Stephen Lee Ching Yen has been appointed non-executive chairman of Singapore Airlines, effective Jan. 1. He will succeed Koh Boon Hwee. Lee is managing director of the Shanghai Commercial and Savings Bank and Great Malaysia Textile Manufacturing Co.
Henry Vanderbilt, Executive Director (Space Access Society, Phoenix, Ariz.)
Jim Hillhouse is mistaken (AW&ST Oct. 17, p. 6). Space Access Society has not recommended any specific technical approach to the Vision for Space Exploration (VSE).
Pakistan International Airlines has agreed to buy seven ATR 42-500 turboprops from the Franco-Italian aircraft maker. The $100-million deal brings ATR's 2005 order book to 70 aircraft. PIA will use the aircraft to replace F-27s. Deliveries are to commence in May and continue into 2007.
Diane P. Murray (see photos) and Karen Evans, both executives for the Northrop Grumman Corp., have received 2005 National Women of Color Awards for managerial leadership and personal achievement. The awards and related conference are an initiative of Baltimore-based publisher Career Communications Group. Murray is chief information officer for Northrop Grumman's Mission Systems Sector in Reston, Va.
Losses in 2006 for the global air transport industry could equal this year's deep pool of red ink, warn industry officials. But such financial uncertainties are not deterring new operators from trying to enter the market.
There's one major obstacle in the supersonic business jet flight plan: FAR 91.187. It is the rule that prohibits any flight of a civil aircraft from reaching or exceeding Mach 1 to or from an airport in the U.S., unless it will "not cause a sonic boom to reach the surface within the U.S." And it will have to be amended come the time supersonic bizjets become a booming business.
Delta Air Lines' Song airline-within-an-airline will survive the carrier's Chapter 11 reorganization in name, but not in concept. Song was launched in April 2003 as a single-class, lower-fare, leisure-market, bypass-the-hubs product with leather seats and TV in the seatbacks--a JetBlue-like competitor of low-cost airlines with larger, 757-200 aircraft. Starting next year, the current 48 Song airplanes will get 26 first-class seats and serve domestic transcontinental routes, including routes involving hubs.
Boeing's Maintenance Performance Toolbox, developed by Boeing Commercial Aviation Services, resides on its MyBoeingFleet.com (MBF) web site. Developed to increase airline MRO productivity and performance, it gives maintenance managers and technicians 24-hr. access to the repair history of individual aircraft by providing an overlay of all the technical documentation necessary for repair, including complete 2D and 3D systems diagram and structural models.
Dale Gibby has been seriously misinformed. The V-22 has not been flying in the "engineering development phase" for 40 years. The first flight was in 1989 and it left the "engineering development phase" in about 1999. Gibby insinuates dozens of crashes; there have been three. That is far fewer wrecks than many other military aircraft programs. The first wreck killed no one. The second tragically cost the military seven fine people. The third killed 19--and it was not due to a mechanical failure or inherent design flaw.
The Rockot light booster has been cleared to resume flight, following an inquiry into an Oct. 8 failure that caused the loss of Europe's CryoSat ice-measurement mission. The inquiry found that the mishap, which was linked to the failure of the flight control system to generate a command to shut down the Rockot's second-stage engine, was due to improper programming of the control system, and not to a malfunction in the Breeze-KM booster.
What's in a name is a question that's relevant for this venerated Aviation Week & Space Technology award. Originally it was established as the Technology Innovation Award. Recently, it's been known as the Product Breakthrough. And in any given year, either one or the other aspect of the honor has taken center stage.
Early next year, information warfare will start to become a tactical, airborne, combat weapon when the first U.S. Navy EA-6B Prowler squadron deploys to the aerial battlefields over Iraq and Afghanistan. Its aircraft will carry an improved electronic attack payload that includes communications countermeasures jamming and a more precise electronic identification system.
EMS Technologies agreed to sell its Montreal-based Space & Technology division to MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates of Vancouver. Terms of the sale, which is expected to close by year-end, were not disclosed. Atlanta-based EMS acquired the satellite products business from Spar Aerospace for $20 million in 1999, but was ultimately unhappy with the division's profit margins.
Robert Shanks (see photos) has become vice president-legal for Raytheon's Washington office and vice president/ general counsel of Raytheon International Inc. He succeeds David Fowler, who has been named vice president/general counsel for Raytheon Technical Services Co., Reston, Va., succeeding Shanks.
Thomas Gollicker and Michael L. Hugill have been named senior acquisition specialists for the SMR Group Ltd., Wadsworth, Ohio. Gollicker was president/founder of Georgetown Aircraft Services Inc. and president of Page Air Services Inc. Hugill was president of Flight Structures Inc.
The emergence of very light jets and airport problems could thwart European and U.S. efforts to reduce air traffic delays through extensive ATM modernization efforts. Government and industry officials backing the soon-to-be-renamed European Sesame (Single European Sky Implementation) program and its U.S. counterpart, the Next-Generation Air Traffic System (Ngats) initiative, worry that some of the outside factors have been receiving only scant attention and could undercut what can be achieved by improved air traffic flow.
Europe's maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) segment looks positioned for rapid growth over the next few years, but is facing massive structural changes, with an increasing number of its customers adopting new business models.
French space agency CNES has selected Thales to supply the image ground segment, image processing chain and ground-based encryption/ decryption system for France's Pleiades remote-sensing satellites. The award is worth 16 million euros ($19.2 million). The two 70-cm.-resolution Pleiades spacecraft are to be launched in 2008-09.
David Hughes has outlined in "Just an Outline" a primary source of resistance to effective airport screening of passengers for explosives, weapons and drugs. Most of us believed the problem of rational screening of passengers came from the hang-up of Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta over racial (ethnic) profiling. Now we learn that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a primary part of the problem in establishing and utilizing backscatter X-ray at U.S. airports.
In his thoughtful analysis as to why unmanned aerial vehicles are the wrong aviation asset for border patrol surveillance (AW&ST Sept. 26, p. 6), reader John Cottrell suggests a more effective alternative. I believe there exists an even better solution, measured in terms of both mission capability and cost containment.
It may seem counterintuitive, but the ever-present threat of terrorism probably won't produce the kind of U.S. defense spending spikes seen during the Cold War. Competing domestic priorities, a ballooning federal deficit and a threat of a completely different nature all stand in the way. More likely is a stable, perhaps even declining, military budget for the foreseeable future. Indeed, the Pentagon is bracing for a reduction of up to $15 billion from its Fiscal 2007 proposal alone.
Spot Image has been granted exclusive rights to distribute imagery from South Korea's 1-meter-resolution Kompsat-2 remote-sensing satellite, except for South Korea, the U.S. and the Middle East. The agreement, which follows a similar one for Taiwan's Formosat-2, is part of a strategy aimed at expanding Spot Image's product base (AW&ST Feb. 14, p. 70). Kompsat-2 is to be launched late this year.
M/A-COM, a business unit of Tyco Electronics and provider of wireless radio frequency (RF), microwave and millimeter- wave components, has a new MATM-090007-SA00XX 1W S-band telemetry transmitter. The programmable lower S-band FM telemetry transmitter is suited for rugged, space-limited uses including smart munitions, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), missiles and other harsh environment commercial and industrial testing applications, the company says. The transmitter is fully customizable in functionality and form for each end-user application. The 31.8 X 41.4 X 5.1mm.
Switzerland and Luxembourg have signed agreements with France allowing combat aircraft to track hijacked planes across their common border. Spain, Italy and Belgium have concluded such accords.
