Christa Rice has become director of sales and marketing for AvQuotes.com, Greer, S.C. She was a Learjet pilot for the Florida Jet Service in Fort Lauderdale.
One cold Christmas Eve night, I was called for a flight. I was the only one sober to go. The dispatcher said all were drunk or claimed dead. And the freight was a real special load. The copilot was dragged from a party of stags. The door prize he won hadn't shown. He cursed and he cried, he fought and he lied, til ole' Shawnasy laid 'im out cold. Then they all took a vote and "sober" they wrote; and sober means you have to go.
TURNING DIRT Construction on a controversial fourth runway at Tokyo's Haneda Airport is scheduled to begin next year following a financing settlement among four local communities. Haneda is Asia's busiest airport and Japan's key facility--as a hub and as an origination and destination point. The new runway will be built on reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay and is estimated to cost about 700 billion yen ($6.5 billion). Late last year, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport planned to raise 30% of the amount from local governments (AW&ST Nov. 25, 2002, p. 15).
PEOPLE MOVER Passenger traffic at Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Ky., is on track to show a 20% increase in 2003 compared with last year. The airport, which serves a growing business region and the thoroughbred equestrian industry in central Kentucky, is projected to accommodate about 1.1 million passengers this year. The previous record was 1.08 million in 1997. Blue Grass has six major airline tenants that provide nonstop flights to 13 hub airports, and four airlines have added six new destinations.
When an aerospace company's board of directors authorizes attempts to sell a new product, one that promises big advances over the state of the art achieved to date by itself and its competitors, this ought to be a positive occasion. But as Boeing sends its salespeople out like bulls at Pamplona, offering the 7E7 (see p. 22), the mood is uncertain at best.
Scaled Composites celebrated the Wright brothers centennial by breaking the sound barrier--the first time it has been done by a small company in a privately funded, nongovernment effort.
Harold (Terry) McGraw, 3rd, chairman/president/CEO of The McGraw-Hill Companies, which is the parent organization of Aviation Week & Space Technology, has been named to the board of directors of the Hartford, Conn.-based United Technologies Corp. Also appointed was Christine Todd Whitman, former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator and governor of New Jersey.
The European Court of First Instance in Luxembourg upheld an $8.4-million fine against British Airways, imposed in July 1999 by the European Commission, for travel-agent bonuses the commission said limited airline competition in service to and from the U.K. The commission acted on a complaint by Virgin Atlantic.
USAF Maj. Gen. Donald J. Wetekam has been nominated for promotion to lieutenant general with assignment as deputy chief of staff for installations and logistics at Headquarters U.S. Air Force at the Pentagon. He has been commander of the Warner Robins Air Logistics Center of Air Force Materiel Command, Robins AFB, Ga.
FedEx Corp. reported a 4% increase in sales, to $5.92 billion, but a 57% reduction in operating profit, to $183 million, in the quarter ended Nov. 30, the second in its 2004 fiscal year. Operating profit would have been up 9% except for $283 million in "business realignment" costs at FedEx Express, where selected employees age 50 and older were offered pension and health-care incentives to retire early and others were offered cash severance incentives to leave.
Kudos to Edmund S. Greenslet on his fine contribution to Viewpoint. Perhaps the Fokker 100 depicted in the accompanying photo is more illustrative of Greenslet's message than the MD-80. In the end, the manufacturing cost of aircraft coming off the Fokker production line at Amsterdam was higher than the selling price. This situation led directly to Fokker's 1996 bankruptcy, despite a backlog. Fokker was competing head-on with the British Aerospace 146. I suspect both companies underpriced their aircraft into oblivion. The lesson for Airbus and Boeing should be obvious.
FRANCO-ALGERIAN ACCORD Bordeaux-based EADS Sogerma Services, the European aerospace/defense group's maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) arm, will support Air Algerie's plan to step-up industrial activity and acquire more business in the third-party market. According to an accord signed last week, Sogerma will assist Air Algerie in expanding MRO facilities at Algiers Houari Boumedienne International Airport.
BULLS EYE Israel's defense ministry has further expanded the engagement envelope for the Arrow ballistic missile intercept test. In the latest test, Arrow intercepted the air-launched Black Sparrow target at a higher altitude than before, the defense ministry reported last week. It was the 11th Arrow intercept test and sixth of the entire system that also includes a dedicated radar and battle management center.
GEOSYNC SIGINT The National Reconnaissance Office has picked Lockheed Martin's International Launch Services for a mission early in 2006 to orbit a classified payload, probably a geosynchronous signals intelligence platform. The launch on an Atlas V is set for Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., which suggests the payload will go into the 19,323-naut.-mi. equatorial orbit that gives it a stationary vantage point, or perhaps to a highly elliptical orbit that gives it a long "dwell time" over a particular location.
William J. Kreuzer points out the important advantages of supercritical wing sections (AW&ST Oct. 20, p. 6). Alternatively, the fuel load could be increased by the amount of wing weight saved due to the thicker supercritical sections for any desired drag-divergence Mach number, hence increasing range or endurance for the same takeoff weight.
The European Union has sued the Netherlands over continuing government control of postal company TPG, parent company of parcel express company TNT. The suit is part of a movement by the EU to prevent member states from protecting state-controlled firms against takeover through "golden shares" and similar schemes. The European Court of Justice ruled last year that such schemes violate principles of free movement of capital within the EU (AW&ST June 17, 2002, p. 26). TPG is the first aerospace firm targeted.
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CHEM-BIO WORRIES Biological weapons may not have posed the threat in Iraq that the Pentagon prognosticated, but that doesn't mean Defense officials believe the threat has lessened. The Pentagon spends a relatively modest $1.2 billion on R&D for chemical and biological weapons protection. But that number is too low, argues Lisa Bronson, the Pentagon's deputy undersecretary for technology security policy and counter-proliferation.
The first large U.S. military spacecraft ever placed in orbit by a Russian-powered booster is now undergoing checkout over the Pacific Ocean following its launch Dec. 17 here on board a Lockheed Martin/ILS Atlas IIIB. The 6,705-lb. Boeing Satellite Systems Navy UHF Follow-on (UFO) F11 spacecraft was placed into a geosynchronous transfer orbit following liftoff on a Russian Energomash RD-180 engine. The cost of the mission is $193 million.
The report of the skilled relanding of a DHL Airbus A300 freighter, without control hydraulics after a missile strike to its wing, also refers to the equal skill shown in relanding a United Airlines DC-10 in 1989 (AW&ST Dec. 8, p. 42). What puzzles me is the apparent lack of a simple safety device--the hydraulic fuse. This would allow pressure to be transmitted but will lock a line when flow rate becomes excessive. This type of device was fitted, I believe, to the A system of the Lockheed L-1011 of the 1970s and was required to be installed in the No.
AND LOTS MORE WORRIES Six areas of concern have been identified by analysts who just completed a two-year analysis of the Air Force's combat capabilities. First on the Capabilities Review and Risk Assessment worry list is the continued development and protection of a global information grid that produces data on demand to warfighters and policymakers. Also on the list are time-sensitive targeting, battle damage assessment and base defense. The last headache was airlift and tankers, where the worries include a shrinking force structure and aging aircraft.
Indonesian private carrier Lion Air aims to capitalize on the weakened situation of state-owned, debt-ridden Merpati Nusantara Airlines to expand its international network. With a fleet of 18 MD-82s, the airline, which started operations in June 2000, will acquire two Boeing 777s early next year to begin flying to Guangzhou, China, and Cheenai, Calcutta and Mumbai in India. It will be the first Indonesian airline to fly to India.
You can now register ONLINE for Aviation Week Events. Go to www.AviationNow.com/conferences or call Ryan Leeds at +1 (212) 904-3892/+1 (800) 240-7645 (U.S. and Canada Only) Mar. 8-9--European Transport Leaders Conference. Merrill Lynch Headquarters, London. Mar. 10-14--Toulouse Symposium. Toulouse (France) Congress Center. Mar. 25-26--Defense Budget Conference. Hyatt Regency Crystal City Hotel, Arlington, Va. Apr. 20-22--MRO USA/MRO Latin America/MRO Military. Cobb Galleria Centre, Atlanta.
