The European Court of Justice was due late last week to hear arguments from General Electric and Honeywell supporting their claim that the European Commission unjustly barred a proposed merger between the two companies in 2001. The decision led to the unraveling of the merger. Although there is no question of renewing the marriage proposal, the plaintiffs are seeking to facilitate acquisitions or mergers that might develop in the future. In 2002, the Court of Justice overturned an EC ruling that had barred an alliance between U.K.
The Japanese Defense Agency awarded 8,519 contracts worth an aggregate $11.3 billion in fiscal 2003 to manufacturers, trading companies and subcontractors. Of that, 61% went to 10 companies.
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Eclipse Aviation officials say they have obtained firm orders for 2,100 of the company's Eclipse 500 lightweight jet at a price per airplane of less than $1 million. An official said all of the orders are accompanied by a non-refundable deposit and ensure each customer a production slot. Each of the 2,100 aircraft sold at a price of $950,000, the official said. As a result of meeting the sales goal, the price for all new orders has increased to $1,175,000, he said.
Newport News Shipbuilding has won a $1.4-billion construction contract to begin work on the next-generation CVN-21, a new-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. The award involves a three-year contract for design (including the propulsion system) and advanced procurement of materials. The concept is expected to produce higher sortie rates and a reduction in the ship's weight and number of crewmen required. Actual construction is to begin in Fiscal 2007.
Ramifications of the recent collapse of a passenger terminal roof at Charles de Gaulle Airport will extend far beyond the time it takes to repair or replace it.
Mark A. Kling has been named vice president/general counsel/secretary of Denver-based Space Imaging. He has been head of commercial, corporate, intellectual property and real estate litigation for Qwest Communications.
To all the world's airlines, high fuel prices are the latest scourge of the bottom line, deepening persistent losses or shrinking hard-won profits. To United Airlines they are that and worse--the carrier believes they pose a grave threat to the financing it needs to get out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Edward D. Mendenhall, retired director of operations and chief of safety for Gulfstream Aerospace, has received the Alexandria, Va.-based Flight Safety Foundation's Business Aviation Meritorious Service Award. He is vice chairman of the FSF's Corporate Aviation Committee. Mendenhall was cited for pursuing advanced safety systems such as the traffic-alert and collision avoidance and terrain awareness and warning systems, while ensuring that the Gulfstream aircraft production environment was efficient and safe.
Space launch entrepreneurs are fuming that one of their own has slowed progress on legislation intended to streamline FAA licensing of suborbital flights carrying passengers. The bill (H.R.3752), which also would make clear that such flights are experimental and the passengers are "space flight participants" who understand the risks they are taking, passed the House 402-1 on Mar 4. But Sen.
SkyLink Airways, based near Washington Dulles International Airport, has selected Boeing 767 aircraft to begin low-fare international passenger and cargo services. The company, headed by veteran airline executive Kenneth T. Carlson, signed an agreement on May 20 with an undisclosed provider to acquire the aircraft. In the Transportation Dept. certificate application filed in February, SkyLink indicated October as its earliest possible startup date and projected operating a fleet of 11 wide-body aircraft, including Boeing 777s, by 2006.
That sure is a beautiful photo of the F/A-22 two-ship (AW&ST May 10, p. 35). The F/A-22s appear to be gold-plated, probably due to lighting or the camera filters. On the other hand, at $132 million per copy, maybe the gold-plated look has nothing to do with the camera at all.
Robert K. Callaway, deputy manager of NASA's Advanced Technology Office, has won the Potomac Institute's Lewis & Clark Fellowship. His work is slated to focus on system-of-systems research and the analysis of complex systems as they relate to multimodal, multivariable, multivariate transportation.
Kaman Aerospace Corp.'s Kaman Dayron unit has received a $13.6-million work order from the U.S. Air Force to begin production of the advanced FMU-152A/B Joint Programmable Fuze. The contract covers low-rate initial production and Lot 1 through 2005. With options for eight additional years of production, the contract has a potential value of $169 million.
Don't expect a replacement for the Concorde supersonic transport, Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and CEO Alan Mulally advises. "I don't see it," Mulally observes in an Aero Club of Washington speech, based strictly on economics. The cost per available supersonic seat mile would be a whopping 87 cents, he says, compared with 10 cents on a Boeing 777. "Question is, in these times, how much money would we pay for a 2-30-hr.
Japan's transport ministry has told power companies to mark high tension transmission lines that are higher than 150 meters (500 ft.) so pilots can see them after AS355 struck a transmission line near Nagano on Mar. 7 and crashed. The ministry said more than 140 power lines will have to be marked.
The Italian government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is pressing state-controlled companies to pour bailout funding in Alitalia. Investment in the troubled flag carrier would be too risky for private investors while an additional government-funded capital injection would break European Commission competition rules. So government and management are jointly devising an interim plan to buy time to ensure that Alitalia survives massive losses.
Your Apr. 19 editorial (p. 102) covers the subject of who knew what and when about Sept. 11, 2001. The Clinton administration and Congress were feckless and lackadaisical, and the Bush administration was focused on other enemies.
Bell Helicopter Textron is relocating key business groups from aging facilities in Fort Worth to a new Customer Training Center at Fort Worth Alliance Airport. The facility, originally built for Galaxy Aerospace and later used by Gulfstream Aerospace, will house the company's sales and marketing departments as well as pilot and maintenance training. Plans call for eventually locating the product support warehouse at Alliance. All three departments will complete the relocation by Nov. 1, according to the company.
Virgin Blue, Richard Branson's low-fare operation in Australia, won Australian Transport Ministry approval of a plan to develop a maintenance base at Brisbane Airport. The facility's design would allow for the servicing of two Boeing 737NG aircraft simultaneously, or one wide-body aircraft, according to the carrier. In the short term, Brisbane will complement the carrier's Melbourne maintenance center, and provide maintenance for Virgin Blue's 737 fleet. With Brisbane only 1 hr.
Your thorough discussion of the manpower needs facing the aviation industry highlights major problems that are the result of seeds sown 30-40 years ago, when our current managers graduated from high school and began their advanced training.
The fleet of aircraft and ships on which the U.S. Coast Guard depends to fulfill its myriad duties is so old that some assets are literally falling apart. The lives of sailors, airmen and the more than 5,000 people they rescue each year are being placed in jeopardy as a result. There is a program in place to address the problem. It's called Deepwater, and planning for it began well before Sept. 11, 2001. Envisioned as a 20-year effort, the $11-billion program calls for replacing most of the Coast Guard's cutters and aircraft designed for offshore work.
British Royal Navy Vice Adm. (ret.) Robert Walmsley has been appointed to the boards of directors of General Dynamics, Falls Church, Va., and the New York-based EDO Corp. He also will be chairman of EDO's London-based U.K. subsidiary. Walmsley was chief of defense procurement at the U.K. Ministry of Defense.
The U.S. Homeland Security Dept. is expected to award a contract worth $10 billion or more when it selects a lead system integrator for the U.S. Visit program in the next few weeks. Lockheed Martin, Accenture and Computer Sciences Corp. are in the running. The General Accounting Office said last year the cost could be much higher if the State Dept. implementation of biometric visas is included.
When Boeing designed the 767 it put 50-60 wings through wind tunnels in tests that were essential in shaping the aircraft's design. But thanks to improved computational fluid dynamics (CFD), Boeing will use fewer than a dozen wing designs as it conducts the second phase of its 7E7 wind-tunnel verification tests this summer. The 7E7's tests will not be used directly for design, but will help verify the accuracy of the CFD software that is used to design the aircraft.
