As more details emerge from the wreckage of Air France Flight 447—which plunged into the Atlantic Ocean en route to Paris from Rio de Janeiro on June 1, 2009—air safety experts will probably focus on the need to further explore meteorological unknowns and Airbus's approach to flight envelope protection. Other areas of interest include the outdated technology used in the pitot tubes, flight training procedures and an envisioned plan to upgrade flight data transmissions using communication satellites.
It is a rare week when airline policy is not at the fore of public discourse, be it passenger rights, pilot or controller fatigue, privatization of the U.S. Transportation Security Administration or the recent, vocal opposition to the European Union's emission trading scheme. Some of these cause celebres certainly deserve the limelight, but at the same time important issues are being left at the wayside regardless of their potential benefit to the entire industry.
Thomas Marrocco (see photo) has been named VP-worldwide sales at Ottawa-based TrueNorth Avionics. He handled software sales for the MRO market at Mxi Technologies.
Lockheed Martin again finished at the top of A&D companies with revenues greater than $20 billion, more evidence of the transformation of this one-time industry laggard. A focus on organic growth rather than acquisitions has led to low goodwill (the difference between the price paid for an asset and its book value) relative to many of its peers and a stellar showing in the TPC's Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) metric. But Lockheed is feeling the pinch of tighter Pentagon spending: Revenue grew just 1.4% in 2010, the lowest increase since 2001.
An Illinois Circuit Court judge has ordered American Airlines to resume providing its fare and flight availability information to Orbitz.com and Orbitz for Business, issuing a preliminary injunction June 1 based on Travelport's claim that its contract with American mandates that the carrier provide the fares to affiliates of the global distribution system (GDS) provider, such as Orbitz.
Adolfo Castro has become chief executive officer of Grupo Aeroportuario del Surestof Mexico City. He succeeds Fernando Chico Pardo, who will remain chairman. Castro was chief financial officer.
The final report on the probable cause of the Air France Flight 447 crash has yet to be written, but the latest update from the French air accident investigation office, the BEA, already suggests airlines and the aerospace industry can learn crucial lessons from the crash, which killed all 228 onboard.
With defense budgets under increasing pressure in the U.S. and Europe, aerospace and defense companies are again looking for growth in non-core, adjacent markets. But will they learn from past mistakes?
At a time when the U.S. Congress is consumed with the federal deficit, lawmakers continue to embrace a vision that reinvests defense budget cuts into the Pentagon's massive war chest.
Astronomers at the University of Michigan are digesting the implications of their discovery that elliptical galaxies previously thought to be dead are still producing stars, relatively slowly but apparently steadily.
“Le CSeries est mort enterré, selon Airbus,” proclaimed the May 31 edition of a Montreal newspaper. Translation: “The CSeries is dead and buried, according to Airbus.”
Your recent editorial “IAM Headed Down The Wrong Path” (AW&ST May 23, p. 62) indicates that globalization has turned the economic world into one huge Walmart.
Conventional wisdom holds that companies with decentralized business models are more agile. Freed from shackles of bureaucracy, they respond quickly to shifts in markets and technologies using cutting-edge innovation to keep product lines fresh. “But there are disadvantages of scale,” says TPC adviser Charles Armitage, a London-based financial analyst. At a certain inflection point, model complexity and size distort focus. Autonomy and entrepreneurial spirit are dulled and products can atrophy.
Cyberattacks continue to alarm Washington. Recently, two large U.S. companies were hit, entailing national security and government victims. Chinese offenders are the chief suspects. Meanwhile, U.S. officials are signaling that a cyberattack could prompt a kinetic response.
Japanese researchers are working on a solar-sail spacecraft with 10 times the surface area of the Ikaros testbed launched toward Venus last year—with a five-year mission instead of the six-month span allotted Ikaros—after achieving all of their technical objectives with the testbed.
The books are closed now and it is clear that core performance in aerospace & defense (A&D) was flat again for the second year in a row, which was good compared with other industries. Revenues stayed essentially the same and barely kept pace with inflation. Earnings were up on its face, but core earnings were level to slightly up if you add back the $10.5 billion of one-time charges in 2009 and $1.7 billion of one-time charges in 2010 associated with over-budget development programs, among other unusual items.
Flush with new contracts for its light tactical military vehicles, Oshkosh rocketed to the top of its peer group for companies with revenues of $5-20 billion, unseating two-time winner Precision Castparts. A surge in production of Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected (MRAP) all terrain vehicles helped drive a 579% increase in operating profit in fiscal 2010. But revenues and profits have begun to decline as production rates turn down, and TPC analysts are questioning whether Oshkosh will be a one-year wonder.
Operations and supply chain appear to be the new focus at Cessna Aircraft as Scott Ernest takes the helm of the Wichita airframer. Textron Chairman and CEO Scott Donnelly tapped his former veteran colleague at GE Aviation to succeed Jack Pelton as chairman, president and CEO of Cessna. Textron's May 2 announcement of Pelton's departure followed Cessna's “disappointing” first-quarter results that Donnelly attributed to operational problems, including growing production costs for the CJ4 business jet.
A disastrous foray into a satellite telephone venture sent Loral into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for more than two years, and the company emerged in late 2005 as a poor TPC performer. But the fortunes of the satellite manufacturer and services provider have improved greatly during the past two years, as evidenced by its second-place TPC finish. Operating income nearly quadrupled in 2010 on a 16% increase in sales, and the company ended the year free of debt.
Whether you call the best engineering development culture “hacker's spirit,” entrepreneurship or chutzpah, the ability to rapidly and pragmatically improvise is inherent. Zahid Hasan's recent Viewpoint, “Aerospace Should Embrace The Hacking Spirit” (AW&ST May 16, p. 66), correctly points out the need for this culture to be nurtured if technology companies are to succeed.
When the aerospace and defense industry entered 2011, executives could look back on the prior year and generally feel pretty good about how the sector did overall. Revenues were up modestly but still reached a new high, and profits were substantially greater.
Is Boeing finally entering calmer waters? A year ago, hefty charges on the Boeing 787 and 747-8 development programs led to a seventh-place TPC finish among the 10 companies with revenues greater than $20 billion. But this year, Boeing ranked third, as operating profit rose to 7.6% from 3% in 2009.
