In “Not Even Close: The Better Choice for LAS” (AW&ST April 15, p. 58), Fred George makes a compelling case for the Embraer A-29B Super Tucano over the Beechcraft AT-6. But this seems to me like winning an order for muskets from the Confederate States of America on April 1, 1865.
Brazil's armed forces are learning to adjust to the country's rapidly changing economic climate. While the country has experienced a slowdown in the last three years, its mining and huge oil and gas reserves have transformed the economy. But with a significant proportion of the wealth located offshore, Brazil is having to learn quickly about how to protect it, and has decided to take lessons from those experienced in the business.
Reiner Winkler has been named to become CEO of Germany-based MTU Aero Engines, effective Jan. 1. He has been chief financial officer and will succeed Egon Behle.
Boeing's 737 twinjet, aviation's most successful commercial transport, is breaking new production records: 38 aircraft are now produced each month at the manufacturer's Renton, Wash., facilities and soon, 42. Recently, the 7,500th 737 was delivered and, in the wake of the MAX next-generation model's promising start, the show is certain to go on for decades to come.
Patrick Fitzgerald has been named senior vice president-integrated marketing and communications of FedEx, Memphis, Tenn. He succeeds Bill Margaritis, who was corporate vice president-global communications and investor relations.
Cliff Greenblatt (see photo) has been promoted to general counsel/vice president from deputy general counsel of TASC Inc., Chantilly, Va. He also has been an assistant general counsel at General Dynamics.
Chances are pretty good that the pilots who will fly the cockpits of tomorrow are today sitting in front of a computer, playing very life-like 3-D video games. Studying how those young minds learn will be crucial to developing not only the cockpit and interfaces, but also the training regime.
NASA plans a mission concept review this summer to wring out its bold proposal to capture a small near-Earth asteroid and place it in “translunar space” for study by spacewalking astronauts (AW&ST April 1/8, p. 17). But the agency is well along in connecting dots for the mission, which Human Exploration and Operations chief William Gerstenmaier describes as a marriage of the disparate capabilities that would be needed to return samples—and perhaps eventually humans—from Mars and beyond.
Bruce DeWitt has been appointed CEO of Minneapolis-based Logic PD. He was vice president/general manager of the Armament Systems Div. of Alliant Techsystems.
American Airlines may have unwittingly found a new use for the 8,500 iPads that its pilots now carry to hold aircraft documents and charts: electronic flight plans. It turns out the computer “glitch” the company experienced on April 16 had nothing to do with the Sabre reservation system, as first reported, and everything to do with flight plans. The glitch caused a shutdown of the carrier's U.S. network for several hours, resulting in the cancellation of hundreds of flights and lingering disruptions through the next day.
John Croft (Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Olathe, Kan.; Phoenix and Tucson)
A line from The Beatles' rock anthem “Back in the U.S.S.R.” nicely sums up a recent morning for Capt. Roger Moore as he piloted an “airliner” from New York to San Francisco: “On the way, the paper bag was on my knee. Man, I had a dreadful flight . . . .” Moore had just endured 5 hr. of constant turbulence, but along with getting paid, he did it for a good cause: making sure certain next-generation avionics are a good fit for the flight deck.
Indonesia's Lion Air will continue to grow its fleet, despite the April 13 incident at Bali's Ngurah Rai International Airport in which the airline's Boeing 737-800, local registration PK-LKS, landed in the sea—short of Runway 09—and broke in two. All 108 people onboard survived, but 46 were hospitalized. Lion President Rusdi Kirana said none of the injuries were critical.
Craig Hoskins has been appointed vice president-safety and technical affairs for Airbus Americas, Herndon, Va. He will succeed Bill Bozin, who plans to retire in July. Hoskins has been vice president/chief safety officer and was an A320 captain for JetBlue Airways.
I enjoyed Michael Bruno's Up Front column,”Slaughterhouse Five,” in which he requested a list of sacred cows that could be eliminated in order to tighten the U.S. budget (AW&ST Feb. 18, p. 12). I've mulled it over and have more to add: •Remove troops from South Korea. Its economy must be 10 times that of North Korea, and the latter has no foreign troops. Our presence is definitely an aggravation, so let us get out and leave South Korea to pick up the slack. •
Metamaterials technology is an emerging field based on the development of tiny, man-made structures that at certain frequencies exhibit acoustic, electromagnetic or optical properties not found in nature.
The FAA predicts flights at 13 major U.S. airports will experience “heavy to moderate” delays because of sequester-driven air traffic controller furloughs slated to begin on April 21, including an average delay of 50 min. at Chicago O'Hare International Airport and maximum delay of 210 min. at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. FAA Administrator Michael Huerta says maximum delays are likely to be infrequent, but that the overall threat to airline performance and passenger convenience is real.
Jeffrey Carrithers, who is president/CEO of Globalair.com, Louisville, Ky., has been named to the board of directors of the Kentucky Institute for Aerospace Education.
