Ben Darnell has become managing director of Delta Air Logistics. He was director of safety, security and ground operations within Delta's Airport Customer Service (ACS) Div. Darnell succeeds Tony Charaf, who is now senior vice president-technical operations at Delta Air Lines. Rob Maruster has been promoted to vice president-Atlanta Worldport from director of strategy, planning and performance for ACS. He succeeds Lem Wimbish, who has retired.
NASA has picked an Atlas V for the planned April 2008 launch of the Solar Dynamics Observatory, a scientific probe designed to study solar magnetic fields and other factors influencing space weather.
Scaled Composites pilots Brian Binnie, Mike Melvill and Pete Siebold have won the Society of Experimental Test Pilots' (SETP) Iven C. Kincheloe Award for their envelope expansion of the company's SpaceShipOne rocket glider, making it the first purely private aircraft to exceed the speed of sound and then the first to reach space with its 100-km. ascent on June 21. The award recognizes professional accomplishment in the conduct of flight-testing. Scaled President Burt Rutan received the J. H. Doolittle Award for technical management for engineering achievement.
The U.S. Army is pressing forward with its strategy to boost its special operations MH-47 inventory and also modernizing the regular Army's CH-47 force. Boeing last week received contracts totaling more than $140 million for Chinooks. Almost $30 million is for long-lead items for MH-47Gs as part of the Army strategy to field at least 95 of the helicopters by around 2011. First flight of the new special ops Chinook took place earlier this year.
The five biggest U.S. carriers stand to improve their combined cash position by about $1 billion through the prospective acquisition of the Orbitz web-based ticket sales outlet by Cendant Corp., which was announced on Sept. 29. American, United, Delta, Northwest and Continental airlines founded Orbitz four years ago with a collective investment of little more than $200 million. They still own 68%.
Chicago O'Hare airport's modernization program has a lot of support as the main hope for increasing capacity and easing congestion, but that doesn't make it any easier to get the program started. As the FAA lumbers through development of an environmental impact statement (EIS) covering the work, the agency tells stakeholders it wants to "facilitate early involvement of the public in the EIS process," in order to save time overall.
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Air Canada is the first legacy carrier to adopt a low-fare, low-cost business model. Emerging last week from its 18-month-long creditor protection, the airline announced finalization of previous purchase agreements with Bombardier for up to 90 CRJs and with Embraer for up to 90 Embraer 190s. The value of the Bombardier contract is estimated at US$2.45 billion, including options. The carrier holds 30 firm orders (15 CRJ700 Series 705 and 15 CRJ200s), 15 conditional orders (CRJ200s), and options on 45 aircraft.
Michael Dehring has been promoted to manager of Lidar systems from manager for ground- and balloon-based Lidar systems for the Michigan Aerospace Corp. of Ann Arbor.
Eutelsat shareholders have approved a revamped management structure with a single 10-member board of directors intended to streamline decision-making and bring it into line with typical industry practice. The shift reflects the structure of private equity firms that now control most of the satellite operator's capital. Formerly, Eutelsat was governed by a 15-member supervisory board and four-man management board, a setup common in Europe.
iNavSat, one of the two consortia vying for the right to deploy and operate Europe's Galileo satellite navigation system, has added Italy's Vitrociset to its team bidding for the concession to be decided at month's end. Specialized in advanced electronics, information technology and integrated logistics, Vitrociset was added through an agreement with iNavSat team leader EADS that could subsequently be extended to such other areas as telecommunications and launch vehicles.
How can NASA and the President promote sending men to the Moon and Mars when we can't even travel the 100 miles or so to the Hubble Space telescope? The robotic mission is a waste of money; it must be a congressman's pork-barrel project and should be shelved. Or perhaps the bad management and decision-making at NASA that has caused so many failed missions has finally reached the top. Maybe a historical society should adopt NASA, make it a landmark and its demise impossible.
U.S. Navy Rear Adm. (lower half) Andrew M. Singer has been nominated for promotion to rear admiral. He is vice commander of the Naval Network Warfare Command, Norfolk, Va.
Mike Wetle (see photo) has been appointed vice president-marketing for the Watlow Electric Manufacturing Co. of St. Louis. He was senior vice president/general manager of CyberOptics' semiconductor products groups.
Northrop Grumman has been awarded a $29.3-million contract to integrate its Large Aircraft Infrared Countermeasures System to defeat heat-seeking missiles on a commercial Boeing 747-400.
Aer Lingus has reduced fares and simplified tariff rules, applying the low-fare concept of U.S. domestic operators to transatlantic trips. Economy fares are down 20-30% and capped at $503 with no Saturday-night stay requirement. Business and first-class fares have been cut by more than half.
Those UFO reports about a large glowing object over the White House and other areas in Washington were generated by an American Blimp Corp. A-170 airship, lighted from the inside, flying a 24-hr. endurance demonstration with the permission of local authorities. Arinc executives are pitching the idea that an unmanned airship could fly for days over Baghdad or other urban combat areas with a ton or two of large-aperture--and thus higher-resolution--sensors to find insurgents before they can stage attacks.
Italy's plan to switch control of its space activities away from the research community and closer to industry, defense and other space-service users underscores the growing strategic importance of space and the concomitant need for broader decision-making mechanisms in Europe.
Lufthansa Cargo has added three more airfreight forwarders--ABX, EGL and Menlo--to its Global Partnership Program, bringing the total now to 11 members. The forwarders will receive preferred access to the cargo carrier's capacity and the aid of a customer support team. The cargo partnership is a strategic mirror image of the airline alliances on the passenger side, but with the added complication that forwarders are not committed to using the service and are likely to seek low costs whenever possible.
The U.S. Navy is deferring for several weeks a decision on whether to procure a second targeting pod for fighters to augment Raytheon's Sharp reconnaissance system. An expert panel reviewing the matter failed to offer a recommendation on whether the Navy should pursue a two-pod plan, pointing out that Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman each have viable offerings. Meanwhile, Raytheon is developing a multiyear procurement strategy for 361 more Sharp pods.
Boeing's 7E7 cabin architecture team is developing wireless feeds for seat-back video systems. That will save a lot of weight and make it easier to reposition seating because the WiFi system will eliminate the need for the bulky Inflight Entertainment System control boxes that are beneath one seat on each row in current-generation aircraft. To power the displays, Boeing will put plugs at the front and back base of each seat. Connecting cables will come in predetermined lengths so an airline can have a set for, say, a 30-in. seat pitch and another for a 33-in. pitch.
Charles H. Boccadoro, Joseph W. Pawlowski and David H. Graham are Northrop Grumman Corp. engineers who have won the Washington-based American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' 2004 Aircraft Design Award. They were honored for leading a team that demonstrated a method to reduce the intensity of sonic booms by modifying an aircraft's shape. Boccadoro is manager of future strike systems, Pawlowski project manager for the sonic boom demonstration, and Graham is leader of the aerodynamic design team.
USMC Lt. Col. Kevin Gross has won the Marine Corps Aviation Assn.'s James Maguire Award for 2004. The award is named for Gunnery Sgt. James Maguire, the first enlisted Marine ordered to aviation duty. Gross was cited in his capacity as V-22 government flight test director and for being "responsible for the highly successful accomplishments of all development tests and flight test prerequisites for entry into operational assessment of the MV-22."
Following the Columbia accident, I noted that the three space program disasters had a common root cause: NASA failed to maintain crew survivability as top priority. President John F. Kennedy implicitly imposed this requirement on NASA with the words ". . . bring them back safely." After reading the NASA spec on the Apollo capsule as a rookie engineer at Rocketdyne in 1964, I told my boss it was a death trap. He agreed and added that the company would take the blame, and NASA would take care of the company.
Delta Air Lines CEO Gerald Grinstein last week told employees more about what to expect in the way of pay and benefits cuts. The cost savings measures, which are to become effective on Jan. 1, are part of Delta's transformation plan, which Grinstein began unfolding early last month. They include: a 10% reduction in pay across the board for executives, supervisory and administrative personnel; an increase in shared costs of health care coverage; and a cut in yearly vacation accrual to five from six weeks.
