More than half of A&D professionals under 30 mention student loans as a key factor in career planning.

Aviation Week's 2012 Workforce Study data come from respondents that collectively employ 80% of the A&D industry's workforce of 624,000. Newcomers to this year's study include Alenia Aermacchi North America and Acutec Precision Machining.

Iberia is chronically uncompetitive against low-cost carriers.

If you thought US Airways' bid for American Airlines parent AMR Corp. was complicated two weeks ago, you haven't seen anything yet.

OLT Express Poland was forced to shut down earlier this month, after its parent, Plichta's Amber Gold finance company, could no longer afford to support the airline

Alitalia doubled its losses in the first half of 2012 compared with the same period last year. But the Italian carrier believes it has reason for hope, although profits are likely to be elusive this year. CEO Andrea Ragnetti says it has been “one of the most difficult semesters in the European airline business ever, but the worst is behind us.”

Just how structurally inefficient European legacy carriers still are in spite of current economic pressures is well illustrated by the comparison of Iberia and its new short-haul offshoot, Iberia Express. The latter has 10 aircraft and was launched three months ago. It became profitable in its second month and exceeded the target of a 20% unit cost improvement over its parent. It achieved 30%, and that is without the greater economies of scale available to Iberia, an airline with over 15 times more aircraft.

These are good times for civil aviation, but not so promising for defense. Acquisitions—many of them small-scale—are often aimed at strengthening an ancillary line of business. General Electric's purchase of Austin Digital Inc. (ADI), a Texas-based specialist in flight operations data analysis—for an undisclosed sum—is a case in point.