Steven G. MacLean, Canada’s chief astronaut and one of the first six Canadian astronauts chosen, will take over the helm of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) following his appointment last week by Industry Minister Jim Prentice. A physicist, MacLean has flown in space twice—on STS-52 on board Columbia in 1992 and on Atlantis in 2006 for the STS-115 International Space Station assembly flight. During the latter mission, he became the first Canadian to operate the station’s Canadarm2 and the second to participate in a spacewalk.
Dassault Systemes has confirmed German press reports regarding an alleged trade secret violation by Siemens Product Lifecycle Management. Dassault says Siemens PLM, acquired in 2007, has admitted obtaining a list of 3,216 Dassault clients from Germany, Switzerland and Austria and posting it on the web, along with contract details and other confidential information.
The U.K. Defense Ministry and Eurocopter are in the final throes of negotiating a service life extension program for 30 RAF Puma helicopters. The program is intended to allow the Puma to remain in service until 2024, rather than being withdrawn from service in 2012. Eurocopter is working on the assessment phase of the proposed extension. The availability and the overall size of the Defense Ministry’s support helicopter fleet is a sensitive issue. Combat operations in Afghanistan have stretched U.K.
Although Grumman’s “Iron Works” was fabled for its U.S. Navy fighters, in a bid to diversify, its engineers also developed the first for-business turbine aircraft—the turboprop Gulfstream—along with postal trucks. Now the current maker of Gulfstream jets is also diversifying, and delivering several messages of its own. General Dynamics Corp.’s Aug. 19 announcement that it planned to acquire Jet Aviation for $2.25 billion not only confirmed its faith in business aviation’s solidity and potential, but signaled the course of the segment’s evolutionary growth.
Pat Connelly has retired as president and become chairman of the ICE Corp. , Manhattan, Kan. He has been succeeded by Randy O’Boyle, who was vice president-marketing.
Flight tests of the revised GEnx-1B engine for Boeing’s 787 are demonstrating improvements to the fuel system and combustor, according to General Electric, and the changes will be recertificated for production engines.
India’s privately owned domestic carrier Kingfisher Airlines has stepped into the international arena with the Sept. 3 launch of daily non-stop service between Bangalore and London Heathrow. The carrier will operate an Airbus A330-200 configured in first and economy classes on the route, the “latent potential” of which Chairman and CEO Vijay Mallya hopes Kingfisher will exploit.
British Airways passenger figures for August reflect the problems facing the sector, with a reduction in passenger load factor of 2.7 points from the previous year, to 77.3%. Non-premium traffic was down 2.1%, while premium traffic was up 2.2%. Despite this increase, BA remains cautious about the outlook for its premium cabin business, saying the “outlook for premium bookings is uncertain.” It adds that “market conditions for the industry remain very difficult.”
China and the U.S. are restarting talks on space cooperation as final preparations are underway for a major Chinese manned space endeavor. China is also preparing to loft the first spacecraft in a unique optical/radar imaging constellation to aid rescue and recovery from natural disasters around the world.
Howard Attarian has been named vice president-flight operations for United Airlines . He was a pilot for Northwest Airlines and has been executive administrator to the president of Air Line Pilots Assn. International.
Pamela Keeton (see photo) has been named a managing director in Burson-Marsteller ’s Washington-based U.S. Public Affairs Practice. She was a former U.S. Army public affairs officer and also was director of communications for Boeing’s missile defense business and later director of external communications for Boeing Integrated Defense.
The Sabre GDS has launched a customer-centric module of its SabreSonic suite of products that it says will allow airlines to generate additional revenue in every distribution channel. This portion of Sabre’s three-year investment in the products, which are rolling out in phases until late 2011, is designed to help airlines learn more about customers. The first to take advantage of one portion of this new capability is Midwest Airlines, which is now selling Midwest Class—better seats in the same coach cabin-—for higher fares, effective Oct. 21.
When Eclipse Aviation founder Vern Raburn was recently ousted, the very light jet manufacturer said no immediate layoffs were planned (AW&ST Aug. 4, p. 36). At least not that week. It didn’t take long for the company to issue pink slips to 200 employees, mostly temporary production workers. And now Eclipse is jettisoning 38% of its workforce as it slows its troubled production line through the end of the year and seeks to staunch the outflow of cash. Employment at the Albuquerque, N.M.-based company has sunk to 1,100, from 2,059 in late July.
Boeing 777 freighter taxis for a test flight at Paine Field in Everett, Wash. The sixth member of the 777 family, the freighter is capable of flying 4,885 naut. mi. with a full payload. Launch customer Air France is scheduled to receive the first 777F in the fourth quarter. Special report on the complications of the U.S. congressional mandate to increase cargo security, and plans for e-freight paperless electronic transactions, begins on p. 52. Boeing photo by Jim Coley.
University of Tennessee Prof. J. Reece Roth’s defense that two foreign nationals working on Air Force contracts had access only to basic research failed to persuade a jury in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee. Roth was convicted Sept. 3 on 18 counts of unlawfully passing data to Chinese and Iranian post-graduate students on a plasma actuator used in an unmanned aerial vehicle munitions project.
Joe Bottenfield (see photo) has been named vice president of the Microwave Systems Solutions Div. of Lynnwood, Wash.-based Crane Aerospace & Electronics . He was director of avionics for North America for Barco Inc.
CIT Group has concluded a firm agreement to take another 10 A320-family transports. The purchase boosts CIT’s Airbus order book to 199 aircraft, including 157 A320/321s, 30 A330s, seven A350s and five A319 executive jets.
Boeing will support Mitsubishi Aircraft in the development, marketing and after-sales support of the MRJ regional jet. Fuji Heavy Industries, meanwhile, also plans to support development of the aircraft, according to a media report apparently sourced from the company. Initially, Fuji will assist only in design of the center wing box and other major parts.
The U.K. will acquire three General Atomics Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles during 2009. The Royal Air Force is operating two Reapers in support of combat operations in Afghanistan. A third Predator will be delivered in January to replace one the RAF was forced to destroy following a crash landing as a result of an engine problem. The RAF also has received approval to purchase a further two Reapers to bolster its UAV capability in the Afghan theater. The U.K.
RapidEye—a German commercial remote-sensing startup that’s staking its future on supplying affordable wide-swath imagery with frequent revisits to geospatial-information users—will push its case following the successful launch of its space segment.
A year after buying and combining StandardAero and Landmark Aviation, Dubai Aerospace Enterprise is replacing the top management at the U.S.-Canadian maintenance, repair and overhaul operation. President and CEO Paul Soubry, an industry veteran, is out—though he’ll remain an adviser. The company will be managed by DAE Engineering, DAE’s aftermarket division. Meanwhile, the credit crunch and weak U.S. economy have DAE scaling back plans to acquire a string of MRO operations.
Russia’s Progress M-64/29P resupply spacecraft will continue the Plasma-Progress experiment started in September 2007 with Progress M-60, following its Sept. 1 undocking from the International Space Station. Using ground-based radar at the Solar Terrestrial Physics Institute in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, Russian scientists will observe the plasma formations that arise when the Progress vehicle’s thrusters fire while the spacecraft is in different attitudes.
