ATA Airlines is outsourcing heavy maintenance and its reservation call center operation as part of another round of restructuring estimated to save $100 million over five years. The airline is eliminating 450 jobs--350 in maintenance and 100 in reservations. CEO John Denison says the expected savings is a critical element for ATA's emergence from Chapter 11 reorganization. ATA's workforce has declined 40% in two years, to 4,687 employees from 7,800. The most recent reduction will leave 800 maintenance workers across the system.
Airbus' newly unveiled management structure may signal that the civil aircraft maker is preparing to raise the profile on its involvement in several military programs. The shakeup is the first of several near-term agenda items for Airbus, after Gustav Humbert took over for Noel Forgeard as president. The latter, in his new post as EADS co-CEO and chairman of the Airbus Shareholder Committee, had a hand in the new alignment.
After more than 30 years in the House and two more as vice chairman of the 9/11 commission, Lee Hamilton knows something about politics and terrorism, and he thinks the former is inhibiting the war against the latter. Homeland security "is simply not the priority that it ought to be and we are not where we should be, four years now after 9/11," Hamilton tells an audience at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. There's a lack of urgency in Congress about counterterrorism efforts, he says.
Greece's decision to buy 30 F-16s gives another boost to Lockheed Martin's large backlog for the fighter and puts further pressure on the Eurofighter consortium, which for years has been trying to sell Typhoons to Athens.
Boeing is filling a seating gap in its single-aisle lineup and renewing the challenge to the Airbus A321 with the launch of the 737-900ER, which offers airlines the choice of carrying 26 more passengers or flying another 500 naut. mi.
The Air Transport Assn. is worried, big time, about legislation to extend U.S. Daylight Saving Time (DST). The bill, a provision of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, calls for DST to run from March to November instead of the current April-October. The little-discussed bill, aimed at electricity conservation, "would have a dramatic impact on airline schedules," warns ATA CEO James May. "For two months out of the year, we [airlines] would be out of synch with Europe and virtually every other country in the world.
Luis Eduardo Riquelme has been appointed Miami-headquartered vice president-North/Central America and Asia for the passenger division of Chile-based LAN Airlines. He has been director of route economics.
The Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (Jassm) was tested successfully last week, likely to the great relief of Congress-watchers at developer Lockheed Martin. The Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center says a Jassm successfully deployed from an F-16 during a July 20 test at White Sands Missile Range, N.M. Two earlier test failures prompted the House Appropriations defense subcommittee to propose terminating the program in Fiscal 2006. Senate appropriators haven't yet passed a spending bill.
A one-piece carbon-fiber structure, based on a 4:5-scale Dassault Falcon business jet front fuselage, was recently shipped from BAE Systems' Samlesbury, England, engineering site to the aeronautical test center (CEAT) in Toulouse, where it will be fitted with windshields and bulkheads and put through a barrage of tests. These will include static, fatigue and bird strike. The 4.5-meter-long fuselage was manufactured using "fiber placement" technology, in which individual strips of carbon fiber are put onto a mold.
Rolls-Royce has named Spain's Industria de Turbo Propulsores (ITP) as the sixth risk- and revenue-sharing partner for development of the Trent 1000. With that deal, Rolls has offloaded 35% of the development risk to partners. The Spanish company, in which Rolls holds a 47% stake, will be involved with assembly of the low-pressure turbine as well as most of the manufacture and design work associated with that sector of the turbofan. ITP joins with Goodrich, Hamilton Sundstrand, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Carlton Forge Works.
Emirates will add a second daily non-stop A340-500 flight from Dubai to New York-JFK International Airport on Nov. 7. This is thanks to strong customer demand, says Emirates' executive vice president of commercial operations worldwide, Ghaith Al Ghaith. The service will double Emirates' daily belly cargo capacity between the two cities to 30 tons from 15. Emirates' total cargo capacity will now increase to about 430 tons a week in each direction, counting that carried by Emirates SkyCargo, which operates twice-weekly scheduled Boeing 747Fs.
Gulf Air in December will begin a three-times-weekly direct service between Dublin and Manama, Bahrain, operating an Airbus A330. It is the first scheduled Ireland-Middle East link, according to Gulf Air. Onward connections from its hub in Bahrain cover 40 destinations in the region and Asia-Pacific.
Evert Dudok has been appointed president of EADS Space Transportation, Bremen, Germany. He succeeds Josef Kind, who has retired. Dudok was vice president-Earth observation, navigation and science applications at EADS Astrium. He has been succeeded by Reinhold Lutz, who was senior vice president-strategy and planning at EADS' headquarters in Paris.
David F. Pittman has been named chief financial officer of the Aircraft Service International Group, Orlando, Fla. He was CFO of Delta Air Lines subsidiaries Song Airways and Delta Technology. Kim Y. Osborne has become senior director of sales and customer service, based at New York John F. Kennedy International Airport. She was manager of quality assurance there for American Airlines.
Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. has delivered nine twin-seat Jaguars to the Indian air force, upgraded with an indigenous avionics/targeting suite that includes a night-attack and precision-bombing capability. The suite uses a Sagem ring-laser gyro inertial navigation system with an integrated GPS. Its twin mission computers were developed in India.
Singapore's Center for Remote Imaging, Sensing and Processing will create a joint venture with Spot Asia, a regional Spot Image subsidiary that distributes imagery from Ikonos, QuickBird, Landsat and other systems in addition to Spot. The new company will develop and market new products and services for regional needs. Spot already has affiliates in China, Australia, Japan and the U.S., in addition to Singapore. Spot Image says its Australian distributor, Raytheon Australia, has been selected to supply high-resolution imagery for the entire state of New South Wales.
ESA and the consortium developing the European Galileo satellite precision timing and navigation system have tapped Thales to devise the requisite security policy for the constellation. The broad work order includes the design of communications security (for both the network and signal), multi-level authentication and access control for the different types of service (there's a public signal and a higher precision, publicly regulated version), data confidentiality and integrity control, and attack prevention.
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Senior Editor Craig Covault (right) interviews Kevin McNeill, Lockheed Martin's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) project manager, in front of the $700-million spacecraft. The 4,796-lb. NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory orbiter is undergoing final checkout at the Kennedy Space Center before its planned liftoff from Cape Canaveral Aug. 10 on a Lockheed Martin Atlas V booster (see p. 27). The MRO sensor suite will be the most advanced ever launched on a planetary spacecraft (AW&ST Jan. 31, p. 48).
Love him or hate him, Virgin Atlantic Chairman Sir Richard Branson has been a powerful force in the global airline industry. Branson never thought of launching an airline until a lawyer named Randolph Fields called in early 1984 with a proposal to start an all-business-class carrier called British Atlantic. After putting his own strategic touch on the business plan, Branson decided to start an international airline that would raise the bar of inflight service and spread his Virgin brand across the world.
World News Roundup 18 Commercial aerospace recovery fuels growth in sales and profits 18 Japan, U.S. agree not to move USMC helos to Camp Schwab on Okinawa 19 Flight testing begins in Germany for Grob SP Utility Jet 20 Eurofighter Typhoon breaks display altitude 'floor' at air show 20 Frank Homan, ex-GE general manag- er of CFM engine program, dies World News & Analysis 22 Into the black for American and Continental; Delta still sees red
The fight for dominance of the new very light jet segment is heating up this summer as competitors push development and flight-test programs forward in a race to reach the marketplace ahead of their adversaries.
Wynn D. Peterson has been promoted to senior vice president-Jetride Services from vice president-strategic planning and analysis for AirNet Systems Inc., Columbus, Ohio. Ray L. Druseikis has become vice president-finance/controller. Druseikis was an accountant and consultant to several companies.
The Russian government's new space spending plan marks the latest attempt to halt the decline of the country's industrial base. But money alone won't help. Industry-wide structural change is also needed, government representatives suggest.
First-half 2005 accident results show the continued decline that has been evident for the airline industry since the end of 2001, according to compiled data from Airclaims Special Bulletins. But that's not true for insurance claims. "From the insurers' point of view, it is perhaps worrying that the cost of losses still amounts to about $1 billion in a 12-month period in which nothing much happened," says Airclaims Safety Director Paul Hayes.
