Future space tourists and commercial travelers to the International Space Station must have clean backgrounds and be able to handle themselves in an emergency, but otherwise they will find it relatively easy to qualify for spaceflight under guidelines established by NASA and the other ISS partner agencies.
Delford M. Smith, founder/chairman of Evergreen International Aviation, McMinnville, Ore., is one of the winners of the Horatio Alger Assn. Award for 2002. He was cited for founding the company in 1960 with three helicopters and expanding it into seven divisions operating in 168 countries.
William B. Tutt has been elected chairman of the board of the Colorado Springs-based Space Foundation. He is a principal in Tutco and was foundation vice chairman. Tutt succeeds Jaime Oaxaca. Other officers elected are: vice chairman, John Higginbotham, chairman of Space- Vest Inc.; treasurer, Jaleh Daie, senior science adviser to the Center for the Study of the Presidency; and secretary, Donovan Hicks, former CEO of Ball Aerospace and Technologies and principal in Cygnus Enterprise Development.
The U.K. will have to carefully juggle its strike aircraft if it is to avoid a potential resources gap between the planned withdrawal from service of its Jaguar GR3A and the ability of its early Eurofighter squadrons to take on the role. The British Royal Air Force's three Jaguar squadrons, all based at RAF Coltishall in southeast England, are currently scheduled to be phased out by 2008.
The lean and linear $1.2-billion midfield terminal that Northwest Airlines opens this weekend will raise dowdy Detroit Metropolitan Airport to world-class status and is likely to change opinions of jaded travelers about the Motor City and Northwest Airlines.
Three stashes of federal money, possibly four, are available to reimburse airports for post-Sept. 11 security expenses, but one of them is bare and may stay that way. That would-be cache is the congressional authorization within the Aviation and Transportation Security Act to spend $1.5 billion in 2002 and 2003. However, as any Hill hand knows, authorization is but the first step. Next, Congress must appropriate the necessary monies. Here, the $1.5-billion authorization faces some tough competitors.
BAE Systems has reported a 32.6% increase in profits for 2001, to 1.26 billion pounds ($1.79 billion), with the company confident that its underlying strategy to become the premier transatlantic defense contractor is bearing fruit. Also apparent, however, is that BAE is not willing to pay any price as it looks to opportunities to extend its already considerable U.S. footprint. Senior company executives said the asking price for Raytheon's Greenville, Tex., aircraft integration systems business was too high.
An intense national debate over arming airline pilots to protect air transports from terrorists will be decided within the next few weeks amid furious behind-the-scenes political maneuvering. Pilots claim the decision is a potential life-and-death matter for flight crews and their passengers.
A succession of commentators has started to argue that NATO has been marginalized and that its future is in doubt. This is not the first time that predictions of this kind have been made. When the Berlin Wall fell, some critics suggested that NATO had completed its mission and could pack it in. Then, after the success of the Persian Gulf war coalition, they suggested that all future operations would be exactly like Desert Storm--and that, as a result, NATO wasn't needed.
TSA chief John Magaw says a cadre of interim federal security directors--security experts on loan from the FAA and deployed to airports late last week--will see to it that checkpoint screeners conduct themselves appropriately while the new TSA workforce takes over later this year. Magaw's comments follow a Feb. 8 letter from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) asking how the TSA intends to fix its screener training regime to account for recent complaints by women--both flight attendants and passengers--that they had been ``improperly'' patted down by male security guards.
Chris Bowers, who has been senior vice president-North America for United Airlines, has become senior vice president-marketing, sales and reservations. Bill Hobgood, who has been senior vice president-people, will be senior labor adviser to the chairman. He will be succeeded by Sara Fields, who has been senior vice president-onboard service. She will be succeeded by Larry De Shon, who has been senior vice president-marketing. Senior Vice President Pete McDonald will head the airport operations division.
Ansett of Australia is tentatively scheduled to take delivery of up to 40 Airbus A320-series twinjets in the next few years. Tesna, Ansett's new parent company, signed a memorandum of understanding covering the acquisition of 30 150-185-seat A320/A321s and options on 10 additional aircraft. First delivery is planned for the end of 2002.
An Iran Air Tour Tupolev Tu-154M crashed into a mountainous region blanketed by fog, rain and snow the morning of Feb. 12 while on approach to Khorramabad, Iran. All 105 passengers and 12 crewmembers on board were killed. According to Iran's IRNA state-run news agency, the Tu-154M disappeared from radar about 1 hr. after departure from Tehran's Mehrabad International Airport and lost radio contact with the tower at Khorramabad minutes before crashing in the Sefid Kouh mountains, about 230 mi. southwest of Tehran.
L-3 COMMUNICATIONS CORP.'S INTERSTATE ELECTRONICS CORP. has received Defense Dept. design approval and will be the first company to begin production of Selective Availability Anti-Spoofing Module (Saasm)-equipped GPS receivers. The Saasm assembly is a multichip security module that contains the core logic devices to track the GPS P (Y) code, plus a Key Data Processor II cryptographic device provided by the National Security Agency (NSA). Hardware and software embedded in Saasm, along with an NSA-approved tamper-resistant coating, help protect security functions.
The Transportation Security Administration will study the movement of passengers and cargo through security systems at 15 U.S. airports in an attempt to come up with procedures and processes that improve passenger service as well as security. TSA staff and business process consultants will analyze security operations at 10 of the largest airports--Atlanta, Baltimore-Washington, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago O'Hare, Dallas/Fort Worth, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New York Kennedy, Orlando and San Francisco--plus Anchorage, Grand Rapids, Louisville, Mobile and Spokane.
The ultra-long-range Airbus A340-500 is scheduled to obtain FAA and European JAA certification by the end of the year, after having made its first flight on Feb. 11 from Toulouse, France. The A340-500, which is powered by four Rolls-Royce Trent 553 turbofans, is a shortened-fuselage derivative of the 380-seat Dash 600 and retains the same systems. Its maximum range is 16,000 km. (8,640 naut. mi.) in a typical 313-seat, three-class cabin configuration.
Boeing's Phantom Works has completed the wings for the X-37 experimental spaceplane, and transported them to the company's High Desert Assembly Integration&Test Facility in Palmdale, Calif.
The Southwest Airline Pilots' Assn. (SWAPA) issued a ``crew concept'' policy last week, encouraging pilots and flight attendants of each flight crew to stay together until they all clear airport security screening checkpoints. Ideally, this will ``avoid possible confrontations with overzealous security screening staff,'' and ``provide all crewmembers with a witness to potential mistreatment by security screeners, National Guard, police'' or other airline and airport personnel, the advisory said.
Charles Claveau has become president of the Helicopter Engine Program Div. of Turbomeca. Christian Hamel has been named vice president-engine commercial strategy for Turbomeca, Francois Pepin representative in Italy and Helene Seguinotte president of Turbomeca Canada.
Crossair, soon to be Swiss Air Lines, plans to restore Switzerland-U.S. routes of bankrupt Swissair about Mar. 31, the effective date of its designation by the Swiss government to operate the service. Seeking authority from the U.S. Transportation Dept., Crossair projected nearly 764,000 passengers, an average load factor of 50% and more than $460 million in revenue during the last nine months of 2002 from single daily round trips between Geneva and New York JFK, and between Zurich and seven U.S.
Carlton D. Donaway, who has been president/chief operating officer of Airborne Inc. of Seattle, also will be CEO and will become chairman on Apr. 30. Robert S. Cline has retired as CEO and will retire as chairman on Apr. 30 along with Vice Chairman Robert G. Brazier. Lanny Michael has been promoted to executive vice president/chief financial officer from senior vice president/CFO and Richard Corrado to senior vice president from vice president-marketing. Jack Bunyan and Carl Rodriguez have been promoted to senior vice presidents-field services from vice presidents.
The Federal Communications Commission has given the go-ahead to use ultrawideband technology for a broad range of applications, despite aerospace industry concerns about possible interference with GPS and other safety-of-life signals. The ruling does protect GPS signals from intentional UWB emissions.
British Airways aims to ax 650 million pounds ($923 million) in annual costs as the result of its latest round of cuts, unveiled last week, which sees employment tumble further, and the airline retrench at London's Heathrow airport. The recommendations of the review mean that 5,800 more jobs will go, in addition to those already announced in September 2001. The airline's operations at Gatwick airport will also be drastically reduced, and it will relinquish five long- and five short-haul routes, yet to be determined.
ADVANCING THE PRACTICAL USE OF PLASTIC OPTICAL FIBER (POF) for data applications has been hampered by a lack of source information. This has been remedied by publication of the POF Sourcebook which lists 150 companies and organizations involved in the technology in the U.S., Europe and Japan. See: www.IGIgroup.com.
The preliminary report on Air Transat Flight 263 is scheduled for release in April, according to the Portuguese Accident Investigation Authority. The report on the Aug. 24, 2001, incident involving an Airbus A330-200 twin-engine flameout over the Atlantic Ocean was to have been released last month. It was delayed when members of the BEA French accident investigation bureau were transferred to the Nov. 12, 2001, American Airlines Flight 587 crash probe, which also involved an Airbus aircraft, an A300-600.
