Delta Air Lines Capt. Dennis Dolan, who also is first vice president of the Washington-based Air Line Pilots Assn., has been elected president of the International Federation of Airline Pilots' Assns. Capt. Madison Walton of United Airlines was reelected vice president for the North Atlantic region; and Capt. Ray Gelinas of Air Canada Jazz for the Canada/ Arctic region.
EASYJET JOINT VENTURE? EasyJet is seeking potential partners for a joint venture to improve ground handling services at London Luton and Geneva airports. The low-fare carrier, which has single-handedly run ground operations at Luton since March 2000 and at Geneva since November 2000, is considering joining forces with a specialist ground handling company. EasyJet hopes to reach a decision on whether to proceed with the venture by the end of August.
More than 4,000 members of the International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers went on strike last week at the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. facility in Fort Worth. A company official said negotiations have been ongoing since February but were stalled recently over economic issues, including benefits. The employees, members of IAM District Lodge 776, build the F-16 for international customers as well as the mid-fuselage center section for the F/A-22.
SIRTF DELAY Launch of the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), NASA's final "Great Observatory," will be delayed at least a week until Apr. 27 at the earliest. NASA and Boeing need the time to recheck documentation on repairs made to a solid rocket booster on the satellite's Delta II launcher. SIRTF's Delta II will use large solid-fuel boosters normally only strapped onto the Delta III. Some of those boosters have movable nozzles powered by a hydraulic control system, and Boeing said the repairs being reexamined involved one of the nozzle systems.
Giuseppe Bonomi has been appointed chairman of Alitalia. He has been head of Milan-based airport administration company Sea. Bonomi succeeds Fausto Cereti. Francesco Mengozzi will remain chief executive.
The Boeing AsiaSat 4 spacecraft, shown in fabrication, is undergoing its initial checkout in space following launch Apr. 11 from Cape Canaveral on board a Lockheed Martin/International Launch Services Atlas III. The flight was the third for the Russian-powered booster. The combined Boeing 601HP spacecraft and launcher cost $240 million. The spacecraft is being maneuvered into a geosynchronous orbit slot over Borneo to provide communications services to users in more than 40 countries. Its 28 C-band transponders will serve an area from New Zealand into the Middle East.
HUB CAPS The annual examination of airport hubs by Smith Barney turned up the forecast that Continental Airlines' hubs have the greatest remaining growth potential. The hubs at Houston Intercontinental, Newark Liberty and Cleveland Hopkins showed promise on two measures: local traffic as a percentage of local population and local air travel revenue as a percentage of local metropolitan personal income, said analyst Brian D. Harris. The hub study took note of the retrenchment at hubs in the post-Sept. 11 period through 2002.
CITATIONSHARES IS THE FIRST FRACTIONAL JET OPERATOR TO COMPLY fully with requirements for Reduced Vertical Separation Minimums (RVSM) scheduled to become effective next year, according to the company. RVSM allows qualified pilots and airplanes to operate at 29,000-41,000 ft. with a minimum 1,000 ft. of vertical separation (instead of 2,000 ft.) and take advantage of weather conditions and reduced fuel consumption. As part of the compliance, all 140 pilots have completed training in the operation of new avionics and autopilots required to obtain the approval.
The Pentagon's $62.4-billion share of the Fiscal 2003 emergency supplemental includes $3 billion for equipment and to replenish weapons, including some of the more than 53,000 GPS-guided Joint Direct Attack Munitions dropped so far. Lawmakers told the Pentagon the money doesn't have to go for replacement of spent munitions, but can be used to buy more capable versions of weapons expended.
Mark V. Rosenker has been named vice chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. He was a board member and had been deputy assistant to the President and director of the White House Military Office.
May 6-8--Aerospace Defense & Finance Conference. Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York. May 14-16--Homeland Security Summit & Exposition. Hyatt Regency Crystal City, Arlington, Va. June 16--Top 100 Stars of Aerospace, Paris (during the Paris air show). Sept. 16-18--MRO Europe, Cardiff, Wales. Oct. 14--Value Creation Conference The McGraw-Hill Companies Headquarters, New York. Oct. 28-30--A&D Programs & Productivity Conference & Exhibition. Arlington (Tex.) Convention Center.
A top student at Aviation High School in New York is the recipient of the Vice Adm. Donald D. Engen college scholarship and award. The $10,000 scholarship is sponsored by FlightSafety International (FSI) and The McGraw-Hill Companies and is named for Engen, former director of the National Air and Space Museum, who died in a glider accident in July 1999.
DHL Airways' citizenship will be reviewed at a hearing before a Transportation Dept. administrative law judge who will report a recommended decision by Sept. 2. The department, which will issue a final decision, ordered the hearing in response to a directive in the Iraq war supplemental appropriation, signed by President Bush Apr. 16 (AW&ST Apr. 14, p. 60).
RISKY BUSINESS Philippe Berterottiere, Arianespace vice president for marketing and sales, says his company is confident it can find sufficient financing outside the insurance market to ensure coverage of dual-launch payloads, despite the failure of the upgraded Ariane 5 EC-A in December and the growing scarcity of insurance capacity. Coverage requirements for the EC-A, a 10-metric-ton booster now scheduled to enter commercial service in 2005, are estimated as high as 400 million euros per launch.
Abrash revolutionary and a luxurious member of the establishment. It's hard to think of any two carriers as dissimilar as Ireland's Ryanair and Singapore Airlines. Except that they both make money.
Northwest Airlines reported a $426-million pretax loss for the first quarter and a mixed forecast: There's little hope for better days in the near future, but legacy carriers could rise from the ashes as 'efficient producers.'
MATERIAL ISSUES Great Britain's GKN has become a member of a Boeing team working on the proposed 7E7 transport. The company will assist Boeing in exploring potential structural materials including composites and advanced aluminum alloys. The agreement represents GKN's initial tier one relationship with Boeing's commercial business.
SMALLER IS BETTER The French government has approved a plan to streamline Giat by cutting staff by 50% to return the company to profitability by 2006. In addition, the plan would inject cash and new capital to cover restructuring costs, past and future losses and recapitalization to make the company more attractive for future joint ventures in Europe. Giat has traditionally built tanks and artillery, but will center its efforts on the VBCI--a light armored vehicle that is comparable to the Bradley Fighting Vehicle in the U.S.
I'm tired of listening to President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld constantly manipulating the media with attempts to raise their approval ratings by piggybacking on sentiments of support for our troops in Iraq. All of their self-absorbed pleading and bullying have only confused the real meaning of supporting our troops for the rest of America.
Northrop Grumman Chairman Kent Kresa and recently retired Eurocopter Chairman and CEO Jean-Francois Bigay were selected as Laureate recipients in the Aeronautics/Propulsion category. But both could just as easily have been recognized for their lifetime achievement.
NARROWING IT DOWN Boeing, Lockheed Martin and an Orbital Sciences/Northrop Grumman team will each get about $45 million over the next 15 months to sharpen the engineering focus on a concept for NASA's proposed Orbital Space Plane (OSP). The money comes in the form of modifications to contracts originally awarded in May 2001. It will support trade studies leading first to a systems requirements review in October, and then to work on refining design concepts meeting the Level2 requirements set in the October review.
The MRO industry is embracing new ways of doing business that focus on providing highly integrated services as the airlines demand more value for their money. Because the global air transportation industry continues to experience soft demand for its product amid a weak revenue environment, MRO companies have been forced to rethink not only how they do business, but how they can better serve their customers through innovative programs aimed at making the MRO "experience" as seamless as possible.
Planned National Transportation Safety Board CAT scans of Airbus A300-600 autopilot and yaw damper actuators won't go far enough in trying to solve what happened to American Airlines Flight 587 (AW&ST Mar. 24, p. 18).
HERE TODAY, GONE TOMORROW Lequois Airlines, a Japanese startup with one Boeing 767 waiting to be delivered in Everett, Wash., has dismissed all of its employees and collapsed. Lequois had planned to establish service to Okinawa this summer but lost its funding. The airline tried to penetrate the Japanese domestic market on a niche route, but other startups have struggled to compete against All Nippon Airways' 50% share of that business. To make matters worse, JAL and Japan Air System plan to merge to challenge ANA for the other half.
