Word: aircrafting
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Marines are still shaking with anger and concern over last week's revelation that one of their own apparently ordered maintenance records for the corps' V-22 Osprey aircraft to be falsified to make the plane appear more airworthy than it really is. That, however, may be comparatively good news for the project: An analysis of the anonymous letter making the charge - believed by senior Marine officers to be true -alongside recent reports on the tilt-rotor program indicates the Osprey program is in worse shape than most Pentagon officials had believed...
While the Marines say the fudged records did not make the V-22s unsafe to fly - two have crashed in the past year, killing 23 Marines - the aircraft has been plagued with problems. The V-22 that crashed last April in Arizona, killing all 19 Marines aboard, makes that all too clear: That craft had spent only 135 hours in the air since the Marines took delivery of it three months earlier. Yet it had required 600 repairs while the Marines had it - one fix for every 15 minutes it was flying...
...This type of deception has been going on for over two years," said the letter, from an unidentified V-22 repairman. The writer alleged that Lt. Col. Odin Fred Leberman ordered his mechanics to engage in wholesale fibbing until the Pentagon approved full-scale production of the Marines' prized aircraft. "Maintainers are being told they have to lie on maintenance records to make the numbers look good," said the letter. What is amazing is how bad the numbers are - even after the Marines fattened their records with falsehoods...
...price his twin-engine, five-seat Eclipse 500 at a mere $837,500. The popular Cessna CJ1, by comparison, costs more than $3.7 million. "If they really can stay under $1 million, they will set the biz-jet market on its ear," says Warren Morningstar, spokesman for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association...
...about 14 in. in diameter. But it produces a powerful 770 lbs. of thrust (CJ1: 1,900 lbs.). That's a higher thrust-to-weight ratio than any commercial turbofan engine, and it is the smallest, quietest and lightest jet engine made for use in a civilian aircraft...