The FAA says it's time to "close the book" on the Age 60 Rule--and open a new one that adds five years to a transport pilot's working life in the cockpit front office. The new book changing mandatory retirement age to 65 will not be a page-turner, but a long, slow rule-making process.
Lockheed Martin has won a $294-million contract to provide Lot 6 and 7 AGM-158A Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles to USAF. Work is to be completed by March 2008. Textron snagged a $92.9-million contract add-on to provide full-rate production of 291 (Lot 12) sensor-fuzed weapons, also for USAF, by March 2009.
An Alaska institution, Kulis Air National Guard base, is closing, a victim of the 2005 base realignment commission. The 176th Wing and its aircraft will shift to Elmendorf AFB at Anchorage. The active-duty 3rd Wing and the 176th will form an associate unit. The 176th's eight C-130Hs, three HC-130Ns and five HH-60s will be joined by an additional four C-130Hs. The two wings will form an active-duty and ANG associate unit equipped with C-17s. Yet another change will stand up the Air Force Reserve 302nd Flight Sqdn.
Despite very public threats that it would back out of a competition with Boeing to build refueling tankers for the U.S. Air Force after the much-awaited request for proposals (RFP) was released, Northrop Grumman has seemingly backed off and is softening its rhetoric.
U.S. airline pilots might be careful what they hope for regarding the Age 60 Rule. There is good reason why the Air Line Pilots Assn. continues to oppose changes: a majority of its membership also is against it and one of a union's goals is to preserve jobs. Enhanced medical standards that would inevitably be part of an age increase might cost more jobs than they save. Any Part 121 pilot working today was hired under the condition of mandatory retirement at Age 60. It has always been the small minority making all the noise.
How would you be feeling, a few months prior to a premature and financially inadequate mandatory retirement, after being told for more than 25 years that your retirement compensation for--a job well done--was secure?
Europe is quietly tackling concerns about losing vital aerospace skills to other industries, but progress may be too slow to achieve research goals set by the European Union.
Clay Foushee has been named to the senior oversight staff of the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee by the Democratic majority. He was a chief scientist/technical adviser at the FAA and a vice president of Northwest Airlines. Jim Coon has become chief of staff and Holly Woodruff Lyons aviation staff director for Republicans on the committee. Coon was staff director for the House aviation subcommittee and had been director of government affairs for Boeing, while Lyons was senior counsel for the subcommittee and a lawyer for the FAA. Rep.
A near-Earth asteroid or comet could be an early target for human explorers as NASA's exploration shops ponder using a hybrid of planned U.S. launch vehicles for the mission. The agency's Constellation Program at Johnson Space Center launched a study last fall on flying the Orion crew exploration vehicle to a rendezvous with a near-Earth object (NEO) for research and possibly sample return (AW&ST Sept. 25, 2006, p. 21).
Antony Jameson, who is Thomas V. Jones Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University, has received the 2006 Elmer A. Sperry Award from the Reston, Va.-based American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), for contributions to the modern design of aircraft through the development of his series of computational fluid dynamics codes. Other recent honors are: J.
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia-based National Air Services (NAS) is the first international operator to order the Raytheon Aircraft Hawker 750 business jet. NAS plans to acquire as many as 20 of the twin-engine, mid-size cabin jets for charter flights in the Middle East in a purchase that could be worth more than $250 million. NAS operates a fleet of 33 aircraft. Deliveries are set to begin in the fourth quarter of this year, according to Raytheon Aircraft Co. RAC officials say the company holds orders for 40 Hawker 750s, including the NAS purchase.
The Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II completed its seventh flight on Jan. 30 and has "experienced no significant problems," according to company officials. Jon Beesley, chief test pilot for the Joint Strike Fighter program, says the JSF's systems integration and risk-reduction initiatives over the past few years have made the airplane "more mature in its first month than other fighters were after more than a year of flight testing." Beesley also was involved in the F-22 Raptor trials.
The National Research Council (NRC) says use of millimeter-wavelength "backscatter" X-ray technology for security screening is not ready for prime time in the U.S. The technology could replace metal detectors and is being tested at airports in the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Thailand and Spain. The NRC study, which was contracted by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), found that there is insufficient technology available to develop a system that can identify concealed explosives.
Safety and economics have been cited in recent letters on raising the mandatory retirement age for commercial airline pilots. But no mention has been made of the government penalties imposed upon pilots who lost their pensions and retire at the federally imposed mandatory Age 60.
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Two Pentagon programs are near the point of declaring a Nunn-McCurdy breach, which means costs have overrun budgets by at least 15% and, therefore, the program receives increased scrutiny. The C-5 Reliability Enhancement and Re-engining Program (RERP) kit price for new powerplants has doubled, and the total RERP cost is quickly rising, according to a source close to the program. The cost was estimated at $11 billion last year.
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Airports of Thailand will take up to a year to fix the runways and taxiways and stands at Bangkok's new Suvarnabhumi Airport. Cracks have appeared in the surfaces, a depression has developed in one runway and aerobridges are out of action. The airport, built on a drained swamp, won't be able to handle as many aircraft as planned while it's being fixed, so the government is asking airlines to temporarily send domestic services back to the old Don Muang Airport. Budget airlines were trying to get back to Don Muang anyway, because it's cheaper.
Shortly after 9/11, executives from some of the leading aerospace companies in Tulsa, Okla., sat down to discuss impending layoffs. In the ensuing months, the region lost about 20% of its aerospace jobs as downturns intensified in the airline and commercial aircraft industries. But those executives now meet to talk about a new problem: how to attract and retain qualified workers. "The discussion has almost completely turned around," marvels Mary E. Smith, vice president of economic development at the Tulsa Metro Chamber of Commerce.
In the end, US Airways took No for an answer. It had no choice. The prospective $10-billion merger with Chapter 11-mired Delta set in motion last November by the high-flying US Airways died a quiet death Jan. 31 when the Phoenix-based airline withdrew its offer. Also stilled were the massive network-carrier consolidations rumored to be the inevitable result of a Delta-US Airways deal.
The U.S. nuclear weapons complex could get a boost of what Defense Science Board (DSB) members say is much-needed attention, the lack of which has led to "triage among demands to sustain a healthy nuclear enterprise," the DSB says in a December report. The board suggests the Nuclear Weapons Council should direct that the Reliable Replacement Warhead, a redesign of existing weapons, be pursued, including a plan to produce a predetermined number of them by 2012.
Engineers at the U.S. Air Force's Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) are placing kinetic-energy interceptors and kill vehicles in simulated orbits in support of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA).
Frank Brenner has been appointed director of operations for the air traffic control center unit of Germany-based Deutsche Flugsicherung. He was director of operations for the aeronautical data management unit.
