In the Nov. 18, 2002, edition of Aviation Week & Space Technology featuring a special report on the airline industry, the cover text exclaimed, “Restructure . . . Or Die.” At the time, low productivity, high costs and an onslaught of low-fare carriers grabbing market share were the bane of most large airlines’ existence, especially in the U.S. and Europe.
Neel Shah has been promoted to senior vice president and chief cargo officer and Chris Collette to senior vice president-supply chain management for Delta Air Lines. Shah joined Delta from United Airlines Cargo, where he was vice president-sales and marketing. Collette came from Northwest Airlines.
USMC Gen. (ret.) Peter Pace has been named to the board of directors of the AAR Corp. He was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2005-07 and is now a member of the Secretary of Defense’s Defense Policy Board.
Liquid fuel rocket engines, high-speed Internet communications and hyperspectral imaging technologies are among the highlights of a new 10-year space spending plan drawn up by the Italian government. The plan, unveiled last week by Italian Space Agency ASI, will also seek to shift more spending to domestic programs and spread the spending burden for the International Space Station (ISS) extension, currently awaiting approval by the European Space Agency member states, by making ISS utilization a mandatory ESA program.
An Ariane 5 carrying the Hispasat-1E and Koreasat 6 satellites was launched Dec. 29 from the European space center at Kourou, French Guiana. The Space Systems Loral-built, 5,320-kg. (11,700-lb.) Hispasat-1E was placed in an orbital slot at 30 deg. West. The Thales Alenia Space Koreasat 6, with a weight of 2,850 kg., was placed at 116 deg. East. Both spacecraft are designed for 15 years in orbit.
The British government plans to unveil a new defense and security industrial and technology policy this year that will spell out the national industrial capabilities deemed essential to meetnational security needs, even in an age of austerity.
Spirit AeroSystems was in the early days of designing the most intricate of Boeing’s single-wind composite sections for the 787 when Sikorsky sought it out to make the main fuselage for the CH-53K for the U.S. Marine Corps.
William F. Marrison has received the American Association of Airport Executives ’ Distinguished Service Award for his “numerous and significant contributions to the airport community at the local and national levels.” Marrison is a 28-year veteran of the Metropolitan Knoxville (Tenn.) Airport Authority.
A new pact that streamlines how government-backed export credit agencies should support sales by aircraft manufacturers is expected to win approval soon. The draft agreement reached Dec. 22 by the intra-government Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) would eliminate differences in financing support for large and regional aircraft and tighten lending terms to minimize the gap between export banks and commercial lenders. The deal has been presented to Brazil, Canada, the European Union, Japan and the U.S.
This time last year, Jeffery Smisek was settling into his new role as chairman, president and CEO of Continental Airlines, but within four months he had initiated, by some key measures, the creation of the world’s largest airline. Smisek, now president and CEO of United Continental Holdings, is Aviation Week & Space Technology’s Person of the Year. Cover design by Art Director Lisa Caputo; photos by Lenny Gilmore (Smisek) and Managing Editor James R. Asker (Chicago O’Hare International Airport).
Charles O’Dell, director of operations of Sun Air Jets, has been named to the board of governors of the Air Charter Safety Foundation . O’Dell joined Sun Air Jets in 2002, is an active flight instructor and airline transport pilot with more than 12,300 hr.
Boeing is poised to issue a revised 787 program schedule following the resumption of flight tests on Dec. 23. Initial flights will focus on an interim version of updated power distribution system software and are aimed at Boeing-specific aircraft systems evaluation rather than FAA certification, according to the company. The revised target for this milestone, as well as the planned first delivery to launch customer All Nippon Airways, is widely expected to be around mid-2011, or three to four months beyond the current mid-February schedule.
Flight testing of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter enters 2011 at a stepped-up pace, but with many key 2010 objectives still unmet and significant program changes looming. While the program exceeded its year-end target of 394 flights, the objectives of clearing the conventional-takeoff-and-landing (CTOL) variant to begin pilot training, and the short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing (Stovl) version for training and initial ship trials, were not accomplished as planned in 2010.
New analysis of one factor that drives structural design in launch vehicles suggests that weight savings of as much as 20% can be achieved in some large components and gives designers a much better understanding of the level of robustness needed for safety.
In answer to a growing constraint problem at a increasing number of airports, Europe this year may introduce new rules on wake vortex separation aimed at potentially freeing up valuable capacity at the slot-constrained facilities.
Russia has agreed to acquire a pair of 20,000-metric-ton-class helicopter carrier/assault ships from France, with an option to build another two locally. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev informed his French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, on Dec. 24 that France’s DCNS-STX and St. Petersburg-based OSK had been selected to meet Russia’s requirement for the vessels. Russia issued an international tender in October for the ships for which Navantia of Spain and South Korea’s Daewoo also competed.
Simon Henley (see photo) has become president of EPI Europrop International GmbH. with full responsibility to manage the TP400 engine program. He was director of new product introduction and helicopters at Rolls-Royce Defense, where he was responsible for the development, testing and demonstration of a wide range of new engine products. Before joining Rolls, he had a 32-year career in the Royal Navy as an aircraft engineer officer, retiring as a rear admiral.
Many industry observers (including this author) are surprised by the resilience of air transport production rates following the Great Recession. How can Boeing and Airbus possibly increase production rates while most capital goods industries—including business aviation—experience production rate declines of 20% or more?
Steven D. Howe, Director (Idaho Falls, Idaho), Center for Space Nuclear Research (Idaho Falls, Idaho), Idaho National Laboratory (Idaho Falls, Idaho)
I was disappointed with reader Sam Scimemi’s misunderstanding regarding the nuclear thermal rocket (AW&ST Nov. 1, 2010, p. 12). The NTR offers a high thrust capability and a specific impulse of over 900 and has been identified as the preferred propulsion approach for NASA’s Mars Design Reference Architecture 5.0 study (NASA-SP-2009-566), which baselined using three 25,000-lb.-thrust engines.
Boeing and Fujitsu are partnering to offer comprehensive automated identification technology (AIT) packages for retrofit on commercial aircraft—any manufacturer and any type. The first application should be available in the second quarter of 2012. This could have a major impact on the aftermarket, and very few in the industry saw this coming. Boeing originally planned to include radio-frequency identification (RFID) on its first 787, as did Airbus on its A380, but neither effort, despite an early collaboration, panned out as originally planned.
Douglas Barrie, a longtime reporter and analyst, and Aviation Week’s London bureau chief until recently, has received the Lauren D. Lyman Award for outstanding achievement in aviation journalism from the Aerospace Industries Association. At a luncheon in Washington last week, the U.S. industry group honored Barrie, an authority on guided weapons and Chinese and Russian airpower. He left Aviation Week this year to become a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
Mark Malkosky (see photo) has become assistant director-maintenance training business development and sales for FlightSafety International . He has held maintenance training positions at CAE and also worked for Bombardier Aerospace and SimuFlite International.
Systems suppliers will not have much of a role to play for the mid-decade improvement that Airbus is planning for its A320 family. As its name, the New Engine Option (NEO), implies, the upgrade is all about fuel burn and lifecycle operating improvements that Pratt & Whitney with the PW1000G geared turbofan or CFM International with the LEAP-X can bring to Airbus’s most successful airplane program. The rest of the industry is anxiously anticipating how the next generation of 100-200-seat workhorses will evolve for Airbus and Boeing.
Kobe Bryant has been appointed a global ambassador for Turkish Airlines for two years . Bryant has been named Most Valuable Player of the National Basketball Association finals for the past two years and has won five NBA championships in his career.
In a rare reversal of an initial rejection, Australian regulators are giving the green light to an alliance between Air New Zealand and Australia’s Virgin Blue Group on routes between the two nations. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) imposed conditions that it says are similar, but not identical, to additional commitments promised by the airlines. The carriers were expecting a ruling from New Zealand’s Transport Ministry as early as Dec. 17.
