Giorgio Zappa (see photo), former chief operating officer of Finmeccanica, has become CEO of Italian aerospace company Vitrociset. He succeeds Antonio Bontempi, who will remain head of operations. Gen. (ret) Mario Arpino is retiring as chairman.
Ike Song (see photo), vice president-situational awareness systems at Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Navigation Systems Div., Falls Church, Va., has been named to the National Association of Asian American Professionals 100.
The Irish commercial aircraft MRO industry is positioning itself for growth, as Ireland's economy slowly recovers from its own financial crisis and the global economy falters
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Antonio L. Elias is one of three executives of the Orbital Sciences Corp., Dulles, Va., to be promoted, effective Sept. 10. He will become executive vice president/chief technical officer of the Advanced Programs Group (APG) and has been its executive vice president and general manager. Frank L. Culbertson will be promoted to APG executive vice president/general manager from senior vice president-human space systems. And, Christopher C. Long will be promoted to senior vice president from vice president for national systems in APG's National Security Space Div.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 with a Centaur upper stage lifted NASA's twin Radiation Belt Storm Probe mission spacecraft into orbit Aug. 30 from Cape Canaveral on a two-year mission to study high-energy particle fluctuations within Earth's Van Allen radiation belts. The $686 million mission is expected to investigate how the belts respond to solar activity and influence space weather. The two 1,400-lb. probes were developed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory as part of NASA's Living with a Star initiative.
In “Golden Turbine” (AW&ST July 30, p. 14), it is too bad you did not mentioned the venerable Walter M601 and its now revamped type under the GE Aviation label—the H80—with all its Czechoslovakian connotations duly erased. This Czech entry is probably the closest competitor to Pratt & Whitney Canada's PT6, and a successful one at that.
Germany's aerospace industry has been growing, driven by civil air transport demand. But it is facing difficult changes as its defense-related business contracts.
Robert W. O'Brien, Jr., has been appointed executive director of the Wisconsin Airport Managers Association, succeeding Peter L. Drahn, who plans to retire. O'Brien was executive director of Chicago Rockford (Ill.) International Airport and has been a member of the board of directors of the American Association of Airport Executives.
Paul Adams, senior vice president-operations and engineering for Pratt & Whitney, East Hartford, Conn., has been named to receive the American Society of Mechanical Engineering's 2012 Leadership Award, for advancing the use of computers and information in engineering.
Roy Fuhrmann has been appointed vice president-management and operations of the Metropolitan Airports Commission of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn. He was director of its Environment Department and is chairman of Airports Council International-North America's Environmental Affairs Committee.
Canadian Armed Forces Lt. Gen. Thomas J. Lawson is scheduled to become chief of Defense Staff and be promoted to general. He has been deputy commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command. Lawson will succeed Gen. Walter J. Natynczyk.
Business in China has caused Airbus executives some serious headaches lately, with political wrangling over the European Union Emissions Trading System (ETS) and the crisis at Hong Kong Airlines threatening orders. But now it appears the tide has turned.
William G. Purdy cautioned in 1966 that society was on a path where affluence and regulation threatened to choke off interest in “unorthodox inquiries.”
If Neil Armstrong had written his own obituary, he likely would have said he had been a test pilot, an engineer, an educator and one of the 400,000 Americans who helped land the first humans on the Moon. Less important to him was the combination of experience and lucky career choices that placed him as the first person to reach the surface of a body beyond Earth.
USAF Maj. Gen. (ret.) Ron Ladnier (see photos) has been named director of military business development and Bert Sawyer has been promoted to director of military programs at New York-based FlightSafety International's simulation facility in Tulsa, Okla. Ladnier was director the USAF operations center that synchronized transatlantic shipments to the Middle East with regional transportation. Sawyer has been deputy director of FSI's military simulation programs.
