Tom Mekis (see photo) has become president/CEO and Jim Odenwaldt vice president-aircraft sales of the Piedmont Aircraft Co. , Winston-Salem, N.C. Mekis was vice president/general manager of the Leesburg, Va., facility of predecessor Landmark Aviation. Honors and Elections
Bell Helicopter is studying a cross between a tiltrotor and tiltwing aircraft as a candidate for eventual replacement of its AH-1Z attack and UH-1Y utility helicopters.
Eager to gain headway in the growing Asian market for satellite services, EchoStar has formed a joint venture with AsiaSat on direct-to-home satellite television services using the AsiaSat 4 spacecraft. The first target market will be television direct-to-home services for Taiwan, but other markets that EchoStar declines to name have been identified. Taiwan has some DTH services, but EchoStar says they are not “robust” and so sees an opening. Denver-based EchoStar provides DTH systems and services in Europe, Mexico, Canada and the U.S.
The Saab Bofors Dynamics workforce in Sweden is being cut as a result of reduced business. The layoffs are only the latest in a series announced by Saab, which is dealing with lags in commercial aviation and defense orders. The latest affect 370 redundancies at Karlskoga, Eskilstuna, Linköping and Göteborg. These layoffs, to be implemented through 2011, come at a cost of 200 million Swedish kronor ($25.9 million) and will largely impact fourth-quarter results.
President Barack Obama may be the “target” of the next missile launch from North Korea, say senior Pentagon officials. However, the impact the North Koreans are aiming for is psychological—not physical. Obama is due to visit South Korea in mid-June and analysts say a large missile, at least the size of a Taepodong 2, is being readied for launch from a new facility on the northwest coast near the border with China. If the North Koreans are willing to rush and break safety rules, the analysts say, they could launch the large missile during Obama’s visit (see p. 27).
Dave Huntzinger has been appointed an executive of Baldwin Aviation , Hilton Head, S.C. He has been vice president-safety, security and compliance for Korean Air and America West.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Drew Dawson, director of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Office of Emergency Medical Services (EMS), have received 2009 Public Service Awards from the Alexandria, Va.-based Assn. of Air Medical Services . Klobuchar was honored for her commitment to health care and EMS, support of air medical transport and “keen interest in the role of technology in enhancing the safety of U.S.
David Rome has become manager of global air traffic management for Metron Aviation , Dulles, Va. He was manager of international operations for NavCanada.
European space ministers are calling on the European Union to direct economic stimulus funding toward the space sector and speed up the introduction of long-term funding mechanisms needed to ensure the smooth rollout of new programs, notably the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) initiative. The two biggest European space-faring nations, France and Germany, have already agreed to include space in their national stimulus plans.
NASA hopes former astronaut and retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Charles Bolden will have his Senate confirmation hearing to become the next administrator of the space agency by the week of July 6. Following a vote by the full Senate, “perhaps we’ll have Charlie in place to celebrate the Apollo 40th anniversary” in mid-July, says Alan Ladwig, senior adviser at NASA headquarters in Washington.
Greg Peckover has become a senior analyst for Euroconsult North America in Montreal and Veronique Revel associate senior analyst for Euroconsult in France. Peckover was director of engineering/vice president-strategic development at NSI Global. Revel was a sales and marketing official for Thales.
Latecoere plans to reorganize its Toulouse area activities in a further effort to deal with dropping demand from the global financial crisis. The reorganization will involve transferring aerostructures work at the company’s plant at Cornebarrieu, France, which is devoted principally to Dassault Falcon business jets, to nearby facilities where Airbus and other aerostructures work is concentrated. Cornebarrieu will remain as a center of maintenance and repair activity.
Thales will shut down its facilities for the first two weeks of August as part of a cost-cutting measure. During the busy European vacation period, sites are usually not running at full pace, anyway, but the decision to formally close down will generate additional, but not publicly quantified cost savings. Thales is making the cuts in reaction to the global economic slowdown, which has taken a toll on its commercial and space business, although military operations have, so far, remained fairly stable.
The first quarter’s declining traffic trend appears to be easing, says Airports Council International Director General Angela Gittens. However, she warns that ACI’s April results could be distorted upward by the boost in holiday traffic, especially international, during the month. Compared with the same period last year, passenger traffic was down an average 3% (1.8% in international, and a sharp 4.9% decline for domestic travel).
When a nuclear or radiological weapon is detonated, scientific investigators can determine where the device originated, based on an analysis of its materials through nuclear forensics. Homeland Security Dept. officials in the Bush administration often warned potential attackers that they had the skills to track them down because every nuclear weapon has a “return address.” But a recent study by the Government Accountability Office finds people with nuclear forensics skills are becoming scarce.
Airbus Military has started dry contacts with its A330 tanker using a new Cobham-designed drogue refueling pod. The so-called 905E pods located on the A330’s wing were used in flight tests with a Spanish air force F/A-18A+ fighter. Canada and the German air force use the 907E pod on their A310 tanker transports. Airbus states: “The system performed well in hose extension and retraction, and showed good hose response in the contact as well as stability during pre-contact and when connected.” The hose-and-drogue system supports a fuel rate of up to 420 gal. per min.
The Kazan-based KAPO manufacturing plant has delivered two heavily modified Tupolev Tu-214s to the presidential flight department. The aircraft, the Tu-214SR, is intended to provide long-range encrypted voice and data communications between the president’s aircraft and land-based stations. The Tu-214SR has a range of almost 5,370 n.m.
MISSION: STS-127 International Space Station (ISS) assembly flight 2J/A, the 127th launch of the space shuttle program and the 29th to the ISS.Orbiter: Endeavour (OV-105) will make its 23rd spaceflight. It most recently returned from orbit on Nov. 30, 2008.
The Transportation Security Administration’s new badging requirements for those with access to operational areas of carrier-served airports took effect June 1, and wary general and business aviation groups are closely monitoring the process. The plan, which TSA altered in late May in response to numerous objections about accommodating transient pilots, now calls for background checks, threat assessments and badging only for those pilots based at such airports.
I agree with Norman Augustine’s comments and recommendations (AW&ST May 11, p. 48) about desirable directions for the aerospace enterprise as well as the need for enlarging the pool of U.S. aerospace engineers. But the interview report fails to address a crucial dimension of the limited pool of engineers: the desirability of pursuing this career as perceived by a potential student and possibly his/her parents.
Lockheed Martin is to expand the flight envelope of the Advanced Composite Cargo Aircraft (ACCA) following its June 2 first flight from the Skunk Works at Palmdale, Calif.
Data link messages indicating Air France Flight 447 encountered electrical and pressurization problems while operating in severe weather are among the scant clues available to investigators as they try to unravel what forces brought down the Airbus A330.
They are not likely to become the Wal-Marts or Amazon.coms of the skies, but airlines appear poised to make a much bigger move into retailing thanks to a convergence of necessity and opportunity.
