Wichita, Kansas, January 19, 2024, Business Wire – Textron Aviation (NYSE: TXT) today announced a purchase agreement for the first Cessna SkyCourier passenger variant in Australia to regional airline Hinterland Aviation. The aircraft, expected to deliver in 2026, will add to Hinterland’s expansive fleet of Cessna Grand Caravans to provide a greater payload capacity and increased passenger seating. This fleet expansion will greatly benefit remote communities, as well as the tourism and business sectors in Queensland.
The Cessna SkyCourier is meticulously designed to deliver unparalleled performance, unwavering reliability and cost-effective maintenance. With the ability to be operated by a single pilot and a generous payload capacity, the SkyCourier is the ultimate solution for air freight, passenger and special mission needs. The aircraft is highly adaptable and can effortlessly adjust configurations to effectively complete any mission, ensuring a significant return on investment.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release may contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including expected delivery dates. Such statements are based on current expectations and projections about our future results, prospects and opportunities and are not guarantees of future performance. Such statements will not be updated unless required by law. Actual results and performance may differ materially from those expressed or forecasted in forward-looking statements due to a number of factors, including those discussed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Saab (SAAB-B.ST) UK’s Sensor Systems business operates from Saab’s site in Fareham, with a team also located in Farnborough. The skilled staff in Fareham primarily produce and integrate the new Deployment Set, a configuration of the Giraffe 1X highly mobile, compact, rapidly deployed, software-based, 3D AESA radar. This increases Saab’s production capacity for its Giraffe 1X Deployment Set and the first units are already in production at the Fareham site.
Saab UK’s Sensor Systems business will also act as a Centre of Excellence developing follow-on UK Intellectual Property in the radar domain. It will also grow to maintain existing radars in-service with the UK Ministry of Defence, such as Giraffe 1X and Giraffe AMB air defence radars and artillery locating MAMBA (Arthur) radars.
Saab UK’s Fareham site has been growing with the announcement in February 2023 of the expansion of its Underwater Systems business of Seaeye autonomous and remotely operated vehicles. Across the UK, Saab has eight principal sites which focus on software engineering, underwater robotics, training services, radars and more.
Saab UK’s presence has been growing at pace, with employee numbers quadrupling through consolidation, acquisition and organic growth, bringing together the best of Swedish and British innovation.
The whole site in Fareham benefits 400 jobs at Saab, in established and future roles across various business activities.
In early September 2021, adventurer and photographer Chris Burkard traveled to Iceland to cycle an adapted version of the Westfjords Way, an incredible new touring route through some of Iceland’s most remote parts. Chris and his friends cycled over 1000km (650 miles) through winding fjords and remote villages in the super-scenic northwest corner of the country.
MD Helicopters, Inc. (MDHI) announces two independent contract awards worth $43.9 million from Army Contracting Command-Redstone supporting the Afghan Air Force’s MD 530F Cayuse Warrior light attack helicopters.
The first contract, a six-month extension worth $14.5 million, continues MDHI’s longstanding efforts to provide program management, and contractor logistics support (CLS) services, material, and remote operations to support the Afghan fleet. Work will take place in Mesa, Arizona; Kabul, Afghanistan; and Al-Ain, United Arab Emirates. The contract was awarded on May 28, 2021.
The second contract, worth $29.4 million, modifies MDHI’s original maintenance capabilities support contract. Under this six-month contract, MD Helicopters will provide continued maintenance, repairs, updates, and overhauls of the Afghan Air Force’s MD 530F Cayuse Warrior helicopters in Mesa, Kabul, and Al-Ain. The contract was awarded on June 10, 2021.
The enhanced MD 530F Cayuse Warrior is a light armed attack helicopter respected for its power, safety, speed, agility, and unparalleled confined area capabilities. The aircraft supports a wide range of training and operational missions, providing safe, efficient multi-mission support with an increased performance profile.
Alaska Airlines continues to strengthen its presence at one of the airline’s key hubs in Anchorage with new nonstop service to three “sun and fun” destinations – Las Vegas, Denver and San Francisco – and the expansion to year-round service to a popular fourth destination, Phoenix.
Come this summer, Alaska will fly eight nonstops from Anchorage to these destinations in the Lower 48: Chicago O’Hare, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Phoenix and Portland. Four of the cities on the West Coast are also Alaska hubs, which allow for improved connectivity for guests traveling to other locations.
The newly announced routes will connect Anchorage to more places that offer warm sunshine, big city vibes and the sky’s the limit on what to do. New service to Las Vegas, Denver and San Francisco begins this summer; the Las Vegas flight will be offered year-round with seasonal flights to Denver and San Francisco. The current seasonal flight between Anchorage and Phoenix will now fly year-round.
The Anchorage-San Francisco flight – first announced in August 2019 – was scheduled to start in April 2020, but it was delayed due to the pandemic.
Tickets for the new routes are now on sale at alaskaair.com.
“The demand for leisure travel in 2021 is beginning to return as our guests look ahead, and we’re offering even more nonstops to take Alaskans to the places they want to go,” said Marilyn Romano, Alaska Airlines’ regional vice president. “We believe our guests will love the convenient nonstops to Vegas, Denver and San Francisco, in addition to our daily nonstop flight to Phoenix that’s now set to fly year-round.”
Start Date
End Date
City Pair
Frequency
Aircraft
May 20, 2021
Year-round
Anchorage – Las Vegas
Th, F, Sa, Su
737
June 17, 2021
Aug. 16, 2021
Anchorage – Denver
Daily
737
June 17, 2021
Aug. 16, 2021
Anchorage – San Francisco
Daily
737
Year-round
Year-round
Anchorage – Phoenix
Daily
737
In addition to Alaska’s continuing commitment to service at Anchorage, the airline partners with non-profit organizations throughout the state focused on helping those impacted by the pandemic. Alaska Airlines and Alaska Air Cargo are currently supporting residents across the state by transporting COVID-19 vaccines, including to some of the most remote communities in the U.S.
“More than 1,800 Alaska Airlines employees call Alaska home, making our connections to the communities we serve here very personal. We’re here in good times and in difficult times,” said Romano. “We’re honored to play our role to make sure this life-saving vaccine gets to the people who need it most as quickly and safely as possible.”
ATR performed well in 2019. We received 79 orders and delivered 68 aircraft for a book-to-bill of more than one. The turnover for the year was $1.6 billion and was boosted by a strong performance from our Services.
In 2020, the aviation industry is facing an unprecedented challenge that will last well beyond the current year. It is too early to understand the full impact on our backlog, however we have not had any cancellations to date.
Currently, 40% of ATR aircraft around the world continue to fly, playing a vital role in humanitarian missions and the transportation of essential goods to the remotest areas.
Naturally, during this time, ATR continues to support airlines 24/7.
Cargo is becoming increasingly important and we have developed a solution allowing airlines operating ATR aircraft to quickly and temporarily convert to a light freighter configuration, allowing them to unlock potential operations.
During this crisis, ATR is not standing still. While our major concern is always the safety and health of our employees and subcontractors, our manufacturing sites have never closed, and we have implemented a very strict health protocol that has allowed us to continue critical activities. We remain committed to the delivery of our new programmes, the ATR 72-600F freighter and the ATR 42-600 STOL. The first deliveries of our new cargo variant will happen this year.
ATR believes that regional aviation will resume its activities faster than international air traffic, because it will have a huge role to play in the recovery of the global economy, connecting communities around the world with necessary supplies.
The new capability for Airbus’ C295 to serve as an aerial tanker brings additional flexibility for this tactical airlifter, further increasing its already-proven versatility and opening additional mission opportunities.
Airbus Defence and Space developed a removable air-to-air refuelling (AAR) kit for the twin-engine aircraft that utilises a 100-ft.-long deployable hose with a “basket” at the end – enabling the transfer of fuel to receiver aircraft equipped with a probe. A remote vision system allows crewmembers aboard the C295 tanker to monitor refuelling operations from the cargo cabin.
Recent flights to test the kit involved an Airbus-owned C295 that refuelled a C295 from the Spanish Air Force, as well as proximity tests with the C295 and a fast fighter aircraft – a Spanish Air Force F-18.
“Customers are increasingly interested in purchasing not just an aircraft, but a versatile platform that can be used for different missions,” explained Martín Espinosa, the Airbus Defence and Space engineering technical manager responsible for the C295’s aerial refuelling test campaign. “The development of the air-to-air refuelling capabilities of the C295 forms part of this strategic vision.”
The C295’s aerial refuelling capability would be a highly valuable mission-extender for customers using C295s. These customers include the armed forces of current and future C295 operators responsible for civil and military search and rescue missions.
Additionally, it could serve as a cost-effective platform to train fighter pilots in the skills needed for air-to-air refuelling. “The C295 tanker kit could facilitate training of fighter pilots for missions involving refuelling, or even for AAR services on a lease-by-the-hour basis at a fraction of the cost of heavier aircraft,” explained Luis Díaz-Miguel, the Tactical Airlifters Marketing Manager.
Captain Gabiña, a Spanish Air Force pilot involved in the aerial refuelling tests, gave high marks to the C295 in its new role as tanker. “The degree of difficulty in flight test is always high since it involves performing manoeuvers that no one has done before. It should be noted that due to the positive behaviour of the aircraft, the operation has been good and straightforward,” he said.
(Reuters) – Teams combing the wreckage of a Hawaii sightseeing helicopter that crashed on Kauai island found no sign of survivors on Friday and recovered six sets of human remains before suspending the search due to bad weather, police and fire officials said.
The grim announcement came in a news conference almost 24 hours after the aircraft, first reported missing on Thursday evening, went down in a remote area of rugged terrain near the end of a tour flight over the island’s famed Na Pali Coast.
The crash was at least the ninth, and by far the deadliest, involving sightseeing helicopters in Hawaii over the past five years, according to National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) records.
The confirmed manifest of the ill-fated aircraft, flown by Kauai-based tour operator Safari Helicopters, consisted of six passengers, two of them children, and one pilot, Kauai County fire battalion chief Solomon Kanoho told reporters.
The identities of the dead were being kept confidential until next of kin could be notified, authorities said.
“We are heartbroken by this tragedy and we continue to ask the public to consider the sensitive nature of this devastating situation,” Mayor Derek Kawakami said in a statement. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and loved ones of all victims during this extremely difficult time.”
The Kauai fire department called off its search-and-recovery efforts late Friday afternoon due to fog and poor visibility but planned to resume the operation at daybreak on Saturday, Kanoho said.
Although the remains of just six of the seven people who were aboard the ill-fated aircraft have been recovered, Kanoho added: “There are no indications of survivors.”
TOURISTS FROM TWO FAMILIES
Kanoho previously said the passengers on board the helicopter had been in two groups – a party of two from one family and a party of four from another.
Kanoho declined to describe details of the wreckage out of respect for the victims’ loved ones.
While the cause of the crash has yet to be determined, Kanoho said the area where the helicopter went down had experienced “some very bad weather” beforehand, adding that the chopper had crashed within its prescribed flight route.
The NTSB, which said it was sending a three-member team to investigate the crash, reported in May that there had been eight accidents involving Hawaii tour helicopters over the past five years, with four deaths and 18 injuries.
The agency made that report after a tour helicopter went down in a residential neighborhood on the island of Oahu in April, killing three people.
The latest crash was in Koke’e State Park in an area called Nu’alolo, a steep-sided valley north of Waimea Canyon State Park, according to a statement posted by the Kauai police department on Facebook.
Waimea Canyon is a tourist destination known as the “Grand Canyon of the Pacific,” and police said the helicopter was last heard from at about 4:40 p.m. on Thursday, when the pilot radioed that the aircraft was just departing that area.
A search was launched a short time later, after Safari alerted authorities that the helicopter was 30 minutes overdue on its flight back to the airfield in Lihue on the island’s southeast end, officials said.
A U.S. Coast Guard cutter vessel and helicopter search crew were immediately dispatched. The search was expanded at daybreak on Friday to include air, sea and ground teams from the Coast Guard, U.S. Navy, police, fire department and other agencies.
The missing aircraft was equipped with an electronic locator beacon, but no signals were received after it disappeared, the Coast Guard said.
According to its website, Safari offers aerial sightseeing excursions to Kauai’s major attractions over the Na Pali Coast and Waimea Canyon. The Na Pali Coast, known for jagged green cliffs laced with towering waterfalls, is one of the most visited attractions on Kauai, the fourth-largest island in the Hawaiian chain.
Reporting by Maria Caspani and Peter Szekely in New York and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Leslie Adler
WASHINGTON, Oct 25 (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp. has won the Pentagon’s $10 billion cloud computing contract, the Defense Department said on Friday, beating out favorite Amazon.com Inc.
The contracting process had long been mired in conflict of interest allegations, even drawing the attention of President Donald Trump, who has publicly taken swipes at Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos. Trump in August said his administration was reviewing Amazon’s bid after complaints from other companies.
The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure Cloud (JEDI) contract is part of a broader digital modernization of the Pentagon meant to make it more technologically agile. Specifically, a goal of JEDI is to give the military better access to data and the cloud from battlefields and other remote locations.
Oracle Corp had expressed concerns about the award process for the contract, including the role of a former Amazon employee who worked on the project at the Defense Department but recused himself, then later left the Defense Department and returned to Amazon Web Services.
In a statement, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) spokesman said the company was “surprised about this conclusion.”
The company said that a “detailed assessment purely on the comparative offerings” would “clearly lead to a different conclusion,” according to the statement.
AWS is considering options for protesting the award, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Although the Pentagon boasts the world’s most potent fighting force, its information technology remains woefully inadequate, according to many officials.
Officials have complained of having outdated computer systems and being unable to access files or share information as quickly as they might be able to in the private sector.
“If I am a warfighter, I want as much data as you could possibly give me,” Lieutenant General Jack Shanahan, the director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, told reporters in August describing the importance of the contract.
Some companies were concerned that a single award would give the winner an unfair advantage in follow-on work. The Pentagon has said it planned to award future cloud deals to multiple contractors.
This week, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper removed himself from reviewing the deal due to his adult son’s employment with one of the original contract applicants, IBM Corp. IBM had previously bid for the contract but had already been eliminated from the competition.
Microsoft said it was working on a comment. IBM and Oracle did not immediately return requests for comment.
In a book slated for publication Oct. 29, retired Navy commander Guy Snodgrass, who served as a speech writer to former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, said Trump called Mattis and directed him to “screw Amazon” by preventing it from bidding on the JEDI contract, according to an excerpt of the book seen by Reuters ahead of its release.
“We’re not going to do that,” Mattis later told other Pentagon officials, according to the excerpt. “This will be done by the book, both legally and ethically.”
Snodgrass declined to comment pending the release of his book.
In a statement announcing Microsoft as the winner, the Pentagon underscored its view that the competition was conducted fairly and legally.
“All (offers) were treated fairly and evaluated consistently with the solicitation’s stated evaluation criteria. Prior to the award, the department conferred with the DOD Inspector General, which informed the decision to proceed,” it said.
Microsoft shares were up 3% to $144.98 in after-hours trading after the news. Amazon shares were down 0.92% to $1,745.12.
The Pentagon said it had awarded more than $11 billion across 10 separate cloud contracts over the past two years.
“As we continue to execute the DOD Cloud Strategy, additional contracts are planned for both cloud services and complementary migration and integration solutions necessary to achieve effective cloud adoption,” the Pentagon said.
(Additional reporting by Stephen Nellis and Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco Reporting by Phil Stewart in Washington; Editing by Cynthia Osterman, Sonya Hepinstall and Lincoln Feast)
Saab has signed a contract with the Finnish Defence Forces Logistics Command, and received an order to provide and integrate the combat system for the Finnish Navy’s new Pohjanmaa-class corvettes within the Squadron 2020 programme.
This follows the previously announced selection on 19 September. The order value is 412 million Euro and the contract period is 2019-2027. The Finnish shipyard RMC Defence will build the Finnish Navy’s four new corvettes, with construction 2022 to 2025. The corvettes will be fully operational by 2028.
“We are proud that Finland has chosen Saab as combat system provider and integrator for their new corvettes. Saab has a long history in Finland and the Squadron 2020 contract means that we will increase our footprint in and deepen our relationship with Finland for many years to come”, says Micael Johansson, Senior Executive Vice President and Deputy CEO at Saab.
The contract includes, among other things, Saab’s Combat Management System (9LV) and Saab’s radars Sea Giraffe 4A Fixed Face and Sea Giraffe 1X. The communication system TactiCall as well as the remote weapon station Trackfire, are also included in the contract.
“This is going to be the world’s most modern and advanced corvettes, with state of the art technology and capabilities, including the 9LV Combat Management System and the integrated mast featuring Saab’s sophisticated Sea Giraffe 4A Fixed Face radar and the Sea Giraffe 1X radar”, continues Micael Johansson.
Saab will carry out the work in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Australia and South Africa.
