With a look that only a mother could love, the Boeing Large Cargo Freighter was rolled out from Evergreen Aviation Technologies Corp.'s modification hangar at Chiang Kai-Shek International Airport in Taipei last week.
I don't know where Mark E.J. Fay is coming from (AW&ST July 17, p. 10), but it is extreme and unfair to contend that the primary function of aviation accident investigations is to "protect wrongdoers." Fay may be drawn to a blame perspective, but investigative organizations like the National Transportation Safety Board need to work primarily from causation. Even when the FAA revokes a license, it isn't done primarily to establish blame but to protect the public. Determinations of blame are moral judgments and belong in civil courts.
Todd Hauptli and Louis Turpen have been appointed to the board of advisers of Vidient Systems, Sunnyvale, Calif. Hauptli is senior executive vice president of the American Assn. of Airport Executives, and Turpen is former CEO of San Francisco International Airport.
A rising tide of revenue lifts all airlines, even ones in Chapter 11. Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines reported second-quarter operating profits, like the rest of the industry, but the cost of bankruptcy reorganization sank net results for each into the red. Delta's operating earnings totaled $369 million, reversing a loss a year earlier of $129 million and achieving a 7.9% return on sales. Other costs reduced the amount to $179 million, however, and Chapter 11 expenses created a net loss of $2.2 billion.
Maj. Gen. Stanley Gorenc has been appointed Air Force chief of safety, based at the Pentagon, and commander of the Air Force Safety Center, Kirtland AFB, N.M. He has been director of operational capability requirements/deputy chief of staff for air, space and information operations, plans and requirements. Goerenc will be succeeded by Maj. Gen. (select) Marshall K. Sabol, who has been director of manpower, organization and resources/deputy chief of staff for manpower and personnel at the Pentagon.
Ted Austell, Vice President-International Trade Policy , (The Boeing Co., Washington, D.C.)
Pierre Sparaco cites a "solid reality" in which "low-interest loans significantly help Airbus fund its new programs while Boeing benefits from so-called indirect aid through Pentagon and NASA budgets" (AW&ST July 31, p. 53). That notion is neither solid, nor reality.
Northrop Grumman planned to roll out its first production version of the larger Block 20 RQ-4 Global Hawk UAV late last week at the company's Palmdale, Calif., facility. The initial Block 20 aircraft is the 17th Global Hawk. Nine Block 10 aircraft were built, with two dedicated to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and two more in service with the U.S. Navy under the maritime demonstration program. One of the latter just finished an exercise around Hawaii, where it demonstrated the ability to pick targets out of a coastal environment and conduct a wide-area search.
Four of the six big U.S. legacy airlines are or have been in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection since fall 2002; one of them, United Airlines, took three years to reorganize. Is this an abuse of bankruptcy laws and a distortion of the market? Or is it nothing more than what the bankruptcy laws were enacted to provide? In these pages, Julius Maldutis argues the former and A. Peter Lubitz the latter. Maldutis is president of Aviation Dynamics, a consultancy he founded in 2002 to advise institutional investors and airline managements.
Capt. R. Peter Clark, Jr., has been appointed vice president-flight operations/ director of operations and Mike Malik chief information officer of Aloha Airlines. Clark was chief pilot and has been succeeded by Capt. Roland M. Smith. Malik was chief information and marketing officer for Maxjet Airways.
European Space Agency planners expect the Smart-1 lunar orbiter to crash into the "Lake of Excellence" in the mid-southern latitudes at 1:41 a.m. EDT on Sept. 3, giving large telescopes in the Americas a good view of the impact. Controllers have spent the past month adjusting the experimental spacecraft's perilune for the controlled touchdown, which otherwise would have occurred Aug. 17 on the far side of the Moon.
The B-2 fleet has exceeded Air Combat Command's standard of 51% for fully mission-capable rates for the first time since September 2004, according to U.S. Air Force officials. Being fully mission-capable means the bomber is able to complete its mission of strike-a-foe without being detected by radar. During the last 18 months, the Whiteman AFB, Mo., wing has received four bombers with new outer coatings of alternate high-frequency materials.
Joanne O. Isham has been named vice president-strategic development for BAE Systems National Security Solutions, Reston, Va. She was deputy director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and had been deputy director for science and technology at the CIA.
A U.S./European team is making final preparations here for the planned Aug. 31 Delta II launch of two spacecraft toward a lunar swing-by that will fling one behind and one ahead of the Earth to reach unique solar imaging vantage points. The Stereo Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory mission is to take 3D imagery of gigantic coronal mass ejections (CMEs) as they blast off the Sun, travel toward Earth, then wrap themselves around Earth's magnetosphere. Each spacecraft carries 16 instruments (AW&ST Sept. 25, 2005, p. 62).
Jack M. Franczak (see photo) has been named director of quality and technology for the European operations of ZKM, a subsidiary of Ladish Co. Inc., Cudahy, Wis. He was senior metallurgical engineer for Ladish's Cudahy Forging operation.
General Dynamics C4 Systems of Scottsdale, Ariz., will soon begin integrating the two instruments that make up NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (Glast) into the spacecraft, which will give astronomers their best view yet of the sources that produce the high-energy radiation associated with the collapse of massive stars to form black holes. NASA Marshall Space Flight Center has delivered the Glast Burst Monitor (see photo), built in collaboration with Germany's Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics.
U.S. intelligence agency analysts are using imagery from the eight or nine largest National Reconnaissance Office imaging spacecraft to keep an especially close watch on the several hundred miles of Iranian coastline along the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman. They worry that Iran--seeking to keep the pressure on the U.S. when fighting between Israel and Hezbollah begins to tail off--might mine shipping lanes or threaten anti-ship missile attacks, shutting down tanker traffic from the oil-rich region. Fuel prices in the U.S.
The FAA has closed an investigation into a long-running air service agreement between AirTran Airways and the City of Wichita, Kan., that Delta Air Lines opposed as a discriminatory and illegal subsidy. The move came after the FAA learned the twice-extended 2003 agreement had expired and has been replaced by a Sedgwick County program funded by the Kansas legislature. Charles C. Erhard, manager of the FAA Airport Compliance Branch, says expiration of the agreement made moot the revenue guarantee issue and that no formal findings will be issued.
Ed Bernardon has become vice president-business development and Mel Passarelli vice president-worldwide sales of Vistagy Inc., Waltham, Mass. Bernardon was vice president-sales of Vistagy, while Passarelli was vice president-sales at Aspect Software.
A new Wyle Laboratories business unit will provide medical screening, training, data and risk management, and mission and ground operations support services to the emerging "space tourism" industry. The Commercial Human Spaceflight Services unit will be headed by Vernon McDonald, who currently oversees Wyle's space medicine group at NASA's Johnson Space Center. The Wyle Life Sciences Group has supported NASA's manned space program with similar services for more than 40 years.
Pretoria-based aerostructures manufacturer Aerosud has been awarded a contract by BAE Systems to produce components for the Eurofighter Typhoon. The $20-million contract is the latest BAE Systems order placed with Aerosud under a $100-million strategic partnership, which was formed between the companies in 2004. Set to run for at least 6.5 years, the award encompasses the manufacture of up to 3,500 detail parts and minor assemblies for the fighter.
French industrialist Jean-Francois Darteyre died in his sleep in Paris on Aug. 2. He was 92. After graduating from the noted Sup'Aero engineering school in 1941, Darteyre held various positions in the aerospace industry. He became a senior vice president and, in 1966, CEO of Nord-Aviation, a predecessor of Aerospatiale. Darteyre was instrumental in exploratory technical studies that later led to Airbus's first commercial transport. He believed in the merits of Franco-British joint ventures to establish a stronger European aviation industry.
The International Launch Services (ILS) consortium is looking to complete two more Proton launches this year after the booster returned to flight following a February launch accident in which its Breeze M upper stage failed.
The alleged terrorist plot to blow up aircraft in flight over the Atlantic (see p. 14) will "usher in a whole new era of threat, because everything we have put in place to date is a reaction to other types of threats," says House aviation subcommittee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.). Secure cockpit doors, air marshals and pilots trained to use guns were a response to the 9/11 hijackings. Puffer machines that scan for explosives residue followed terrorist Richard Reid's shoe-bomb plot.
