Italian air force Gen. Vincenzo Camporini has been named chief of defense staff. He was his service’s chief of staff and has been succeeded by Lt. Gen. Daniele Tei, who was head of the operational command. Lt. Gen. Antonino Altorio, who was head of the logistics command, now leads the NATO Eurofighter and Tornado Management Agency. Italian navy chief Adm. Giampaolo Di Paola has been appointed chairman of the NATO Military Committee, effective in June. He will succeed Canadian Gen. Ray Henault.
Japan’s Orix Group and the Manara Consortium of Bahrain will each buy 10% of AirAsiaX, the long-haul affiliate of Malaysia-based budget airline group AirAsia Bhd. The airline says it will use the 250-million-ringgit ($77.5-million) proceeds to pay for aircraft it has already ordered.
USAF Brig. Gen. Michael R. Moeller has been appointed commander of the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing of Air Combat Command (ACC) at Al Udeid AB, Qatar. He has been director of strategy, policy and plans for the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command. Brig. Gen. Harry D. Polumbo, Jr., has been named commander of ACC’s 380th Air Expeditionary Wing, Al Dhafra AB, United Arab Emirates. He has been commander of ACC’s 9th Reconnaissance Wing, Beale AFB, Calif. Polumbo has been succeeded by Brig. Gen. Robert P.
Elia Dragone has been appointed general manager of the Cessna Aircraft Co. ’s New York Citation Service Center and Mark Withrow general manager of the Bend, Ore., facility. Dragone was Northeast U.S. manager for Jet Support Services Inc., while Withrow was general manager of Cessna’s production facility in Mexico.
Michel Menard has been named vice president/general manager of Standard Aero subsidiary Landmark Aviation ’s Springfield, Ill., operation. He was divisional director of engineering, quality and operations for Standard Aero’s Enterprise Services in San Antonio.
The German aerospace research center (DLR) and Lufthansa Technik will jointly develop and support the Airbus A320-based Advanced Technology Research Aircraft (ATRA). Lufthansa Technik’s maintenance expertise is being tapped to help DLR modify the aircraft for various sensors. The ATRA will have a relatively low utilization rate—about 200 flight hours per year—according to DLR. Trials are set to start in the fall, with noise abatement listed as a special focus. New displays for improved man-machine interface will also be explored.
Greg Williams has been named president/general manager of Bell Helicopter Textron’s Edwards and Associates Inc. in Fort Worth. He succeeds Phil Dieterich, who has retired. Williams has been executive director for Integrated Support Solutions for Bell Customer Support and Services.
The next six weeks should be a very interesting time for the Japanese aerospace industry. Commercial airliners haven’t rolled off an assembly line here since 1974, when production was halted on the YS-11 turboprop. But Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. says it’s on the brink of launching a new regional jet designed to capitalize on demand for greener and more fuel-efficient aircraft, following a path blazed by Japan’s automobile manufacturers more than three decades ago.
Assembly operations at the International Space Station will intensify in the next few months as the partnership builds toward a six-person crew, amid questions about how they will be supplied over the long haul. While the combined crews of the space shuttle Atlantis and ISS Expedition 16 were busy plugging Europe’s long-awaited Columbus laboratory module into the station last week—and adding a new European control center to the ISS communications net—NASA and its partners announced the astronauts and cosmonauts who will make up the first six-person crew.
India’s Chandrayaan 1 mission to the Moon has been postponed from its planned launch dates of Apr. 9 or 23. Project director Mylaswamy Annadurai tells local media there are still problems relating to the integration of the scientific payloads with the main lunar orbiter. The Indian Space Research Organization says the probe will be launched before June, however.
Eutelsat says it anticipates no impact from a gyro failure that threatens to curtail the life of the Express AM22 satellite, located at 53 deg. E. Long. The Paris-based operator has a long-term lease on 12 transponders on AM22, which was built by NPO PM for the Russian Satellite Communications Co. RSCC says it plans to upload a software patch to correct the problem, but so far the spacecraft, launched in late 2003, is performing nominally.
EADS has inked a memorandum of understanding with Kazakhstan’s main titanium supplier, UKTMP, and aircraft component provider Aubert & Duval, to help assure the long-term supply of the raw material. The percentage of titanium has been increasing on aircraft, along with the growth in composites, so EADS and Boeing have been on a spree of signing long-term relationships with numerous partners. EADS says the latest deal could be worth $1 billion.
I found the “Inside Avionics” article, and one in the previous issue, reporting a trend toward integration of diverse electronics systems, alarming (AW&ST Jan. 21, p. 43; Jan. 14, p. 43).
Bradley C. Flick has become chief engineer and James W. Harris director of the Test Systems Directorate at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center , Edwards AFB, Calif. Flick was chief of the Flight Systems Branch of Dryden’s Research Engineering Directorate, while Harris was deputy director of test systems.
USAF Brig. Gen. Peter F. Hoene has been appointed director of command and control programs at the Defense Information Systems Agency, Arlington, Va. He has been commander of the 350th Electronic Systems Wing of Air Force Materiel Command, Hanscom AFB, Mass. Brig. Gen. Everett H. Thomas has been named commander of the command’s Nuclear Weapons Center, Kirtland AFB, N.M. He has been vice commander of the U.S. Air Force Warfare Center of Air Combat Command, Nellis AFB, Nev.
Boeing has received FAA supplemental type certification (STC) for Japan’s first KC-767 Tanker, a convertible freighter derivative of the 767-200ER. The passenger and main deck cargo certification work “went beyond what is normally performed on military aircraft, and we have received our FAA STC for those capabilities,” says George Hildebrand, Boeing KC-767 Japan program manager. The FAA previously certified the KC-767 for everything except passengers and main deck cargo, and the STC was obtained using a combination of tests on KC-767s destined for both Italy and Japan.
Goodrich is ready to cut the ribbon on a new aftermarket campus in Singapore, the latest in a string of expansions that have morphed a small maintenance shop into the company’s largest MRO facility in the world. The new campus more than doubles the size of an existing nacelle/thrust reverser MRO shop to 530,000 sq. ft. and creates space for Goodrich to consolidate several other services that had been spread across three local facilities. Those activities include aftermarket work on evacuation slides, power systems, engine controls and actuation systems.
Feb. 25-29—UCLA Extension Winter Aerospace and Mechanical Courses: “Finite Element Analysis” and “Airframe Design and Repair.” Also, Mar. 10-14—“Airframe Stress Analysis and Sizing.” Los Angeles. Call +1 (310) 825-3344 or see www.uclaextension.edu Feb. 26-28—American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ Third Space Exploration Conference and Exhibit. Colorado Convention Center, Denver. Call +1 (703) 264-7500, fax +1 (703) 264-7551 or see www.aiaa.org
The U.K. has begun to invest in infrastructure improvements at the dockyard in Scotland that will be used for final assembly of the Royal Navy’s future class of aircraft carriers. The two 65,000-ton carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, are to be final-assembled at Babcock’s Rosyth yard. The two ships are scheduled to enter service in 2014 and 2016.
Controllers plan to upload commands to the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (Messenger) spacecraft Feb. 27, setting up a midcourse maneuver next month as they begin planning for a second flyby of the planet Mercury on Oct. 6. The spacecraft’s instrument suite returned an unprecedented trove of data Jan. 14 as Messenger used Mercury’s gravity to begin slowing it into orbit. The suite will be shut down for the software upload. It will be the first time new software has been loaded into Messenger’s computers since Oct.
Thales has reinforced cooperation with IntuiLab, a leading French specialist in intuitive man-machine interface systems. The expanded agreement will allow Thales to access IntuiLab technologies, development kits and components for MMI prototyping applications. The exclusive accord will be used for interactive cockpit development and improvement activities—a major focus of Thales’s avionics strategy (AW&ST Feb. 11, p. 45).
The NH90 helicopter consortium is scrambling to offset delays that have held back deliveries of the naval NFH (NATO Frigate Helicopter) variant ordered by France, Italy, the Netherlands and Norway. But certification issues, lingering mission system deficiencies and a possible shortage of flight-test personnel still pose major challenges, industry and naval sources say.
Iran is about to begin flights with a new multistage rocket it says will be used later this year to launch satellites into space. U.S. criticism of the booster as a weapons system in disguise, however, set off a two-day war of words with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Both the White House and Kremlin expressed concern that the booster is a wolf in sheep’s clothing for development of an intercontinental ballistic missile that could eventually threaten the U.S. and all of Europe with an Iranian nuclear strike.
South Korea’s Asiana Airlines has purchased a controlling stake in Busan International Air, which plans to begin flying next year as a budget carrier. The investment cost 23 billion won ($25 million). Rival Korean Air is also establishing a no-frills subsidiary, while Singapore’s Tiger Airways anticipates opening a carrier in South Korea.
