Marc Cavaliere has been apppointed senior vice president-global sales development for South African Airways . He was the airline’s executive vice president for North America and previously was vice president of sales and marketing distribution for Spirit Airlines.
The needle of a compass tells you where you are, provides context and can guide you along a journey, combining a look to the stars with a look at the next step in front of you. And according to the U.S. service academy graduates honored at the 2011 Aviation Week Laureates ceremony, serving their country and following in the footsteps of the other Laureates honored this year are two destinations along that journey.
The group of companies from Europe and North America that commercialized space-based radar is the 2011 space laureate winner. The new business was built on the ground-breaking work of Germany’s Joerg Herrmann, the former managing director of Infoterra GmbH who oversaw development, construction and launch of the twin one-meter-resolution commercial X-band imaging satellites TerraSAR-X and Tandem-X.
Two of the U.S. Air Force’s new Global Hawk Block 30 aircraft are conducting imagery intelligence missions over Japan following the massive earthquake that struck off the island chain’s northeast coast on March 11.
In the face of stiff competition from large network carriers and high-growth, low-cost airlines, Flybe, the U.K.-based regional airline has managed to carve out a strong business niche for itself. Jim French, the airline’s chief executive, and this year’s Aviation Week Commercial Air Transport Laureate winner, has also put the airline on a strong growth footing. Flybe has not just managed to be profitable. It also has steadily grown market share to become the largest regional carrier in Europe and the largest domestic airline in the U.K.
The metrics used to determine the success of performance-based logistics (PBL) programs can be complex, often measuring such things as availability, cost avoidance and component fill rates. But to U.S. and coalition ground forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, the equation, particularly when it comes to the U.S. Army’s Apache attack helicopter, is easier to explain. As expressed by an Army officer, “When Apaches fly, soldiers don’t die.”
Space Exploration Technologies Inc. (SpaceX) hopes to reach the International Space Station on a trial cargo run before the end of the year. Now its engineers and astronauts are working on concepts to convert the Dragon cargo capsule into a crew carrier. With at most two flights left for the space shuttle fleet, NASA is eager for the commercial-crew work to go forward, and the company is likely to be a winner in the second round of the commercial crew development (CCDev-2) competition that will be announced by the end of this month.
As to “Training Turnaround,” lowering the nose in a stall is perhap Lesson 2 in Airmanship 101. Right? Or maybe that was only in 20th century America, when we used to start out by teaching people to fly air “planes” and only later allowed them to step up to air “liners.”
David A. Fulghum (Washington), Graham Warwick (Washington), Robert Wall (London), Alon Ben-David (Tel Aviv)
Customers for Lockheed-Martin’s stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter—among them Canada, Israel, Britain and Australia—are shifting their mood from anxiety to paranoia over increasingly unpredictable costs. Foreign analysts now expect JSF prices to significantly exceed even the latest Pentagon estimate, putting government officials in fiscal and political jeopardy as they try to craft a rational purchase plan for the fifth-generation warplane.
Gil Jackson will fill the new position of technical business development manager for aftermarket services at Sargent Aerospace & Defense , Tucson, Ariz. Jackson has held numerous engineering roles at Delta Air Lines, Goodrich Aerospace-Landing Gear and American Airlines.
European Space Agency member states have agreed to fund the International Space Station through 2020, a move the U.S. and the other ISS partners have already taken at ESA’s urging. At a meeting at agency headquarters in Paris, the ESA Council approved spending €550 million ($770 million) on Europe’s share of station operations, logistics and transportation using the Automated Transportation Vehicle (ATV). Another €2 billion is promised in 2012 to fund ESA’s station share through 2020, according to Bernardo Patti, ESA’s ISS program manager.
With NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in limbo amid reports of a possible $1.5 billion cost overrun, Ed Weiler, head of NASA’s science directorate, is reminding budget-conscious lawmakers that the Hubble Space Telescope was similarly troubled during its development before triumphing as arguably NASA’s greatest scientific achievement. “Where we are on James Webb now reminds me of where we were on Hubble in the mid-eighties,” says Weiler. Hubble was finally orbited seven years late after exceeding its budget by 300%.
Robert Hutchison (see photo) has joined the Civil Air Navigation Services Organization as director of communications and marketing. He was director of communications and marketing for CHEP, an Orlando, Fla.-based maker of logistics products.
Russia’s federal air transport agency is telling operators of Tupolev Tu-154M narrowbodies to upgrade them. The agency’s chief, Alexander Neradko, points to out three major defects that need to be addressed: power failure due to battery overheating, fuel system malfunction and failure of the low-pressure compressor disk on NPO Saturn D-30KU-154 turbofans. All were involved in Tu-154M incidents in recent years. Russian airlines operated 81 Tu-154Ms at the start of the year, with UTair having the largest fleet, 15 aircraft.
Ohio is the No. 1 U.S. supplier to EADS/Airbus ($4.3 billion in annual sales) and No. 2 to Boeing ($4.8 billion), after California. General Electric’s engine works in Evendale and Peebles account for much of that, but there are thousands of other suppliers spread across the state, some dating to World War II, when the government pushed aircraft production inland to make it less vulnerable to attacks. We recently visited with Ohio’s suppliersat a roundtable in Cleveland hosted by Aviation Week and the Ohio Aerospace Institute.
Rick Sanford has been appointed chief executive officer of Odyssey Moon Ltd. , Douglas, Isle of Man. He was chief operating officer of Cisco IRIS and director of space and intelligence at Cisco Systems.
Paul Dolan (see photo) has been named director of military affairs for Orangeburg, N.Y.-based Chromalloy . He was vice president of sales and marketing at Avioserv.
Four hundred luminaries from all corners of the global aerospace and defense industry converged on Washington for Aviation Week’s 54th annual Laureate Awards. The standing-room-only dinner, held March 8 at the ornate Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, continued a long-standing tradition of honoring the industry’s technology pioneers, top managers and leaders of tomorrow.
Satellite operators may no longer have to throw away perfectly good geostationary communications satellites if a $280 million deal between Intelsat and Canada’s MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) works out. The arrangement—crafted by the world’s largest commercial satellite operator and the company that developed the sophisticated robots on the International Space Station—is designed to add in-orbit refueling and simple repairs to the way commercial satellite operators manage their fleets.
Japan is unlikely to issue a request for proposals (RFP) in March for FX fighters because the defense ministry and other authorities are too busy dealing with the nuclear crisis and other repercussions from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, say industry executives.
Embraer has pulled the trigger on the first transaction for its defense and security business, buying 64.7% of OrbiSat da Amazonia’s radar division in deal valued at 28.5 million Brazilian reals ($17 million). The deal will see OrbiSat broken into two parts, the Embraer-controlled radar activities and the electronic equipment part that is not changing hands. Embraer says executives of the new business are already in talks with the Brazilian air force and navy to develop and build integrated monitoring systems.
Marcus Hancock has been named technical director at Birmingham, England-based Dunlop Aircraft Tires . He was general manager of Cooper Tire & Rubber Co.’s European Technical Center. Ken Hutchins is Dunlop’s new technical sales manager for the Americas, based in Houston. He was an aircraft wheel and brake specialist at Goodrich and Messier-Bugatti.
Charles Celli (see photo) has been named vice president of Gulfstream Aerospace ’s Savannah, Ga., service center operations. Celli came from Jet Aviation in Basel, Switzerland, where he was senior vice president-completions services for Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia.
