Aviation Week & Space Technology

As airline corporate communications and marketing departments focus on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, a fourth site, LinkedIn, is becoming increasingly important to airline human resources departments.

Mexico has the potential to be a boom market for air travel, but the Mexicana airline group is not just sitting back and waiting for demand to materialize. The carrier has made major changes across all of its operations, positioning it to capitalize on untapped domestic traffic as well as new international opportunities.

Body scans, pat-downs, passenger profiling, flight delays—the global aviation community is bracing for the operational and financial impact of measures being taken ­to address vulnerabilities laid bare in the Dec. 25 terrorist attempt to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253.

With the threat of a conflict with Iran looming, the Israeli air force has augmented its fleet of KC-707 (“Re’em”) aerial refueling aircraft with an eighth tanker, bolstering the strike capacity the country would have if it tries to undertake a raid on Teheran’s nuclear facilities.

The Global Positioning Systems Wing and the 50th Space Wing at Shriever AFB, Colo., will bring improved ground systems software for telemetry, tracking and command to support the USAF’s GPS on Jan. 11. The upgrades include new navigation signals for civil users, encrypted military codes, crosslink enhancements and improved navigation signal accuracy. They anticipate mid-2010 launch of the first of 12 GPS-IIF satellites from Boeing.

Lockheed Martin received a foreign military sales contract to deliver sniper advanced targeting pods and Lantirn (low-altitude navigation targeting infrared for night) enhanced-resolution pods to the Turkish air force. The award, valued at $118 million, is to deliver pods for F-16 Block 40 and 50 Peace Onyx aircraft. Rich Lovette, program director for fixed-wing fire control at Lockheed Martin’s Missiles and Fire Control unit, says the pods will bring a significant upgrade to Turkey’s F-16 fleet.

It did not take long for Wes Bush to make his mark on Northrop Grumman Corp. Three days after he became CEO on Jan. 1, the 120,000-employee military contractor announced that its headquarters will move to the Washington region in 2011, decamping from Los Angeles, where Jack Northrop founded the company 70 years ago.

Alan Diehl is right in his letter “KC-135 Updates Make Sense” (AW&ST Nov. 30, 2009, p. 10), which endorses the suggestion that instead of buying oldish Boeing 777s or Airbus A330s, or even older 767s as tankers, the U.S. Defense Dept should fund development of a new tanker with a blended-wing, composite airframe and geared turbofan or unducted fan engine.

Sikorsky’s Helicopter Support Inc. unit, and Goodrich Corp. have agreed to collaborate to offer an advanced aircraft maintenance application to the global rotary aircraft market. The Health and Usage Monitoring Systems (HUMS) developed by Goodrich’s Sensors and Integrated Systems business is a series of networked diagnostic sensors that comprehensively tracks mechanical performance of the aircraft. Real-time data are provided to enhance predictive maintenance.

ABX Air pilots, hard hit by the 2008 closing of the DHL hub at Wilmington, Ohio, are benefiting from a recent agreement over disbursement of $75 million of severance and pension funds. DHL remitted $75 million to ABX Air in December under a 2008 pact between the airline and the express package operator. ABX Air and Teamsters Local 1224 reached agreement separately on the disbursement covering 670 pilots.

ITT Corp. last week announced a restructuring. A new division, which represents areas with about $6.5 billion in annual sales, will include three components: Geospatial Sensors will subsume areas including digital and analog sensors and the night-vision business; Electronic Systems will comprise the networked communication and electronic warfare businesses; and Information Systems will address the “sharing, collation, fusion and timely, secure application of the vast amounts of information made available by more integrated networks,” a company official says.

U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz is looking to automation as a solution for manpower headaches brought on by the sudden influx of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) into the service’s fleet. “Right now we have about 140-160 people [for support of each UAS] orbit. That is aircrew, that is maintenance, that is back-end processing. We have got to reduce that,” Schwartz said following a speech at the Aviation Week/Credit Suisse Aerospace and Defense Finance conference in New York last month.

It is exciting to see possible improvements to the Airbus A320 series aircraft. I truly hope Airbus moves on all upgrades to the aircraft. I had to laugh, though, at a comment that Chief Operating Officer-Customers John Leahy made about upgrades to the avionics: “Cool on that idea.” As a captain on A320 series, I must say the avionics (including recent slight improvements) are stuck in the 1980s. I doubt Leahy uses a 1986 Apple computer, yet that is where the A320 intelligence stands.

The tail of a Mexicana Airlines Boeing 767 looms in front of an Airbus A330 at Mexico City International Airport. Mexicana uses leased 767s and A330s for its new long-haul routes to Europe and South America, while A320s form the backbone of its extensive U.S. network. An order for A350s or 787s could be placed this year. The Mexicana group is pursuing a strategy based on three separate airlines, as it prepares for the strong growth in air travel that is forecast for the Mexican market (see p. 38). Mexicana photo.

BAE Systems has installed the Advanced Threat Infrared Countermeasures (Atircm) on a U.S. Army CH-47D Chinook. The laser-based, directable countermeasures system protects helos against missile attacks. The first systems were installed prior to the Dec. 15, 2009, deadline for the service’s Atircm quick-reaction capability program.

Japan Airlines looks increasingly likely to go bankrupt, probably under a pre-packaged arrangement that would speed up court-directed reorganization. The state bailout agency directing the turnaround, the Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corp., is proposing the bankruptcy as part of a plan under which it would inject government capital worth ¥300 billion ($3.21 billion) into the airline, according to a draft that the agency has presented to lenders, the Nikkei newspaper reports. The lenders would also waive ¥300 billion of debt, under the scheme set out by the agency.

The U.S. government is embarking on a comprehensive, 20-year program to fold virtually all of its commercial satellite bandwidth and services buys under one roof.

The European Commission is opting to acquire its Galileo satellite navigation spacecraft the way the U.S. Global Positioning System is procured—in competitive batches. The commission last week selected a team led by OHB System of Germany to build a first batch of 14 Full Operating Capability (FOC) satellites for the system, which will allow Europe to provide global high-precision timing and position location services to complement GPS.

Astronaut John M. Grunsfeld, who has visited the Hubble Space Telescope three times in orbit to make upgrades and repairs, will help guide its observations as the new deputy director of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore. Grunsfeld also will help prepare the institute for operations with NASA’s planned James Webb Space Telescope. The STScI manages science operations on the Hubble. Trained in physics, Grunsfeld has conducted research in X-ray and gamma-ray astronomy and high-energy cosmic rays.

British Airways and its cabin crew union are talking to resolve their disagreements over contract terms and avoid a potential strike. A court last month invalidated the union’s strike ballot just before a 12-day walkout was planned over the Christmas holiday period. The union had threatened to seek another strike mandate, but has now entered negotiations under the auspices of the Trade Union Congress.

Israel’s Iron Dome counter-rocket system has taken a small step toward fielding by successfully intercepting salvos of 122-mm. Grad-type rockets in a series of tests on Jan. 5-6.

Prompted by Western and other competitive air-to-air developments and renewed domestic funding, Russia is now offering upgraded versions of its own weaponry in the export arena.

Mexicana is reshaping its fleet as it takes delivery of new aircraft types, but the carrier is also planning ahead for the orders it will need to fulfill its long-term ­strategy. CEO Manuel Borja hopes to place an order next year for either Airbus A350s or Boeing 787s as long-haul fleet replacements. Meanwhile, the carrier is already looking at options to replace its new Boeing 717 fleet once the leases expire.

In the Jan. 4 issue, (p. 35), the value of the Orbital Sciences’ Corp. contract for Phase 2 of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s System F6 program was incorrect. The contract is worth $74.6 million.

Obituary: USAF Gen. (ret.) Lew Allen, Jr., died Jan. 4 of complications from rheumatoid arthritis. He was 84, and lived in Potomac Falls, Va. A West Point graduate, who was commissioned in 1946 and also held a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois, Allen was the 10th Air Force chief of staff and director of both the National Security Agency and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory during his 44-year career.