VIRGIN ATLANTIC AIRWAYS WILL BREAK THE DUOPOLY enjoyed by British Airways and United Airlines on the well-traveled, highly profitable London-Washington route next year. Having obtained the necessary takeoff and landing slots at London Heathrow Airport, the U.K.-based Virgin expects to begin service, probably in May, to Washington Dulles International Airport with Airbus A340 aircraft. Washington will be Virgin's eighth U.S. gateway.
Oliver W. Bootz has been named senior sales manager for aftermarket products for the B/E Aerospace Seating Products Div., Litchfield, Conn. He was Midwestern sales manager for the Brice Manufacturing Co.
RAYTHEON HAS SIGNED a contract extension with the government of Brazil on the Amazon region surveillance system (SIVAM). The action came a week after Raytheon denied that its Brazilian representative had been involved in an attempt to bribe a former Brazilian presidential aide in connection with SIVAM. Raytheon officials note there is no evidence of bribery in transcripts of conversations leaked to the press. Police reported the tapes they have of these conversations have been erased.
REAR ADM. JOSEPH J. DANTONE, JR., has been tapped to head up an implementation team that will establish a new U.S. National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), the CIA and Pentagon announced last week (AW&ST Nov. 27, p. 19). Dantone, currently deputy director for military support at the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), is also expected to be on a short list of candidates to head the new agency once it is up and running next Oct. 1.
Sabena Belgian World Airlines, the Air France group, Swissair and Iberia are suffering from mounting social unrest, paving the way for additional ground worker and flight crew walkouts. Sabena management's surprise initiative to unilaterally suspend all salary agreements is generating a strong social controversy in Belgium. Union delegates, speaking on behalf of cockpit crews, flight attendants and ground workers, voted a one-day walkout on Nov. 29 and are threatening a strike if the planned cost-cutting measures are implemented.
The U.S. Air Force has performed more than 100 approaches using a GEC-Marconi ILS/MLS/GPS multimode receiver in a C-135C transport and an S-76 helicopter and plans to develop a production version of the unit by 1997.
BALL AEROSPACE&TECHNOLOGIES CORP. will seek to improve and expand intelligence information collection, processing and analysis capabilities for the U.S. Air Force National Air Intelligence Center under a new $49-million contract. NAIC's Measurement and Signature Intelligence (Masint) Exploitation Capability Improvement contract extends through September, 2000. Most of the data are acquired by a variety of infrared, electro-optical and radar remote-sensing systems.
MORE SMALLER CARRIERS, REGIONALS AND STARTUPS are turning to automated crew scheduling. Air UK Ltd., the U.K.'s third largest carrier, recently started using SBS International's PC-platform based Crew Planning System and in spring, 1996, plans to implement SBS' Maestro Crew Scheduling System. The PC planning system, which is expected to handle scheduling of about 1,000 Air UK crewmembers, creates trips and tracks crew availability for those trips.
Rockwell Collins has developed a new flight management system tailored to the needs of long-range corporate jets for use in the Challenger 604 and plans to compete with well-established suppliers in this high-end market segment. Honeywell has FMS systems on long-range business jets, inlcuding the Challenger 601-3R. Universal Avionics Systems Corp., AlliedSignal and Rockwell Collins also supply FMS systems in corporate jets.
THE U.S. ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS Agency plans to spend nearly $500 million in Fiscal 1996--roughly one quarter of its budget--on advanced electronic technology programs, according to ARPA director Larry Lynn. Emphasis will be on developing design, fabrication and testing techniques for microcircuits with 10-100 million transistors on a single chip.
WHEN IT COMES TO DIVERTING AIRPORT REVENUES, the City of Los Angeles has no peer, according to Air Transport Assn. president Carol Hallett. She told Aero Club of Washington a report by the Transportation Dept.'s inspector general detailed the city's efforts to ``illegally get money off the airport.'' Among LA's supposed ``important aviation safety initiatives'' paid for with airline fees: construction of elaborate floats for three Rose Bowl parades. Adding insult to injury, she quipped, ``Just our luck, none of them won!''
WATCH FOR TRADE SHOWS TO CHANGE IN 1996. While organizers of the German International Aerospace Exhibition were here last week eliciting government and industry support for next year's ILA show, Dayton Air and Trade Show brass were resigning. Dayton president Henry Ogrodzinski and executive director Jim Wood quit after their board decided to outsource the annual air show and drop support of the biennial trade show. The latter event was losing money and never established itself as a major aerospace event.
With the launch of service to Newark, N.J., this month, Western Pacific Airlines established itself as a coast-to-coast U.S. carrier built on low prices, brash innovation and fortuitous timing.
Poor weather conditions and the limited capabilities of airfields in war-torn, former Yugoslavia pose tough challenges for U.S. airlift planners tasked with supporting NATO peace implementation forces. Col. David Sloan, Air Operations Sqdn. commander at U.S. Air Forces Europe, said his unit is putting the final touches on U.S. theater airlift plans. Sloan said the overall airlift operation will not be as large as that for Desert Shield or even Provide Hope in Rwanda ``because it's in our own backyard.''
John Pum (see photo) has rejoined FlightSafety International as Southwest U.S. regional marketing manager, based at Ontario (Calif.) International Airport. He was vice president-marketing of MedAire Inc. and marketing manager for FlightSafety in Toledo, Ohio, and Long Beach, Calif.
HAINAN AIRLINES HAS BECOME CHINA'S FIRST airline with foreign investors. The Civil Aviation Authority of China and the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation have approved the sale of 25% of Hainan's stock, for $25 million, to American Aviation Investment, a fund partially controlled by financier George Soros, according to the official Xinhua news agency. Hainan Airlines was started in 1989 and was China's first stock-holding airline company. It operates five Boeing 737s.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS ANTICIPATE IMPROVED COMMUNICATIONS and more flights over the Gulf of Mexico now that Harris Corp. Transcomm Div. has won the FAA's $10-million Buoy Communications System development contract. ATC now limits the number of flights because of the limited range capabilities of traditional VHF radio communications in use. Harris is to equip six strategically placed buoys in the Gulf of Mexico with satellite communications, with the first two buoys expected to be operational by December, 1996.
The U.S. is expected to exercise its aerial peacekeeping skills in resupplying, warning and protecting the 60,000 troops being readied to police the region in compliance with the fragile treaty established by the leaders of Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia.
CONGRESS MAY HAVE NO CHOICE but to go along with NASA's plan to award a noncompetitive contract for space shuttle operations to United Space Alliance (USA), the Rockwell/Lockheed Martin joint venture. The plan doesn't appear to pass the ``smell test,'' says Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R.-Wis.). But going a different route could delay the space station assembly a year, Administrator Daniel Goldin says. USA officials declined to testify.
Chester L. Ekstrand, director of flight training for the Boeing Commercial Airplane Group, received the Flight Safety Foundation's Adm. Luis de Florez Flight Safety Award at a joint meeting of the FSF, International Federation of Airworthiness and International Air Transport Assn. in Seattle. Ekstrand was cited for work in ``developing safety training aids that have reduced accidents and incidents worldwide.''
OVERALL SPENDING ON DEFENSE by the United Kingdom will remain relatively constant over the next two years despite the government's new budget, which calls for cuts from previous plans of 500 million pounds ($320.5 million) in 1996-97 and 400 million pounds ($256.4 million) in 1997-98. The cuts are largely offset by savings of 680 million pounds ($435.9 million) achieved this past year and the previous year through efficiency improvements and program delays, which the Ministry of Defense will be allowed to keep.
Bob Phillips has been named vice president-marketing and sales, Keith Windham director of commercial and regional airline sales and Roger J. Forand director of government program development, all for the AVSCO Aviation Service Corp., College Park, Ga. Phillips was a financial consultant for Merrill Lynch. Windham was an account manager for Barfield/AVSCO, and Forand was government programs manager for Goodyear.
John Horsburgh (see photo) has been appointed director of operations at Aviall Caledonian Engine Services, Prestwick, Scotland. He was director/general manager of the CF6 engine product line there.
Coordinated programs for three categories of airborne early-warning and control aircraft, started in the early 1980s for the air and naval forces of the former Soviet Union, have been stalled by the downturn in Russian military spending.
