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.
The disruption in power and communications networks following the Japanese earthquake and tsunami have made satellites typically used for entertainment in the highly industrialized nation an important source of emergency communications in the disaster zone, when combined with ground equipment developed for rural areas.
Regarding “Training Turnaround” (AW&ST March 7/14, p. 42), I am a retired U.S. Air Force pilot and NASA astronaut with about 5,000 hr. in jet fighters and trainers, and I was a jet instructor pilot for more than three years. With all of this background, I never knew of anyone who lost control of an aircraft and flew into the ground due to a stall. For one thing, stall recovery and unusual attitude recovery were essential parts of pilot training.
Tom Cooper and Michael Moore have been appointed to senior vice presidents at TeamSAI of Denver. Cooper worked for Delta Air Lines, and Moore was an executive at Northwest Airlines and Timco Aviation Services.
The team that developed the Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System (Auto-GCAS) for the U.S. Air Force won the Aviation Week Laureate Award for Information Technology and Electronics.
It’s a simple idea: If your business jet has an empty seat, give it to someone who needs it—specifically, a cancer patient traveling to and from a treatment center. The gesture costs the aircraft operator nothing, but can save the patient thousands of dollars and considerable stress during a time of extreme personal hardship. That simple generosity took form in 1981 as the Corporate Angel Network—CAN.
A 143-sec. flight over the Pacific in May 2010 will be remembered as the moment the supersonic-combustion ramjet proved itself capable of powering a practical aerospace vehicle, crowning decades of research and winning the X-51A Waverider hypersonic vehicle team the Aviation Week 2011 Laureate for Achievement in Aeronautics and Propulsion.
Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and CEO James Albaugh acknowledges that early Boeing 787-8s will be heavier than the specified maximum takeoff weight of 502,500 lb. when initial orders are delivered. “But I think we’ll be able to meet what our guarantees are,” he says. “I feel pretty comfortable that over time we’ll be able to get to [the specified range]. When that date is going to be, I can’t tell you.”
Elbit and Israel Aerospace Industries will jointly pursue a program to provide advanced training aircraft to the Israeli defense ministry. The joint company would handle the aircraft acquisition and support of the trainer aircraft. If a contract is awarded, Elbit says the joint venture would likely seek funding from capital markets to build the required infrastructure and buy training aircraft.
Steven Verhasselt, Wim Kuit and Norman Hecht have become senior consultants for the Air Cargo Management Group of Seattle. Verhasselt has been an aviation consultant in Hong Kong since 2003; Kuit has worked for Panalpine World Transport, Kales Airline Services and Emery Worldwide; and Hecht recently left a 37-year career at Pratt & Whitney, where he handled sales, aftermarket maintenance and strategic planning.
While carriers around the world are still enjoying strong growth rates and higher fares backed by global GDP growth, several factors may lead the industry into an overcapacity situation as soon as next year. These factors include uncertainty over the price of fuel, GDP development in key markets, markedly increasing delivery stream for new aircraft backed by a stronger than expected early order cycle and, not the least, the ambitious expansion in various pivotal markets planned for this summer.
The British Defense Ministry is considering extending the in-service period for the Nimrod R1 signals-intelligence fleet by at least three months to cover use in a no-fly zone over Libya that the United Nations Security Council approved on March 17. The aircraft were to be phased out this month.
Unmanned aircraft played a prominent role in many of the nominations for Laureates throughout the evening, so it was fitting that both recipients of the Philip J. Klass Lifetime Achievement Award were pioneers of the unmanned air vehicle (UAV) industry. Thomas J. Cassidy, Jr., and Abraham Karem were each credited for work that helped move UAVs from occasional roles on the sidelines to becoming essential assets in a variety of military operations. In presenting the awards, Aviation Week Executive Editor James R.
A couple of sometimes-maverick Senate Republicans are trying to move defense spending to the front of the appropriations line, but they are finding resistance near and far. Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), both of whom have a history of bucking their congressional caucus at times, have been echoing the Pentagon’s calls for passage of fresh fiscal 2011 legislative language so that the Defense Dept. can get on with better managing everything from the wars to paying its electricity bills (AW&ST Feb. 21, p. 28).
A string of procurement choices by the Pentagon—including an American KC-X platform, a stunted buy of Italian airlifters and a defunct Italian Marine One airframe—exemplify how difficult it can be for foreign designs to earn the right to fly in U.S. livery.
