The European Commission confirmed on Feb. 27 it has prohibited the proposed acquisition of Aer Lingus by low-cost carrier Ryanair, because “the most likely outcome of this transaction would have been quite simple: When flying to and from Ireland, passengers wouldn't have been able to choose between as many options as they can today, and they would have ended up paying higher fares,“ says the EC vice president for competition policy, Joaquín Almunia. Aer Lingus welcomed the ruling.
Having produced a sorry excess of fractured syntax, bent nails, bounced landings and brainstorms begetting yawns over the years, I have long admired golf's greatest convention: the Mulligan. It is the linksmen's way of simultaneously accommodating failure and encouraging renewal. Do it again, do it better.
Kathy C. Hassenpflug (see photo) has joined Grand Prairie, Texas-based American Eurocopter as manager of human resources for its Texas operations. She has held similar management positions for TRW and Animal Health International.
India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) has orbited seven spacecraft, including the Indo-French Saral ocean-monitoring satellite and the world's first smartphone-operated nanosatellite. The 44-meter-tall (144-ft.) Indian Space Research Organization's (ISRO) PSLV-C20 vehicle lifted off Feb. 25 from the Satish Dhawan space center. The launch marks ISRO's 101th space mission and the first of the 10 planned this year. New Israeli Space Program
The head of the U.K.'s air navigation service is urging government to take the country's busy airspace into consideration as it examines how to build future capacity. Richard Deakin, CEO of National Air Traffic Services (NATS), says several of the leading ideas to solve London's airport capacity problems have not taken into account the challenges of the airspace around them. Officials deciding on the future of London's airports must plan for more than just concrete and terminal buildings, he says.
Japanese industrial conglomerate Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries (IHI) is on track to launch its Epsilon rocket in August carrying the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Sprint-A planetary observatory. The solid-fuel rocket is designed to launch satellites up to 1.2 tons into low Earth orbit, and satellites weighing up to 900 lb. into Sun-synchronous orbit, he says.
USAF Gen. (ret.) Arthur J. Lichte has been named to the board of Wilmington, Ohio-based Air Transport Services Group. He was commander of the Air Mobility Command at Scott AFB, Ill.
Manchester Airports Group (MAG) has sealed its deal to buy London's Stansted Airport. The agreement with Heathrow Airports Ltd.—formerly BAA—was completed Feb. 28 and sees MAG paying £1.5 billion ($2.38 billion) for London's third busiest airport and its low-cost-carrier gateway. The deal follows the U.K. Competition Commission's July 2011 ruling that BAA had to sell two of its U.K. airports.
C. Megan Urry (see photo), astrophysicist and chair of Yale University's Physics Department, has been elected president of the American Astronomical Society for a one-year term, succeeding David Helfand.
The merger deal struck by American Airlines and US Airways has been widely characterized as the endgame for U.S. airline consolidation, a process begun in 1978 when the government deregulated the industry. After all, in just the last five years, the number of mainline carriers has shrunk from six to three, and low-cost behemoth Southwest Airlines gobbled up AirTran Airways. That leaves the nation with just four large airlines. With the “Big Four” collectively accounting for almost three-quarters of U.S.
The price of EU Allowances (EUAs) under the EU Emissions Trading System rose in February, but fell back in the second half of the month on questions over whether a fast-track process can be launched to approve the European Commission's bid to delay EUA auctions in 2013-15. EUAs for delivery in December 2013 rose to a peak of €5.30 per metric ton ($6.95) on Feb. 21, after the EU Parliament's environment (ENVI) committee on Feb. 19 backed the EC's proposed amendment to the ETS Directive which would clarify its power to alter the timing of auctions.
The fact that large-scale aerospace and defense manufacturing is no longer as prominent in Southern California as it was in the Cold War-era is not news. But the region still leads the nation in the number of small suppliers and many are trying to come up with new ways of doing business, especially as they see ominous headlines about defense cuts from Washington.
Boeing has placed 10 777-300ERs with Air Lease Corp., adding to the 15 -300ERs the Los Angeles-based company already has on order. Although American Airlines completed a previously announced order for 43 widebodies earlier this year, the Air Lease agreement is Boeing's first new widebody placement of the year. Meanwhile, the company delivered its first 777 produced at the top rate of 8.3 aircraft per month that it has been developing for the past 32 months. As of Feb. 28, Boeing's 777 back-order list stood at 367 aircraft.
Dennis Tito's plan to send a crew of two around Mars is getting a big assist from NASA via a Space Act Agreement (SAA) with its Ames Research Center (see page 24). While Tito will repay NASA for its work, the agency's inspector general and a powerful member of Congress are examining SAAs—which are less restrictive than standard federal business arrangements—to see if they are being abused. That is one of the charges in a whistle-blower report on alleged malfeasance at Ames (AW&ST Feb. 18, p. 19). Rep.
Charles Lindbergh's 1927 flight from New York to Paris to win the $25,000 Orteig Prize inspired the $10 million Ansari X Prize for private suborbital spaceflight, which was won for SpaceShipOne in 2004 by a Scaled Composites team led by designer Burt Rutan and financier Paul Allen. In turn, they are serving as inspiration for a growing number of incentive challenges run by government and industry to cast a wider net for ideas in a bid to spur innovation and solve problems in aerospace and defense.
U.S. defense budgets are declining, but Parker Hannifin, a leading supplier of hydraulics, fluid systems and flight controls, still sees lots of opportunity in aerospace. With major positions on platforms such as the Airbus A350, Bombardier CSeries, Comac C919 and Embraer Legacy 450/500, the company projects annual aerospace sales will rise two-thirds by mid-2016, to $3.5 billion. Roger Sherrard, president of Parker's aerospace unit, and Thomas L. Williams, executive vice president and operating officer, spoke with AW&ST Editor-in-Chief Joseph C.
Honeywell is fine-tuning a civil helicopter-specific combined vision system based on a recent flight-test campaign that evaluated fused synthetic vision and enhanced vision technologies for the primary flight displays of higher-end models. Though the company had planned to begin offering a helicopter synthetic vision system (SVS) by 2010, complexities in presenting real and database-generated terrain, obstacles and various safety features to a helicopter pilot have slowed the process. Work continues, but no new date has been issued.
The ongoing, expanding F-35 fiasco reminds us that then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates forgot the old admonition about “a bird in hand” when he canceled the F-22 Raptor, likely to remain the gold standard for a generation or more. What's more, key U.S. allies Japan, Australia, Canada, Britain and Israel were eager to take another 100 if Congress had allowed F-22 exports—at an incremental cost likely lower than that of the far less capable F-35.
Australia and Saudi Arabia have formally inducted their new Airbus A330 multirole tanker transport aircraft into service. Australia announced that it had achieved initial operating capability for the aircraft on Feb. 26. The Royal Saudi Air Force formally introduced the type into service a day later.
