Charles Pineo has been named marketing and sales director for the UND Aerospace Foundation at the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. He was regional manager of corporate and agency sales at Northwest Airlines.
Toronto-based Onex was in negotiations to buy Boeing's Wichita, Kan., facility late last week. Onex is a holding company with a track record of getting in low, improving the business and selling high. The sale is part of Boeing's restructuring of its commercial airplane operation. Its Wichita complex will become an external subcontractor that supplies prefabricated pieces of Boeing's 737, 747, 767, 777 and 787 aircraft. A military segment of the Wichita plan will stay part of the Boeing company.
Chuck Atkins has been named Democratic staff director for the House Science Committee. He will remain chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Bart Gordon (Tenn.), the ranking Democrat on the panel.
Boeing's 20-year sales forecast for the Indian market has been raised $10 billion to $35 billion because the country's market is booming. The company says Indian software services firm HCL Technologies Ltd. will support the 787 by developing a hosting platform for a flight-test computing system and providing software services. Boeing also is to use the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore for research in aerospace materials, structures and manufacturing technologies.
I take strong exception to Winfried Giese's allegation (AW&ST Jan. 17, p. 382) that First Officer Sten Molin's "heavy-footed" actions are partially to blame in the tragic loss of AA587. Having flown as a captain for 10 years on the A300 from New York, I have had the pleasure of flying with Sten many times on that aircraft, and at no time did he ever display less than consummately professional flying skills and knowledge.
Lockheed Martin is starting to lay off about 425 workers at its Atlas II/III and Titan IVB operations at Cape Canaveral as part of its transition to the Atlas V Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle. The Cape workforce was notified more than a year ago that layoffs would follow once the final flights of the Atlas III and Titan IVB took place, so they aren't a surprise. The last Atlas III was launched Feb. 3, and the Cape's final Titan IVB is set to fly with a National Reconnaissance Office payload by early this spring.
Defense Dept. acting acquisition chief Michael Wynne asks the Pentagon's inspector general to review eight contracts let under the authority of disgraced former Air Force acquisition chief Darleen Druyun. She is serving nine months in federal prison after admitting to misguiding billions in Air Force procurement dollars toward Boeing, the company she later joined as a vice president. The eight contracts were flagged in a review of 407 contracts due to anomalies in the procurement process that called for a more in-depth look.
The Bush administration's plan to shift the lion's share of aviation security costs to passengers by doubling a ticket tax is facing fierce industry and consumer opposition and also considerable skepticism on Capitol Hill. In fact, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation hearing last week showed that even some Republicans question the proposal.
General aviation couldn't have asked for a better comeback. In 2004, shipments, billings and exports were up, up, up--but now the sector faces the challenge of sustaining growth.
AgustaWestland plans to spend $6.8 million to enlarge its helicopter assembly facility in Philadelphia and establish a new office in Washington. CEO Giuseppe Orsi says the company is committed to expanding its presence in the U.S. Its Philadelphia-based subsidiary, Agusta Aerospace Corp., delivered 12 helicopters and is responsible for assembling the turbine-powered, single-engine A119 Koala. Orsi says demand by law enforcement, offshore and emergency medical services operators is increasing, and the factory is capable of building at least 15 aircraft annually.
NASA's aeronautics program continues to shrink under the Bush administration's Fiscal 2006 budget request, dwindling to a handful of "public good" and long-term aircraft technology efforts as the agency shifts its focus to deep-space exploration.
It turns out the FAA knew a fair amount about Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden. In fact, 52 of the 100 daily intelligence summaries issued by the FAA security branch from Apr. 1, 2001, leading up to Sept. 11 mention Osama Bin Laden or Al Qaeda and five mention hijacking as one capability of the terrorist organization. These details and others are contained in a redacted 120-page staff memo from the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the U.S. The memorandum surfaced last week on the National Archives web site.
Ken Gilbert has been named vice president-customer experience and airports for the Oneworld Alliance. He succeeds Robert Antoniuk, who has become a senior executive at Cathay Pacific Airways. Gilbert was managing director of corporate project implementation for American Airlines.
Falling passenger counts in post-tsunami Asia have led the region's airlines to rewrite their routes and fleet plans as they try to woo back 43 million international visitors. For the moment, they've discovered, smaller is better.
Airbus has assembled four 555-seat A380 long-range transports at its Toulouse production facilities (see p. 54). The MSN01 is undergoing ground tests in preparation for its first flight in the next two months. The European manufacturer has secured 154 orders and about 50 options for the mega-transport. Singapore Airlines is the customer slated to take first delivery of the aircraft, which is anticipated in the second quarter of next year. Airbus photo.
The Pentagon is slowing the pace of the Missile Defense Agency's High-Altitude Airship (HAA) program to allow material development to mature. The HAA is designed to carry missile detection sensors aloft and at lower cost than satellites. Pentagon officials have found, however, that Lockheed Martin is struggling to reduce the weight of the hull of the lighter-than-air vehicle. As a result, the program is being extended and will focus on materials before pursuing other elements of the aircraft.
Space science managers in Europe have agreed with the European Commission and the automotive industry to allow the temporary use of the 23.6-24-GHz. frequency band for automobile anti-collision radars. But the deal stipulates that the application will be switched to another band if it proves successful. The compromise agreement, similar to one in the U.S., permits usage of the 24-GHz. band through June 30, 2013, or as soon as 7% of the automobiles on the road are equipped with the radars. After that, auto makers are expected to move to the 78-GHz.
Saudi Arabia has hired Thales to supply en route air traffic control centers as well as approach control centers at Riyadh and Jeddah, with a third approach control center for Medina. The installation of Thales' Eurocat system will provide positions for 50 controllers at the seven sites under the $40-million contract.
Appearing at the same conference, Boeing President/CEO Harry Stonecipher says he's personally wooing potential customers as part of his campaign to cure an "arrogant and insular" culture that led to the loss of loyal customers to Airbus. "This business really runs on personal relationships," he said. In addition, he's demanding better earnings margins from the company's passenger-transport business as orders rebound. That segment is generating margins of 5-6% compared with about 10% for the defense segment.
David A. Fulghum (Washington), Michael A. Dornheim (Los Angeles), William B. Scott (Colorado Springs)
New data on classified U.S. Air Force programs track the service's changing emphasis from manned aircraft to unmanned stealth vehicles to algorithms that penetrate enemy defenses with even less notice but with equal, and perhaps even more, destructive power.
Mountains of Kabul hold clues to crash of Kam Air 737 NATO rescuers are braving high altitudes, frigid weather and inhospitable terrain to recover the wreckage that was Kam Air Flight 904 from the stark mountains of Kabul. The wreckage, including flight data recorders, will aid investigators in determining what led to the crash that killed 104 people.
A TSA rule issued last week gives the go-ahead for "transient aircraft operations" to resume after Feb. 13 at three general aviation airports in the Washington Metropolitan Area Flight Restricted Zone: College Park, Potomac Airfield and Washington Executive/Hyde Field. The airports, known as the "Maryland Three," previously were off-limits to transient pilots. Under the ruling, the security responsibility for the facilities shifts from FAA special regulations to TSA, and transient pilots will be allowed access to the airports provided they meet TSA requirements.
Lockheed Martin conducted a 60-sec. test of the multiport, multirow hybrid rocket motor it is developing for the second stage of its entry in the Pentagon's Falcon Small Launch Vehicle competition. Cast at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, which the company operates for NASA, the motor is designed to deliver 23,500-lb. thrust burning a solid, normally inert fuel and liquid oxygen. Lockheed Martin heads one of four teams working under preliminary design and development contracts with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency/ U.S.
A few intelligence and communications initiatives are headed for growth in the Fiscal 2006 Pentagon budget request, even though the spending proposal cuts procurement and shifts the military's spending focus from the Air Force and Navy to ground forces. Even missile defense, long one of the preferred spending areas for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, did not escape unscathed, having to absorb a $1-billion cut in Fiscal 2006 and a $5-billion one through 2011. Even so, total missile defense spending remains high: about $9-10 billion per year.
