Getting mighty crowded

Bombardier Aerospace plans to enter the larger-size regional aircraft market with two new entries of 110 and 135 seats, placing it in competition with Boeing, Embraer and Airbus, reported Aviation Week magazine.

The new line of Bombardier airplanes will compete directly both with Boeing's 717-200, 737-600 and 737-700, and the Airbus A318 and A319. However, Bombardier officials and other manufacturers are looking to replace the almost 4,000 Fokker 70/100s, early McDonnell Douglas DC-9s and MD-80s, early Boeing 737 models and the British Aerospace 146 and Avro RJs in service, Aviation Week reported.

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IN BRIEF

NASA mulling over proposals for jupiter icy moons orbiter

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is evaluating industry proposals for the preliminary design of the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) spacecraft, in anticipation of awarding a contract by October, Aerospace Daily said.

Teams led by Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman submitted their final proposals last month, according to Ray Taylor, acting director for Project Prometheus at NASA's Office of Exploration Systems. In collaboration with JPL, the winning team will create a preliminary design for the spacecraft, which NASA plans to launch sometime next decade.

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European union wants open-skies air deals with U.S.

The E.U. Commission called on European governments in late July to renounce their bilateral airline treaties with the United States, Dow Jones News Service said.

The E.U. Commission's decision follows a ruling Europe's highest court, the European Court of Justice, issued in November 2002. It ruled the aviation treaties many E.U. member states have with the United States are illegal because they grant landing rights only to the domestic carriers of the individual European country that agreed to the treaty, Dow Jones reported. The court ruled this violates the European Union's single-market principle because all European carriers need to be treated equally. It also gave the commission a mandate to negotiate a single air treaty for all member states.

For more than a year, the commission has negotiated with Washington. The overall goal of the talks is to replace a mix of treaties between individual E.U. countries and the United States to ease restrictions on one of the world's most heavily regulated sectors, according to Dow Jones.