Sonaca, a major aerostructures producer, is considering cutting about 300 jobs. The decision is causing a stir in southern Belgium where the unemployment rate hovers above 8%. The Charleroi-based company's difficulties are a direct result of the euro's unfavorable exchange rates against the U.S. dollar and of Embraer's decision to significantly reduce the 35-50-seat ERJ 135/145 production rate. In addition, Sonaca executives say the company is facing competitive pressure on prices in the regional twinjet market.
A look across the Atlantic shows European network airlines are returning to profitability after the rise of low-cost carriers (LCCs), while their U.S. peers continue to lose money. One major reason may be that their parent corporations rely less on passenger airline income and more on diversifying their networks and revenues.
While House and Senate leaders wrangle over the best way to investigate the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is pressing ahead this week with its own probe.
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Worried about troop casualties in conflict zones, the German defense ministry is buying a container system to shield personnel moving around crisis areas against sniper fire, shrapnel and even nuclear, biological and chemical weapons attack. So says EADS, which developed the TransProtec system with Krauss-Maffei Wegmann.
With 18,500 striking machinists having shut down their assembly lines and forced layoffs at suppliers, executives at Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA) are about to face another headache: Their engineers want a raise. The Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (Speea), the union representing 11,600 engineers and 6,000 technical workers at Boeing's Seattle area plants, is planning to deliver a proposal to the company this week demanding hefty wage and benefit concessions. Speea's current three-year contract with Boeing expires Dec. 1.
EADS has completed its acquisition of Nokia's Professional Mobile Radio unit. The deal, announced earlier this year, passed anti-trust review. EADS has created a new business unit, EADS Secure Networks, where it has bundled its own activities in this field with those acquired from Nokia. Tetra and Tetrapol digital radio standards form the technology backbone of the venture.
Contrary to what some Boeing executives would like the outside world to believe, labor-management relations at the U.S.'s largest aerospace contractor haven't exactly been a model for industry. Rather, they have been characterized by resentment and distrust. So it came as no big surprise when more than 18,000 members of the International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers recently decided to strike over retirement, health care benefits and job security (see p. 39).
Maneuvering by European firms to win stakes in the production, sustainment and follow-on development phase of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter project is expected to intensify this fall. International participants will lay their financial and industrial cards on the table to remain part of the 196-billion-euro ($245-billion) project to develop and manufacture over 3,000 combat aircraft for the U.S. and allied air forces.
LRAD on steroids is what the U.S. Marine Corps jokingly calls the linguistically unwieldy "man-portable long-range, non-kinetic, nonlethal weapon" it wants to send to Iraq. While the description reads like a shopping list of nonlethal weaponry, it's really the Marines' way of getting a scaled-back version of Sheriff (see right column).
Air France-KLM says it is upping its year-end profit target, and that it will beat last year's result of 534 million euros ($662 million). The airline group benefited from a strong fuel hedge position, but also growth in its business-class traffic. The long-suffering short- and medium-haul traffic also is showing a gain. Air France-KLM has 83% of this year's fuel demands hedged at $42 per barrel, with 54% of next year's demand hedged at $52.
Cassini imagery of Saturn's moon Enceladus may have made the moon another target for future life-detection missions. Imagery and other data suggest "pure-water volcanism" at the south pole vents vapor and fine ice particles that both coat the tiny moon's weird surface and feed the planet's outermost ring. For reasons not entirely understood, the moon's south pole registers about 20C warmer than the -203C scientists expected to find.
The federal government's latest plan for Secure Flight, the computerized airline passenger pre-screening program, is in trouble again. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has pushed back its debut this year from April to late September because of testing glitches, congressional investigations and threatened budget cuts. Now the Justice Dept.'s inspector general (IG) has a problem with it.
Fred Grieger (see photo) has been named vice president-sales and marketing of Pacific Cast Technologies, a Ladish company in Albany, Ore. He was a sales and market-development manager for Paris-based Hutchinson Industries.
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U.S. and European helicopter manufacturers submit bids in September for the U.S. Army's Light Utility Helicopter (LUH) competition ahead of a selection next April. The LUH program calls for production of 322 helicopters between 2006 and 2015. The helicopters will perform general support missions in the U.S. and overseas, reconnaissance, drug interdiction and homeland security.
A group of western African countries is envisioning the creation of a cross-border regional airline. The initiative would sustain the participating countries' long-term economic plan to establish a single market and monetary union to boost gross national product. The tentative plan involves, for example, Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mali, Senegal and Togo. Governments would support the new carrier while seeking private investors to provide additional funding.
In formalizing the legislative foundation for the Galileo satellite navigation program, the European Parliament has added language requiring the private concessionaire to use proceeds from the venture to repay governments some of their up-front investment. The modalities are in discussion, with government officials preferring a revenue-sharing scheme, while others suggest a profit-sharing approach.
The McGraw-Hill Companies September/October 2005 The Next Generation Body Armor's New Look Million-Rounds-A-Minute Marine Space Plane Takes Off www.defensetechnologyinternational.com An Editorial Supplement to Aviation Week & Space Technology
Thomas M. Ripp has been named president of New York-based L-3 Communications' Security and Detection Systems. He will succeed Allen Barber, who has become senior vice president-strategic planning within the Sensors and Simulation Group. Ripp was vice president-sensors and advanced packaging for the Dover Corp.'s Vectron International business.
Since storming defense trade shows more than 10 years ago with its "million-rounds-a-minute" gun, Australian defense firm Metal Storm has learned the hard knocks of trying to sell a revolutionary weapon in a market resistant to change. Although its promotion is impressive--the company has announced a slew of small development contracts and has garnered significant private investment--Metal Storm has yet to make a major breakthrough in the defense market and time could be running out for the cash-strapped enterprise.
China does not now face a direct threat from another nation," the Pentagon contends in its latest annual assessment of the country's military capacity. Threat or not, Beijing continues to modernize its armed forces, leaving China-watchers to debate the precision of the Pentagon's report. There is no shortage of hawkish rhetoric about China in Washington, but the report, "The Military Power of the People's Republic of China 2005," takes a measured approach. Some critics describe it as "watered down."
As an 8,000-plus-hr. "freight dog," I have heard the assertion made by Brian Wilson that freight pilots have acquired "bad habits" that "plague us throughout our careers" (AW&ST Aug. 8, p. 8). In most cases, nothing could be further from the truth. Some of the best pilots with whom I have flown were or are freight pilots.
