The latest statistics from Airports Council International show that Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, headed by Aviation General Manager Louis Miller, has retained its crown as the world's busiest airport. Miller, former executive director of Tampa International Airport, has only been on the job six months, but he has worked hard to repair the relationship with its largest tenant, Delta Air Lines, and keep a $1.4 billion international terminal under construction on time and on budget. Miller spoke with AW&ST Online Managing Editor Benet J.
Boeing is battling perceptions that Airbus won some key points in the latest round of World Trade Organization disputes. The WTO's appeals ruling did reverse some aspects of a preliminary ruling in the U.S. case against European subsidies of Airbus and its parent company, EADS. But influential publications, including this one, missed some important distinctions (AW&ST May 23, p. 41). One failure was confusion over the WTO legal terms “prohibited” and “actionable,” says Robert T. Novick, Boeing's outside counsel.
Efforts continue to deploy the troublesome C-band antenna reflector on Intelsat's New Dawn satellite, although the spacecraft's Ku-band antenna has been deployed and is undergoing on-orbit testing, according to Intelsat. Ku-band antenna deployment had been on hold while Intelsat and spacecraft manufacturer Orbital Sciences Corp. diagnosed the C-band problem (AW&ST May 16, p. 14). If C-band capability can't be established, “we have over 20 other satellites covering Africa, so we have other resources upon which to draw,” the company says.
After battling instrument delays, NASA's National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System's (Npoess) Preparatory Project satellite has cleared its last major pre-launch hurdle—a two-month-long thermal vacuum test—and is on track for an Oct. 25 liftoff from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. Ball Aerospace, which based the 13.5-ft.-tall, 4,700-lb. satellite on its BCP 2000 bus, expects to ship it to Vandenberg in mid-August.
Development of the improved Mil Mi-34C1 light helicopter received a significant boost as Russia's largest rotorcraft operator, UTair, placed a launch order for 10 units during the HeliRussia 2011 exhibition held in Moscow last week. Deliveries should commence in 2012; the contract value was not disclosed. According to UTair CEO Andrey Martirosov, the company will use the Mi-34 for pilot training in a corporate flight school to be opened soon. The platform also will serve for monitoring and patrol missions for customers from the energy sector.
Masten Space Systems will fly a series of suborbital demonstration flights from Cape Canaveral, Fla., under a $400,000 contract from Space Florida, a state-backed economic development agency focused on space and related technologies. The contract will include multiple flights of Masten's vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing reusable suborbital vehicle, called Xaero, which also is one of two vehicles picked by NASA for suborbital research missions (see p. 17).
NASA will fund research payloads on test flights of a pair of commercial suborbital reusable launch vehicles later this year as its microgravity flight opportunity program moves beyond parabolic flights in aircraft. Vertical-takeoff-and-landing vehicles under development by Masten Space Systems of Mojave, Calif., and Armadillo Aerospace of Heath, Texas, will carry four payloads.
John Blatchley has joined Avantair, Clearwater, Fla., as Northeast U.S. sales director. He was responsible for Piper aircraft sales at Columbia Aircraft Sales.
China's growing submarine fleet worries many countries in the Asia-Pacific region and will lead some to boost their anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capabilities. The Malaysian navy uses six Westland Super Lynx helicopters for ASW but wants to buy rotorcraft with more capability and plans to buy six, a senior Malaysian navy official told Aviation Week on the sidelines of the Imdex Asia naval defense show here last week.
Seattle-based Alaska Airlines will help Boeing Commercial Air Services develop an automated identification system for airline parts, components and equipment using a combination of radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags and Contact Memory Buttons. Boeing is developing the Component Management Optimization tool in conjunction with Fujitsu for airlines to speed up line-maintenance checks of the status of components and equipment.
A month into his role as Ultra Electronics' chief executive, Rakesh Sharma sat down in his office with International Editor Robert Wall to discuss the business environment, innovation and cybersecurity, which generates 15% of the company's turnover. Sharma oversees 25 diverse businesses with €710 million ($1 billion) in revenue in 2010. He also explains the link between chocolate candy and saving the lives of soldiers in Afghanistan.
Mike Kahmann is the new managing director of New York-based CIT Aerospace, Business Aircraft. He was senior vice president-transportation finance. John Morabito has been promoted to senior vice president from director of the company's Financial Institutions Group.
Boeing is studying a potential hybrid engine update for future 737 derivatives as part of its strategy to stay ahead of the Airbus A320NEO. Concepts under mid-term evaluation include upgrades of the CFM International CFM56-7B with elements of the more advanced Leap engine, including re-fanning with a composite fan of the same size or larger diameter.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates is making it clear that everything is on the table militarily if Washington really is going to redirect $400 billion over 12 years in defense spending, although he is also making clear what programs and actions in his view must go forward. “We must buy a new tanker. We must buy a fifth-generation fighter. We must replace the ballistic missile submarines toward the end of this decade. . . . The Army must reset after Afghanistan and the Marine Corps as well, but to a lesser extent.”
Even as NASA launched Endeavour (left) on its final flight into space, crews were preparing Atlantis (right) for the last flight of the space shuttle era.
The cause of the crash of Air France Flight 447 could start coming into sharper focus soon, with the French air accident investigation office, the BEA, planning to provide a new interim report during the summer.
The Royal Air Force next year plans to reactivate the just disbanded XIII Squadron as its second Reaper unmanned aircraft unit and move control of the vehicle to the unit's new home base at RAF Waddington. So far, RAF Reapers have been controlled from Creech AFB., Nev., collocated with U.S. Air Force operations. The shift comes as the U.K. is preparing to double its Reaper force to 10 vehicles at a cost of £135 million ($219 million).
Paul Goffredi (see photo) has been tapped to become vice president of business development at Carrollton, Texas-based Killick Aerospace. He was director of operations for the Pratt & Whitney PW100 engine program and program director for all Honeywell engine programs at Dallas Airmotive.
Training and organizing military cyberforces will demand monumental changes, not the least of which is building a mind-set that transcends current policies, international agreements and borders. Cybertraining is shaped by rapid advances in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) gathering, information fusion and the resulting availability of data. These factors make intelligence the principal driver of real-time military operations as deliberate, long-term targeting becomes a thing of the past.
An Argentine satellite with a U.S.-built primary instrument will begin measuring the salinity of Earth's oceans with unprecedented detail this summer, provided its planned June 9 launch goes well. The Aquarius/Satelite de Aplicaciones Cientificas (SAC)-D spacecraft is scheduled to lift off on a Delta II from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., to begin a three-year mission that will map ocean salinity globally.
Appearance is not everything, but airlines know well that it is a major component of the passenger experience. And the exterior of an aircraft—including the sheen of its livery—is arguably as important to public perception as the cleanliness of its interior. With post-recession demand on the rise, airlines aim to catch up on the fleet refresh work they delayed.
Emerging aerospace powers have relied heavily on state-owned enterprises to build up their product portfolios. But India appears ready to try another approach, putting increased faith in the private sector long eager for such a role.
As the elected leader who in 1993 drafted the proposal to restructure the FAA (AW&ST Feb. 22, 1993, p. 34), I find Adrian Schofield's recent Air Intel commentary “Dropping the Pilot” to be particularly compelling (AW&ST May 9, p. 18). The FAA chief operating officer (COO) was original intended to report to a board of directors, not the FAA administrator. Throughout the years, the COO position was drawn into the administrator's oversight. The political implications we predicted are evident today.
