The Belgian government and Sabena's management team are extending their quest for investors to revitalize Delta Air Transport, Sabena Belgian World Airlines' regional affiliate.
Lockheed Martin Corp. said it will eliminate 360 jobs from its Space Systems unit. The action is part of an effort, started in 1999, to integrate space-related operations. This measure will cut indirect costs by another $30 million per year, on top of $40 million per year already being saved, and will primarily involve functional operations. Layoffs, attrition and reassignments to other parts of the parent company are expected to account for some of the downsizing.
There is no excuse for Congress' inability to reach a consensus on what measures to take to bolster airport and airline security. Once, there appeared to be resolve by the Bush Administration and both political parties to rapidly plug the holes in U.S. aviation security following the Sept. 11 tragedy. Now, that resolve seems to have fallen prey to partisan rancor, ideological extremism and political payoffs.
Development work on Chinese Shenzhou manned-spacecraft rendezvous and docking systems, as well as Chinese space suit testing, has and will continue to be done at the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (BUAA). The university is becoming a key research facility for the development of technology and systems to support China's aggressive new space plans.
THE ARMY PLANS TO SELECT A TEAM in March for the next-generation software-defined radios whose architecture would allow them to communicate with virtually any other radio, using any of 21 waveforms. Among the groups known to be competing are Raytheon's Team Futura with ITT Industries, TRW, General Dynamics and SAIC; and a Boeing led-team with Harris, TRW and Rockwell Collins.
CIT Ltd., the Australian subsidiary of Tyco Capital Aerospace, has delivered one Boeing 737-300 to Virgin Blue Airlines. The aircraft had been operated by Ansett Australian Airlines.
Terry Hall has been promoted to chief operating officer from senior vice president/chief financial officer and Yasmin Seyal to senior vice president-finance and acting CFO from corporate treasurer of GenCorp., Sacramento, Calif. Mike Martin has been named president of subsidiary Aerojet. He was acting president of Aerojet Missile and Space Propulsion and had been vice president/controller of GenCorp.
Conferees from the House and Senate appropriations committees added $282 million to the Administration's Fiscal 2002 NASA budget request, boosting science probes to the Sun and Pluto but cutting the International Space Station by $95 million. Overall spending for the agency in Fiscal 2002 would be $14.8 billion under the conference action.
London Heathrow Airport slots, the key issue when American Airlines and British Airways applied unsuccessfully for antitrust immunity five years ago, remains the key issue this year in their second try. Despite heavy pressure to work out an immunity deal quickly, the Heathrow problem isn't getting any easier.
More than 5,000 petitions demanding that airline pilots be allowed to carry guns in the cockpit will land on the desks of a House-Senate conference committee forging a final airport and airline security bill this week. A message accompanying those petitions states that ``either we get the right to be screened, trained and armed, or we're going to suspend service,'' a leader of a grassroots pilot campaign declared.
A German offer to mobilize up to 3,900 troops to support the U.S.-led war against the Taliban may be compromised by a rift in the Green Party that is part of the ruling coalition. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder would not say where or when he would deploy the troops, which he and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, a member of the Greens, view as a sign of Germany's will to stand up and be counted in Europe. However, Green opposition to the plan, which is to be submitted to the Bundestag for approval on Nov. 13, has proven much stronger than expected.
Group Capt. John Cunningham has received the Award of Honor from the London-based Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators. He was cited for spearheading the application of airborne radar to night fighter tactics in 1941 and his post-World War II accomplishments as chief test pilot for de Havilland Aircraft, for which he made the first global jetliner flight in 1955 with the DH106 Comet.
Paul H. Tate has been named vice president/chief financial officer of Frontier Airlines. He was executive vice president/CFO of US Airways Express carrier Colgan Air.
The Italian government is trying to engineer a compromise that would allow Italy to participate in Europe's A400M airlifter project without fomenting a revolt in its ranks. Under the compromise, the government would finance the 16 aircraft that Italy is committed to buy, valued at around 1.4 billion euros ($1.26 billion), using money from the Ministry of Industry's research and development budget, instead of from the defense budget.
AAR has signed a three-year agreement with KLM UK Engineering under which AAR Aircraft Component Ser- vices will provide component management and repair for 15 Fokker 100s.
The Blair government has told Parliament that accelerating the procurement of two new aircraft carriers would be unwise, given the ships' size and complexity and the need to keep their development in sync with other forthcoming weapons systems, including the Future Organic Airborne Early Warning Aircraft. If the two carriers, which are slated to come into service in 2012 and 2015, are to have the best fit with future operational requirements, then time must be invested at the outset in assessing designs and development, the government contends.
Airlines that voluntarily share closely-guarded error trends with federal regulators will have guaranteed immunization from federal en- forcement actions for those faux pas under a proactive new safety program that becomes law on Nov. 30. But just how that data is ``shared'' remains a touchy subject that industry analysts say may cause airlines to avoid taking part in the Flight Operational Quality Assurance (FOQA) program.
Any such agreement, coming on top of Moscow's recent westward turn, would cost Beijing prime leverage in its bid to block U.S. deployment of missile defenses. It's hard for most China watchers to see how a deal could be struck here. A discussion at the Cato Institute explored the idea last week. The Bush Administration insists missile defenses have nothing to do with China and seems determined to deploy them.
Speedbirds migrated back to New York airspace last week. Air France F-BTSD`s and British Airways' G-BOAE ``Speedbird Concorde One'' arrived 1 hr. apart at New York's JFK International Airport on Nov. 7, marking the Concorde's return to scheduled service after a 15-month grounding.
Cloudy weather is beginning to limit the ability of U.S. analysts to maintain surveillance of Taliban and Al Qaeda forces, while heavy icing has downed a special forces helicopter and a third Predator unmanned reconnaissance aircraft in Afghanistan. Such incidents are triggering a reexamination of how the U.S. is going to confront harsh, cold-weather flying conditions and continue to conduct aggressive air operations throughout the winter. First among their foul-weather needs are air bases closer to the battlefield.
ROCKWELL COLLINS PROPOSED SOME SOLUTIONS to the problems of aging avionics last week, conferring with representatives of the U.S. military on strategies for dealing with obsolescence and inserting new technologies. The Collins Flight2 approach would add capability by using open slots in an integrated processing center, analogous to adding a card to an empty slot in a home PC or the military's VME bus. Open systems architecture should allow other vendors' capabilities to be added to refresh technology and provide a broader base for dealing with component obsolescence.
Arnold J. Grossman has become director of sales for Chicago-based TravelClick. He has been a member of the board of directors and is a retired vice president-international planning for American Airlines.
