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.
THE U.S. ARMY IS SEEKING AN AIR DEFENSE SYSTEM to protect ground forces against a barrage of as many as 720 projectiles, including mortars and unguided missiles. The desired system, described to attendees at the recent IEEE Aerospace 2003 conference in Big Sky, Mont., would engage incoming weapons at ranges of 2-80 km. Recent laboratory work at the Army Aviation and Missile Command's Redstone Arsenal, Ala., explored the concept of low-cost, 40-mm.-dia. bullets that would guide to the targets on the reflected energy from a Ka-band fire-control radar.
The company is offering two free videos on propeller care and maintenance. The first, "Propeller Care & Maintenance for Professionals," runs 30 min. and is aimed at aviation maintenance professionals. It explains how to perform an annual inspection of a propeller, and provides guidance for on-wing propeller inspection, repair and maintenance, as well as an overview of a propeller overhaul. FAA Great Lakes Region Aviation Maintenance Technician of the Year (2001) and Hartzell technician Mark Runge narrates the video. A 10-min.
Training in the federal flight deck officer program begins this week for 48 pilots at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Ga. This is where many federal air marshals are also trained initially. The pilots were selected from 100 nominated by the Air Line Pilots Assn. and the Coalition of Air Line Pilots Assns. after they completed cognitive and psychological applications and passed background checks. The group includes a mix of short- and long-haul pilots from a variety of carriers and includes men and women.
Arianespace CEO Jean-Yves Le Gall says that when the European space ministers meet on May 27 to approve a slate of programs intended to get the Ariane 5 launcher back on its feet, they will be presented with a bill well in excess of 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion).
AnaMaria Favela has been promoted to regional manager for Central America from district sales manager in Mexico City for Delta Air Lines. She has been succeeded by Tony Torres, who was sales manager in Guadalajara, Mexico. In turn, he has been succeeded by Gerardo Gomez, who was a sales representative in Guadalajara.
As might be expected in a business with a desert full of surplus aircraft, aviation maintenance, repair and overhaul is in a "show-me" mode when it comes to buying new software solutions.
John Alexander has been appointed vice president-Americas for training operations and Andrew McIntosh as London-based vice president-Europe for Seattle-based FlightSafety Boeing International. Chris Johnson-Pasqua has succeeded Alexander as general manager of the Long Beach (Calif.) Training Center. McIntosh was general manager for European operations. Martin Schaaf is the new general manager of the Miami Training Center.
FLY BYE Delta Air Lines retired its last Boeing 727 on Apr. 6 following a flight from Greensboro, N.C., to Atlanta. An airline official said this was the final scheduled flight of a 727 by a major U.S. carrier. Delta began flying the airplane in 1972 and eventually operated 184 of the three-engine jets. With retirement of the 727, Delta has reduced its fleet to six types--MD-88/-90, MD-11, Boeing 737, 757, 767 and 777. Plans call for grounding the last three MD-11s and reducing fleet types to five by December.
Gordon Phillips (see photo) has become London-based vice president of Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum Aviation, working on terminal projects for London Heathrow, Severnside International and Cork International airports. He was a senior associate at Seattle-based NBBJ.
F. Suzanne Jenniches (see photo) has been named vice president/general manager of the Government Systems Div. of Baltimore-based Northrop Grumman Corp. Electronic Systems. She was vice president of the Communications Systems business unit.
VISUAL AIDS As the House and Senate were jockeying back and forth on how much airline aid to put in the Iraq war supplemental appropriation, the Air Transport Assn. lobby starts publishing weekly data on U.S. international carriers' traffic and capacity. For the week ended Apr. 6, domestic traffic was down nearly 15% year-over-year and Atlantic and Pacific were off more than 25%. Carriers cutting capacity couldn't keep up--Atlantic capacity was down only about 12% and domestic 5%, and Pacific capacity actually was up more than 2%.
