An All Nippon Airways crew's overextended dinner-with-drinks has raised more safety questions in Japan, where the transport ministry is jittery after a series of pilot-to-air traffic controller episodes and derailment of a West Japan Rail train in late April. The train was less than a minute behind schedule, but the driver is alleged to have speeded up on a curve to try to make up time. The derailment killed 107 people and injured more than 400.
A Boeing-built Small-Diameter Bomb (SDB) has flown more than 55 mi. from an altitude of 30,000 ft. to hit within one yard of its predicted impact point in the Gulf of Mexico. It was the longest flight to date. The SDB has an average accuracy of 42 in. Earlier, an F-15E launched the weapon from 35 mi. and the bomb was subjected to jamming of its GPS guidance system. It hit within 7 ft. of the target. The 250-lb. SDB is scheduled to be deployed first on the F-15E in 2006.
The French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle has conducted another operational practice firing of the SAAM air defense missile system. The firing resulted in a direct hit against a high-subsonic antiship target.
Technical problems with a key sensor are putting the schedule for the future U.S. weather satellite constellation in question and are adding hundreds of millions of dollars to the price tag.
Russia's Foton M-2 robotic microgravity laboratory is in orbit with a load of 39 European Space Agency experiments, many of them replacements for hardware lost with the October 2002 failure of Foton M-1 and the February 2003 loss of the space shuttle Columbia. Controllers at the Swedish Space Corp.'s Esrange Payload Operations Center near Kiruna will oversee the 385 kg. (850 lb.) of ESA experiments on the mission until its scheduled return to a parachute landing in Kazakhstan on June 16.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency/Boeing X-37 moved closer to a glide and landing demonstration as it underwent taxi tests last month under its carrier aircraft, the Scaled Composites White Knight.
SpaceX, the startup space transportation company funded out of pocket by dot.com tycoon Elon Musk, conducted a brief hot-fire test of its Falcon 1 rocket May 28, paving the way for a first flight later this year. The 70-ft. rocket (shown) ran at full throttle for about 3 sec. on its pad at Vandenberg AFB's Space Launch Complex-3 in California, completing a full launch dress rehearsal. The first payload is scheduled to be a small U.S. Defense Dept.
For United Technologies Corp., it has been a steady climb to the top. Several years ago, the international industrial conglomerate that owns Pratt & Whitney, Hamilton Sundstrand and Sikorsky Aircraft placed ninth among large aerospace companies in the Top-Performing Companies rankings. The next year it was up to sixth. Last year it ranked second. And now UTC has unseated General Dynamics Corp. to claim the top spot.
Is there a doctor in the house? When the U.S. and European Union last October took the first steps toward a World Trade Organization (WTO) settlement of their dispute over large aircraft subsidies, it seemed certain nothing less than a full-blown legal battle could resolve their differences. They are too large. The fact that the five-month cooling-off period that ended Apr. 11 produced no equitable compromise only underscores the point.
Microcosm Inc. is progressing on its Small Launch Vehicle design after tests last month of an ablatively cooled liquid rocket engine. The company received a 10-month contract from the joint Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency/U.S. Air Force Falcon program in September 2004 to conduct SLV risk-reduction tests and refine the design. The Microcosm engine was fired several times with durations running from 1-30 sec. at the Air Force Research Laboratory's Test Stand 2-A at Leuhman Ridge on Edwards AFB, Calif.
Net earnings are commonly used to measure a company's financial performance, but when Frank C. Lanza wants to get a look at what's going on at the operating level, the metric he turns to is free cash flow. "If you don't see any free cash flow but a lot of earnings, you've got a problem," says the chairman/CEO of L-3 Communications Corp. "Earnings is great stuff for Wall Street, but if it doesn't have any cash that goes with it, it's only smoke."
Todd Burke (see photo) has been promoted to vice president from director of corporate communications for JetBlue Airways. He succeeds Gareth Edmondson-Jones, who has returned to Australia.
Narita Airport Corp., in its first year after being privatized, says it made a $59-million profit on $1.6 billion in revenues in fiscal 2004. It also said it processed 31.7 million passengers, 18% more than in 2003. The breakthrough profits are in contrast with Japan's government-supported airports, which typically run in the red.
Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency JAXA has set a launch date as early as June 26 for the Astro-E2 X-ray astronautical satellite, delayed while the agency focused on getting its H-IIA rocket flying again. The window for the flight on an M-5 vehicle from the Uchinoura launch site at Kagoshima on Kyushu island closes on Aug. 2. From its 570-km. circular orbit, the 1,700-kg.
John Gannon (see photo) has become vice president of the Global Analysis unit of BAE Systems Information Technology, McLean, Va. He was staff director of the House of Representatives' Homeland Security Committee and had been a team leader in the White House's Transitional Planning Office for the Homeland Security Dept.
Mark R. Wise (see photo) has been appointed vice president for ground-based programs for Thales North America Inc., Alexandria, Va. He was an executive with Dynetics Inc.
Former Air Force Secretary James G. Roche has been appointed to the board of directors of the Orbital Sciences Corp., Dulles, Va. He also is a former corporate vice president of the Northrop Grumman Corp. and president of its Electronic Sensors and Systems Sector.
The only certainty in the U.S.-European Union battle over commercial aircraft subsidies that's now before the World Trade Organization is that the outcome is uncertain.
The results are in from Aviation Week & Space Technology's ninth Top-Performing Companies analysis. A series of stories and tables beginning on p. 42 provide a critical assessment of how publicly traded aerospace companies and both public and private airlines stack up against their peers. Platforms illustrated on the cover represent four continents covered in the study: North America, Europe, Asia and South America. Cover illustration by AW&ST Art Dept.
A 30-month program to adapt the Ariane 5 booster for the Automated Transfer Vehicle will be completed by January 2006, says the European Space Agency. The 74-million-euro ($90-million) program, led by French space agency CNES and Ariane 5 prime contractor EADS, primarily involved reinforcing the interstage adapter that will mate the ATV to the launcher so it can support the 20.8-metric-ton vehicle--more than twice the mass of any previous Ariane 5 payload (AW&ST May 17, 2004, p. 35).
The U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee's chairman and senior Democrat are threatening to subpoena Defense Dept. records unless the Pentagon produces more documents supporting its recommendations for military bases to be closed and realigned.
Northrop Grumman has started building its first X-47B, a large version of its X-47A, as its demonstrator for the U.S. Joint Unmanned Combat Air System program. The surveillance/ strike design is to be operated from land bases and aircraft carriers. Initial production of the forward fuselage is underway at partner company GKN Aerospace.
FAA's two-month operational assessment of the New York Tracon (Terminal Radar Approach Control) facility found it more than adequately staffed for safe operations, but that union-controlled scheduling practices were "wasteful"--driving overtime costs to $4 million in 2004 alone. The overtime was more than double that of Chicago, Southern California, Atlanta and Denver Tracons combined. Overtime allowances allowed 21 controllers to earn more than $200,000 in 2004; 51 controllers are forecast to do the same this year.
This year's top performers from the publicly traded airline study were identified, in large part, by results derived from CSFB HOLT's cash flow return on investment computation, a metric that gauges how efficiently a company is employing its assets. Predictably, all five of the winners carried rates that were listed in the top 10 of the 60 airlines surveyed. But were these managers really as good as their cash flow return on investments (CFROIs)?
