Juerg Reuthinger has become vice president/general manager of Jet Aviation Business Jets in Zurich. He succeeds Theo Staub, who has become corporate vice president-strategic planning and business development. Norbert Ehrich has succeeded Reuthinger as vice president/general manager of Jet Aviation Saudi Arabia in Jeddah.
Concern about the quality and availability of imaging data during the Kosovo crisis has encouraged French planners to prepare unspecified improvements to the Helios 2 surveillance satellite. No details have been released, but the program of enhancements is expected to be launched soon. Helios 2, to be launched around 2003, will have an infrared sensor allowing it to see at night, but it lacks the radar imager necessary for bad weather observation. The existing Helios 1A--like its twin Helios 2A, to be orbited later this year--has no IR capability.
Matra Marconi Space and DaimlerChrysler Aerospace expect to create a new space venture, Astrium, as soon as final legal details are ironed out--probably at the end of the summer--said MMS Chairman/CEO Armand Carlier. DASA will contribute its satellite and space infrastructure businesses to the new venture (formerly called Newco), but keep its shareholdings in Skybridge and Nahuelsat, at least for now. MMS will own 55% of Astrium, but both firms will have equal voting rights. Alenia Spazio will join the venture once due diligence operations are completed early next year.
Aviation Week&Space Technology editors Craig Covault and Joseph Anselmo won the Northrop Grumman award for the Best Breaking News Submission story during the 1999 Aerospace Journalist of the Year Awards. The article contained exclusive photos by Carleton Bailie. The Royal Aeronautical Society-sponsored award presentation was held last week in Paris in conjunction with the Paris air show. They were given the award for their coverage of the Titan IV explosion, carried in the Aug. 17, 1998, issue of the magazine.
A decimal point appears to have caused the costliest launch accident in Cape Canaveral history. An Air Force Milstar 2 satellite was stranded in the wrong orbit Apr. 30 when the Centaur upper stage of a Titan IVB steered off course. Aviation Week initially reported that the Centaur's software had been corrupted. National Reconnaissance Office Director Keith Hall told a House panel a decimal point was improperly written into the Centaur software. Two other failures--the explosion of a Titan IV/Centaur last Aug.
Bombardier won a North American launch customer for its new regional turboprop as smaller-aircraft makers seized much of the spotlight at the 43rd biennial Paris air show. Seattle-based Horizon Airlines placed 15 firm orders and took 15 options for the Q400, the advanced version of Montreal-based Bombardier's Dash 8-400 turboprop that incorporates cabin noise-suppression technology. If the airline executes all options for the 70-seat aircraft, last week's transaction would be valued at about $321 million.
Norman B. Hirsh, who headed development of the Apache attack helicopter, died on June 8 at Coto de Caza, Calif., at age 65. He was general manager of the McDonnell Douglas Helicopter Co. and left as executive vice president in 1990. He then was president of Rogerson Hiller Corp. until retiring in 1993. Hirsh was president and board chairman of the American Helicopter Society.
Southwest Airlines (SWA) has not abandoned the idea of franchising its unique brand of low-fare air service in countries outside of the U.S. The concept emerged in 1994, based on inquiries from off-shore investors, but was not developed largely because the Dallas-based airline has been too busy expanding domestic service, said Gary Kelley, SWA's chief financial officer. Franchising, however, probably will remain in limbo until Southwest exhausts market opportunities in the U.S.
The failure of a Pratt&Whitney RL10 rocket engine on May 4 during the launch of a Delta III booster is now forcing communications satellite operators to consider shifting their payloads from U.S. launchers to Europe's Arianespace Ariane booster. Loral Telstar managers have been threatening to pull their Telstar-7 spacecraft off the first launch of the Lockheed Martin Atlas III which also uses a Centaur upper stage with an RL10.
Starsem, a joint venture of Aerospatiale, the Russian Space Agency, the Samara Space Center and Arianespace, has approved a $60-million capital increase. The infusion of capital will help finance the completion of development for the new Fregat upper stage, intended for Cluster 2 and Mars Express, design of a new variant with an Ariane 4 fairing, an economic feasibility study for a Kourou launch site and further marketing efforts for the Soyuz booster, which has launched three batches of Globalstar satellites.
Conair Aviation plans to begin work on a new, $50-million maintenance facility at Abbotsford (B.C.) International airport on Aug. 1. The company, which already operates a 180,000-sq.-ft. facility at the airport, is seeking a larger share of the growing commercial aircraft maintenance market. According to the company, the 250,000-sq.-ft. facility will be able to simultaneously accommodate eight narrow-body jet transports, and create approximately 800 long-term jobs.
Embraer won a regional jet order from an operator in the backyard of its chief competitor, Bombardier. Montreal-based InterCanadian placed six firm orders and took six options for ERJ-145s, with the options convertible to ERJ-135s. The transaction could be worth as much as $230 million. The order marks Embraer's first regional jet sale in Canada. Skyways Airlines of Sweden ordered two ERJ-145s with 11 options. Alitalia Express plans to acquire at least six ERJ-145s, with options for 10 more.
The International Space Station was unable to carry out a space debris avoidance maneuver last week, when the Russian computer on board the station's FGB module disallowed a command, because it had not been updated with software to account for the presence of the 25,000-lb. U.S. Node 1 Unity module. The incident is prompting a review of procedures by U.S. and Russian station managers.
French military officials said the Franco-Russian MiG-AT advanced trainer will soon undergo a series of flight demonstrations in France. They said the flights had long been planned under the two-nation cooperation agreement governing the program. Both the MiG-AT and the modernized MiG-29 SMT fighter, for which Sextant Avionique of France is providing new avionics, are to complete flight tests by the end of the year, but no contract for either is yet in sight.
Denmark has become the only dissenting voice among 15 EU member states voting to extend postponement of an intra-EU ban on duty-free sales. Philippe Hamon, Europe's director general of the Airports Council International (ACI), said the $5.3-billion duty-free industry will be ``thrown into chaos,'' and as many as 60,000-140,000 people could face unemployment. Elimination of this major source of investment also could threaten future investments in airport capacity. The ACI is urging member states to persuade Denmark to review its policy.
The largest anechoic chamber on the U.S. East Coast--a crucial tool for fine-tuning stealth designs and electronic warfare tactics--opened here last week and already has a full slate of commercial and military customers through the end of the year.
Sea Launch has received four additional confirmed launch orders from Hughes Space and Communications, worth $280-360 million. The new orders to Sea Launch, the joint venture in which Boeing participates to launch Ukrainian Zenit 3-SL rockets from an offshore platform, brings the order book to 19 confirmed launches. After one successful test launch, Sea Launch plans its first commercial mission on Aug. 29 to orbit Hughes' DirecTV 1-R satellite. Hughes now has 14 slots booked on Sea Launch.
Japanese press reports quoted unnamed defense sources as saying that North Korea is expected to test its Taepodong-2 ballistic missile in July or August. The missile has a reputed range of 4,000-6,000 km. (2,480-3,720 mi.) and is an advanced version of the Taepodong-1, which North Korea launched over Japan last August. Planning for theater missile defense has gained a higher profile in Japanese defense circles as a result of that launch. The North Koreans are said to be preparing a launch pad for the Taepodong-2.
Phill Watkins has been named regional business development director, based in Redditch, England, for Shaw Aero Devices, Fort Myers, Fla. He was customer support manager for vendors for BMW-Rolls-Royce in Germany.
Two U.S. digital satellite radio ventures are vying for shares of the lucrative automobile market. Just one week after XM Satellite Radio completed an exclusive arrangement to offer its satellite radio receivers in vehicles built by General Motors, CD Radio countered with a similar alliance with Ford Motor Co. Ford has agreed to install CD Radio receivers as early as 2001 in Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Mazda, Jaguar, Aston Martin and Volvo vehicles. The deals are huge for XM and CD Radio because financial analysts expect the bulk of digital radio subscribers in the U.S.
Marconi Avionics and Sterling Dynamics have agreed to collaborate on active control technology. The alliance between the two U.K. companies is expected to reduce integration costs for active stick technology in which control sticks can be programmed to specific circumstances or pilot/operator requirements. The technology is aimed at flight control applications for civil and military aircraft, such as Marconi's work on Eurofighter and the KDX-2. It also can be employed in other fields where active feel or feedback from a stick control is required.
Charles S. Ream has been named senior vice president-strategic initiatives, mergers and acquisitions of the Raytheon Systems Co., Arlington, Va. He was senior vice president-finance. Ream has been succeeded by Gary W. McCauley, who was vice president-finance for the Command, Control, Communication and Information Unit. Philip E. Graham has become vice president-information technology/chief information officer. He was information technology executive for Rockwell Collins, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
American Airlines is being forced to rearrange its daily flights from Dallas' Love Field to Austin because the competition is adding flights to Houston. American shares one of two gates at Love Field with rival Continental Express, which plans to add the flights beginning on July 9 in response to increased business travel demand during peak periods. Continental leases the gates from the City of Dallas and has preferential rights when flights are added.
The Rockot launch vehicle's first commercial flight has been set for December from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia to loft two Iridium satellites for Motorola, Khrunichev SS-RPC announced. A demonstration launch is planned for the third quarter of 1999. Previous test flights have been conducted from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The new light launcher is essentially a decommissioned RS-18 (SS-19) ICBM with a Breeze-K upper stage.
Midway Island, best remembered for the June 4, 1942, carrier battle that put Japan on the defensive in World War II, has become an eco-tourism destination and potential haven for extended-range twinjet operations in the North Pacific. Midway is part of the Hawaiian Island chain, 1,300 mi. northwest of Honolulu at about 28 deg. N. Lat. Its position is actually south of Los Angeles on a straight line across the Pacific, which makes it seem an unlikely site for an alternate airport for north Pacific operations.
