Swiss International Air Lines is moving ahead in its ongoing financial turnaround, hoping this month's admittance to the Star Alliance will boost revenues. Swiss officially joined the biggest airline alliance last week alongside South African Airways (SAA). After the airline posted the fourth consecutive annual loss since its inception, Swiss CEO Christoph Franz pledged it will break even in 2006 and achieve its first-ever profit next year. In 2005, the carrier reduced operating losses to 14 million Swiss francs ($11 million) from 122 million Swiss francs.
Air Europe has exercised options for 16 Boeing 737-800s in a $1-billion order for delivery between 2010-14. The Spanish carrier plans to use the aircraft on routes to the Balearic and Canary Islands, and to other European countries and North Africa.
Boeing and the U.S. Air Force are in discussion about possibly adjusting the future-year C-17 purchasing profile to see if they can stretch out the life of the manufacturing line that could shutter soon unless the Pentagon or international customers don't buy more of the airlifters, indicates John Lockhard, president of Boeing's Precision Engagement and Mobile Systems Div. The goal would be to keep the line open at least as long as the Air Force debates the fate of C-5s.
French space officials worry that U.S. ground-safety concerns related to the design of the Proteus satellite bus could delay deployment of the U.S.-European Jason-2 oceanography satellite, possibly jeopardizing continuity with Jason-1. The Proteus bus developed jointly by the French space agency CNES and Alcatel Space Industries for Jason-1, which was launched in December 2001, met U.S. fire and toxic-hazards regulations at the time. But those rules have since changed.
China is completing assembly of a 132-ft.-dia. deep-space network antenna specifically designed to communicate with the Chang'e lunar orbiter set for launch next year. The antenna is located atop Mount Phoenix, a 6,600-ft. peak near Kunming. It will be used in connection with smaller dishes in Shanghai and northwest China to send and receive data during the Chang'e mission and to communicate with follow-on unmanned Chinese lunar orbiters and landers. The new antenna stands 148 ft. tall and weighs 400 tons.
Eurofighter officials are trying to exploit Norwegian unhappiness about workshare on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and have made an extensive offer of industrial participation should Oslo buy the Typhoon. EADS officials also are playing on the fact the U.S. may not export some JSF capabilities to other partners.
Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee aren't crazy about the Bush administration's Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) missile system. The Pentagon wants more than $1 billion in Fiscal 2007 alone for a system, lawmakers claim, that hasn't been operationally tested. The head of the Missile Defense Agency begs to differ. The agency hasn't "put it all together end-to-end," says USAF Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, 3rd, but the interceptor's booster, kill vehicle and other components have been successfully tested.
Gary Calvaneso (see photo) has been named vice president-marketing for Irvin Aerospace, Santa Ana, Calif. He was president of Advanced Innovations Marketing.
TAAG Airlines of Germany has agreed to pay Rockwell Collins a fixed monthly fee for two years to provide inflight entertainment services on its fleet of Boeing 777-200s and 737-700s. The avionics company's inflight entertainment services group, enCompass, will provide the service including design, audio and video licensing, usage analysis and technical support.
The air force has decided not to buy Ukrainian-Russian turboprop-powered Antonov An-70 transports, air force chief Gen. Vladimir Mikhailov says. Weight growth has driven the aircraft into a heavy-lift class, so the air force is losing interest. "Why should we acquire another heavy transport, we have a lot in our inventory," Mikhailov says. "We just do not need [the An-70]." The comments drew an immediate response from Ukraine. "It is high time for Ukraine to think about a new partner in this extremely important project," economic minister Arseny Yatcenuk says.
Air France will take delivery in early 2007 of the first Airbus aircraft line-fitted for use of onboard mobile phones. The A318 will conduct a six-month commercial trial for the service on short-haul flights within Europe and between Europe and North Africa.
Tom Anderson has become senior vice president-supply chain and LiveTV for JetBlue Airways. He has been senior vice president-technical operations. Holly Nelson has been promoted to senior vice president/controller from vice president and Tim Hickey to vice president-information technology operations from director of information technology. Todd Thompson has been appointed senior vice president/chief information officer.
Market Focus 10 Analysts see EADS stock selloff as sign of looming troubles News Breaks 16 EADS starts flight testing of refueling boom 17 Goodrich gets Boeing 747-8 drawings to begin work on landing gear 18 Operational, equipment upgrades on tap for Airbus single aisles World News & Analysis 22 U.S. military readies for more cuts, surprising number of adds 24 Separate aircraft, missile efforts loom for Long-Range Strike program
The U.S. Army plans to spend $1.3 million through Fiscal 2010 to advance compressor technology for a 6,000-shp.-class turboshaft engine. The effort is part of the service's Advanced Affordable Turbine Engine, intended to deliver a higher-performance, lower-cost, more fuel-efficient engine for rotorcraft and UAVs.
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Rob McDonald has become chief financial officer/group corporate general manager for Air New Zealand. Other new general managers are: Vanessa Stoddart, human resources and organizational change; Norm Thompson, short-haul flights; Ed Sims, international flights; chief pilot Capt. David Morgan, operations standards and safety; Chris Nassenstein, Anzes; Steve Bayliss, marketing; and Mike Tod, public affairs and group communications.
Alcatel Alenia Space has won a contract to study a second-generation hy- brid satellite/terrestrial network to replace Globalstar's low Earth orbit system. Alcatel had a major role in designing and producing the first-generation system for Globalstar, which received an ancillary terrestrial component license from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission in January.
NASA has decided to mount a surface probe on its 2008 Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) for "high-risk and high-return research of the lunar surface." The agency will announce details Apr. 10 of its decision to send a piggyback lander into a deep crater at one of the Moon's poles. The mission will attempt to find out what is generating strong hydrogen signatures detected by past orbiters in permanently dark crater bottoms there. Scientists hypothesize--and exploration managers hope--that it is water ice delivered by comets and preserved by the deep cold and lunar dust.
Also, Avion Aircraft Trading, which provides an aircraft, crew, maintenance and insurance service, has ordered four 747-400 Boeing Converted Freighters to be operated by its subsidiary, Air Atlanta Icelandic. The -400BCFs are being purchased from All Nippon Airways and will replace four 747-200Fs. The first aircraft is to arrive in August 2007.
In the fall of 2004, as Delta Air Lines and its pilots went down to the wire negotiating concessions to keep the carrier out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a Delta captain was spotted at Los Angeles International Airport with a sticker on his flight bag. "Full pay to the last day," it said.
Virgin America, the San Francisco-based carrier that Virgin Atlantic founder Richard Branson is starting, will use a virtual call center concept for passenger reservations. It has signed WillowCSN Inc. of Miramar, Fla., to manage the calls using its CyberAgent system. Willow's agents operate from home offices and pay for their own training and equipment. It expects to hire 200 CyberAgents "in the coming months."
V-22 managers hope to gain more details this week on the recent crash of an MV-22, although information already in hand is leading to changes designed to prevent a repeat occurrence. These include modifications to the engine control system and flight manual as well as procedural changes.
Effective U.S. long-range strike capabilities will remain elusive unless the Air Force stops obsessing with short-range, small- payload fighters. The operational requirement: an aircraft that transits from the continental U.S. to an area of responsibility 12,000 mi. away in 6 hr., conducts survivable precision strike operations against about 100 targets for 4 hr. on station, then returns to the landing base within 6 hr.
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The Wichita (Kan.) State University-based National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR) has created the Advanced Joining Laboratory to conduct R&D of the friction stir welding process (FSW). Work will center on material properties testing, destructive and non-destructive inspection techniques and modeling of the FSW process. A key objective is the development of standards for aerospace structures built using FSW, based on strength, fatigue properties, fracture toughness, crack propagation and corrosion resistance.
