THE FAA IS AMENDING REGULATIONS GOVERNING the renewal of mechanics holding an Inspection Authorization (IA). Under current rules, IAs must be renewed every year but the new law would expand this to once every two years. The agency says the change will reduce administrative costs by 50% for both the FAA and the mechanic holding an IA.
The saddest and most frustrating aspect of the FAA's plans to adopt an Age 65 Rule for commercial pilots is about the pilots it won't cover--the ones who turn 60 during the period when the FAA bureaucracy is moving at a glacial pace toward the new standard.
Boeing could soon lose a vital piece of its C-130 Avionics Modernization Program. The U.S. Air Force has issued a stop-work order on upgrades of special operations C-130s, long considered the most urgent need. The move is seen as linked to cost and technical performance problems on the upgrade.
Rockwell Collins is expanding its footprint at Boeing by becoming the primary avionics supplier on the 747-8, building on its important role on the all-new 787. The Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based company will not only supply more of the avionics content on the 747-8 than it does on the 747-400, it will take on some responsibility for integrating subsystems. This doesn't mean it will be the lead systems integrator on the 747-8 cockpit--Boeing will retain that role.
Jim Ranghelli (see photo) has become executive director for business development for International Jet Management at Washington Dulles International Airport. He was an executive with Midcoast/Jet Aviation.
To submit Aerospace Calendar Listings, Call +1 (212) 904-2421 Fax +1 (212) 904-6068 e-mail: [email protected] Feb. 19-20--Asia Business Forum's Indian Airports Development Conference 2007. InterContinental The Grand, New Delhi. Call +65 (65) 368-676 or see www.abf-asia.co Feb. 20--Royal Aeronautical Society Capital Branch's Winter Lecture and Annual General Meeting. Speaker: FAA Administrator Marion C. Blakey. Boeing offices, Arlington, Va. Call +1 (703) 739-6700 ext. 108.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Adlai Hardin has prohibited Comair's pilots from striking over planned $15.8-million cuts in pay and benefits, ruling on a management motion. Carrier officials say they will impose new contract terms at 11:59 p.m. Feb. 9 if no other agreement is achieved. Comair says the average pay reduction will be 11%.
Airlines are concerned that an ambitious effort to redraw Europe's airspace map is being hindered by states' reluctance to carve up their borders in the sky. If the countries can't get their act together, European leaders must step in and assert more control over the process, airline groups say. Rearranging airspace regions is considered an integral part of the larger Single European Sky (SES) initiative. All parties agree that the efficiencies promised by SES can only be realized by simplifying the complicated web of European aviation boundaries.
It may be summer before Airbus learns whether its sole remaining A380 freighter customer, UPS, stays committed to the program, but company officials see an opportunity in Cathay Pacific to shore up the struggling variant. The Asian carrier is expected to issue a request for proposals in the coming months for a large cargo hauler. The competition would pit the A380 against the Boeing 747.
NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria holds the new U.S. record for time spent spacewalking--61 hr., 22 min.--following his completion of a third extravehicular activity (EVA) in nine days. His spacewalking partner, NASA's Sunita Williams, gained the women's record on the 6-hr., 40-min. EVA Feb. 8. She has now spent 29 hr., 17 min. in four EVAs, all of them since she arrived at the International Space Station on the space shuttle Discovery in December.
A News Break item incorrectly stated the closest distance that the New Horizons spacecraft will be from Jupiter (AW&ST Jan. 22, p. 22). New Horizons will pass within 2.3 million km. (1.4 million mi.) of the planet.
Amy Butler (Orlando, Fla.), David A. Fulghum (Washington)
The Air Force's $153.9-billion budget request for Fiscal 2008 is merely an attempt to slow losses from what one senior Air Force official calls the "insidious effect" of reduced readiness brought on by years of fiscal pressures. An associated and perhaps overly ambitious get-well plan calls for adding $20 billion annually to its budget for the next 20 years, beginning in Fiscal 2009. This would be to improve readiness and stabilize production rates of F-35s and F-22s, and procure needed cargo and refueling aircraft sooner.
Germany plans to have six Tornado reconnaissance aircraft operational in Afghanistan by mid-April to meet a request by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for more intelligence collection capacity. The German cabinet last week gave the green light for the deployment after prolonged internal debate. Although strong opposition persists, parliamentary go-ahead is expected next month.
Safran's Turbomeca unit has laid the cornerstone of a plant that will house all of the development and production activities at its main site in Pau, in southwestern France, into a single new facility (AW&ST Dec. 5, 2005, p. 60). The new digs are expected to be ready in 2008.
EXECUTIVE JET MANAGEMENT (EJM) HAS OPENED an office for charter sales and service in the Preston Center in the Dallas Park Cities area to serve Texas and the southwestern U.S. Maurice Levy, EJM senior vice president for sales, says "four of the top 10 fastest-growing cities fall into that market." Since 2003 EJM has opened offices in Teterboro, N.J., San Jose, Calif., and Chicago, and intends to open another office in south Florida. EJM is a subsidiary of NetJets Inc.
Don't look for Boeing to make any big acquisitions anytime soon. "We really have an organic [growth] strategy and will fill in stuff around the sides," CEO James McNerney told investors at a Cowen & Co. conference last week in New York. Those fill-ins should include more international acquisitions, services operations and product and technology-based add-ons for the company's defense unit, he says. "We don't have any big, big acquisition plans in mind at all." McNerney says one of his top priorities is executing on Boeing's record backlog.
John Walker is playing a key role in devising better ways for unmanned aircraft to operate in civil airspace, and he sees the stage being set for rapid aviation innovation like that experienced in the early 20th century. In fact, the current unmanned aircraft system (UAS) era looks to him like another Kitty Hawk. "There are multiple industries in the U.S. [and abroad] that do not know today they will have a UAS in their business plan in 5-10 years," Walker says of the huge potential for civil applications.
One of the largest aerospace engineering faculties in Europe is about to launch a major strategic research project that by 2011 is to deliver innovative concepts for a future, post-2025 ultra-green airliner. The project is known as CleanEra (Cost-effective Low Emissions And Noise Efficient Regional Aircraft). It is to be the first taken on by the newly formed DELcraFTworks, an advanced aerospace technologies research center at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), the Netherlands.
William Spires, Jr. (see photo) has been named vice president-operations for Aitech Defense Systems, Chatsworth, Calif. He was director of manufacturing for Curtiss-Wright.
Northwest Airlines, in the black for the first time on an annual basis in six years, posted a $301-million 2006 profit. Payouts for profit-sharing and severance cut into fourth-quarter earnings, resulting in a $7-million loss. The earnings do not reflect $3.1 billion in Chapter 11 reorganization items or taxes. Officials predicted the carrier is on track to complete its restructuring in the second quarter.
The FAA's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to end the discriminatory forced unemployment of U.S. airline pilots at Age 60 is long overdue (AW&ST Feb. 5, p. 39). The only remaining organized opposition is a single special interest union group, the politically powerful Air Line Pilots Assn. Two years ago, the younger members voted to continue opposition to the change so they might progress faster. Since the resulting economic penalty to others violates the the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, ALPA couches its opposi- tion as safety concerns.
A year's worth of fare increases and slightly fuller airplanes in January amount to a healthy step toward first-quarter financial improvements for six of the seven biggest U.S. airlines. The key measures are yield and load factor. Multiplying the two provides the coinage of the airlines' realm--revenue per available seat mile, or unit revenue.
China launched another Beidou navigation satellite from the Xichang center in Sichuan province Feb. 2 on a Long March 3-A rocket, bringing to four the number of spacecraft in the constellation. A fifth Beidou is planned for launch later this year as China builds toward a 35-satellite constellation, with the first five of them in geostationary orbits. Like the U.S. with its Global Positioning System, China plans to offer civilian and military timing and navigation service with the Beidou system.
Airports of Thailand President Chotisak Asapaviriya has resigned just 10 months into his four-year term as the authority works to fix cracking pavement at its new Suvarnabhumi airport at Bangkok. Thailand has confirmed it will reopen Bangkok's old Don Muang Airport.
