Administrator Charles Bolden took the occasion of a $753 million purchase of 12 Soyuz seats for NASA astronauts last week to press Congress for funds to complete the commercial crew development effort. NASA and the Russian Space Agency on March 14 signed a two-year agreement extending the purchase of Soyuz spacecraft for the transportation of U.S., European, Japanese and Canadian astronauts to the ISS through June 2016.
Cessna fully supports current efforts to reform and streamline the overall export licensing and policy framework. As an aircraft manufacturer, we have found that we have a generally positive export environment for our physical products: aircraft, spares and ground support equipment. However, ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) in many cases is a problem for our utility and special mission aircraft sales.
Pritesh Patel (see photo) has been tapped by Circor Aerospace Products Group , Corona, Calif., as director of information technology. He joins Circor from OK International, where he held the same title.
Delta Air Lines has suspended its services to Tokyo Haneda Airport to “maximize operational efficiency,” but flights to and from its hub at Tokyo’s Narita International Airport were continuing to operate as normal as of March 17. “Given recent events in Japan, it is more efficient for us to run our operations from our hub at Narita, where we can consolidate resources,” the airline says. Delta plans to resume the service from Detroit on May 31 and from Los Angeles on June 2.
David Langstaff (see photo), chairman of Chantilly, Va.-based TASC and former CEO of Veridian Corp., has been named president and chief executive officer of the company, succeeding Wood Parker, who will retire and become vice chairman.
Dassault faces another difficult year, with uncertainty over how quickly its core business aircraft market will recover and the knowledge that revenue will drop because of fewer deliveries. Although there has been a slowdown in cancellations and a slight uptick in order activity, Chairman/CEO Charles Edelstenne says the current macroeconomic environment makes it hard to predict when the business aviation market will rebound. Turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa also could slow defense exports.
I fervently hope the U.S. can finally proceed with getting a new tanker (AW&ST Feb. 28, p. 30). The absolute stupidity with which this acquisition was pursued is another case study in defense procurement run amok and the reason why we cannot use the broken “competitive bid” process to ensure we obtain what this nation needs to protect itself.
If you’re into watching Fringe, Big Bang Theory or any other science/engineering/math-oriented television show, you may want to join in applauding this year’s Workforce Laureate winner, Richard Stephens. In Stephens’ world, engineers, scientists, mathematicians and technologists are rock stars, and he has made a mission of bringing recognition and status to the people who drive his company and the aerospace and defense industry.
I will be saving David A. Fulghum’s article “Adapt or Fail” (AW&ST March 7/14, p. 50) because I have seen companies succeed using precisely the principles that are discussed.
April 6-8—University of Westminster Aviation Seminar: “Air Transport Economics and Planning.” London. Call +44 (207) 911-5000 ext. 3220 or see www.westminster.ac.uk/aviation April 12-14—Aerial Refueling Systems Advisory Group International’s 2011 Conference. Hyatt Regency Atlanta. Call +1 (937) 431-8106 or see www.arsaginc.com April 13—Women in Aerospace’s Fourth Annual Reception at the National Space Symposium. Broadmoor Hotel Gaylord Suite, West Tower, Colorado Springs. See www.womeninaerospace.org
At a gala ceremony in Palm Springs, Calif., at the end of 2008, Amin J. Khoury was named one of Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneurs of the Year. It was a bittersweet moment for the founder, chairman and CEO of B/E Aerospace Inc., the leading supplier of seats and other interior components for commercial and business jets. As he accepted the prestigious national award, B/E’s profits were in a free fall, due to a spike in fuel prices—followed by a global economic meltdown—that forced airlines to defer interior retrofits en masse.
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.
