Klaus Goersch has become executive vice president-operations and customer service, Jack Smith senior vice president-customer service, Rocky Wiggins senior vice president-information service/chief information officer and Stephen Kolski executive vice president-corporate affairs, all for AirTran Airways .
USN Rear Adm. John W. Miller has been appointed commander of the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center, Fallon, Nev. He has been commander of San Diego-based Carrier Strike Group 11.
Vince Restivo (see photo) has been appointed vice president-aircraft completions and interior design for the Hawker Beechcraft Corp. , Wichita, Kan. He was director of completion sales for the Gulfstream Aerospace Corp., Savannah, Ga.
Unions Gain Ground In New Era Of Contract Negotiations It has been said since early 2009 that this would be the year for organized labor in the U.S. This has been true for many airlines, as unions have come to the end of a decade of givebacks, coupled with major Obama administration pro-labor initiatives that include a recent decision which will help union organizing efforts.
New Delhi and Moscow are trying to finalize workshare arrangements for a proposed hypersonic cruise missile program that would closely involve Russian industry, including cruise missile manufacturer NPO Mashinostroyenia.
Marc Sander has been named Zurich-based charter sales director for ExecuJet Europe . He was a sales and marketing manager at Excellent Air. Honors and Elections
John Dowdy, the director of McKinsey & Co.’s A&D consulting practice, recently asked an audience which nation the U.S. replaced in 1892 as having the world’s largest economy. Most wrongly guessed it was the U.K. The correct answer is China. Dowdy’s point: Chinese leaders view the last century as an aberration and are aiming to reclaim their country’s role as a leading economic power. And creating an aircraft industry is a big part of that ambition.
Airships are survivors—a genus of aircraft that has been around since the dawn of aviation and is now being offered another chance at lasting success. This time the mission is persistent surveillance, but can undisputed endurance carve out a role for unmanned airships that lasts beyond today’s war?
A series of Aster 30 firings from French, Italian and British vessels appears to have confirmed a fix MBDA had to make to the air defense and ballistic missile interceptor. The Royal Navy last year suffered two failures with the Sea Viper configuration, which forced MBDA to make design changes and also to delay delivery of further Aster 30s. The company now says that it completed a series of launches. MBDA had made a production change that introduced a problem affecting a strake that protects cables along the missile’s airframe.
After years of studying the feasibility of building a homegrown atmospheric reentry capability, Europe is preparing to demonstrate initial advanced concepts.
Jo Kremsreiter has become St. Louis-based Western U.S. sales director for the general aviation aeronautical communications systems and solutions of the International Communications Group , Newport News, Va. Robert D. Troyer (see photo) has been appointed manager of new business and customer development for the Ladish Co., Cudahy, Wis. He was vice president-business development for Grede Foundries Inc.
Unleaded avgas versus the clock Having essentially squandered decades, the general aviation industry is suddenly in a hurry-up mode in response to a federal government increasingly impatient with it to clean up its act. Beyond that, there’s a question as to how much longer an essential supplier will stay the course.
The letter from Eric Salo, “Power to Powered Wheels” (AW&ST June 7, p. 10), reminded me of a conversation with my father in the late 1960s at Chicago O’Hare International Airport when I was a budding young aviation enthusiast. Where the big jets touched down, clouds of rubber smoke would curl in the wing tip vortices to mark the location of their return to Earth. It seemed a waste so I asked my father why the wheels didn’t have a system of wind vanes, or something, to bring them up to speed before they touched.
Tom Haulik has been named carbon fiber sales manager for Hexcel Composites Ltd. , Duxford, England. He was sales manager for Sigmatex High Technology Fabrics.
In reference to David Bangley’s letter citing options to capsules as shown by the X-37B recent flight (AW&ST May 3, p. 10), he, like many others, doesn’t really understand the whole picture. NASA has a capsule now for several reasons that can be traced back many years. During the early 1990s, Crew Transfer Vehicle and Orbital Space Plane concepts were under development, both of which were winged bodies or other high-lift derivatives.
Thai Airways International will acquire seven new Airbus A330-300s through financial lease and eight Boeing 777-300ERs on operating lease, with deliveries to be completed by 2014. This is on top of a previous order of eight A330-300s and six A380s that are expected to join the fleet by 2013. The carrier is also retrofitting its 747-400s.
Patrick M. Antkowiak (see photo) has become vice president/general manager of the Advanced Concepts and Technologies Div. of the Northrop Grumman Corp. ’s Electronic Systems Sector, Linthicum, Md. He was vice president-strategy and capability for the Engineering, Manufacturing and Logistics Div.
Eurofighter partner nations could start development of an active, electronically scanned array (AESA) radar for the Typhoon as early as July 1. A full-scale development program would aim to have an AESA radar available in 2015.
The data are still raw and will require alternate views from ground-based telescopes and the Hubble and Spitzer orbiting observatories to weed out false leads, but results are pouring in from the Kepler mission to find Earth-like exoplanets in the Cygnus and Lyra constellations. The mission’s science team has released the first 43 days of data from views of 156,000 stars. The information has not been reduced into visible images yet, but the team says it has identified 400 objects as top candidates to be exoplanets.
Pierre Sparaco blames the tanker mess on politicians, “Tanker Quagmire” (AW&ST May 31, p. 58). Actually, politicians are reactive. The ones I know say they have been bombarded with constituent correspondence expressing strong objections to our armed forces buying even one airplane from the French. My sources say constituents cite the fear that one day the French will say, “No more tankers. We disagree with your presence in this or that war.” That is one reason politicians react the way they do toward the tanker buy.
British industry in particular—and the wider sector in general—will want to put its best foot forward at the Farnborough showcase, but it is also taking a stride into the unknown. Turmoil in the U.K. domestic economy, as well as the recently elected government’s warning of an age of austerity and cross-departmental budget cuts form a challenging backdrop for one of the world’s premier aerospace trade shows.
A small groundswell is rising in Congress for a faster start on the heavy-lift launch vehicle President Barack Obama says he wants, but it may be swamped by the backwash from growing irritation over NASA’s sluggish production of justification for its “game-changing” new approach. A bipartisan gang of 62 House members wants Obama to initiate “the immediate development and production of a heavy-lift launch vehicle that, in conjunction with the Orion crew exploration vehicle, may be used for either lunar or deep-space exploration.”
The Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency has obtained approval from the FAA for a certificate of authorization that will allow Predator B flights along the Texas border with Mexico, and throughout the Gulf Coast.
