U.K. air travel was severely disrupted Sept. 25 due to a breakdown affecting operations at the London Area Control Center. A system feeding controller workstations at the center malfunctioned, according to British air navigation service provider NATS. Airlines had to cancel a large number of flights, because NATS limited the amount of air traffic in the London Area Control sectors, as well as flights taking off from major U.K. airports. The glitch did not affect Scottish airspace, Manchester Area airspace, and Manchester and London Terminal Control, NATS said.
Eric Cardinali has been named president of Textron’s Montreal-based Bell Helicopter Canada . He succeeds Jacques St.-Laurent, who has become president of Bell Helicopter’s European operations. Cardinali was vice president-integrated supply chain.
Lockheed Martin has been tapped by the Securities and Exchange Commission to provide transition services, program management support for Server, Managed Network and End-User Computing services, as well as other infrastructure areas. The $33-million, six-year award has a potential value of $122 million if all program options are exercised. Work will be performed at the SEC Washington headquarters and the commission’s operations center in Alexandria, Va., as well as remote sites.
Sandia National Laboratories’ Responsive Neutron Generator Product Deployment Center received the Shingo Prize—an operational excellence award—for 2008, becoming the first public sector organization to do so. Shingo promotes awareness of lean concepts and recognizes companies in the U.S., Canada and Mexico that achieve world-class status in lean transformation. The prize, named for Japanese industrial engineer Shigeo Shingo, associated with the Toyota Production System, was established in 1988 at Utah State University’s John M. Hunstman School of Business.
Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority is set to start random alcohol and drug testing of the continent’s 120,000 aviation industry workers before year-end. New regulations that became effective Sept. 25 require aviation organizations, such as airlines, to establish comprehensive testing plans within six months. They would include pre-employment and post-accident testing, as well as education and rehabilitation. Flight and cabin crews, engineers, dispatchers and air traffic controllers are among those covered by the new rule.
Thales Alenia Space has begun work on a €41-million ($60-million) expansion of its main satellite facility in Cannes, France. The extension, to be finished in the second half of 2010, will add 26,000 sq. meters (280,000 sq. ft.) of office and logistics space to handle the company’s rapid growth and improve the layout of the plant, which sprawls on both sides of a main rail line through the city.
High oil prices are helping drive leading commercial airframers’ and airlines’ participation in efforts to develop alternative fuels as soon as possible. Speaking at Aviation Week’s MRO Europe 2008 Conference and Exhibition in Madrid last week, James Kinder, Boeing’s senior fuel engineer, said past company studies on alternative fuels estimated they would be competitive with jet fuel at $70-90 a barrel.
In his most detailed position yet on NASA issues, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) is signaling strong support for civil space and aeronautics spending.
Kay Weatherford (see photos) has been named vice president-revenue management and pricing, and Kathleen Wayton vice president-strategy and change leadership, of Southwest Airlines . Weatherford was senior director of revenue and traffic analysis, while Wayton was senior director of strategic planning. Bob Young has become vice president/chief technology officer.
L-3 Communications has completed work on the first of a planned 78 C-27Js for the U.S. Army/Air Force Joint Cargo Aircraft program, meeting the agreed schedule. A second aircraft is in flight testing at Alenia Aeronautica in Italy and will be delivered in November after completion by L-3 in Waco, Tex. These first two C-27Js will be used for operational testing. Six Army aircraft are already under contract, and Congress has fully funded procurement of seven more in Fiscal 2009.
Michael A. Taverna (Paris), Graham Warwick (Washington)
A project aimed at developing an advanced light twin-turboprop to replace aging utilities in the Dornier 228 class is finally moving forward, reflecting a new surge of interest in this long-neglected market segment.
The U.S. Army and Air Force are nearly finished working out plans for cooperating on operations of medium-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). In the coming weeks, Gen. William Wallace, commander of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, and USAF Gen. John Corley, commander of Air Combat Command, will brief their respective service chiefs on the arrangement. The plan could lead to common airframes, training and control schemes for medium-altitude UAVs such as the Air Force’s Predator and Army’s Sky Warrior.
Joe Del Balzo, founder/president of JDA Aviation Technology Solutions of Washington and a former acting FAA administrator, has been named to the FAA ’s Research, Engineering and Development Advisory Committee and chair of its Aircraft Safety Subcommittee.
Hungary’s national carrier, Malev, has begun using SITA software that allows passengers departing from Budapest Ferihegy Airport to check in anywhere they have access to the Internet. Airline officials plan to expand the service to other airports. Similarly, Croatia Airlines has started offering Internet check-in capability using Lufthansa Systems software that allows passengers to print boarding passes in advance as well.
Russia’s business aviation sector is poised for change. Medium and smaller aircraft are now attracting buyers and operators in a region where larger airframes have been the norm. The smaller models could also benefit from a government decision to waive a 20% import tax on aircraft seating up to 19 passengers and weighing (operational empty) 15-20 metric tons. Previously, many operators registered aircraft in other countries to avoid the steep charge.
Qantas Airways hopes delivery of its first Airbus A380 will not just kick off a major fleet renewal, but also provide a much-needed image boost following a spate of operational incidents and strikes.
European startup business jet fractional ownership company Jet Republic will begin training pilots for its Bombardier Learjet 60 XR aircraft in March. The company has 25 Learjet 60 XRs on firm order, and holds options for another 85. The company began operating last week, offering a private jet card program using European charter operators. Fractional ownership on the Learjet 60 XR will begin at 50 hr. The entry level cost will be about $900,000. Funding has been secured from Austrian private bank Euram and a group of its clients.
Airline executives continue to make financial choices that are both angering their frequent customers and offering little incentive for them to remain loyal to a particular brand. A downward spiral in the public’s perception, particularly of U.S. airlines, started when they began to charge for checked bags. Some carriers then added cost and confusion for the consumer when they revised those policies to fit what their competitors were doing.
Growth of Indian airlines this year has been the second slowest after the U.S. According to the International Air Transport Assn., India’s aviation growth slowed from 33% in 2007 to 7.5% in the first half of this year, and went negative in the last two months. This July, the growth was 1.9% compared with 7.3% in July 2007. Giovanni Bisignani, IATA director general and CEO, says Indian airlines could post $1.5 billion in losses in 2008, the largest outside the U.S. IATA says there is an urgent need to reduce costs, improve infrastructure and implement global standards.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is nearing the end of a research program spurred by a concept advanced by The Aerospace Corp. more than a decade ago. The idea of developing and qualifying computer chips to fly in space using commercial microelectronic foundries for chip fabrication has some urgency attached to it because military and civil space projects always need radiation-hardened computer chips.
Peter P. Papadakos, Gyrodyne Foundation (Reno, Nev.)
Regarding Robert Vanderzee’s letter on how the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency would deal with suicide bombers (AW&ST Sept. 15, p. 9), the Navy was concerned about mines and improvised explosive devices back in 2000 when a captain came to talk to me and an associate about flying a HyperSpectral Imaging System from our unmanned aerial vehicle.
Boeing Capital Corp., the company’s “lender of last resort,” hasn’t had to finance a sale for more than two years. Outside banks were eager to lend money to buyers and lessors of commercial aircraft on generous terms. But with the markets now paralyzed by the greatest credit crisis since the Great Depression, the company is preparing to finance select deliveries within the next 18 months for buyers whose financing has fallen through or become unaffordable.
Russia’s Proton Breeze M launch vehicle underscored its return to service with a Sept. 20 launch of Nimiq 4 for Telesat, hard on the heels of Inmarsat 4F3 on Aug. 19. That mission ended a five-month shutdown following a mid-March mishap that left SES Americom’s AMC-14 stranded in useless orbit (AW&ST Sept. 1, p. 18).
