Boeing has added 44 orders for 737s, all but one of them—a fleet upgrade by Australia’s Virgin Blue Airlines—from unidentified customers. The addition boosts the company’s 737 net order count through July 6 to 138 and its total for all models to 177. Meanwhile, Boeing reports it made 114 deliveries in the second quarter—95 737s, three 767s and 16 777s—bringing its total for the year to 222. Meanwhile, the big Emirates order for 32 A380s topped an order intake of 52 aircraft in June for Airbus, which also secured 10 bookings for A319s from an undisclosed customer.
Sept. 28-30—MRO Europe. London. Nov. 1-3—A&D Programs Conference. Phoenix. Nov. 2-3—A&D Supply Chain Conference. Phoenix. Nov. 2-4—MRO Asia Conference and Exhibition. Singapore. Dec. 8-9—A&D Finance Conference and Exhibition. New York. You can now register ONLINEfor Aviation Week Events. Go to www.aviationweek.com/events or call Lydia Janow at+1 (212) 904-3225/+1 (800) 240-7645 ext. 5 (U.S. and Canada Only)
The Indian navy sent out its own RFI last year for five aircraft following the Mumbai terrorist attacks. Its interest is in keeping an eye on the nation’s 7,516-km.-long (4,670-mi.) coastline. Analysts say the Indian air force will need at least 11 more with an initial emphasis on monitoring the nation’s western and southwestern sectors.
The first-ranked low-cost carrier in this year’s Top-Performing Airlines study is a great example of what can happen when you combine a profitable niche with the right business model to exploit it. Allegiant Travel Co. has been among the leaders in this category in past TPA studies, but this year it claims the top ranking by a wide margin. Its financial health score of 96 is higher than any other airline in any category. And it has steadily increased its net profit at a time when others were struggling with large losses.
Japanese scientists are continuing to probe the sample canister from the Hayabusa asteroid mission, now that they have found particles that might be from the asteroid Itokawa. “It’s good news that the capsule wasn’t empty, but we still need to examine whether these particles are from Earth or from Itokawa,” says Project Manager Junichiro Kawaguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The possible asteroid samples are in a small cylinder being examined at the Sagamihara Curation Center.
In all of Asia, no aerospace manufacturer has deeper roots nor a broader reach than Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. From its start as an engine maker in the 1920s, it has built fighters, developed Japan’s launch vehicles, helped lead Japan’s YS-11 turboprop effort and tried its hand in business aircraft with the MU-2 and MU-300. Its most fruitful industrial linkups have been with commercial engine and airplane producers, especially Boeing.
A Wall Street analyst says Boeing’s top priority should be replacing its 777 widebody jet—not the 737 narrowbody. J.P. Morgan’s Joseph B. Nadol, 3rd, warns that orders for Airbus’s new A350 widebody family, scheduled to enter service in 2015, are eating into 777 sales. While orders for the 777-300ER have held up reasonably well, the backlog for the 777-200—the oldest and smallest variant—has declined to just 35 aircraft from 90 in 2006.
Tom Herring has been promoted to senior vice president/general manager from vice president-business development of the unmanned aircraft systems segment of AeroVironment Inc. , Monrovia, Calif. He succeeds John Grabowsky, who is now chief technology officer.
Amy Butler (Washington and Beale AFB, Calif.), Robert Wall (London)
The complexities of the Afghanistan battlefield are driving a closer integration of intelligence collection techniques, with the U.S. Air Force working on new ways to marry signals and imagery intelligence to find enemies on the ground. One such project collocates collection of these two types of intelligence on slow-flying tactical Hawker Beechcraft King Air 90s.
Your introduction to the Aviation Week & Space Technology revamp, “Our New Look” (AW&ST June 28, p. 7), gives me hope that this latest iteration will better serve the aviation community from the top executives and decision makers down to the line assembler and subcontractors. This will be a enormous challenge because the procurement process has become so complicated that I doubt that even politicians can grasp the consequences to individual bidders in the ever more complicated procurement processes worldwide.
Astrium is expected to lead a 15-month, 10-company study intended to identify basic concepts for a Next Generation Launcher to replace Europe’s Ariane 5. The €10-million project, commonly known as Ariane 6, aims to come up with a basic configuration that could be approved for preliminary definition at the next European Space Agency ministerial summit in 2011-12: The 3-8-metric-ton two- or three-stage modular vehicle is expected to be ready around 2025.
Brian Haines has been appointed vice president-sales and marketing of Timco Aviation Services , Greensboro, N.C. He was director of airframe contracts and business operations for Continental Airlines.
Neelam Mathews (New Delhi), Michael Mecham (San Francisco)
Boeing Network & Space Systems is adding to its command, cyber-security and intelligence network portfolio with its second acquisition in as many weeks. For an undisclosed sum, the company is to acquire privately held Narus, a Sunnyvale, Calif., specialist in real-time network traffic and analytics software to help it expand into commercial network accounts, such as in telecoms and energy, while continuing to build its government networks and cyber-security portfolio.
Landon Nitschke (see photo) has become vice president-operations for Aviation Technical Services , Everett, Wash. He was director of line maintenance in Minneapolis and the Western U.S. for Northwest Airlines.
This year’s Top-Performing Airlines rankings highlight that while size grabs attention and consolidation attracts management’s focus, leadership quality is what truly differentiates performance. It is interesting to note that in the decade-plus history of Aviation Week’s airline study, whichever carrier has been the world’s largest at the time has never sat atop the major airlines rankings.
Mark Cancilla (see photo) has become global platform director for aerospace transparencies for PPG Aerospace , Sylmar, Calif. He was global manager for commercial aerospace transparencies.
Speaking of Farnborough no-shows, Lockheed Martin CEO Robert Stevens is hoping to give his company a trim off the top, offering voluntary separation packages to executives. The company will not say how many execs it wants to leave, but their departure date is Feb. 1, 2011. This comes on the heels of Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s call to thin the military’s general officer ranks and top civilian staff in the Defense Department.
Consolidation may be the prevailing trend in the airline industry, but Aviation Week’s latest Top-Performing Airlines study provides a timely reminder that bigger is not always better.
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For the first time since 2001, NASA will fly a six-week field campaign to gather data on how tropical storms form and develop into major hurricanes. Beginning Aug. 15, the Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) mission will use the agency’s DC-8 research aircraft operating out of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood (Fla.) International Airport, a WB-57 flying from Ellington Field in Houston and a Global Hawk remotely piloted aircraft from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center in California.
An Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-800 is about to touch down at San Francisco International Airport. Alaska is the highest-ranked mainline carrier in this year’s Aviation Week Top-Performing Airlines study. Allegiant Air was named the top carrier in the low-cost category, with Australia’s Regional Express Holdings the best of the regional airlines. The full TPA report begins on p. 48. Joseph Pries photo.
It will be at least a month before verification of revised sequencing software for the Orbital Sciences Minotaur IV rocket will be in place and a new launch date can be set for the Boeing Space-Based Space Surveillance system from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. The SBSS mission was set for July 8 but scrubbed when “rigorous and significant testing to ferret out remote failure modes” at Orbital’s Chandler, Ariz., facility turned up an anomaly that posed a one-in-1,000 chance that a timing issue would prompt a launch failure, says Orbital’s Minotaur chief engineer, Tim Kettner.
Though launched barely a year ago, Europe’s Herschel orbital infrared observatory is already challenging old ideas about the birth of stars and opening new roads for IR missions, notably the NASA-led James Webb Space Telescope. Among the findings are a new phase of water never before observed in space and super-distant galaxies that until now were indistinguishable from the cosmic infrared background that permeates deep space.
