William Clark has been appointed senior vice president/chief marketing officer of Lockheed Martin subsidiary Savi Technology , Alexandria, Va. He was executive vice president/CMO at Deltek Inc.
Boeing is assessing whether further slips in its hard-pressed 787 delivery schedule are likely following a second Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engine failure. But the initial view is that neither event involves issues relating to the engine’s design or certification and is unlikely to have a long-term effect on the aircraft or engine development program.
It may be tough going for many in business aviation these days, but there’s not a hint of a slowdown at FltPlan.com. In fact, the free computerized flight planning and filing service is going gangbusters. It now submits 65% of all the flight plans for business flights conducted by turbine aircraft; total filings from all sources (no airlines) brushed 200,000 in August, a record. On average, 20,000 flight plans are calculated (though not necessarily filed) on the web-based system every day.
Upcoming experiments should pave the way toward the first practical applications of drag-reducing laminar flow control on a transport aircraft under NASA’s Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) program.
Senators like to tweak White House spending requests just to show the president who gets the last word, but the Senate’s Fiscal 2011 defense appropriations measure goes well beyond. Last week, appropriators pushed through language that would cut 10 aircraft, about a quarter of the next year’s request, from the JSF program, as well cut or alter the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle and other programs.
Advocacy of an air-launched, missile defense system is being proposed by two veterans of the Pentagon’s “Star Wars” era and a 1990s program to mate unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and long-range air-to-air weapons.
Despite global economic uncertainties, ATR is convinced that the turboprop market will continue its strong rebound, with a delivery hike in the cards from 2012. The EADS/Alenia Aeronautica joint venture, which handed over its 900th aircraft to Brazil’s TRIP Linhas Aereas in Toulouse on Sept. 9, continues to evaluate plans for an all-new successor to its ATR family, which debuted a quarter of a century ago in 1985.
SES Chairman/CEO Romain Bausch says SES-Eutelsat joint venture Solaris Mobile is revisiting the business case for mobile satellite service (MSS) to Europe. Solaris was selected last year along with Intelsat to provide MSS to the 27 European Union countries using an S-band payload on Eutelsat’s W2A spacecraft. However, a solar panel failure on the satellite, launched in April 2009, has forced the company to limit its ambitions to trial service while it weighs options for an alternative source of capacity.
Robert J. Conyers has become director of safety management for Baldwin Aviation , Hilton Head Island, S.C. He was manager of general aviation safety at Global Aerospace.
Global demand for pilots and maintenance personnel is set to increase dramatically, but the demand is concentrated in the Asia-Pacific region and other emerging economies. A shortage of skilled and qualified labor is already evident in some countries in these growth regions. Philippine Airlines canceled dozens of Airbus A320 flights in July and August after 27 of its A320 captains and first officers resigned suddenly to join other airlines. And Garuda Indonesia cannot expand its low-cost carrier Citilink due to personnel shortages.
Aviation professionals who happened to see the recent Green-related report on the transportation sector by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP)—an independent, nonprofit organization—must have been more than a little disheartened by what they read. As a scorekeeper and data house for carbon emissions and climate change information coming from businesses worldwide, CDP lumped all forms of transportation together—road, rail, sea and airlines.
The British Parliament is taking issue with the unfolding Strategic Defense and Security Review (SDSR), asserting that a flawed process could lead to poor decisions.
International Space Station prime contractor Boeing will continue to provide sustaining engineering for the orbiting laboratory through Sept. 30, 2015, under a five-year, $1.24-billion contract extension from NASA. The company will also help NASA and its international partners evaluate whether the ISS primary structure can continue to operate through the end of 2018, as the U.S. Congress appears likely to extend ISS funding at least through 2020.
Alexander L.W. Snyder (see photo) has been named vice president/general counsel/secretary of the Hawker Beechcraft Corp. , Wichita, Kan. He was associate general counsel for corporate and commercial matters and chief counsel for mergers and acquisitions for Koch Industries, also in Wichita.
Prospects for a settlement of the U.S.-European Union dispute over large commercial aircraft subsidies remain elusive in the wake of the World Trade Organization’s latest ruling.
Mitsubishi Aircraft has begun making production drawings for its MRJ regional jet and confirms that the aircraft is on schedule for a first delivery in the first quarter of 2014. First flight is due in the second quarter of 2012.
As approval for use of biofuels in aircraft approaches, Solazyme is already producing renewable jet fuel from a range of biomass sources using algae. The fermentation process feeds the algae with sugars produced from feedstocks ranging from switchgrass to municipal waste. Oil is extracted from the algae and turned into jet fuel. Cover photo by Solazyme.
The Marine Corps’ determination to reach initial operational capability of the short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) in late 2012 looks increasingly untenable. The F-35B will miss initial at-sea testing scheduled for next March because of delays in clearing the vertical-landing envelope. The delays have been caused by aircraft reliability issues and weather at NAS Patuxent River, Md.
Long endurance for unmanned aircraft is being transformed, with 100 hr.—five days aloft—as the new yardstick against which future systems are being measured.
I’ve been covering development of laser weapons for three decades, and the cycle described in the Leading Edge column (AW&ST Sept. 6, p. 18) has been going on since the laser was developed. Solid-state lasers were the first choice for high-energy lasers, but early ones were only 1% or so efficient and couldn’t dissipate the heat load. Then there were gas, gas dynamic carbon-dioxide and hydrogen-fluoride chemical lasers.
Faltering economies may have taken the heat off global warming as a political issue, but the pressure is still on aviation to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions if it wants to grow. Despite the financial turmoil, and the failure to reach a global agreement on climate change in Copenhagen in December, airlines remain committed to their plan to achieve carbon-neutral growth from 2020 through a combination of fleet renewal and upgrades, operations and infrastructure improvements, and biofuels.
Asia Broadcast Satellite expects a management buyout led by the Permira private equity fund to lead it to the top of the fragmented Asian fixed-satellite service (FSS) market.
The problem with turning points, in business or personal life, is that you often are not aware of them until months or even years after they happen. Nonetheless, I’m going to declare that the Sabre Travel Network launch of its Air Total Pricing product on Sept. 17 is a turning point for the selling of airline fee-based ancillary services.
