The employment status of Stephen Luckey, head of the Air Line Pilots Assn.'s national flight security committee, was incorrectly reported (AW&ST May 6, p. 38). He retired in March 2000 from Northwest Airlines.
NASA's Space Launch Initiative (SLI) office plans to present top agency management with a list of options next month for getting humans to and from the International Space Station, including the use of expendable rockets to launch reusable crew vehicles. The expendable launch vehicle (ELV) approach is just one of several under study as a way to cover NASA's requirements to give ISS crews a lifeboat down for emergencies and an alternative to the space shuttle or Russian Soyuz to get up to their orbiting post.
The steep drop in international passenger traffic that followed the Sept. 11 attacks drove Japan Airlines, the country's leading carrier, into a $287-million shortfall for the fiscal year ended Mar. 31. It was JAL's first net loss in four years. The carrier's management predicted a precipitous decline in revenue soon after the attacks and doubted the airline would pay a dividend in 2001--it did not. JAL's total revenues fell 5.6% compared with 2000. Revenue from international travel slipped 11.7% and overall traffic decreased 9.4%.
Deployment early next month of the 6-meter-long boom for the Mars Odyssey spacecraft's gamma-ray spectrometer (GRS) is now the main focus of the NASA mission. Previous plans called for the GRS boom to be extended on May 17, but in routine activity leading up to the deployment--considered one of the last critical events of the mission--project officials turned up a possible problem that could occur during deployment.
Raytheon will build 387 AIM-120C advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles for the U.S. Navy and Air Force and international military customers in a $165-million contract.
Brian Brandewie has been named president of Avionics Systems for the Goodrich Corp., Charlotte, N.C. He was vice president/general manager of the company's Regional, Business and Military Aircraft Wheel and Brake business in Troy, Ohio. Harry Arnold has become vice president/general manager of commercial programs for Goodrich's Chula Vista, Calif.-based Aerostructures business.
The British Airport Authorities (BAA) will likely contribute 50 million pounds ($72 million), to be matched by the government, to help bolster the finances of the U.K.'s civil air traffic control provider, National Air Traffic Services. BAA is refusing to comment on the deal, which may be formally announced later this month.
U.S. and Indian forces held their first joint military training exercises in seven years last week near Agra, with U.S. Special Forces personnel wearing Indian parachutes in a jump from an Antonov An-32 and Indian soldiers wearing U.S. equipment in a jump from a Lockheed Martin C-130.
Saab has selected Telephonics Corp. to supply the airborne multimode surveillance radar for Sweden's NH-90 helicopters. Telephonics' APS-143B(V)3 Ocean Eye was designed to detect small targets under adverse conditions from both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. The Swedish armed forces plan to use the imaging radar for wide area maritime surveillance, search and rescue, environmental protection, anti-surface and antisubmarine missions. It has high-resolution inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging modes, as well as strip-map SAR capabilities.
As President Bush heads for a summit in Russia with Vladimir Putin this week, the spotlight will be on reductions of strategic forces (see p. 28). But two other subjects bear watching--ballistic missile defenses and Iraq. Bush may resurrect an idea to share BMD technology with Moscow. Regarding action to unseat Baghdad's Saddam Hussein, many strategic thinkers believe Russia holds the key. Russia wants to remain a geopolitical player.
Disclosure that President Bush received intelligence warnings of terrorist hijackings last summer (see p. 19) catapults Sept. 11 further into domestic politics than it has been until now. Congressional Democratic leaders Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt call for disclosure of enough information to figure out whether Sept. 11 was an intelligence failure or a failure to act on intelligence.
MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. has been awarded a U.S. $1.6-million contract to upgrade and maintain a satellite ground station in Asia that processes information from Radarsat-1 and Spot commercial satellites.
The FAA has certified Connexion by Boeing for commercial flight operations to link passengers to the Internet. ViaSat Inc. of Carlsbad, Calif., said it has delivered the first set of flight-qualified airborne receive/transmit subsystems for Connexion. The three-month certification process was conducted with a 737-400 aircraft used for research, testing and demonstrations.
John F. Phillips has been appointed senior vice president-customer business for International Aero Engines, Glastonbury, Conn. He was head of Rolls-Royce's office in Toulouse, France, which included representing IAE at Airbus headquarters. Phillips succeeds Mike Field, who is now head of commercial engines marketing and sales for Pratt & Whitney.
Over the next two weeks, US Airways will try to remake itself into a low-cost, viable competitor as unions, employees and other stakeholders critically examine a three-pillared restructuring plan. Carrier management distributed the ``first draft'' of the plan to officials of its five unions late last week, strongly suggesting by its title that management expects an appreciable amount of revision before the recovery blueprint takes final form, possibly in early June.
Capacity cuts by major airlines and the continuing growth of regional jet fleets are creating turboprop-flying restrictions that will erode air service to small communities, the Regional Airline Assn. will argue in a new challenge to scope clauses in major airlines' pilot union contracts. Scope clauses, a problem-of-the-future side issue at recent RAA annual conventions, emerged front and center at this year's event. Executives of regional airlines, their suppliers and the RAA itself, meeting here last week, said developments since Sept.
The Australian Advanced Air Traffic System (Taats) project plans to replace square CRT displays in air traffic centers at Melbourne and Brisbane with BarcoView LCD flat panels. Barco's ISIS LCD main display will be used in the Executive Planner workstation, primarily as a planview air situation display. The 20 X 20-in. display has 2,048 X 2,048-pixel resolution. Displays will be supplied in four batches, with the first to be shipped in October 2002. The contract award from Thales ATM of Australia is valued at more than $4.5 million.
Linwood D. Lewis has been promoted to vice president-corporate sales and marketing for the B/E Aerospace Corp. from vice president/general manager of seating aftermarket and component manufacturing operations for B/E's Seating Products Group, Winston-Salem, N.C.
Listening to Walter Taylor, you'd think he was the batting coach for the Atlanta Braves rather than the manager of an infotech makeover for the hometown airline's maintenance, repair and overhaul operations. Taylor talks about Delta TechOps finding the ``sweet spot'' in its choice of software solutions in much the way a batter wants to make the optimum connection with the ball. In Taylor's case, a home run comes from achieving a balance between business operations and software technology.
The U.S. Air Force is about to make key decisions on the future GPS III program and is reinvigorating the development that had slowed while the Pentagon addressed more near-term concerns with the GPS constellation. The wide-reaching GPS III program is to redefine the architecture for the space-based navigation and timing system and ensure its viability for another 30 years. It is to address a multitude of issues, including the design of the spacecraft, spares requirements, signal strength and protection of the constellation against attack.
Virgin Atlantic Airways has signed a five-year, $22-million maintenance contract with FLS Aerospace covering all base maintenance including C checks and modifications for Virgin's Airbus A340 fleet.
Lufthansa German Airlines has selected Rolls-Royce's Trent 900 engine to power its planned fleet of Airbus A380s. The contract, covering 15 aircraft, will be worth up to $750 million.
Look for the Future Imagery Architecture (FIA) satellite constellation to get more expensive and slide even further behind schedule. Capitol Hill staffers fear that could lead to a gap between the end of current intelligence-gathering satellite systems and the start of FIA operations. They suggest using commercial satellites, adding some offer 70-80% the capability of military systems. But the Hill-types note a problem in feeding digital data through the military's analog intelligence distribution system.
The newly formed French government is scrutinizing the massive investment of more than $6 billion that would be required to build a third Paris airport. The validity of a plan to begin construction of an international airport northeast of Paris--tentatively scheduled to be completed by 2015--is disputed by the right-wing team of French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin. Orly is far from being congested, while Charles de Gaulle (CDG) still has ample runway capacity, Transport Minister Gilles de Robien stressed.
