SES Astra has bought a Eurostar E3000 spacecraft from EADS Astrium as its planned Astra 1M replacement satellite for the 19.2 deg. E. Long. orbital slot. The EADS unit will also supply the payload, which will include 36 transponders for broadcasting services, including high-definition television and broadband. Positioning the spacecraft at 19.2 deg. E. will allow SES Astra to shift its Astra 2C bird to 28.2 from 19.2 deg. E. Long., where it will support the growing HDTV market in the U.K. and Ireland.
Edmund (Kip) Hawley is a step closer to confirmation as the fourth head of the Transportation Security Administration since its creation in 2001. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved his nomination last week. No word yet on when the nomination will move to the full Senate for a confirmation vote.
American Honda's HondaJet flies over the countryside near Greensboro, N.C. Cessna Aircraft, Embraer, Eclipse Aviation and Adam Aircraft also are developing small, turbofan-powered airplanes for the new very light jet market (see p. 44). The twin-engine HondaJet has been in development since late 2003 and will make its public debut this week at the Experimental Aircraft Assn.'s AirVenture 2005 sport aircraft exhibition in Oshkosh, Wis. Mike Fizer photo.
Frank Homan, General Electric's general manager of the GE-Snecma CFM engine program in its early and middle stages, died July 16 from prostate cancer at home in Cincinnati. The GE Hall of Fame executive and French Legion of Honor recipient was 78. Homan was born in 1927 in Ulm, Germany. Under threats from the Nazi government, the family fled to Paris in 1934. When the German army occupied that city, Homan and members of his family were sent to concentration camps. Each was later released. In 1948, Homan emigrated to the U.S.
John Tejada has been appointed optical designer for Janos Technology Inc., Keene, N.H. He was senior optical scientist at Insight Technology Inc., Londonderry, N.H.
Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, Missile Defense Agency director, is cautious at best about the future for Boeing's Airborne Laser (ABL), which is designed to destroy long-range ballistic missiles in their boost phase. Boeing conducted a conference call earlier this month to tell reporters that expected snags in the program had not materialized, sparking some optimism. But Obering told reporters last week he doesn't "paint as rosy a picture on ABL . . . .
The British government's Defense Export Sales Organization (DESO) and Transparency International held a one-day conference in London this month to initiate discussions about anti-corruption measures in the arms trade. Transparency International is a nongovernmental organization that is pressing for measures to minimize arms sales transgressions.
Ongoing problems with Ariane 5 launcher preparation facilities have forced Arianespace to extend the delay in its launch of the Ipstar satellite. A new launch date is set to be announced this week.
French military procurement agency DGA is starting a launch demonstration program for the third stage of a strategic ballistic missile. Budget and schedule are still being determined. EADS Space Transportation will serve as the prime contractor, with G2P--a joint venture of Safran and European Energetic Corp. (which includes France's former SNPE)--to produce the ballistic vehicle. The effort is supposed to explore technologies for a future submarine-launched ballistic missile and help maintain France's technical expertise in the area.
The FAA would get $14.3 billion in Fiscal 2006 under a Transportation Dept. spending bill approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee. The bill now moves to the floor for full Senate action. The FAA allotment is $463 million more than the agency received from Congress in Fiscal 2005. The House version of the bill, which included $14.4 billion for the FAA, passed June 30.
Don't look for action until September, at the earliest, on amending the Iran Non-proliferation Act so NASA can buy seats on Russia's International Space Station lifeboat. That's cutting it pretty close, because the final Soyuz launch under the old barter agreement is scheduled for Sept. 27. Once that Soyuz returns to Earth in April 2006, NASA astronauts won't be able to stay on the ISS when space shuttles aren't present unless the law is amended (AW&ST July 18, p. 21).
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.
