John L. Fugh has been appointed president of McDonnell Douglas-China. He is a former judge advocate general of the U.S. Army and partner in the Washington law firm of McGuire, Woods, Battle and Boothe. Roger A. Krone has been named vice president-treasurer of the McDonnell Douglas Corp. in St. Louis. He was division director of information systems at McDonnell Douglas Aerospace.
Harry Halamandaris has been named a corporate vice president of Litton Industries Inc., Woodland Hills, Calif., and will head the electronic warfare systems group. He succeeds Michael R. Brown, who has been appointed executive vice president/chief operating officer. Halamandaris was a corporate vice president/ group executive at Kaiser Aerospace and Electronics Inc., Van Nuys, Calif.
The Vympel Design Bureau is flight testing an improved version of the AA-11 Archer with a seeker capable of viewing 90-deg. off boresight as the U.S. conducts initial tests of seekers with similar wide-angle capability for the AIM-9X.
Simula Inc. of Phoenix, Ariz., will install and test a system of forward, left and right side airbags in the McDonnell Douglas AH-64 helicopter under a pair of advanced development, engineering and manufacturing contracts worth $7.5 million.
China's aviation leaders will not decide until the end of the year on a Western partner to help them build the ``Asian Express'' regional jet. Aviation Industries of China President Zhu Yuli said last week that AVIC is still evaluating four proposals for the AE-100, as the aircraft is tentatively called.
DUNCAN AVIATION IS EXPERIMENTING with various work shifts, including three consecutive-day 12-hr. shifts. The new hangar routines are aimed at improving customer responsiveness and turnaround times. The Lincoln, Neb.,-based maintenance and completion center recently began a new ``Quickturn'' service program that restores business jets to productive service more quickly for the same cost.
Mercy Air is expanding service and planning to add fixed-wing aircraft to its aeromedical helicopter fleet. The largest U.S. aeromedical helicopter operator not affiliated with a hospital system, Mercy Air flies four Bell 222UTs (below), two Model 222Bs and a single Bell 412 (top), according to David Dolstein, executive vice president. A second 412 is leased out. The four 222UTs and the 412 are based in Southern California. In a switch from conventional practice, the helicopters mostly are based at strategically located fire stations.
INMARSAT INTENDS TO PROVIDE a new aeronautical satellite communication service tailored to give regional airlines and corporate jets cheaper telephone, fax and data communications in flight. The Aero-1 service will be provided by four Inmarsat-3 satellites, slated for first launch next year. The use of five spotbeams from the satellite will permit smaller, lighter and cheaper avionics and antennas. Comsat Mobile Communications is improving its satellite messaging service to aircraft.
The European Space Agency and Russia are planning a 44-day extension to their EuroMir flight. ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter and cosmonauts Sergei Avdeev and Yuri Ghidzenko were launched to Mir Sept. 5 for what was planned as a 135-day flight. But a six-week extension is necessary because of Russian problems in funding the SL-4 booster needed for a replacement mission in mid-January, Energia officials said.
Marise Rene Stewart (see photo) has been named Washington-based director of government affairs for Textron Inc. She was legislative director in the office of Rep. Bill McCollum (R.-Fla.).
THE FAA HAS ORDERED new rules and penalties concerning bogus parts. Reports of suspected unapproved parts, previously voluntary, will become mandatory for all agency-approved repair stations, airlines and mechanics. The new regulations, announced late last week, also will require the destruction of scrap parts and the creation of a voluntary accreditation program for distributors and dealers meeting quality control standards. The FAA will ask Congress to raise penalties ten-fold, to $10,000 from $1,000 per violation.
Marilyn M. Hoppe has been appointed vice president-revenue management of Trans World Airlines. She was a vice president of America West Airlines. Jeffrey C. Ashworth has been named chairman of the Aeronautical Science Dept. at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Prescott, Ariz. He was military assistant to the deputy assistant Air Force secretary for research and engineering.
Larry Baker (see photo) has been appointed vice president-operations of Stevens Aviation, Greenville, S.C. He was executive vice president/acting president of Page Avjet. Named at Stevens' Atlanta facility were: Richard McFadden, director of engineering and quality assurance; Bob Arcand, director of technical service sales; Joe Geiger, Northeast U.S. technical services sales manager; and Gary Blackstone, director of operations. Glen Cothran has succeeded Blackstone as technical services manager at Nashville, Tenn.
OBITUARY: Walter C. Williams, whose career spanned more than a half century at the leading edge of developments in air and space, died Oct. 7 at age 76. Williams was the first director of what became the Dryden Flight Research Center and served during X-15 flights. Williams began his government aerospace career with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1940. During World War 2, he was project engineer in successful efforts to improve the maneuverability and high-speed characteristics of fighters such as the P-47, P-51, and F6F.
LAPA is attempting to bring elements of the low-fare, no-frills service pioneered by U.S. carrier Southwest Airlines to South America. Lineas Aereas Privadas Argentinas, a privately owned carrier, is battling price and political competition from entrenched major carrier Aerolineas Argentinas, its subsidiary Austral, and their 44-jet domestic fleet. High fuel and spares costs also present economic challenges. Since acquiring its first Boeing 737-200 in March, 1993, LAPA has grown to a fleet of six of the type.
Photograph: Rafael Python 4 has 90-deg. off-boresight capability and agile aerodynamics. Rafael's Python 4 air-to-air missile is arguably the best short-range missile in the world, but it is not a likely contender to fill the U.S. short-range requirement. ``Everyone agrees that the Python 4 is slightly better than the Russian AA-11,'' Lt. Cdr. Don E. Gaddis, the U.S. Navy's air-to-air missile requirements officer, said. The AA-11 is the threat that is driving the AIM-9X program, and there are concerns about Python 4 proliferation.
Olympic Airways expects to show a net profit in 1995 for the first time since 1978, according to Rigas Doganis, the airline's chairman and chief executive officer since February. Doganis, former head of the Air Transport Dept. in the College of Aeronautics at Britain's Cranfield University, attributed the turnaround to a major restructuring put in place after the European Commission last year approved a state aid package.
Bill Linkfield has been appointed chief of the Aircraft Div. of EUA Air Support Inc. of Dallas. He was supervisor of quality control for E-Systems, Greenville, Tex. Stan Nielsen has been named chief of the EUA Component Div. He is a retired U.S. Coast Guard chief petty officer.
AIRCRAFT WILL BECOME less crucial to the Navy, while weapons increase in importance, Boorda predicts. By 2020, the weapon an aircraft fires will be as important as the aircraft itself. Boorda also anticipates the Navy will buy a missile, perhaps a version of the Army's Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), that can be fired from shipboard vertical launchers to hit armored targets ashore in support of ground forces.
Hudson B. Drake (see photo), senior vice president of Teledyne Inc. of Los Angeles and president of its aviation and electronic segment, has been named 1995 Executive of the Year by the National Management Assn. The award is given to a U.S. industrialist who has contributed leadership toward the preservation and advancement of the free-enterprise system.
Air Force officials report that low-altitude B-2 radar tests are going well, after solving software problems that stalled those flights for 16 months. Officials described the radar's terrain-detecting capability as good for this stage of the bomber's development. However, they confirmed that there had been a problem with the software's fail-safe logic designed to command the aircraft to climb if there is a loss of data from the terrain-following system.
ARGENTINA'S FIRST SPACECRAFT, Satelite de Applicaciones Cientificas (SAC-B), has completed environmental testing in Brazil and is in storage awaiting assignment of a launch date. The 421-lb. (191-kg.) satellite developed by the Argentine Space Agency and built by Invap S.E. is waiting for a ride on a Pegasus launch vehicle along with a companion payload--NASA's High Energy Transient Experiment (HETE). SAC-B will test new detector technology and study solar flares, gamma-ray bursts, diffuse X-ray cosmic background, and energetic neutral atoms.
Japanese researchers are planning to attach Global Positioning System satellite navigation receivers and other sensors to dozens of blue whales, which will then transmit data to a specialized Japanese whale-monitoring satellite launched into polar orbit. The $2-million ecological project is under development by NEC Corp., Yokohama, and Japan's Chiba Institute of Technology, southeast of Tokyo. The project, which is planned for launch in 1997, was presented at the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) congress in Oslo.
RUSSIAN TELEPHONE SERVICES would be enhanced with a satellite network to be developed by Scientific Atlanta Inc. Teleport-TP selected Scientific Atlanta to build what both hope will grow to 125 earth stations by the end of the decade. The voice, fax, data and videoconferencing system is designed to use Intelsat 704, which is to be launched to a 66-deg. East Long. slot next year. The companies say the network would be the first private digital satellite system to offer on-demand services spanning the 6.6-million-sq.-mi. Russian Federation.
THEY ARE STILL AT ODDS over whether unapproved parts are a threat to aviation safety. But at least the FAA and the Transportation Dept.'s Office of Inspector General are teaming up to put parts crooks in jail. The inspector's office, with special help from the FBI, will assist the FAA in training its field inspectors to conduct more thorough checks of component suppliers and to improve their skills at recognizing suspect parts and falsified documentation.
