NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria holds the new U.S. record for time spent spacewalking--61 hr., 22 min.--following his completion of a third extravehicular activity (EVA) in nine days. His spacewalking partner, NASA's Sunita Williams, gained the women's record on the 6-hr., 40-min. EVA Feb. 8. She has now spent 29 hr., 17 min. in four EVAs, all of them since she arrived at the International Space Station on the space shuttle Discovery in December.
A News Break item incorrectly stated the closest distance that the New Horizons spacecraft will be from Jupiter (AW&ST Jan. 22, p. 22). New Horizons will pass within 2.3 million km. (1.4 million mi.) of the planet.
Amy Butler (Orlando, Fla.), David A. Fulghum (Washington)
The Air Force's $153.9-billion budget request for Fiscal 2008 is merely an attempt to slow losses from what one senior Air Force official calls the "insidious effect" of reduced readiness brought on by years of fiscal pressures. An associated and perhaps overly ambitious get-well plan calls for adding $20 billion annually to its budget for the next 20 years, beginning in Fiscal 2009. This would be to improve readiness and stabilize production rates of F-35s and F-22s, and procure needed cargo and refueling aircraft sooner.
Germany plans to have six Tornado reconnaissance aircraft operational in Afghanistan by mid-April to meet a request by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for more intelligence collection capacity. The German cabinet last week gave the green light for the deployment after prolonged internal debate. Although strong opposition persists, parliamentary go-ahead is expected next month.
Safran's Turbomeca unit has laid the cornerstone of a plant that will house all of the development and production activities at its main site in Pau, in southwestern France, into a single new facility (AW&ST Dec. 5, 2005, p. 60). The new digs are expected to be ready in 2008.
EXECUTIVE JET MANAGEMENT (EJM) HAS OPENED an office for charter sales and service in the Preston Center in the Dallas Park Cities area to serve Texas and the southwestern U.S. Maurice Levy, EJM senior vice president for sales, says "four of the top 10 fastest-growing cities fall into that market." Since 2003 EJM has opened offices in Teterboro, N.J., San Jose, Calif., and Chicago, and intends to open another office in south Florida. EJM is a subsidiary of NetJets Inc.
Don't look for Boeing to make any big acquisitions anytime soon. "We really have an organic [growth] strategy and will fill in stuff around the sides," CEO James McNerney told investors at a Cowen & Co. conference last week in New York. Those fill-ins should include more international acquisitions, services operations and product and technology-based add-ons for the company's defense unit, he says. "We don't have any big, big acquisition plans in mind at all." McNerney says one of his top priorities is executing on Boeing's record backlog.
John Walker is playing a key role in devising better ways for unmanned aircraft to operate in civil airspace, and he sees the stage being set for rapid aviation innovation like that experienced in the early 20th century. In fact, the current unmanned aircraft system (UAS) era looks to him like another Kitty Hawk. "There are multiple industries in the U.S. [and abroad] that do not know today they will have a UAS in their business plan in 5-10 years," Walker says of the huge potential for civil applications.
One of the largest aerospace engineering faculties in Europe is about to launch a major strategic research project that by 2011 is to deliver innovative concepts for a future, post-2025 ultra-green airliner. The project is known as CleanEra (Cost-effective Low Emissions And Noise Efficient Regional Aircraft). It is to be the first taken on by the newly formed DELcraFTworks, an advanced aerospace technologies research center at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), the Netherlands.
William Spires, Jr. (see photo) has been named vice president-operations for Aitech Defense Systems, Chatsworth, Calif. He was director of manufacturing for Curtiss-Wright.
Northwest Airlines, in the black for the first time on an annual basis in six years, posted a $301-million 2006 profit. Payouts for profit-sharing and severance cut into fourth-quarter earnings, resulting in a $7-million loss. The earnings do not reflect $3.1 billion in Chapter 11 reorganization items or taxes. Officials predicted the carrier is on track to complete its restructuring in the second quarter.
The FAA's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to end the discriminatory forced unemployment of U.S. airline pilots at Age 60 is long overdue (AW&ST Feb. 5, p. 39). The only remaining organized opposition is a single special interest union group, the politically powerful Air Line Pilots Assn. Two years ago, the younger members voted to continue opposition to the change so they might progress faster. Since the resulting economic penalty to others violates the the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, ALPA couches its opposi- tion as safety concerns.
A year's worth of fare increases and slightly fuller airplanes in January amount to a healthy step toward first-quarter financial improvements for six of the seven biggest U.S. airlines. The key measures are yield and load factor. Multiplying the two provides the coinage of the airlines' realm--revenue per available seat mile, or unit revenue.
China launched another Beidou navigation satellite from the Xichang center in Sichuan province Feb. 2 on a Long March 3-A rocket, bringing to four the number of spacecraft in the constellation. A fifth Beidou is planned for launch later this year as China builds toward a 35-satellite constellation, with the first five of them in geostationary orbits. Like the U.S. with its Global Positioning System, China plans to offer civilian and military timing and navigation service with the Beidou system.
Airports of Thailand President Chotisak Asapaviriya has resigned just 10 months into his four-year term as the authority works to fix cracking pavement at its new Suvarnabhumi airport at Bangkok. Thailand has confirmed it will reopen Bangkok's old Don Muang Airport.
Labor groups at Airbus are drawing battle lines before the aircraft maker unveils cost-cutting plans next week. Workers are warning Airbus management they could torpedo production plans. Additionally, French and German unions are fighting each other to shift the cost-cutting burden to production facilities in the other country. Both labor groups have held demonstrations involving thousands of workers to signal their seriousness.
Douglas O. Stanley of NASA's National Institute of Aerospace, Hampton, Va., has been named the Peninsula Engineers Council Engineer of the Year. He is being recognized for technical leadership of NASA's Exploration Systems Architecture Study of returning humans to the Moon and on to Mars and beyond. Stanley led the 400-person study to define the systems, schedule, programs, budgets and technologies. He also has been named the AIAA Hampton Roads Section Engineer of the Year and received the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal.
Airbus has found another customer for its A330-200 freighter, with Iceland-based Avion Aircraft Trading saying it will buy six. Also last week, Airbus announced China Sonangol is the buyer of three Airbus Corporate Jets (ACJ) previously booked, and that a new Asian A319 ACJ buyer also has been found. Moreover, the first Asian A340-500 VIP aircraft order has been posted. Airbus started the year with 90 orders in January. The bulk of those, 50 A320-family aircraft, went to AirAsia.
Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), chairman of the Senate appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA, says she's still trying to find a way to "reimburse" the agency for costs it incurred in returning the shuttle fleet to service after the Columbia accident four years ago. She and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) introduced legislation that would have added $1 billion to NASA's Fiscal 2007 funding for that purpose, but it died at the end of last year's Congress.
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol added 4,000 positions in a 12-month period ending last October, representing a 6.4% increase in jobs over the previous 12 months and pushing the number of positions to 61,691. Of the job increases, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines was responsible for 512; HMS Host added 399; ICT-NAS VOF, 233; Securitas & Aviation Security, 191; and DHL, 160. Also, Schiphol Group has founded Schiphol College, where non-degreed workers can enroll for vocational study.
Earl H. Dowell, who is William Holland Hall Professor at Duke University, Durham, N.C., has been selected to receive the 2007 Walter J. and Angeline H. Crichlow Trust Prize from the Reston, Va.-based American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The quadrennial prize honors excellence in aerospace materials, structural design, structural analysis or structural dynamics.
A judge's ruling that halted Fokker 100 and Boeing 737-700/-800 operations for Brazil's Gol Airlines at Sao Paulo's Congonhas Airport has been overturned on appeal by the National Civil Aviation Authority. The ruling stemmed from concerns about aircraft sliding off wet runways, although it was not applied to other aircraft types.
Sea Launch's Odyssey Launch Platform and the Commander assembly and control mother ship began what is typically a 12-18-day journey back to their home base in Long Beach, Calif., on Feb. 3, five days after a liftoff explosion of a Zenit-3SL booster doomed launch of SES New Skies' NSS-8 satellite (AW&ST Feb. 5, p. 27).
The U.S. Air Force/Navy proposed buy of 285 Raytheon Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles (Amraam) in Fiscal 2008 is an effort by the Pentagon to address shortfalls. "Engine rocket motors and other parts obsolescence issues are shrinking the inventories by approximately 1,300 missiles" by Fiscal 2010, according to Air Force budget documents. Money in the Fiscal 2008 request would also begin Amraam D production.
China's Shanghai Airlines wants to create a base within the home territory of Hainan Airways--one of the country's three major airlines. Shanghai Airlines officials say they are negotiating with authorities to build the base on Hainan Island before the end of the year. In other news, China Aviation Industry Corp. I plans to establish a leasing company in cooperation with other aviation businesses to promote ARJ21 sales.
