Low-fare carriers in Asia are mostly to thank for a billion-dollar increase in the profits forecast for airlines in 2012 by the International Air Transport Association ( IATA). But profits will still be more than 50% down from last year and the improvement expected next year will not bring airlines back to the healthier levels of 2011 or 2010.

There are few silver linings in a situation where two related engine types fail within weeks of each other.

President Barack Obama's widely panned debate included criticism for his lack of interest and intensity. The lackluster performance extended to the few areas in which aerospace and defense entered the discussion, as Obama opted to ignore messages that resonate with Americans in favor of dusting off an old battle that never took off. And his attacks on Mitt Romney's proposal to spend 4% of GDP on defense during a time of tight budgets went nowhere.

A new mid-year report from Aviation Week's Top-Performing Companies (TPC) study reveals that the aerospace and defense (A&D) industry remains resilient, even as potentially deep cuts to Pentagon spending draw closer. Boeing held on to its top ranking of 10 publicly traded contractors with revenues of more than $20 billion, raising its TPC score two points in the first half of 2012, to 89. And the next three companies, all pure-play defense contractors, also managed to boost their performances, reversing declines in 2011.

It may be one of the most isolated, loneliest flight-test outposts in the Northern Hemisphere, but that is exactly why Boeing prefers to perform flight-testing at the former Glasgow AFB in the northeast corner of Montana.

Cyberattacks have breached the Pentagon and sent businesses into bankruptcy. Still, it might take a cyberdisaster on the scale of Hurricane Katrina to impel lawmakers to pass laws to help shore up the nation's infrastructure. The White House has proposed an executive order to address some of the problem, but Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency and commander of U.S. Cyber Command, says more is needed. The Pentagon has a pilot program that will help private companies to work with the government to help them protect their own information.

Lufthansa is pushing for new tools to diagnose cabin air quality following passenger reports about cabin fumes onboard Airbus A380s and a serious incident involving an A319. But health damages have not been proven scientifically. The airline is putting in place initiatives to reduce the number of cabin fume events on its A380s. The measures include adjustments to the Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines, procedural changes and better surveillance of cabin air quality.

NASA stalwarts across the agency have pulled up their socks and forged ahead with the new approach of sending humans to Earth orbit in commercial crew vehicles. But it has been a case of reality transcending preference, says William Gerstenmaier, who runs NASA's human-spaceflight effort. “As a government person, I kind of like the old way of doing business with these big government programs, and controlling specifications and not being in this new world,” he tells an International Astronautical Congress audience in Naples, Italy. “This is a little riskier for me.