measures to enable remote-working for design departments and drawn up schedules for carrying out the main programme tasks. Four MC-21 test aircraft have currently completed 300 out of a total of 650 flights required for flight certification. 
• Boeing has announced a loss of $641m for Q1 of 2020 after it used up $4.3bn in cash following order cancellations and a lack of new orders. Q1 revenues fell by 26% to $16.91bn. 
• GKN Aerospace has signed a collaboration agreement with electric aircraft start-up Eviation to design wing, tail and electrical wiring interconnections for its nine-seat all-electric Alice aircraft. The first prototype Alice was damaged in a battery fire during ground testing in January. 
• Airbus has announced it has inaugurated its A220 single-aisle final assembly line at its existing US factory in Mobile, Alabama. The company began producing A220s from Mobile in 2019, with US airline JetBlue to receive the first example from the new dedicated line later this year. 

• Colombian airline Avianca has filed for bankruptcy according to a statement released on its website on 10 May. The flag carrier, which has a fleet of 189 aircraft and employs 21,000 people throughout Latin America, said the decision was due to the ‘unforeseeable impact of the Covid-19 pandemic’ – with revenue dropping by 80% and eating into cash reserves.
• IAG has announced that it will reduce the number of aircraft deliveries it has scheduled across its carriers for the period 2020-2022 from 143 to 75. As the group reconfigures its fleet plan to match the slump in passenger demand, short-haul aircraft are worst hit with 57 deliveries deferred in the three-year period. 
• Heathrow Airport has said that it is to begin temperature scanning of inbound passengers as part of Covid-19 precautions. The trial, using heat-sensitive cameras, will be carried out in the immigration hall of Terminal 2, Heathrow, before being rolled out to other terminals. Other airports around the world have already been screening passengers for fevers in the wake of Coronavirus, including Rome, Singapore and Hamad, Doha.
• Thai Airways has been granted government approval to begin restructuring under the supervision of the Central Bankruptcy Court of Thailand. Operations and flights will continue as normal with the carrier stressing it will not be declared bankrupt. 
• UK low-cost carrier EasyJet has reported a serious cyber security breach which resulted in 9 million customers’ travel and email information being accessed. The airline has reported the breach to the National Cyber Security Centre and the Information Commissioner’s Office. 

• Boeing has rolled out the first Airpower Teaming System (ATS) ‘Loyal Wingman’ drone for the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). The RAAF plans to acquire three of the semi-autonomous long-range UCAVs for trials with piloted aircraft.
• Six members of the Canadian Armed Forces were killed when their Royal Canadian Air Force Sikorsky CH148 Cyclone helicopter crashed into the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Greece on 29 April in good weather. 
• Airbus Defence has launched a new expert forum to address the ethical challenges of AI and the pan-European FCAS future combat air system as weapon systems shift to a higher level of autonomy. The panel includes industry, academia, political scientists and a theologist and chaplain. 
• Lockheed Martin has won a $50m contract to upgrade the US Air Force’s fleet of U-2 Dragon Lady high altitude surveillance aircraft. In service since the 1950s, the U-2s will be modified with updated avionics, modern cockpit displays and new mission computers designed to securely integrate with systems across air, space, sea, land and cyber domains. Fleet modifications are expected in early 2022. 
• The US has said that in six months it will withdraw from the 2002 Open Skies Treaty, which permits countries to conduct unarmed overflights of each others territory to verify arms control agreements. 

• The US Government has drawn up proposals for international regulations to allow for the commercial mining of the Moon. Under the US-sponsored ‘Artemis Accords’ countries would be able to own the resources they mine from the Moon. The framework also proposes ‘safe zones’ around future national moonbases to prevent countries’ or companies’ mining operations interfering with human habitats. The US now plans to present these proposals to international allies and partners.
• The United Arab Emirates’ Mars space probe, Hope, has been delivered to Japan’s Tanegashima Space Centre, ahead of its scheduled launch in July. The first Arab space mission to Mars, Hope, will be launched by an H-11A rocket between 14 July and 3 August. 
• Four companies have teamed up to form a new UK national space team, Athena, to exploit opportunities for British space and deliver the ‘prosperity agenda’. The companies are CGI UK, Inmarsat, Lockheed Martin UK and Serco. 
• Iranian state media has reported that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps launched a small military spacecraft into orbit on 22 April. The Noor (‘light’) spacecraft was launched from the Shahroud missile range onboard a multistage Qased (‘messenger’) rocket. The purpose of the spacecraft is not known. 

• The UK Government has now updated its Covid-19 advice on GA, with recreational flying in England permitted if social distancing guidelines are followed. However, recreational GA flying in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales is still not permitted.
• Gulfstream Aerospace has announced that it has been awarded type certification for its 6,500nm-range G600 bizjet from EASA, opening up deliveries to European customers. 
• French airframer Daher will equip its turboprop TBM 940 with ‘HomeSafe’, an automated landing system which will safely land the aircraft if the pilot becomes incapacitated. The system is activated manually and its software is programmed to consider a range of factors including fuel range, runway length, weather, terrain and air traffic.