Japan Airlines will phase out its last 747 Classics in its coming financial year as it implements its strategy of reducing the average size of its aircraft in preparation for greater capacity at Tokyo’s airports. Ten classic 747s will be withdrawn beginning Apr. 1, along with two 767-300s and six MD-81s. New widebodies entering the fleet will not fully replace the 747s either in number or seat count.
USAF Brig. Gen. Cecil R. Richardson has been nominated for promotion to major general. He is deputy chief of chaplains at USAF Headquarters, Bolling AFB, Washington, D.C. Brig. Gen. Brooks L. Bash has been appointed commander of the Coalition Air Force Transition Team, Multi-National Security Transition Command for Iraq of Air Combat Command. He has been director of combat and information operations at Strategic Command Headquarters, Offutt AFB, Neb.
With a decision imminent on the Air Force KC-X tanker competition, Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) has advice for the Pentagon: Don’t punt to lawmakers decisions you should make. Boeing’s 767-based design and a Northrop Grumman/EADS North America A330-based option are vying for the deal, worth an estimated $40 billion. Abercrombie, who chairs the House Armed Services’ air and land forces subcommittee, has grown increasingly frustrated with Defense Dept. indecisiveness.
Air One hopes to hear from an Italian administrative tribunal on Feb. 20 concerning its legal challenge to stop Air France-KLM talks to take over Alitalia. Air One wants to be allowed to put forward its own bid, even though it lost out to Air France-KLM to be named preferred bidder last month. The fate of state-owned Alitalia also is awaiting the outcome of general elections in April; Alitalia will run out of cash in June. Alitalia says that starting Mar. 30, it will reduce destinations to 51 from 86, with daily flights decreasing 12%.
Congressional phones will be ringing off the hook this week. The general aviation sector isn’t exactly thrilled with the Bush administration’s proposed FAA budget for Fiscal 2009 (see p. 32). “What part of ‘NO!’ doesn’t the White House understand?” asks Phil Boyer, president of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Assn. “It’s essentially the same as last year’s,” he notes, which was soundly rejected by the GA community, the House and the Senate.
David A. Fulghum (Washington), Amy Butler (Washington), Michael Bruno (Washington)
Military aviators with insight into the VH-71 Presidential Helicopter program say the Pentagon chose the right company and the right helicopter. But they contend the program is stalled until the White House and the Pentagon’s senior civilians agree on a reasonable set of requirements and identify the additional resources needed to complete the project. It could cost as much as $4 billion to fully fund the helicopter.
Here we go again. The airline industry is buzzing with speculation about mergers as marriage talks heat up between Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines, and UAL Corp. (United Airlines) considers a combination with Continental Airlines. Skeptics can be forgiven for doubting that anything will come of the discussions. It was only a few weeks ago that hedge fund Paradus Capital Management was publicly pushing for a merger of Delta with United (AW&ST Dec. 3, 2007, p. 12).
Keith S. Vasey has been appointed team representative for the Upper Midwest U.S. for the Mooney Airplane Co. , Kerrville, Tex. He was North Central U.S. sales manager for Columbia Aircraft.
Yannick d’Escatha, director of the French space agency CNES, says NASA has agreed to benchmark launch operations at Europe’s French Guiana spaceport and the Kennedy Space Center in order to compare operational and technical experience. Michel Eymard, the French launcher director, says NASA wants to benefit from certain technical similarities between its new Ares launch vehicles and Europe’s Ariane 5 heavy lifter.
Martin Zelman (see photo) has been appointed vice president-internal audit of the Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman Corp. He succeeds Carolyn Pitman, who now leads the company’s Enterprise Shared Services organization. Zelman was vice president/controller of the Mission Systems Sector.
The British government has finally decided to proceed with the sale of the rotary-wing element of its Defense Aviation and Repair Agency to Canadian third-party maintenance company Vector. The £17-million-pound deal will see the transfer of DARA’s Fleetlands and Almonbank sites to the Canadian company. The acquisition will double the staff count at Vector, and boost its revenue by a third. The two sites provide support for British Chinook, Lynx and Sea King helicopters.
Aer Lingus and JetBlue Airways have signed a deal giving passengers for the Irish carrier single-booking access to the U.S. low-fare carrier. JetBlue has a big presence at Boston Logan International Airport, which is a key destination for Aer Lingus. However, the duration of the deal is uncertain with Lufthansa taking a 19% stake in JetBlue and looking to link its long-haul flights with JetBlue’s U.S. domestic operations. Aer Lingus could begin talks with several other U.S. carriers by year-end to extend the online booking model that will go live with JetBlue in April.
Japan’s ATD-X Shinshin stealth demonstrator could potentially be developed as a combat aircraft, should Tokyo so choose, thanks to an airframe that appears to have been designed with a production version in mind. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the country’s fighter specialist, is now confirmed as a key player in developing the aircraft. One of the latest official photographs shows a radar cross-section model of the ATD-X being wheeled out of a Mitsubishi plant.
Very few satellite-based services are available for the vast areas covered by the Royal Australian Air Force and Navy, but help is on the way. The Australians bought into the U.S. Wideband Global Satcom program by spending enough to provide the constellation with an additional satellite (for a total of six). Australia will have access to 10% of the communications bandwidth provided by USAF’s first satellite, which is now on orbit. Eventually it will have a 16% share of the entire constellation’s capability.
British Airways is proving that not even the prospect of a tightening transatlantic aviation market will deter it from rolling out innovative strategies for new services. Hard on the heels of launching a subsidiary carrier to operate between Continental Europe and New York, BA is again raising eyebrows with plans to fly Airbus A318s across the Atlantic carrying just 32 business-class passengers.
Lufthansa hopes to broaden its product portfolio as it enters significant partnerships with TUI and DHL. Late last month, Lufthansa and travel concern TUI signed a memorandum of understanding to merge their low-fare and leisure subsidiaries Germanwings and TUIfly into the country’s second-largest low-fare carrier after Air Berlin. Also, Lufthansa revealed more details about its new cargo joint venture with DHL, AeroLogic.
Although the overall earnings outlook for European airlines is uncertain, network carriers believe their key premium long-haul traffic could weather a downturn, whereas yields on short-haul operations are already under pressure. The U.S. economic slowdown could spread to Europe and that, coupled with soaring fuel prices, is causing consternation throughout most of the airline sector. Capacity and stage-length growth also are adding pressure to financial returns while labor issues continue unabated.
The U.S. Army has begun pilot instruction using two OH-58D Operational Flight Trainers as part of its Flight School XX1 program. The OFTs allow Kiowa Warrior crews to train for the first time on a full-motion, high-fidelity simulator, according to Lenny Genna, vice president of Army programs for L-3 Communications’ Link Simulation and Training division. He says the Flight School XX1 initiative is aimed at improving the readiness of operational units, and the OFTs provide OH-58D crews with individual or networked training.
The $50.5-billion U.S. Homeland Security Dept. budget request for Fiscal 2009 includes $1.3 billion for counter-IED (improvised explosive device) measures, more than $1.1 billion for Transportation Security Administration (TSA) explosives detection technology at airports, $30 million for training of TSA security officers and $9 million for the department’s Office of Bombing Prevention.
French armaments agency DGA has concluded a contract for basic helicopter training that will be the country’s first major private financing initiative (PFI) in the defense arena. Inspired by PFIs introduced in the U.K. such as the Skynet 5 telecom satellite program, the 22-year contract, which was awarded to Defense Conseil International and Proteus Helicopters, will enable the French defense ministry to replace its aging fleet of 54 Gazelle rotorcraft on a flight-hour service basis, without dipping into its overstretched procurement budget.
SAS Group, in an ongoing effort to ensure long-term financial viability, has decided to shed its Spirit Air Cargo Handling unit, one of three subsidiaries it was considering for divestment. SAS Technical Services will remain part of the group, but the heavy maintenance of Boeing 737 classics will shift from Scandinavia to a lower-cost site. SAS Ground Services will have another 1.5 years to prove itself, with a goal of improving its cost base by 400 million Swedish kronor ($62 million).
A recent article says 182 U.S. Air Force F-15s remain grounded due to a longeron manufacturing defect (AW&ST Jan. 14, p. 28). The article also says it would cost about $260,000 per fighter to bring them back to operational status. USAF says this grounding illustrates the need to purchase more F-22s because repairing the F-15s is too expensive. Rudimentary math concludes that repairing all 182 grounded F-15s would cost a total of $47.3 million, to extend their service life 20 years beyond current projections. A single F-22 Raptor will cost $339 million.
The European Space Agency has inaugurated a space astronomy center near Madrid. The European Space Astronomy Center (ESAC) will be in charge of operating astrophysics and solar system missions, including the existing XMM-Newton, Integral, Mars Express, Venus Express, Rosetta and Akari observatories and upcoming initiatives such as Herschel-Planck, Gaia, Lisa Pathfinder, James Webb Space Telescope and the BepiColombo Mercury probe (AW&ST Jan. 28, p. 403).
I had to chuckle when I read the USAF rationale for new F-22s as a result of F-15 Longeron defects. For a relative costs basis, here’s a good analogy: Say the owner of a fleet of pickup trucks, which have been reliable through the years, finds out there is a safety issue (the wheels might fall off). The new part costs only $10 apiece, but installation costs $200 for each truck.
