Market Focus 10 Gun maker lays out plan to increase defense business News Breaks 18 Inaugural flight for first production A700 AdamJet 19 NTSB probes death of mechanic during run-up 20 Boeing to close 717 assembly line and deliver last of type this spring 21 UPS freighter makes emergency landing while on fire 21 USAF Maj. Gen. (ret) Morrell dies, was key architect of milspace ops Laurels 2006
President Bush told members of the National Guard in Washington last week about a terrorist plot to attack Los Angeles after 9/11 thwarted by the U.S. government and its allies. "We now know that in October 2001, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad--the mastermind of the September the 11th attacks--had set in motion a plan to have terrorist operatives hijack an airplane using shoe bombs to breach the cockpit door, and fly the plane into the tallest building on the West Coast." The Library Tower is 1,017 ft. tall and has 1.43 million sq. ft. of office and retail space.
Bombardier is restarting production of the CRJ200/Challenger 850 aircraft in mid-April after putting the line on ice in October. The decision comes a few days after Bombardier said it would reassess its operations in the wake of the decision not to pursue the CSeries development program. Meanwhile, Italy has exercised an option to buy 15 upgrade kits for Bombardier 415 amphibious firefighting aircraft, after buying one last year.
The U.S. Air Force this year plans to conduct flight evaluations on Very Light Jets to see if the emerging class of aircraft has utility in national security missions. Aircraft trials would be conducted by the Air Force Flight Test Center, and most likely take place at Edwards AFB, Calif. The Air Force is even willing to check out fledgling designs, realizing the VLJ segment is an emerging business. VLJs might be evaluated for passenger and cargo transport, navigation training, homeland defense, surveillance, target tow and transition training.
United Airlines' "differentiated customer segmentation strategy" is producing results. Chief Financial Officer Jake Brace recently told a JPMorgan conference the carrier is receiving 31% of its passenger revenues from the "high-value" 8% of its customers, 26% of revenues from the "medium-value" 26%, and 43% of revenue from the 66% leisure segment. How? Perks for the high-value group and reduced costs to serve the others.
Acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the minister of defense, Shaul Mofaz, late last week officially authorized appointment of Itzhak Nissan as Israel Aircraft Industries' president and CEO. Nissan had been corporate vice president and general manager of the company's Missiles & Space Group. His specialties were electrical engineering and radar. Nissan succeeds long-serving Moshe Keret.
Defense contractors soon may have to think about time. Moving to a development process that is driven by time rather than requirements is one of the major recommendations in the U.S. Defense Acquisition Performance Assessment Group's executive report, the study chartered by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England and chaired by retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish. Acquisition strategy and procurement would be governed by "time-certain development," which means fielding useful military capability within six years of the decision to purchase.
An article in the Jan. 23 issue misstated Air One's financial performance for 2005 (AW&ST Jan. 3, p. 39). The Italian airline had an operating profit of 16.8 million euros on 489 million euros in revenue.
Subodh Karnik has been appointed executive vice president/chief operating officer of ATA Airlines. He was senior vice president/chief commercial officer. John Graber, who was senior vice president-flight operations and maintenance, is now senior vice president-operations/general manager for military/charter. Doug Yakola has been named senior vice president/chief financial officer. He was senior vice president-customers and ground operations.
IRIDIUM SATELLITE SIGNED UP 24% more subscribers in 2005 than it had at the end of 2004, while revenue climbed 55% and before-tax earnings increased more than 10 times from the year before, according to Iridium. The lack of cell phone coverage in the wake of Hurricane Katrina highlighted the utility of the direct-to-satellite phone system used by the U.S. Defense Dept., other agencies and commercial customers. In the first 72 hr. after the storm, Iridium traffic in the area increased 3,000% and the number of subscribers there climbed to five times the previous figure.
Kenneth J. Binder has been named senior vice president-finance/acting chief financial officer of the New York-based Sequa Corp. He succeeds Howard M. Leitner, who has retired. Binder was president of the industrial turbine services operation of subsidiary Chromalloy Gas Turbine Corp.
Ryan S. Mifsud has been promoted to general manager from manager of operations and marketing, and John D. Creech to operations manager from quality manager at Cleveland-based Aero-Instruments. David E. Genovese has been appointed chief engineer and Deborah A. Allen controller.
Dassault Aviation has told the Indian government that it is withdrawing the Mirage 2000 from an international tender for 126 frontline fighters. Dassault officials say the long delay in launching the request for proposals makes it uneconomical to keep the now-idle Mirage 2000 line open. The company will evaluate the RFP before deciding whether to tender the new-generation Rafale. France recently launched a new export package for the Rafale (AW&ST Jan. 23, p. 29).
FAA's $13.75-billion budget proposal for Fiscal 2007 represents another year in which labor costs outpace efficiencies, another attempt to slash funding for airport improvements and a final appearance for the aviation trust fund as we know it.
The Transportation Dept.'s proposal to relax control restrictions on foreign investors in U.S. airlines draws bipartisan sniping at a House aviation subcommittee hearing. Allowing more foreign control of business issues--not security or safety--is widely seen as an unwritten quid pro quo for European Union acceptance of the liberalized U.S.-EU aviation agreement negotiated last fall. But several subcommittee members fear that a foreign-airline investor might turn a U.S. carrier into a feeder for its own transatlantic routes and that U.S. jobs might be exported.
Kevin M. Phillips has become chief financial officer of the ManTech International Corp., Fairfax, Va. He has been corporate vice president/chief of staff.
Air New Zealand will offer additional daily service from Auckland to San Francisco beginning June 5 using a mix of Boeing 777-200s and refurbished 747-400s. Norm Thompson, the airline's marketing and sales manager, says the new service will support the country's tourism industry by offering visitors from Europe and North America more choices.
NASA still hasn't decided to launch its STS-121 space shuttle mission in May, the next available window for the daylight photography conditions mandated after the Columbia accident, or in the follow-on July window. But if the test flight demonstrates the problems that felled Columbia are solved, NASA will be back in the space ops business in earnest. One of the payloads for the upcoming flight--just delivered to Kennedy Space Center--is a U.S. oxygen generator designed to support an International Space Station crew of six.
International Launch Services has won three new contracts, all for repeat customers and all on the Russian Proton it markets along with the Atlas V. Japan's JSAT Corp. has committed its fourth launch with ILS and its first using the Proton Breeze M. The launch of JCSat-11, built on a Lockheed Martin A2100 series platform, is to be in 2007. In 2008 Canada's Telesat will launch its Nimiq 4 spacecraft in its fifth ILS mission. Sirius Satellite Radio, which launched its three satellites on Protons, has reserved a spot for a fourth before December 2010.
Adri Ruiter has become president of Weber Aircraft, Gaines- ville, Tex. He was vice president/general manager of engineering and marketing. Ruiter succeeds Michel Labarre, who is now at C&D Zodiac. Alain Peraudeau has been appointed Toulouse-based director of European and Middle East operations.
Detailed work is underway at NASA to minimize the period when the U.S. has no human access to space. Shaping the transition between space shuttle fleet retirement and the introduction of its replacement has become paramount.
U.S. President Bush will visit India this month to discuss, among other things, nuclear arms proliferation--and there's sure to be much to talk about. His host's missile development program is moving ahead, including the recent completion of work necessary for the first test of the Agni III medium-range ballistic missile.
David A. Fulghum (Washington), Robert Wall (Paris)
The proposed Fiscal 2007 defense budget is hammering home what the Quadrennial Defense Review suggested--that long-range strike, unmanned aircraft, tankers and the broad category of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance will be favored for at least the next three years.
Henry is ambiguous about how many F-22As the Air Force eventually will buy. The 183 stealth fighters currently approved are "roughly sufficient," he says. "We did need the [F-35] JSF capability, specifically the carrier-based aspects. It did not make sense to make cuts of the JSF variants within the future-years defense budget. [But] there was a technical risk in shutting down one production line before you brought up another one.
