Following a cash crunch, Nepal has canceled an order for two Chinese 50-seat MA60s for VIP use. The Chinese aviation industry, which hopes to sell at least 300 MA60s to foreign buyers by 2020, has introduced a buy-two-get-one-free scheme. Although it is said that 100 potential buyers in 24 countries have been identified, only Zimbabwe has taken advantage of the three-MA60 deal to date.
With the dust hardly settled on Singapore's fighter competition, manufacturers are already battling for the republic's various trainer needs. The activity is symptomatic of comparatively robust procurement among the major players in the region, China aside.
Egypt is putting Raytheon's Rolling Airframe Missile on its new Fast Missile Craft, making it the fifth customer for the weapon system, joining South Korea, Greece, Germany and the U.S. Navy. The RAM Block 1A missile will be the ship's main self-defense weapon, with cruise missiles, helicopters and aircraft in its target set.
All Nippon Airways and Japan Post say their joint-venture international cargo airline, ANA & JP Express, will begin operations in August. The deal was initiated last October after Japanese voters approved privatization of Japan Post. Three ANA Boeing 767 freighters will be used initially, with four more to be added by October 2008.
India's new interest in exporting weapons systems is prompting it to explore Latin American as a market--and that puts Chile's Fidae International Air Show higher on India's priority list than this week's Asian Aerospace 2006 in Singapore.
They don't have sports teams to brag about, but there is no bigger city rivalry in Asia than Singapore versus Hong Kong. Now they can add air shows to their rivalry. After years of squabbling with the government over a move to a better location, co-organizers of the 26-year-old Asian Aerospace--Reed Exhibitions and Singapore Technologies Engineering--split up last October.
Lynne A. Gochanour, a lawyer specializing in aircraft and equipment finance, has joined the Lease Finance Group of the Chicago-based law firm of Chapman and Cutler. She was with Vedder Price in Chicago.
I laughed in anger when I read the letter "United Not Badly Off" (AW&ST Jan. 30, p. 6). I once was a very loyal United customer and avoided flying on other carriers if possible. Not anymore.
EADS EFW is converting three China Eastern Airlines A300-600 passenger aircraft into freighters. Work on the first of the aircraft at the conversion facility in Dresden, Germany, is slated to start in December, with the other two aircraft to be switched next year.
Delay of regulatory formalities has led Cathay Pacific Airways to postpone its planned late-March launch of a three-times-weekly service to Moscow, and continuing to Manchester. The airline says it hopes to launch the service later this year.
NASA's Chandra orbiting X-ray observatory has validated a theory about the formation of spiral galaxies like the Milky Way, detecting a halo of hot gas exactly where theory predicted it would be, surrounding a spiral galaxy 100 million light-years distant. Showing up as a faint blue cloud that extends roughly 60,000 light-years above and below the plane of galaxy NGC 5746 (see image), the X-ray-emitting cloud of hot gas is believed to be an inflowing remnant of the clouds of intergalactic gas that cooled and collapsed to form the spiral galaxy.
Retired Capt. Jim Gombold's LNAV and VNAV example of being performed more than 20 years ago illustrates how self-delusional we are in the U.S. about navaid innovations. If it wasn't invented here, it doesn't exist. European carriers have been making automatic, hands-off, zero-zero landings for decades. The vast majority of U.S. commercial airports don't even have Category-3 capability. The U.S. is still in the "buggy-whip" era in terms of practical navaids innovations and implementation.
Joslyn Read, assistant vice president-regulatory affairs at Hughes Network Systems, is this year's chair of the Washington-based Satellite Industry Assn. She succeeds Tony Trujillo, senior vice president-corporate services and government relations at Intelsat. Other officers are: vice chair, Nancy Eskenazi, vice president/associate general counsel for SES-Americom; treasurer, Jennifer Manner, vice president-regulatory affairs for Mobile Satellite Ventures; and executive director/corporate secretary, David Cavossa.
A. Thomas Young, former director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and president/chief operating officer of the then-Martin Marietta Corp., has been named to receive the Bob Hope Distinguished Citizen Award from the National Defense Industrial Assn., Greater Los Angeles Chapter. Young is involved in advisory and review activities associated with the U.S. space program and is a member of the National Academics Space Studies Board.
The Scaled Composites/Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer had substantially more fuel on board than believed when a generator failure forced pilot Steve Fossett to land short of the intended destination on his record-setting unrefueled airplane flight. Fossett thought he had as little as 200 lb. of JP-4, forcing a fuel crisis in addition to a generator emergency, when he landed Feb. 11 at Bournemouth Airport, on England's south coast. He also may have had more battery power than he believed, according to post-flight analysis.
Extremely detailed layered rock is examined by the Cornell Pancam high-resolution cameras on the Mars rover Spirit. Located at a feature designated Home Plate, these are the most finely layered rocks found in more than two years of operations in the Spirit Gusev Crater landing area. "It is stunning," says Steve Squyres, rover principal investigator from Cornell University. "It is too early to tell what we are dealing with. This stuff could be volcanic, it could have been formed by (meteorite) impact, or it could be sedimentary," he says.
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EasyJet is expanding its route structure from Glasgow to four European destinations. The low-cost carrier is introducing flights to Alicante, Malaga and Palma in Spain, as well as to Berlin-Schonefeld. The airline is in the process of converting its operations at both Glasgow and Edinburgh to the Airbus A319, which will replace its Boeing 737s. It will begin flights to Alicante and Malaga in July, and to Berlin and Palma in May.
Is the aerospace industry on the cusp of a great wave that will shift work to low-cost producers in China? Or is offshoring a minor phenomenon being exploited by companies to win concessions from workers and local governments? Taking the former view is William C. Parr, a faculty member of the University of Tennessee's Aerospace Executive MBA program. He recently returned from a three-month stay in China, where he taught and conducted research on offshoring and Chinese management practices.
DBA looks better prepared for its ambitious growth plans after the airline found an investor to take over 25% of the company. German entrepreneur Lutz Helmig bought the stake for an undisclosed sum last week. He will also be a member of DBA's supervisory board. Helmig and his family late last year sold their 94% stake in hospital group Helios Kliniken for 1.5 billion euros ($1.8 billion) and are investing in a variety of businesses.
Larry D. Haughey (see photo) has become vice president-government markets for XTAR, Rockville, Md. He was executive sales branch manager for MCI for the Defense Information Systems Agency, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Joint Programs and DOD International Services.
Innovations in friction stir welding, the PhostrEx fire suppression system, electromechanical actuators and digital electronics with integrated software were cited by the National Aeronautic Assn. in its award of the 2005 Robert J. Collier Trophy to Eclipse Aviation Corp. for the Eclipse 500 very light jet. The aircraft's acquisition cost was cited as "perhaps the company's greatest contribution" in making jet technology available to a larger segment of the population.
Is the aerospace industry on the cusp of a great wave that will shift work to low-cost producers in China? Or is offshoring a minor phenomenon being exploited by companies to win concessions from workers and local governments? Taking the former view is William C. Parr, a faculty member of the University of Tennessee's Aerospace Executive MBA program. He recently returned from a three-month stay in China, where he taught and conducted research on offshoring and Chinese management practices.
Hawaiian Airlines went to court last week to prevent Mesa Air Group from starting inter-island flight service for a two-year period. Hawaiian's complaint alleges Mesa gained confidential information about Hawaiian's operations when it was a potential investor and used it to build a competitive business strategy. Hawaiian exited bankruptcy protection in June 2005. In October 2005, Mesa unveiled its plans for an April 2006 startup of a low-fare, high-frequency inter-island service.
