Garrett/Piedmont Hawthorne/Associated is shedding its cumbersome name in favor of what it hopes is the catchier Landmark Aviation. The group anticipates announcing two more acquisitions during the National Business Aviation Assn. convention Nov. 9-11 in Orlando, Fla.
I read the interview with Gerard Arpey, president and CEO of American Airlines, with amusement and amazement (AW&ST Oct. 10, p. 60). He was not talking about the same American that as a resident of Dallas, I am often relegated to fly. This is thanks to the Wright Amendment, which gives American a near-monopoly for air travel in Dallas.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) plans a new round of hearings in November on spiraling procurement costs and discoveries of contracting improprieties at the Defense Dept. McCain told an audience at the conservative Heritage Foundation that military buying has reached "a crisis situation." Meanwhile, growing hurricane-recovery bills are sparking "serious discussions about restricting spending," McCain says. Even so, congressional earmarks continue to increase--from 4,126 items worth $26.6 billion in 1994 to 14,040 worth $47.9 billion last year.
The Paris airports authority says that in a year it will offer an intra-airport link at Charles de Gaulle, connecting three terminals and the local and long-distance train station. The project will replace bus service and allow passengers to reach each facility in no more than 8 min. Each train can shuttle 60 passengers. About 60% of the construction is complete. Deliveries of the new trains are scheduled for early 2006, followed by trial runs in March and public access in autumn.
The European Union has named former Commissioner Karel Van Miert to mediate a dispute with Germany, Spain and the U.K. that has blocked signature of a contract for the first four Galileo navigation satellites. The European Space Agency had hoped that proposals in the final Galileo concession bid, submitted on Oct. 21, could bring removal of the stumbling block (AW&ST Oct. 24, p. 30).
Congressional staffers are beginning to lay the foundations for lawmakers to iron out the final details of the Pentagon's Fiscal 2006 budget, and space programs are expected to take the brunt of cuts.
NASA is seeking regulatory clearance to collaborate with the X Prize Foundation on two Centennial Challenge competitions aimed at future space operations. The "Lunar Lander Analog Challenge" would reward the first team to build a vertical-takeoff/vertical-landing suborbital vehicle capable of landing on and launching from the Moon. The prize for the "Suborbital Payload Challenge" would go to the first team that demonstrates a reusable rocket to speeds or altitudes of interest to science researchers.
The Pentagon's interest in protection of forces has moved beyond the obvious threats of lethal weapons and computer attacks to include insects. The Air Force Research Laboratory has demonstrated a prototype unmanned helicopter, which has been modified for pesticide applications in areas where there is both disease and hostile fire that could jeopardize manned aircraft operating at low altitude. The Air Force's 757th Aerial Spray Flight uses C-130s for the mission.
In 1997, the Boeing Co. suffered a supply-chain meltdown when it tried to ramp up commercial aircraft production too quickly, forcing a shutdown of its 747 line for 20 days and delays in 737 deliveries. The company's new CEO, W. James McNerney, Jr., is hell-bent that won't happen on his watch.
In anticipation of the burgeoning Chinese market, DHL has established in Shanghai the DHL Logistics Management University (LMU), with the goal of building a pool of logistics specialists in the region. LMU opened last month and is targeted at DHL employees and corporate customers in junior, middle and senior management across the Asia-Pacific. The university intends to have fully trained 2,000 employees by the end of 2006, with the majority of graduates coming from China, initially. Fudan University is one of the partners for the initiative.
Iran is a new member of the space club, following the successful launch of a multinational payload last week from Plesetsk, Russia. The launch, on a Cosmos 3M booster, carried aloft small reconnaissance spacecraft Sina-1 and Mesbah, an experimental satellite that was built under a fledgling space program launched in 1998.
A report from the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) claims that a newly-built Boeing CV-22 flew into a cloud on Oct. 18, suffered stalls in both engines and had to make an unplanned landing in Prescott, Ariz. The U.S. Navy denies most of the report's claims but says the aircraft's engines were indeed damaged by ice and needed to be replaced before the tilt-rotor design could finish its ferry flight from the manufacturing site in Amarillo, Tex., to Edwards AFB, Calif., where it will be involved in a test program.
The National Air Traffic Controllers Assn. is complaining that the FAA has added 15 new north-south air routes to alleviate congestion for flights headed to Southern Florida, but left controllers in the dark. The FAA says this isn't so and the changes, most of which went into effect in August and last week, were developed in coordination with controllers. Natca has been participating "since the very beginning" of this seven-month redesign effort, according to Doug Molin, FAA manager for tactical operations for the Southeastern U.S. in the Air Traffic Organization.
The Indian air force is to acquire six Il-78 midair refueling aircraft. It currently has six Il-78s. The procurement will strengthen the air force ability to act as an "expeditionary force" while responding to natural disasters and emergencies in the region, a senior military official said.
With the price of oil not falling appreciably, it's time to reconcile design goals with those of aircraft operators. Current aircraft are not designed for maximum fuel efficiency--they have opti- mized engines and equally perfected airframes. However, the whole is merely equal to the sum of its parts. The fuel economy and ownership cost of transport aircraft of all sizes can be improved markedly by exploiting synergistic interactions between airframe and powerplant. While there are many, I'm writing about "pressure thrust."
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Czech Deputy Prime Minister Martin Jahn says the government will liquidate aerospace and defense contractor Aero Vodochody if a planned sell-off of the state-owned company is not completed by mid-2006.
Three USAF/Lockheed Martin F-16Cs from the 64th Aggressor Sqdn. at Nellis AFB, Nev., prepare for an attack during a recent Red Flag exercise (see p. 46). Camouflage paint schemes help blue-force aircrews identify the F-16Cs as "bad guys" during aerial engagements. Wingtip-mounted data/tracking pods carried by each of the squadron's aircraft enable detailed postflight reviews of each mission. USAF Master Sgt. Robert W. Valenca photo.
A Canadian supplier has won an expanded role in Boeing's 777 program. Heroux-Devtek last week was awarded a 10-year, $106.8-million contract from Goodrich to supply landing gear components. The Montreal-based company plans to revamp its Kitchener, Ontario, facilities to accommodate the work.
Observations of the comet 9P/Tempel after NASA's Deep Impact mission suggest that comets are composed primarily of dust held together by ice, rather than of ice contaminated with dust, as previously thought. Scientists have determined this on the basis of readings from ESA's Rosetta spacecraft, which observed the comet/spacecraft impact from a distance of about 80 million km. on its way to a 2014 rendezvous with the comet 67P Churymov-Gerasimenko.
Michael A. Taverna (Paris), Douglas Barrie (London)
Europe and the U.S. will launch space missions this week intended to shed light on climate change on Earth, but from two very different perspectives. Set to lift off on Oct. 26 from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, atop a Starsem Soyuz/Fregat rocket, the European Space Agency's Venus Express mission is intended to refine terrestrial models of planet-warming mechanisms by studying the greenhouse effect evident on our nearest planetary neighbor.
RUSSIAN DEFENSE Minister Sergei Ivanov's three-day visit to India last week to observe joint Indian-Russian army and naval maneuvers included an agenda with some items that weren't so visible. They included signing a long-delayed agreement on intellectual property rights and promoting the sale of Mikoyan MiG-29s to fulfill India's requirement for 126 multirole combat aircraft.
Connexion by Boeing has concluded a week-long campaign to demonstrate the feasibility of inflight mobile phone use on commercial airliners. The flights on board a 737-400 testbed allowed passengers to access the Internet and four channels of live TV as well as roaming cell phone service. Connexion expects the offering to be introduced as early as 2006, regulatory approval permitting, on the 120 daily flights on which its equipment is now installed--part of an accelerating move toward cabin wireless services (AW&ST Oct. 3, p. 45).
