The threat to Chinese airlines from fast trains will become clearer and maybe uglier this year, as the railways ministry opens thousands of kilometers of high-speed track. New lines will include one between Beijing and Shanghai that will challenge China’s premier air route with trains running at up to 380 kph (236 mph) and connecting the two cities in just under 4 hr. According to several studies, the trains can expect to take at least 45% of the business.
Your analysis of India’s fighter competition suggests that political aspirations to forge stronger ties with the U.S. will give the Lockheed Martin F-16 and Boeing F/A-18E/F contenders a major advantage in the selection process (AW&ST Feb. 7, p. 46).
Goran Jansson has become chief financial officer and deputy president of SAS , succeeding Mats Lonnqvist, who is leaving the company. Jansson has held various consulting and board assignments.
Finmeccanica is facing the prospect of a significant revenue shortfall owing to turmoil in Libya, as the first Western aerospace and defense company to directly feel the effects of the regional turmoil in North Africa and the Middle East. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlesconi had heavily courted Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi in recent years for deals on a variety of fronts. In, aerospace and defense, those were about to pay off before anti-Qaddafi unrest erupted in the country.
David Daws has joined Oxford, England-based Blake Lapthorn ’s aircraft finance team as partner, bringing in solicitor Chris Knott and paralegal Niall Daws as part of his team. Daws, of IWG Daws, advises global helicopter operators and lessors.
Malaysia low-fare, long-haul operator, AirAsia X, is adding A330-200s to its fleet in 2014 under a new deal with Airbus. The addition of three aircraft of the type brings the airline’s total A330 order to 28 widebodies. AirAsia X also has signed for 10 A350XWBs, the eventual A330 successor.
As the cost to aircraft operators of fuel, delays and environmental measures continues to build, air traffic management (ATM) stands at a crossroads. Transformative technologies to increase capacity and efficiency are coming to fruition, but policy makers are still debating the framework under which new systems will operate.
Jorge L. Perez (see photo) has been added to Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. ’s staff of field service representatives based in the U.S. He has worked as a technician at Gulfstream headquarters in Savannah, Ga., and as a line maintenance supervisor for Jet Aviation in Palm Beach, Fla.
The space shuttle Endeavour, being lifted onto the STS-134 stack at Kennedy Space Center on March 1, was scheduled to make its final trip to the launch pad on March 9 in preparation for an April 19 launch to the International Space Station (ISS). As technicians prepared Endeavour for the last funded shuttle mission, the six-person crew of Discovery breezed though the final days in space of the fleet-leading orbiter’s 39th flight.
Patrick Kelly (see photo) has been named chief financial officer and principal financial officer for Hawker Beechcraft Acquisition Co. of Wichita. He was interim chief executive for Express Airlines, Houston.
A trio of scientists from the Southwest Research Institute will be making suborbital rocketplane flights—some of them into space—under the first set of commercial space tourism flights purchased for scientific research. The Texas-based institute has bought seats on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo and the XCOR Aerospace Lynx Mark I to conduct experiments in biomedicine and microgravity and capture astronomical images.
There is general agreement that global harmonization is a critical path as we advance NextGen and Sesar (Single European Sky ATM Research) programs. Failing to follow that path will result in a lack of a world standard for air traffic management, leaving us to deal with a system that consists of pieces that are cobbled together. Efforts will be duplicated and vital opportunities may be missed. Capabilities and benefits will inevitably be lost, and aerospace leadership fractured between competing regions.
Michael Cox has been named vice president of human resources at Duncan Aviation , Lincoln, Neb., after spending 28 years in the insurance industry. Justin Merkling is the new engine shop manager for Duncan Aviation, Battle Creek , Mich. He was one of the company’s Cessna Citation technical representatives.
Sustaining effective military operations in a degraded environment—the breakdown of networks, command and control, communications and extreme physical stress—is seen as a key element in fielding a flexible force for future, multi-dimensional conflicts. Adaptability also is important in adjusting to a period of shrinking defense budgets and uncertainty about the mix of missions needed to meet the requirements of both irregular and conventional warfare.
Amy Butler (Eglin AFB and Fort Walton Beach, Fla. )
U.S. Air Force officials are concerned that years of progress righting a once-wayward $7.1 billion Lockheed Martin stealthy cruise missile program could be hindered by the failure of Congress to pass a fiscal 2011 budget.
Camille Allaz (see photo), former executive vice president-cargo for Air France, has been named to The International Air Cargo Association ’s Hall of Fame. Allaz, whose career included a stint as president of Groupe Air France, was selected for his leadership and work as a historian of the cargo industry.
When the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board (DSB) started looking at ways to make the U.S. military more adaptable, it assembled a list of successful and sometimes less successful commercial companies and military programs to use as models. The DSB’s selections often reveal the themes of discovering and understanding user needs; dividing tasks among small, multi-discipline groups; reducing the number of meetings; slashing management layers; and simplifying acquisition, all moves intended to speed needed or desired products to the user.
Forward-traded European Union emissions allowances (EUAs) steadily increased in price in February as the fallout from a rash of thefts of the credits from emissions credit registries in EU member states continued, limiting spot carbon trading and forcing many market participants to revert to safer technical patterns that lowered volatility.
Recent moves by the EchoStar Corp./Dish Network group to acquire Hughes Communications and ICO Communications subsidiary DBSD have recast the battle for control of the fast-growing broadband and mobile satellite sectors.
Companies looking to supply precision weapons to the U.K. are still grappling with the aftereffects of the British government’s new defense spending plan, wondering which programs will be sustained and what further cuts may loom. A lack of clear direction on which weapons systems will be supported going forward is a big planning headache, warns a senior industry official. “I am still slightly confused what the future holds for us,” he says.
Further development of the world’s largest and smallest unmanned air vehicles hangs in the balance as AeroVironment seeks new funding to secure the future of its innovative Global Observer (GO) and Hummingbird concepts.
Bombardier Inc. stands out among aircraft manufacturers for the degree to which it has integrated China into its global supply chain. The fuselage for the Canadian company’s Q400 turboprop is produced here, and Shenyang Aircraft Corp., a subsidiary of state-owned Avic, is building a plant that will manufacture fuselages for Bombardier’s new CSeries jet. You might think all of that sourcing would result in big sales, but so far it hasn’t. Bombardier has not sold a passenger aircraft in China in more than seven years.
Russia is ramping up fielding of its newest long-range air defense system and has put the follow-on missile defense capability on a firm development path.
The U.S. Navy expects its first Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) unmanned aerial system (UAS) base to achieve initial operational capability in late 2015, somewhere in the Persian Gulf. “The intention is to base BAMS in the 5th Fleet,” says Capt. Robert Dishman, the U.S. Navy’s program manager for BAMS.
U.S. Air Force officials have confirmed they signed a $3.5 billion contract with Boeing to design and deliver the first 18 KC-46A refueling tankers by 2017. The company won the contract over EADS North America, after a nearly decade-long battle to start building 179 replacements for the KC-135.
