AUBURN, Calif., 12 Dec. 2011. TGH Aviation officials announced that they, grateful for another successful year in the aircraft instrument repair industry, are paying that success forward as a sponsor and contributor to the local Toys for Tots campaign. TGH strongly advocates and supports local community and economic efforts, donating time and funding to the Auburn Chamber of Commerce, the Auburn Airport Business Park Association, The Navy League, and local causes.

STRATFORD, Conn., 12 Dec. 2011. Sikorsky Aircraft, a subsidiary of United Technologies Corp. (NYSE:UTX), and By Kids For Kids Co., an organization that inspires kids to be inventors, awarded a California teenager the Igor Sikorsky Youth Innovator Award for envisioning a small unmanned helicopter that could carry critical relief supplies and electrical power to the scene of a natural disaster or other catastrophic event.

MANAMA, Bahrain, 16 Oct. 2011. Gulf Air in Bahrain is offering broadband connectivity at altitudes of 37,000 feet via Sky Hub in-flight technology. Sky Hub is a joint venture of Gulf Air, Panasonic, Deutsche Telekom, and Aeromobile designed to provide air travelers with access to e-mail, text messaging, phone calls, the Web, and live TV, as well as Gulf Air's regular in-flight entertainment offering. One aircraft is equipped with functioning Sky Hub service, to date; Gulf Air officials anticipate fitting a new plane with the equipment every two weeks until the entire fleet is outfitted, over roughly five months. The project reportedly cost several million dollars.

MANAMA, Bahrain, 13 Oct. 2011. Gulf Air, the Kingdom of Bahrain’s national carrier, took delivery of an A330-200 aircraft retrofitted with Panasonic Avionics Corp.'s Sky Hub Global Communications Suite. The Sky Hub communications and entertainment system provides onboard passengers with broadband connectivity to access Internet, mobile phone services, and global, live television service.

CHARLOTTE, N.C., 5 Oct. 2011. Goodrich Corporation (NYSE: GR) will provide high density video reproducer units (VRU) to upgrade the entertainment system on the Airbus A330 fleet of Gulf Air, Bahrain's national carrier. Installation will begin in late 2011 and continue through 2012. The Goodrich VRUs are direct plug-and-play replacement units for the airline's current Hi-8 film-driven video reproducers. These new, high-density file servers provide up to 40 hours of video and entertainment content, including "early window" movies that are not yet available for general distribution.

EVERETT, Wash., 3 Sept. 2011. Boeing (NYSE:BA) is scheduled to deliver its 747-8 Freighter to carrier customer Cargolux on Sept. 19 at Paine Field in Everett, Wash. Cargolux personnel will then fly the airplane away and put it into service. Boeing will host a celebration of this first delivery the following day at the Everett factory; Cargolux officials, Boeing employees, and other stakeholders will be in attendance. Boeing officials anticipate delivering a second 747-8 Freighter on Sept. 21 to Cargolux, which has ordered 13 of the aircraft.

FREMONT, Calif., 16 Aug. 2011. SGI (NASDAQ:SGI) has acquired OpenCFD Ltd., a provider of open-source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. OpenCFD’s OpenFOAM software solves anything from complex fluid flows involving chemical reactions, turbulence, and heat transfer to solid dynamics and electromagnetics. CFD tools are commonly employed in the design, development, and testing of unmanned aerial and undersea vehicles, including the flow of air and water around the unmanned designs.

NASHUA. N.H., 15 July 2011.The Editors of Vision Systems Design (VSD) are offering a new report on robotic vision technology called “Vision For Service Robots.” The report is available at  http://www.vision-systems.com/research-reports.html#order. VSD is a sister media source of Avionics Intelligence.

TOKYO, 15 July 2011. Officials at All Nippon Airways (ANA) and Boeing (NYSE: BA) finished the 787 Dreamliner's service ready operational validation in Japan. During the validation, ANA pilots and Boeing personnel flew the Dreamliner on routes from Seattle to Tokyo and Tokyo to four airports across Japan, including Osaka (Itami and Kansai), Okayama and Hiroshima.

TOKYO, 5 July 2011. Officials at All Nippon Airlines (ANA) and Boeing (NYSE: BA) started the service readiness validation process for the 787 Dreamliner to enter into service as part of ANA's fleet. ANA pilots and Boeing personnel will fly a 787 on actual Japanese airline using airline dispatch and flight rules.

ENGLEWOOD, Colo., 9 June 2011. Officials at Finnair are using Jeppsen risk management tools within their Crew Management suite to develop crew schedules. Using the Boeing Alertness Model (BAM), a crew and pilot fatigue tool created by Jeppesen and Boeing, is part of the Crew Management product and enables commercial carriers to manage fatigue in the crew's roster construction and optimization phase.

SEATTLE, 16 April 2011. A new Rockwell Collins maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) facility opened in Seattle. The new service center will expand the company's asset management and testing for Boeing and its 787 Dreamliner operators.

LAKE FOREST, Calif., 19 Feb. 14, 2011. Panasonic Avionics Corp. announced the first test flight of its eXTV in-flight entertainment service (IFE). During the flight the company used eXTV to deliver a live television feed to a Boeing business jet equipped with Panasonic's eXConnect service.

SHANGHAI, China, 19 Jan. 2011. Rockwell Collins expanded its offerings in China with the opening of a new China System Support Center (CSSC) in Shanghai. The CSSC is housed within Rockwell Collins' Shanghai office -- the third facility opened in Shanghai by Rockwell Collins and the company's fifth in China.

ENGLEWOOD, Colo., 22 Dec. 2010. Jeppesen officials signed a five-year agreement with SkyWest Airlines, a wholly-owned subsidiary of SkyWest, Inc., to provide Jeppesen AirSide Service materials, which includes delivery of pre-assembled Jeppesen operational manuals, standard operating procedures, and navigational charts for the commercial carrier.

TOKYO and SEATTLE, Wash, 17 Dec. 2010. Fujitsu (TSE: 6702) and Boeing [NYSE: BA] are joining hands to develop a service that enables greater efficiency in aircraft maintenance operations through tools such as radio frequency identification devices (RFID) and contact memory buttons (CMB). It will enable operators to use these technologies without needing to retrofit their own fleets. Airlines can reduce costs by reducing inventory and manual data entry errors without having to create new processes.

WINDSOR LOCKS, Conn., 26 Nov. 2010. Hamilton Sundstrand Corp. and AVIC Electromechanical Systems Co. Ltd. (AVIC EM) have signed a joint venture framework contract to co-develop and manufacture the electric power system for the Commercial Aviation Corp. of China's (COMAC) new C919 jetliner. The agreement between AVIC EM and Hamilton Sundstrand is intended to result in formation of a new entity that will serve as a tier one supplier to COMAC on that program.

PHILADELPHIA, 30 Aug. 2010. Avionics databus test supplier AIM established a new AIM-USA enterprise with headquarters in Philadelphia.

THE FARNBOROUGH BLOG, 20 July 2010. So we're finished with the first day of the Farnborough International Airshow, and we had some big aircraft sales, but not the big blowout in widebody aircraft that I had been expecting. More than 200 airplanes were sold at Farnborough on Monday, and 41 of those were widebodies -- Boeing 777s and Airbus A330s -- but I'm hoping for more. Experts say to watch the number of commercial passenger jets sold at Farnborough. If these numbers are in the hundreds, then we might have turned the corner on the aerospace economic downturn. We're nearly there, but just barely.