USAIR CHAIRMAN Seth E. Schofield said last week the airline is not holding merger discussions with other carriers and has no plans to do so, but did not rule out the possibility of a future alliance. Talks with United Airlines and American Airlines did not progress beyond the exploratory stage before they were terminated earlier this month. To survive in the long term, however, USAir must slash its high labor costs, and soon. The airline faces tough negotiations in 1996 with its pilots, flight attendants and ground workers.
A U.S.-British team has completed about 40% of a planned 6,500-hr. test program aimed at validating the consortium's candidate for the Joint Advanced Strike Technology program. Scale model tests of the McDonnell Douglas/Northrop Grumman/British Aerospace team's JAST candidate are confirming performance predictions concerning aircraft drag, stability and engine hot gas ingestion.
THE U.S. R&D BUDGET must be managed as a coherent whole rather than piecemeal if the nation is to continue its R&D success record within new budget constraints, a report by the National Academy of Science, National Academy of Engineering and Institute of Medicine concludes. Besides greater prioritization, the report, ``Allocating Federal Funds for Science and Technology,'' also calls for strong peer review of science allocations and international collaboration for large, costly science projects.
Termination of overtime flying and the prospect of limited strikes have spurred FedEx to wet-lease cargo aircraft and use ancillary personnel to supplement flight crews. The Master Executive Council (MEC) of the Air Line Pilots Assn. (ALPA) at FedEx late last week escalated tensions between the company and pilots by authorizing an advertising campaign, boycotts and informational picketing against FedEx.
Airbus Industrie expects to be ready to deliver the first extended-range A330-200 during the second quarter of 1998, and additional A330/A340 growth derivatives are being considered. Last week, the European consortium's supervisory board approved a $450-million investment to complete development of a new version of the twin-engine transport. However, no launch orders have been concluded yet. ``But the A330-200 clearly fills a market requirement,'' an Airbus Industrie official said.
Ronald E. Walser has been appointed vice president-marketing and sales of the Aero Kool Corp., Hialeah, Fla. He was director of purchasing and stores for Arrow Air of Miami.
Independent-minded Malaysia will cap the year's air show activities, and perhaps the year's order books, this week with the third Langkawi International Maritime&Aerospace Exhibition. Called LIMA '95, the biennial exhibition reflects the interest of Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in a strong defense.
Jerry Hannifin was given the Cecil A. Brownlow Publication Award in recognition of his contribution to excellence in aviation writing. Hannifin is chief aerospace correspondent of Time magazine.
THE HOUSE VOTED 216-208 to send the Fiscal 1996 VA-HUD appropriations bill, which includes NASA funding, back to conference with the Senate with instructions to add another $213 million for veterans' medical care programs. The bill contains $13.8 billion for NASA, but conferees may now have to cut into that to help find the extra funds for the veterans' accounts.
Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, which led development of some of the most successful black aircraft programs in history, is now asking the U.S. government to loosen its grip on classified information. In a white paper submitted to a U.S. government commission studying reform of classification policies, Skunk Works officials argue that the U.S. is being overly cautious in its classification of information, resulting in added expenses to industry and inflated procurement costs to the government.
DELTA AIR LINES HAS REFINED A COCKPIT RESOURCE management training methodology for shaping automation-related cockpit behavior. The scenario-based Special Purpose Operational Training approach aims at developing a limited set of behavioral objectives in short, focused simulator sessions. Instructor coaching and intervention is encouraged, according to Vince Mancuso, manager, corporate human factors. The airline has found Spot an improvement over traditional Loft simulator sessions in developing aircrew technical, procedural and CRM skills.
Part of a $107.5-million revenue bond issue in mid-November will be used to begin site preparation and grading for a new 16,000-ft. runway at Denver International Airport. The sixth runway's length would allow heavier domestic and international takeoffs, especially during hot weather conditions. Last summer, 95F+ days pushed density altitudes at the mile-high airport in excess of 10,000 ft., forcing even turboprop-powered regional aircraft to modify procedures or occasionally abort a takeoff.
MORE AIR FORCE PROMOTIONS ARE BEING PLANNED if and when Gen. Joseph W. Ralston moves up to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Gen. Richard Hawley is a leading contender to take over the Air Combat Command. Lt. Gen. Michael Ryan, now running air operations over Bosnia, would replace him as the chief of U.S. Air Forces Europe. However, 9th Air Force commander Lt. Gen. John Jumper's stock is on the rise, and that may alter that part of the plan. With the foot-in-mouth retirement of Adm.
U.S. NAVY AND AIR FORCE officials are a step closer to fielding a new primary trainer aircraft with the General Accounting Office's announcement that it has rejected Rockwell's protest of the Joint Primary Aircraft Training Systems (JPATS) contract award to Raytheon Aircraft. A second protest from Cessna is still pending, but it is expected to be decided sometime in December-February. ``We hope the GAO decision indicates that we are nearer to a resolution of the remaining protests . . .
Jan Salsgiver has been appointed president of the Arrow/Schweber Electronics Group, Melville, N.Y., and Michael Long has been named president of Gates/Arrow Distributing Inc., Greenville, S.C. Salsgiver was president of Zeus Electronics, and Long was senior vice president-sales of Capstone Electronics, both Arrow subsidiaries.
An electric mechanism developed by Hollingshead International retracts overhead video displays for passenger entertainment systems when not in use. It was developed to permit easier retrofit of entertainment systems into the passenger compartment of narrow-body aircraft. Two sizes of mechanisms exist to accommodate 5-in.- or 7-in.-diagonal LCD displays provided by Hollingshead. In the aircraft modification, the video panel replaces an existing speaker panel.
NASA IS ENCOURAGING AIRLINES and other pilot training organizations to make use of the approximately 50,000 full-form incident reports on file with its anonymous Aviation Safety Reporting System. The data, available on CD-ROM from AeroKnowledge, Pennington, N.J., can easily be searched and categorized using keywords. Identification of common problems can be used to build written, computer- or simulator-based training scenarios that will enable pilots and crews to avoid similar situations.
JAMES OTT AND RAYMOND E. NEIDL, authors of Airline Odyssey: The Airline Industry's Turbulent Flight Into the Future, will take questions about current and future issues of airline deregulation in an on-line conference presented by AVIATION WEEK&SPACE TECHNOLOGY on Dec. 4 at 9 p.m. EST in the CompuServe Convention Center. Ott is a contributing transport editor at Aviation Week and has covered airline deregulation for 17 years. Neidl is a managing director at the investment firm Furman Selz. To attend the conference, GO CONVENTION on CompuServe.
A HIGH-LEVEL RUSSIAN space agency delegation is scheduled to arrive at Johnson Space Center Dec. 11 to discuss the possible transfer of the new Spektr and Priroda science modules from Mir to the international space station. Senior NASA officials say they're open to the idea--so long as it does not affect station's schedule and cost. Spektr was launched to Mir last May, and Priroda is slated for launch in March, 1996.
Richard Troutte has been appointed vice president-sales and Nelson Chan vice president-marketing of the SanDisk Corp., Santa Clara, Calif. Troutte was managing director of Far East business development, and Chan was director of marketing.
Korea Telecom expects to issue a request for proposals early next year for a 7,000-lb. class satellite as a follow-on to Koreasat-2, which is due for launch Dec. 23. The RFP will be issued sooner than expected as part of Korea Telecom's recovery effort from the bad launch of Koreasat-1 on Aug. 8. A rare failure of a McDonnell Douglas Delta 2 booster put the 3,200-lb. satellite into a low transfer orbit (AW&ST Aug. 14, p. 63). The satellite is functioning well, but its station-keeping fuel supply was largely consumed to reposition it.
SAS HAS BEGUN A PROGRAM that tracks the last five landing sites of aircraft suffering unwitnessed foreign object damage. The technique, which can be used by military and non-airline operators as well, seeks to establish common threads to help identify and correct FOD-prone locations or practices, according to Ivar Busk, airside safety coordinator for Scandinavian Airlines System in Denmark. The carrier's transports average about five flights a day and most FOD damage is discovered during night checks.
RESEARCHERS AT OAK RIDGE (Tenn.) National Laboratory have developed a thin-film lithium battery that could prove useful in size- and weight-constrained applications. The rechargeable battery is thinner than plastic wrap and can be manufactured in a variety of shapes and sizes. Specific power ranges from 50-10,000 microwatts/milligram and specific energy from 50-1,000 microwatt-hours/milligram, according to John Bates, group leader, Solid State Div. Likely applications include portable communications devices, micromachines and personal hazardous gas sensor cards.
