Speaking of that Narita runway, Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport will ask the Ministry of Finance for 7.3 billion yen ($61 million) in the fiscal 2003 budget to extend it to 2,500 meters as originally planned. However, neighboring landowners and farmers whose lobbying led to the original shortening are still opposed. So a battle is brewing.
Fluent, the maker of computational fluid dynamic software, is using the Internet to rent out its software running on a supercomputer. Fluent's Remote Simulation Facility is aimed at highly parallel simulations or concurrent execution of many simulations, and sees the customer as needing occasional surge capacity or periodic execution of a large model, but not so frequently that they want to develop their own capability (www.fluent.com/software/rsolve/index.htm). The company says the Internet link is highly secure.
BAE Systems has received a $58-million work order to develop and produce 42 ALR-56C(v) radar warning receivers for South Korea's F-15K fighter program.
The world market for general aviation and utility aircraft deliveries is forecast to grow by about 27% in the next five years, to 2,100, with production steadily declining in the second half of the decade. That's according to a new study by Forecast International/DMS, an aerospace and defense market research firm in Newtown, Conn. The outlook for turboprops is brighter, thanks to recent changes in operating regulations that have led to increased use of single-engine models. As a result, shipments of those aircraft are forecast to rise in the 2006-11 period.
Don Burtis (see photo, p. 11) has been promoted to vice president from director of avionics and electronics for the Eclipse Aviation Corp, Albuquerque, N.M.
USN Reserve Cdr. Thomas L. Egbert has become commanding officer of U.S. Navy Strike Fighter Sqdn. 204 (VFA-204). He succeeds Cdr. Barry Behnfeldt. Egbert was executive officer and also is a pilot for American Airlines.
Jaiwon Shin has become deputy director for aeronautics at the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. He was chief of its Aviation Safety Program Office.
The U.S. Special Operations Command hopes to make its helicopters just a bit harder to detect. Army special ops pilots fly terrain-hugging flight profiles to avoid detection by radar and to give an adversary scant time to counter an attack. But the radar altimeter that's relied on to fly low is also a vulnerability because it emits a potentially detectable signal. Now the Pentagon wants to upgrade some of its AN/APN-209 radar altimeters to give them low-probability-of-intercept and low-probability-of-detection (LPI/LPD) features.
The TC-350 series of low-profile, surface-mount temperature compensated crystal oscillators (TCXO) is available from 1-80 Mhz. The series was developed for military radios and has found use in commercial off-the-shelf applications for traditional military OEMs looking for better reliability and support. The TCXO's temperature stability, coupled with low aging rate and small surface-mount package, helped place it in communications applications such as wireless communications and portable test equipment.
Sergio Vetrella has been elected president of Cira, the Italian aerospace research center, for a second three-year term. He is president of the Italian space agency.
Gene Colabatistto has been appointed president of Solutions at Space Imaging of Denver. He was president of the Spot Image Corp., Chantilly, Va., and succeeds Kass Green. Neal Carney has been named CEO of Spot Image, succeeding Colabatistto. Carney was senior vice president/ chief operating officer for Spot's U.S. operation.
Gulfstream Aerospace is introducing a ``premium interiors'' initiative that will standardize the range of flooring and furniture options available to customers, allowing green aircraft to be completed more quickly and efficiently, and on a more predictable schedule. The company is now pioneering the concept on its GIV and GV business jets and will apply it to its G200 aircraft in 2003. Extension of the initiative to G100 aircraft will follow at a later date.
Michael Grimes, who has been CEO of Stewart & Stevenson Services Inc. of Houston, also will be president of the Power Products Div. Richard Wiater, who has been senior vice president, has been named division chief operating officer.
Craig Sinclair has been appointed senior vice president-operations and technical for Air New Zealand. He has been chief information officer and succeeds Bill Jacobson, who has resigned.
A fatal midair collision over southern Germany on July 1 was the result of a complex interaction of human factors and technical shortcomings, according to the investigating German agency the Bundesstelle fuer Flugunfalluntersuchung (BFU). The collision involving a DHL International Airways Boeing 757-200 and a Bashkirian Airlines Tupolev Tu-154 killed 71 people.
US Airways has issued the winter schedule with which it will implement its earlier-announced 13% capacity reduction. Overall, weekly departures will decrease by a lesser percentage than capacity--down 305, from 3,785 to 3,480. More than one-third of the impact will be at the carrier's hubs. Pittsburgh will drop to 414 departures per week from 495, Charlotte to 462 from 494 and Philadelphia to 390 from 399. Nearly all the cutbacks at Charlotte and Philadelphia involve mainline jet service, but turboprops account for 42% of Pittsburgh's falloff.
The FAA says aircraft arriving or departing New York airports from Sept. 11-13 could experience delays due to special flight restrictions and procedures in place for commemorative ceremonies and a United Nations meeting. In addition to possible rerouting or holding of flights, passengers will be required to stay in their seats for the first or last 30 min. of the flight, the same procedure already in place at Washington Reagan National Airport.
Trade officials continue to push for a negotiated settlement to a dispute over alleged American tax subsidies, despite a World Trade Organization ruling entitling the European Union to impose $4 billion in retaliatory sanctions against the U.S. But U.S. aerospace executives are concerned that remedies proposed to meet WTO obligations could affect the industry's competitiveness.
The company's line of miniature position transducers expands with the Series D60, D61 and D62 family of digital output position transducers that offer measurement ranges of up to 43 in. Applications are found in machine control and robotic control. The products use a stainless steel cable wound around a threaded machined aluminum drum; the bearing-mounted drum is mated to an incremental encoder that translates linear position information to a digital electrical signal.
Malaysia's proposed buy of 18 F/A-18Fs could total $1.5 billion, the Pentagon said last week. The contract, which has yet to be finalized, would include 18 APG-73 radars, 39 F414-GE-400 engines, 18 AN/AL:R-67(V)3 radar warning receivers, 18 ALE-47(B)2 countermeasures dispensers and 12 ALQ-214(V)2 Idecm systems.
Sidney E. Fuchs (see photo) has been appointed vice president/director of the TASC Intelligence Operations unit of the Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Information Technology Sector, Herndon, Va. He succeeds Ronald E. Szabo, who has resigned. Fuchs was director of professional services at Rational Software, McLean, Va.
Industry pundits who predicted a few years ago that the market for fractional ownership of business jets would remain robust in a U.S. economic downturn were wrong--but not by much, as it turns out. The sale of shares generally has held up remarkably well, considering the turmoil that has wracked financial markets and hammered corporate profits in the last 24 months, according to several major providers.
