The Air Line Pilots Assn. says Northwest Airlines responded negatively toward its unique contract offer that would establish a new career path to the mainline cockpit. Northwest officials would not comment on either the airline's or the union's proposal. In recent weeks ALPA proposed an exclusive pay and benefits system for 70-seat-aircraft pilots and suggested that the 70-seaters serve as the career entry point for new-hires and affiliated pilots (AW&ST Aug. 2, p. 28).
The impact of high fuel prices on airline performance continues to worry Wall Street. As the oil futures price topped out at $44.60 per barrel, Michael Linenberg of Merrill Lynch started questioning carrier plans to boost capacity in coming months. He singled out weakened Delta Air Lines, which projected a 7% capacity gain in the second half of the year. Linenberg recognizes that legacy airlines such as Delta are trying to protect market share, fighting against the growing incursion of low-cost operators.
Tony H. Smith, Sr., has been named vice president-operations and finance for the Ohio Aerospace Institute in Cleveland. He was chief financial officer of Ideastream.
Testers from the Global Power Fighters Combined Test Force at Edwards AFB, Calif., have completed the first accelerated testing in qualifying the Block 30 F-16 to carry the GBU-38 500-lb. Joint Direct Attack Munition. The release of three inert bombs was made by the 416th Flight Test Sqdn. at the China Lake, Calif., range. Operational and developmental testing was completed in 30 days.
It's certainly not something anyone wants to advertise at a time when outsourcing looms as a hot-button election-year issue, but sending work outside the company--and outside the country, perhaps--appears to be one area in the aerospace and defense industry in line for strong growth. It's not the high-profile practice of shipping manufacturing work overseas that's at issue, it's more subtle outsourcing processes of large companies, such as enterprise-wide procurement, by which items that are deemed non-core are being shifted from in-house work.
Optimism among major European airlines for a quick recovery is fading, as stubbornly high fuel prices and falling yields continue to erode operating margins.
Like American Airlines 18 months ago, Delta Air Lines and US Airways are nearing the brink of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy-protection filing. And like American, which stayed solvent, the outcome at Delta and US Airways probably will turn on last-minute actions by their labor unions.
The U.S. government has awarded Arlington, Tex.-based VirTra Systems a General Services Administration listing for its proprietary immersive virtual reality (IVR) counterterrorism technology. The award, a first for the use of patented technology, will enable VirTra Systems' products to be sold directly to any federal agency without competitive bidding. The company is expected to deliver its latest IVR counterterrorism simulator to the U.S. Air Force at the end of this month.
Northrop Grumman has been chosen to provide support services to the RAF's Boeing E-3D Sentry airborne warning and control system aircraft for up to 21 years. The whole-life support program is anticipated as being worth 650 million pounds ($1.19 billion) over the length of the contract. Northrop Grumman, which recently lost out to Thales on the U.K.'s Watchkeeper surveillance UAV program, was competing with Boeing for the E-3D work.
Ryanair has no relationship with Singapore-based Tiger Airways (AW&ST July 26, p. 17). The airline advises it is the Ryan family that holds a stake in the low-fare startup.
CESSNA AIRCRAFT CO. HAS BEGUN PRODUCING tooling and detail parts for the first Citation Mustang entry-level business jet. More than 3,600 parts have already been made for the prototype and the ground test article, according to Cessna. Plans call for the airplane to make its first flight in the second quarter of 2005. A company official says 80% of the suppliers have been chosen and the remaining 20% will be selected by year-end.
THE NEW PIPER AIRCRAFT INC. PLANS TO OFFER the Avidyne FlightMax Entegra glass cockpit on the retractable-gear Arrow and the fixed-gear Archer III and the entry-level Warrior III piston-powered airplanes. The Entegra system features two high-resolution color displays--one for primary flight information and another that depicts a moving map with terrain information as well as engine systems status. The University of Oklahoma's aviation department recently ordered 13 Warriors for flight training, including two with the Entegra system.
International Space Station crewmen were due to receive a fresh load of supplies early Saturday after the Wednesday launch of a Russian Progress cargo vehicle from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Progress M-50 carried 3,086 lb. of dry cargo, as well as fuel, oxygen, air and potable water. The two-man Expedition 9 ISS crew--Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineer Mike Fincke--had earlier cleared the Zvezda Service Module axial docking port by sending the Progress M-49 vehicle toward a controlled reentry over the Pacific.
Airbus has awarded Indian government-owned defense company Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) an $84.4-million order for 1,000 shipsets of forward passenger doors for the aircraft in the A320 family. HAL is also manufacturing doors and other parts for the 737, 757, 767 and 777. By 2006-07, HAL plans to roll out six Su-30 MKIs with the raw materials and radars, stabilizers and wings of the aircraft outsourced and manufactured locally.
By the early summer of 1959, my friend Murray, an ex-F-86 fighter jock fresh from the Royal Canadian Air Force, and I, a furloughed Canadian C-46 copilot, were newly graduated crop-dusters.
Crews of two Avro regional jets operated by Lufthansa CityLine and Swiss International Air Lines had to declare emergencies earlier this month. On Aug. 7, CityLine's RJ85 flight LH 5388 from Frankfurt to Graz, Austria, was on approach to Graz when the first officer discovered that neither ailerons nor elevators reacted to his control inputs after disconnecting the autopilot. The captain took over and steered the aircraft normally from his side. After a while, the crew discovered that controls were back to normal on the first officer's side, too.
Virgin Blue was a pioneer in discount air services for the Asia-Pacific region, which is putting its own stamp on the genre. These low-cost carriers are not all the same in their levels of service, but they are all shaking up the airline establishment (see p. 40). Gavin Ashard photo.
In contrast with network airlines, Europe's biggest low-fare carriers, Ryanair and EasyJet, do not plan to establish surcharges, despite mounting fuel bills.
Frank DeFelice has been appointed general manager of the Gulfstream Service Center at London Luton Airport. He was manager of scheduling at the GSC at Gulfstream headquarters, Savannah, Ga. DeFelice succeeds Marc Schneider, who is now director of materials support at the Savannah facility.
The U.S. Army is borrowing production money from its next five-year budget plan to pay development costs for an additional four programs in its Future Combat System project. The service needed to break loose an additional $6.4 billion to start work on all 18 of FCS' core initiatives deemed necessary by the Army to improve effectiveness in urban combat such as in Iraq.
A graying NASA gives undergraduate engineers a taste of space in hopes they'll make a career of it. Microgravity flights on aircraft for student experiments are used as a no-strings enticement to promising candidates. For six weeks this year, four days a week, a half-dozen two-person student teams have donned flight suits for 1.5-hr. flights on NASA's KC-135A reduced-gravity aircraft. While on board they go "weightless" for 20-25 sec. at a time, 30 times or more, as the 40-year-old plane arcs through 8,000-ft. parabolas over the Gulf of Mexico.
Christopher A. Waln (see photo) has become vice president-strategy for the Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Information Technology Sector. He was director of strategic planning for its TASC unit.
The Southwest effect is spreading across Europe to Asia--until recently, a location less than hospitable to discount airlines, such as Europe's Ryanair and the U.S.' JetBlue. Obstacles included onerous regulations, relatively few secondary airports and restrictions pegged to bilateral agreements.
The Pentagon is taking aim at some of its helicopter suppliers, expressing concern that their focus on after-market support has come at the expense of innovation. But industry representatives disagree with many of the findings, arguing that they aren't ground in reality.
