Do you doubt the viability of new international airline alliances? About 25% of Lufthansa's $1.2-billion profit last year, or $300 million, was contributed by the carrier's Star Alliance traffic, according to Dietmar Kirchner, senior vice president for corporate purchasing and properties. United Airlines recently said Alliance traffic contributed almost 10%, or $200 million, to its 1998 operating earnings.
Political meddling and the noise lobby have transformed one of the world's oldest airports into a model of inefficiency. More importantly, they also have created a potentially dangerous gateway into Australia. Sydney's Kingsford Smith Airport (KSA) serves 53 international, national and regional carriers. Few gateways to any country are as prominent. KSA handles 45% of Australia's total flights, or 275,000 aircraft movements a year. Yet it occupies the smallest piece of land of any of the country's major airports.
Work is well underway for the opening of Pudong International Airport in this bustling financial and trading city. The $1.4-billion first phase of Pudong airport is set to officially open on Oct. 1, although the first scheduled flight--a Shanghai Airlines flight to Kunming--is set for mid-September. Construction on China's most modern airport, situated southeast of Shanghai near the mouth of the Yangtze River, began in 1997.
ALL THE FAA'S COMPUTER SYSTEMS are now fully compliant for the Year 2000, according to Administrator Jane F. Garvey, who said the computer work was accomplished before the June 30 deadline the agency had established. Y2K compliance was independently verified by Science Applications International Corp. and the Transportation Dept.'s inspector general, who also examined sample systems and approved the FAA's work.
GE Aircraft Engines estimates its Engine Services organization will generate half of its anticipated $11 billion in 1999 gross revenues. In 1996, the company's aftermarket sales were $2.3 billion, according to GEAE President and CEO James McNerney, Jr. In 1995-2005, the installed base of GE-built engines is scheduled to double.
Signaling the accelerated disposal of Ansett's 11 BAe-146 regional jets, Kendell Airlines is expected to convert 12 options for 50-seat Bombardier/Canadair CRJ-200s in favor of the 70-seat CRJ-700. Kendell, a wholly owned Ansett subsidiary, will take delivery of the first of 12 CRJ-200s in September. They are to enter service in November on east coast routes feeding such major hubs as Sydney and Melbourne.
The White House has approved a NASA plan to allow the agency to enter into commercial contracts for services on the space shuttle and then pocket the money. Industry could get products and processes tested in orbit for prices below NASA's marginal costs. The scheme would require amending the Commercial Space Act of 1998, so Congress would have to go along. Dan Tam, NASA's commercialization guru, told Aviation Week's Aerospace Daily the idea is to use the shuttle as a business testbed for commercializing the International Space Station.
A hijacker with a penchant for flight simulation games took control of an All Nippon Airways 747-400 and allegedly stabbed its captain to death when he would not let the hijacker land the jet full of passengers by himself. Other cockpit crew overwhelmed the alleged killer and made a safe emergency landing on July 23 to ensure that none of the other passengers on the crowded flight was hurt. But by that time, the 51-year-old captain bled to death from a 4-in. gash in his right carotid artery.
The FAA has failed to reverse the rising incidence of near-collisions on airport runways and has little money budgeted for measures to reach its goal of slashing the number of so-called runway incursions by next year, a government watchdog has found.
Judith A. Bishop has been named London-based vice president-Atlantic Div. for United Airlines. She succeeds Graham Atkinson, who is now senior vice president-marketing.
The Irish government has endorsed Aer Lingus' strategic alliance with Oneworld partners British Airways and American Airlines but ruled out proposals for the two airlines to acquire a 10% stake in the Irish flag carrier. The government endorsed privatizing the airline but said the money generated by selling a 10% stake would not be enough to meet Aer Lingus' requirements for a fresh infusion of capital.
David M. North Editor-in-Chief No Russian Roulette For The F-22
This is not the time to cut funding for the U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor, for many reasons. If the bid to delay production of the Lockheed Martin fighter is being used by the Republicans in the House of Representatives as a club to force the White House to support an increased defense budget, they are playing a potentially costly and divisive game.
Protracted operations overseas, long-term pay increases and immediate readiness shortfalls helped fuel House deferral of the F-22 in the Fiscal 2000 defense appropriations bill. Although pro-defense House members issued a scorching indictment of the F-22 itself, the larger budget squeeze contributed to the zeroing out of $1.85 billion to initiate F-22 procurement in the next fiscal year, which begins on Oct. 1.
Lockheed Martin Commercial Space Systems delivered Koreasat-3 to the Arianespace launch site in Kourou, French Guiana, on July 19. The spacecraft is scheduled for launch on Aug. 23 and could be providing service by October after in-orbit checkout. The satellite is configured to provide both fixed and direct broadcast services. The A2100 spacecraft, with a steerable antenna to provide regional coverage capability, has a total of 30 Ku-band transponders and an additional three Ka-band transponders.
The U.S. Air Force has selected Applied Data Technology to incorporate data recording capability into Air Combat Training Systems at Elmendorf AFB, Alaska. The system upgrade, which is valued at up to $6 million, will be completed in October 2000.
Steve Ridolfi has been named vice president/general manager of marketing operations, Chris Beaton vice president-customer support, Rodney S. Williams vice president-aircraft programs and Trung Ngo vice president-marketing, all of Bombardier Aerospace Regional Aircraft, Downsview, Ontario.
By fine-tuning its airport ground operations, German holiday carrier Condor is turning around its new stretched, single-aisle Boeing 757-300s in the same amount of time previously required to deplane and fill its 757-200s. The 55-min. turn times are no worse than for the DC-10s the 250-seat 757-300s are replacing, according to Lufthansa's Dietmar Kirchner. He was managing director for Condor, which now is 50%-Lufthansa owned.
Air Force officials are planning to rewrite their requirements for the Joint Strike Fighter as Congress threatens to cripple the F-22 program. ``If F-22 is canceled, you've got to go back to a clean sheet of paper for JSF,'' a senior military official said. ``You've wasted 15 years and $20 billion.
Airbus Industrie officials last week threatened to withhold parts and support to any airline buying Singapore Airlines' A340s if they are sold as trade-ins by Boeing. The announcement follows Boeing's mid-June coup in which Singapore Airlines executed options to buy 10 more 777-200ERs and phase out the 17 A340-300s they will replace (AW&ST June 28, p. 28). In a sales contract signed in 1995, Boeing agreed to buy the A340s from SIA if the airline could not sell them first. Two of the A340s have not yet been delivered.
Sharp capacity growth and a slowdown in demand for main deck lift in domestic and international markets over the next four quarters may mean future turbulence for airfreight markets. According to Seattle-based Air Cargo Management Group, although business has been good, planned capacity additions could outpace traffic growth in many sectors and cause problems over the next few years for startups, established combination passenger/freight carriers and all-cargo airlines.
The Astrolink partners have completed their manufacturing plans for the $4-billion satellite network that they expect will provide the industry's first broadband services for Internet, intranet, multimedia and data networks. Not surprisingly, the geostationary network will use the A2100-series from Lockheed Martin Commercial Space Systems of Sunnyvale, Calif. (See rendering.) TRW Space&Electronics of Redondo Beach, Calif., will provide the spacecraft's high-capacity digital packet switching system.
ITT INDUSTRIES HAS FORMED A STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP with Voxware to jointly develop and market speech recognition products for the military. The agreement will add Voxware's noise-robust speech recognition technologies developed for industrial markets to ITT's ``Command Voice,'' developed for tactical voice control of military systems.
