Last week’s Paris Air Show gave Airbus a chance to gloat on several fronts, as it tallied 58 firm aircraft orders for the week – well beyond the two firm orders Boeing pull in but less than a quarter of last year’s tally for Airbus at Farnborough, England. And Airbus said it remains in a strong position to bid on the U.S. Air Force’s forthcoming midair refueling tanker contract, the London Telegraph reported. Airbus plans to again offer a modified A330, which would be built in Alabama. Boeing said it would give the Air Force a choice of a modified 767 or larger 777. The latter would likely be more expensive, but would be able to hold more fuel and cargo than the A330. Last fall, the Air Force withdrew the contract after awarding it to Airbus, when the Department of Defense found that Boeing had been unfairly penalized in scoring the competing offerings. But Airbus remains confident it will prevail again in a contract that could mean $35 billion of revenue for one of the companies in the coming years.

An Air Force staff sergeant flying a civilian flight from Chicago to Tokyo last month spotted a fuel leak that could have put the plane in dire straits. Staff Sgt. Bartek Bachleda, who is a midair refueling boom operator, had a window seat and noticed fuel streaming out from underneath the wing of the Boeing 747 soon into the flight, the Air Force reported. He shot video of the fuel leak and alerted a flight attendant, who initially was unconcerned. A few minutes later, with fuel continuing to stream out from the wing, Bachleda identified himself as an Air Force officer and told the flight attendant that it was an emergency situation. The captain of the flight came back to Bachleda’s seat and soon after seeing the fuel leak, turned the plane toward San Francisco, where it landed uneventfully. The Air Force did not list the airline Bachleda was flying or the date he flew, though a picture of the fuel leak shows the plane’s winglet painted in United Airlines’ livery. A search of Flight Aware’s previous flight plans shows that on April 18, United flight 881, which flies daily from Chicago O’Hare to Tokyo Narita, made an abrupt turn over the Saskatchewan-Manitoba border for San Francisco instead.

When Yavuz Berke flew a Cessna Skyhawk from Canada into Wisconsin on April 6, officials quickly picked up his plane and scrambled fighters to intercept him as worries mounted that he might be a terrorist. But the fighters were never given permission to shoot down Berke’s plane, as officials soon learned from his girlfriend in Canada that he was suicidal, the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization reported. Berke flew south, past Madison, Wisc., and Chicago, before landing on a road in Missouri and fleeing to a nearby supermarket, where he was arrested after flying for more than four hours. FAA officials worked with their counterparts in Canada as the flight progressed to learn that while the plane had long-range fuel tanks, security cameras at his airport showed Berke didn’t take anything on the plane with him. When the FAA learned that Berke was suicidal, the fighters that had been following him gave him more space. Based on the flight’s path and range, officials were able to call ahead to controllers in airspace where the plane was likely to pass through, giving controllers time to clear other traffic out of the way.

Ray Melikian stopped at Pearl Harbor two days before it was bombed by the Japanese in 1941, and, because of landing gear problems, missed getting on an aircraft carrier in 1942 that sank days later. The pilot and his Curtiss P-40 Warbird, Melikian’s name stenciled on the side, flew in nearly 240 missions across the South Pacific in World War II before another pilot borrowed his plane and never returned, the Fresno Bee reported. On March 14, Melikian was reunited with his plane and took it for a spin over the San Francisco Bay Area. Vintage aircraft restorer Chris Prevost picked up the hulk of the P-41 in Australia a decade ago and started painstakingly rebuilding it. It had been found wrecked in a New Guinea jungle in 1969. Using Army serial numbers, Prevost was able to track down Melikian and set up the reunion flight. About 125 people turned out at a Northern California Airport to see the flight. Melikian shared time on the controls with Prevost, who estimates he spent about $600,000 buying and restoring the plane. The restored P-41 is one of just 25 still flying today.

Ballistic Recovery Systems, the maker of airframe parachutes for many general aviation aircraft, recently scored its second major defense contract. The Army recently awarded the company a $4.1 million contract for 1,200 parachutes that will allow drops of pallets of cargo under a 65-foot canopy, according to a news release from BRS. The contract could be extended for an additional 1,500 parachutes and a total value of $9.2 million. Since receiving the contract, BRS says it will start hiring more workers, bringing its total staff to 95. While BRS has been making parachutes for almost 30 years, it is new to the defense business. Its airframe parachutes have been a hallmark of every Cirrus plane; the company makes aftermarket versions for many other aircraft models as well.

Boeing and Lockheed are posturing and maneuvering to secure their share of billions of dollars in future military contracts. In the short term, both companies are vying for an $11-billion contract to build five military communications satellites, Bloomberg reported. The satellites, a simpler version of a plan that once called for using lasers to transmit full-frame video, could be launched starting in 2019; the Air Force is expected to make its decision later this year. Separately, Lockheed is moving ahead with its plans to shut down its flight service station in Macon, Ga., at the end of this month, the Macon Telegraph reported. The closure is part of the company’s effort to pare down the 18 flight service stations it currently operates. Lockheed has said the closures at Macon and elsewhere in the nation won’t affect service, since most of the briefers are being offered jobs at other flight service stations. Critics have long argued that Lockheed’s takeover and consolidation of the nation’s flight service stations is reducing the amount of local knowledge briefers have about airports, terrain and weather.

Predator drones, controlled by humans thousands of miles away, are nothing new in the military’s arsenal. A new plane being developed by Northrop Grumman could take the unmanned aerial vehicle to the next level, landing on aircraft carriers and even refueling in midair by itself, the Register reported. The $100 million X-47B planes are also specially designed to fly undetected by radar and could carry weapons along with surveillance equipment. The planes are set to start land-based tests in the fall of 2009, with carrier testing as soon as 2011. The X-47B is costly but if it works, it could prove just as capable as many Navy pilots, especially if it can deftly land itself on an aircraft carrier. And that could open up a whole new discussion about when manned flights would still truly be necessary.

A $10 million Army grant recently awarded to the University of Michigan, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of New Mexico could help spur development of tiny sensors and electronics that would make a six-inch-long, four-ounce surveillance plane a reality. Dubbed “the bat,” the plane would use a tiny onboard radar array to navigate and would be powered by solar cells and a small battery, according to a news release from the University of Michigan. The plane’s equipment would include detectors for nuclear radiation and toxic gases, as well as very small cameras. There is no timeline to have “the bat” flying or in production, though the five-year grant could be extended for another five years after that depending on how the research progresses. The small unmanned aerial vehicle could scout ahead of advancing troops, or take up a position atop a building or telephone pole, gather data and then fly to another spot.

About 130 of the U.S. Air Force’s single-seat A-10 Warthogs have been grounded over concerns about wing fatigue cracks. The 30-year-old planes were all made with “thin-skin” wings designed to reduce weight, but mechanics working on the planes noticed some wings had started developing fatigue cracks, Reuters reported. There have been no accidents as a result of the cracks. The grounded plans represent about a third of the Air Force’s fleet of Warthogs. Those made with thicker wing skins aren’t affected, and Air Force said, and the groundings won’t affect their ability to deploy aircraft. Some of the grounded planes had been used in Iraq and Afghanistan to provide air support for ground operations. Last year, the Air Force awarded a $2 billion contract to Boeing to replace the wings on the planes, which were originally made by Fairchild Industries.

The Air Force and other military branches logged more than 500,000 flight hours in unmanned aerial vehicles last year, a spike that coincided with increasing troop numbers in Iraq. The drones were used most frequently in Iraq and Afghanistan, often flying missions 20 hours long, the Associated Press reported. Predator drone use more than doubled over the course of the year, from about 2,000 hours per month in January to about 4,300 hours by October. The 361 drones in Iraq flew more than 300,000 hours last year. To keep up with the increasing demand, the Air Force has transferred about 120 fighter pilots to posts in the United States flying the UAVs remotely. The increasing use comes as the military looks at ways to make UAVs more sophisticated by improving how they track targets and making their weapons more precise.