The French defense ministry has outsourced management of services at Creil air base, outside Paris, to a team led by Defense Environment Services, a venture of Veolia and naval systems house DCNS. The Creil facility is responsible for transportation, canteen, maintenance and other support services at five different bases, including Creil itself. The €10-million ($14-million), five-year award is the first multiservice contract of its kind to be outsourced by France.
Despite their less than breathtaking bid, Kansas political leaders convinced Hawker Beechcraft to stay put and keep building airplanes in Wichita, thereby once again using the public purse to perpetuate the city’s continuing claim as Air Capital of the World.
Andrew Warner has been appointed president/chief financial officer of specialty airline Pet Airways , Delray Beach, Fla. He was CFO of EnergyConnect Group.
Robert Lee has been named general manager of Million Air Houston , succeeding Brad Primm, who will return to his full-time role as executive vice president of Aircraft Technical Services.
The widespread introduction of Western airliners into Russia’s air transport system should limit the operational impact caused by the grounding of parts of the country’s Tupolev Tu-154 fleet over safety concerns. Russian air transport authorities have temporarily grounded the fleet of Tu-154Bs after the Jan. 1 fire of a Kogalymavia Airlines (also known as Kalavia) aircraft at Surgut Airport, in which three persons died. The cause of the accident is still under review.
Aviation Week, continuing a decades-old tradition, presents the nominees for Laureate awards for 2011. These individuals and teams have been nominated for their extraordinary achievements in operations and technological advancements. The nominees are grouped in eight categories listed on the following pages. Winners already have been selected for two additional honors: the Aviation Week Heroism Award and the Philip J. Klass Lifetime Achievement Award. Nominations were open to industry and government, but the finalists were selected by Aviation Week editors.
Fabio Miguez (see photos) has been promoted to manager of FlightSafety International ’s Detroit Metro/Toledo Learning Center, succeeding David Glass, who has moved to the Houston Learning Center. Miguez has been an avionics instructor, program manager and director of programs for Dassault Falcon Jet Training, while Glass has been director of standards and an FAA-designated training center evaluator for the Embraer 170.
The U.S. Air Force first demonstrated the ability to create a focused datastream with its EC-130 Compass Call aircraft that could be filled with invasive algorithms and fired into the antenna of an integrated air defense system and its detached missile launching vehicles in a series of Suter programs. Now the Navy acknowledges that its Next Generation Jammer (NGJ)—designed for the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, EA-18G Growler and F-35—will carry the network invasion capability. “I think [Suter] is a good description of NGJ [capability],” says Vice Adm. David J.
Airlines can expect insurance premiums to increase this year, following a sharp rise in the number of accidents in 2010. “The number of fatal accidents during the year increased 22%, going from 23 in 2009 to 28 in 2010,” says London-based research firm Ascend. This pushed up the fatal accident rate to one per 1.3 million flights compared with one per 1.5 million flights for 2009, it says.
The chaos that disrupted operations at Paris airports around Christmas has sparked the ire of French Transport Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, who is set to review all aspects of the weather-related travel fiasco. One key question to be answered: Why were there insufficient supplies of deicing glycol when heavy snowfall and freezing temperatures diminished runway capacity?
USN Vice Adm. (ret.) John G. Morgan has joined Toffler Associates as senior global strategist. Morgan spent 36 years in the Navy and earned a Bronze Star for his decisive move of the USS Enterprise carrier battle group into the theater of operations against Al Qaeda and the Taliban following the Sept. 11 attacks.
The first personnel from 51 Sqdn. are starting to undergo training at Offut AFB, Neb., this week as the U.K.’s Royal Air Force gradually gears up for fielding of three RC-135W Rivet Joint signals intelligence aircraft. The foreign military sales agreement for the three Rivet Joints, to be based at RAF Waddington, was finalized last year. The U.K. Defense Ministry says up to four RAF crew will undergo training at Offut. As part of the work up, the British military personnel will begin operating on U.S. RC-135 Rivet Joints starting this summer.
Brad Hicks has joined Lockheed Martin ’s Mission Systems and Sensors business in Washington as vice president-radar programs. He has been a consultant for the Monitor Group after retiring from the U.S. Navy.
Like most prime contractors, Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems has found that with the investment required to be vertically integrated, it makes no sense for it to build everything on its own. It buys about 60% of what goes into its products and produces 40%, a ratio that would have been reversed a decade ago.
Space programs must be affordable, sustainable and realistic to survive political and funding dangers that have killed previous initiatives, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden says. Speaking at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics meeting, Bolden said affordability, sustainability and realism have become his “mantra” while negotiating with officials in the White House Office of Management and Budget, as well as Congress. Affordability “is dominant,” while sustainability is needed to survive multiple sessions of Congress and presidential administrations.
Mark Fischer (see photos) has joined Greenwich AeroGroup ’s MRO Product Management team as director-MRO avionics products. Other key team members are Carl Lukas, who is director of MRO interior and completion products; and Brian Rehberg, who is director of MRO airframe products. Fischer brings experience gained at Gulfstream; Westar and Rockwell Collins, and Lukas has worked for Challenger Aviation Service GmbH., Bombardier Aerospace and Midcoast Aviation Savannah. Rehberg was recruited from Western Aircraft.
Even though no one has yet produced a commercially successful single-engine jet, candidates continue to appear. The latest is the Stratos 714 (see image at top of page). So far financed largely by Michael Lemaire, a French high-tech entrepreneur who found success in India and Silicon Valley, the four-year-old project just received enough outside funding to proceed with wind tunnel testing of a 1/8th-scale model to verify design developed through computational fluid dynamics. Those tests should occur in April, probably at the University of Washington.
Jan. 17-19—Civil Air Navigation Services Organization’s Middle East Conference. Park Rotana Hotel, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. See www.canso.org Jan. 20-23—U.S. Sport Aviation Expo. Sebring (Fla.) Regional Airport. See www.sport-aviation-expo.com Jan. 24-26—International Quality and Productivity Center’s “Airport Security Asia 2011.” Hong Kong SkyCity Marriott Hotel. Call +65 (67) 229-388 or see www.airportsecurityasia.com/Event
Feb. 1-2—MRO Middle East Conference & Exhibition. Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Feb. 16-17—A&D Technology & Requirements Conference. Washington. March 8—Laureates Awards. Washington. April 12-13—MRO Military Conference & Exhibition. Miami. April 12-13—MRO Latin America Conference & Exhibition. Miami. April 12-14—MRO Americas Conference & Exhibition. Miami. May 10-12—NextGen Ahead. Washington. May 24-25—A&D Cybersecurity Forum. Washington.
Robert Suhs is the new director of business development for PAS Technologies , Kansas City, Mo. He was a sales executive for Delta Air Lines’ TechOps Division and has held MRO management positions at Honeywell Aerospace and Sermatech International.
A new German experiment inside the space station may help engineers develop the fluid-management systems that will be needed for handling fuel and other fluids in microgravity. Developed by the Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM) at the University of Bremen, the Capillary Channel Flow (CCF) experiment is located in the station’s Microgravity Science Glovebox.
Engineers from NASA Marshall Space Flight Center and the Applied Physics Laboratory will be able to test guidance, navigation and control systems for a prototype lunar/asteroid lander for as long as 60 sec., now that hot-fire tests of a peroxide-driven thruster setup at Redstone Arsenal, Ala., have validated the 16-thruster system—12 for attitude control, three for altitude and one to simulate lower gravity.
Conventional wisdom has it that, over time, the international airline industry will grow at a reasonably steady pace. But when examined at a more granular level, the ups and downs of the airline industry are apt to induce nausea. In mid-December 2009, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) predicted the scheduled airline industry would suffer a $5.6-billion net loss in 2010. A year later, IATA forecast a full-year 2010 net profit of $15.1 billion—a swing of nearly $21 billion.
Russ Hammer (see photo) has been appointed chief financial officer of Orbitz Worldwide of Chicago, succeeding Marsha Williams, whose retirement was announced in June 2010. Hammer was chief financial officer at Crocs.
A Franco-Chinese ocean-observing satellite mission will be the latest addition to the rapidly expanding fleet of spacecraft engaged in monitoring key ocean parameters that are major factors in predicting long-term weather and climate change.
