Andrew J. Schmidt, Geoffrey Murray and Blair Pomeroy have been named directors and partners in the aviation practice of Mercer Management Consulting of Boston. Schmidt was a vice president at A.T. Kearney who headed its Aviation Center of Excellence. Murray was a principal in A.T. Kearney's transportation practice, while Pomeroy was global director of airline strategy for Accenture.
Nearing the end of a rulemaking process that began years ago with Airbus-versus-Boeing overtones, the FAA has proposed a landmark regulation, "Extended Operations (ETOPS) of Multi-Engine Airplanes." The T in ETOPS used to stand for Twin, as in twin-engine aircraft, but the proposed rule would cover three- and four-engine airplanes as well, with application all the way down to business jets.
ROCKWELL COLLINS HAS SELECTED XM SATELLITE RADIO, which offers real-time, aviation graphical weather through its XM WX Satellite Weather service, for the Pro Line 21 integrated avionic system. The service provides pilots with weather information anywhere in the contiguous U.S. and above coastal waters. Heads Up Technologies provides the XM receiver.
Daniel Patrick McGahn has been named executive vice president/chief marketing officer of Konarka Technologies Inc., Lowell, Mass. He was chief operating officer/general manager of Hyperion Catalysis.
DaimlerChrysler hopes to complete the sale of its fully owned subsidiary MTU Aero Engines by the end of the year, following recent reports that it had selected a bidder for final contract negotations.
Backers of face-recognition technology are attempting to position the technique as a "must-have" in the new world of stepped-up security. A Frost & Sullivan World Face Recognition Biometrics Market analysis states the total market revenues were $21.5 million in 2002 and predicts an expansion to $791.8 million by 2009. Noting that there has been a marked improvement in the performance and reliability of face recognition technology, including 3D face-recognition, the sector seems ripe for growth. Legislation and standardization efforts by industry seem to bear this out.
Lockheed Martin subcontractors began cutting metal for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter last week in Texas and California. In Texas, Arlington-based Progressive Inc. is building a major wing section bulkhead and Euless-based H.M. Dunn Co. is fabricating a forward-fuselage radar bulkhead. Progressive specializes in profile-milling of aluminum and titanium parts; H.M. Dunn operates a machine shop with four- and five-axis computer numerically controlled machines. Brek Manufacturing of Gardena, Calif., is milling a canopy shelf for the center fuselage.
Robert Dompka (see photo) has been appointed director of tiltrotor unmanned aerial vehicle programs for Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. of Fort Worth. He has worked on the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey and Bell/Agusta BA609 tiltrotor aircraft programs as well as the Bell 412 RSAF and AB139.
Jens Flottau, Aviation Week & Space Technology's Munich bureau chief, has won the annual Hugo Junkers Prize for excellence in aviation reporting from the German aerospace press association, Luftfahrt-Presse Club. Flottau was recognized for his coverage of Fairchild Dornier's long-lasting financial difficulties and eventual demise. Flottau joined the magazine in 2000 as a contributing editor and was promoted to bureau chief in 2002.
Ashley J. Tellis has become senior associate in the Global Policy Program of the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was senior adviser to the U.S. ambassador to India and had been the National Security Council's special assistant to the President/senior director for strategic planning and Southwest Asia.
Research institutes at the University of Dayton, the Georgia Institute of Technology and Texas A&M University have established an Academic Center for Aging Aircraft with $4.2 million from the Defense Dept. Maintenance cost of Defense Dept. aircraft has grown to an annual $13-billion burden, escalating at a rate of 7-12% a year, said Michael V. McCabe, director of the institute at Dayton.
Lillian A. Dukes has been appointed vice president-maintenance for Atlantic Coast Airlines. She was director of aircraft technical support for Midwest Airlines.
Credit Suisse First Boston analyst Cameron Jeffreys is taking a dim view of CAE's near-term outlook. Last week, he lowered his rating on the Canadian company to "underperform" from "neutral," and substantially reduced his earnings estimates for fiscal years 2004 and 2005. Moreover, he believes CAE's stock will actually lose about 17% of its value in the next 12 months.
British Airways saw profits tumble for the quarter that ended Sept. 30 to 105 million pounds ($177 million), compared with 248 million pounds for the same period in 2002. The 2003 quarter included the strike at Heathrow airport. The airline has also announced Lord Marshall, its present chairman, will retire in July 2004. Martin Broughton, the chairman of British American Tobacco, will be his replacement, a choice that has attracted criticism from some quarters.
The European Commission has proposed a plan that could provide extra money for Europe's hard-pressed space program and ensure continued independent access to space. The plan, contained in a White Paper to be presented to the next EU heads of state summit in December, would implement cooperation covered by an ESA-EU framework agreement signed last week, as well as further collaboration expected under Europe's new constitutional treaty (AW&ST June 30, p. 43).
The big international airline alliances continue to expand (Swiss International, livery at right, is joining Oneworld, for example), and over time their size and complexity will challenge the current regulatory system of bilateral aviation agreements (see p. 44). The U.S. and Europe are beginning talks toward a multilateral system over the Atlantic, but issues such as consolidation, foreign ownership and control of airlines, and the right of non-citizens to establish new carriers won't be resolved quickly or easily. Oneworld photo.
The U.S.-China trade deficit gap narrowed somewhat last week, when Boeing and GE Aircraft Engines (GEAE) formally completed contracts with China's airlines valued at nearly $5 billion--a move U.S. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans hailed as "a good day" for U.S. manufacturing and a "big victory" for the companies and countries involved.
A French parliamentary report says disadvantages of selecting a conventional powerplant over a nuclear one for France's new aircraft carrier, PA2, outweigh advantages, particularly from a job standpoint. However, French defense officials noted the report did not amount to a recommendation and would constitute "just one additional element" in the propulsion system selection process, which is scheduled to be decided at year-end. Going with a conventional system would virtually eliminate chances of a cooperative effort with the U.K.'s CVF program.
THE NUMBER OF AIRFRAME AND POWERPLANT (A&P) MECHANICS leaving the aviation business is a problem that needs to be addressed by the industry. According to an analysis of the North American commercial and military MRO markets conducted by Frost & Sullivan, some A&Ps are abandoning their jobs to pursue careers in the computer and automotive industries.
The United-Mesa-Atlantic Coast Airlines family feud continues. Washington Dulles-based ACA, which operates as a United Express carrier, is determined to announce its "whole new set of wings" this week: transformation into a low-fare carrier, the first to operate an all-regional-jet fleet. Family members are strongly opposed to the career move.
The U.S. Transportation Security Administration is launching a complete review of the civil aviation security system. Stephen McHale, deputy administrator, told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation this month that the fledgling agency now has time "to consider other approaches to aviation security." A senior Homeland Security Dept. official later said TSA and the department's science and technology directorate will do an "end-to-end systems engineering study" of U.S. aviation security. The one-year study will cost $1 million.
The two rival bidders for the U.K.'s tanker/transport requirement continue to jostle for position in the run-up to a final decision. As the choice went before the Defense Ministry's Investment Approvals Board on Nov. 10, Boeing Chairman Phil Condit, and his BAE Systems counterpart, Dick Evans, met with Patricia Hewitt, the secretary of state for trade and industry, to argue the case for the Tanker and Transport Service Co., of which they are both members.
Scientists have determined a flare that erupted Nov. 4 on the lower right solar limb as viewed from Earth was the most powerful ever measured. Space-weather watchers were able to calculate its X-ray brightness at X28 on an open-ended scale where the previous record was X20, reached in 1989 and 2001. The brightness calculation is subject to revision, because the flare saturated the X-ray detector on the sunward U.S.
NASA has slipped the next test of the X-43A hypersonic testbed until late January 2004, because of an intermittent failure in an actuator associated with its air-launched Pegasus booster. NASA's B-52 was scheduled to fly carrier tests with the X-43A/Pegasus stack this month, but the problem with an actuator electronic control unit, along with expected disruptions from the approaching end-of-year U.S. holidays, have pushed back the schedule and forced postponement of the Mach 5 hot-fire test from its original date in late December, according to a NASA spokesman.
