John Rahilly has become vice president-national sales and marketing for the Dassault Falcon Jet's aircraft service network organization and Todd McGahey vice president/general manager of the Wilmington, Del., service facility. Rahilly was vice president-operations for Mercury Air Centers and had been president of KC Aviation. McGahey was head of the Garrett Aviation Services facility in Springfield, Ill., and three satellite centers.
Frederick M. Strader has been appointed president/chief operating officer of the AAI Corp., Hunt Valley, Md. He succeeds Richard R. Erkeneff, who will remain CEO. Strader was executive vice president/general manager of AAI's defense systems business.
Dave Daniels (see photo) has been appointed vice president-sales and marketing for Extex Ltd., Mesa, Ariz. He was director of technical services for Honeywell in Phoenix.
FAA Administrator Marion C. Blakey, speaking last week at the North American Safety Conference in Atlanta, noted that while there were no fatalities on U.S. airlines in 2002, the crash last month of Air Midwest Flight 5481 at Charlotte, N.C., demonstrated that "We still have work to do."
David A. Fulghum (Washington), Frank Morring Jr. (Washington)
U.S. intelligence agencies operate ships and aircraft designed to analyze the glowing plasma that surrounds foreign spacecraft as they reenter the atmosphere, and this very specialized technology may help provide clues to the destruction of the Columbia space shuttle.
U.S. Navy Capt. (select) Laurel Blair Salton Clark, 41, of Racine, Wis., was a mission specialist making her first shuttle flight. Holder of a bachelor's degree in zoology and a doctorate in medicine from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she did post-graduate work in pediatrics. During medical school, she was on active duty with the Diving Medicine Dept. of the Naval Experimental Diving Unit and completed training as an undersea medical officer. Besides serving as a submariner medical officer, she made dives with U.S. Navy Seals.
USAF Lt. Col. (ret.) John F. Harvell (Merrimack, N.H. )
was both gratified and perturbed to read the articles on network-centric warfare (AW&ST Jan. 27, p. 50). I was gratified that USN Vice Adm. (ret.) Arthur K. Cebrowski and the operating commands are discovering the concepts that we struggled to enunciate more than 25 years ago, and perturbed that they have failed to pick up on the robust and survivable network concepts that were part of the original Joint Tactical Information Distribution System (JTIDS) "nodeless" architecture.
Philippe Jaquard has become president of the Asecna African flight safety agency. He headed the DGAC French civil aviation authority's air navigation unit.
Customer response to Delta Air Lines' recent trial food run will determine whether the carrier joins the airline food fight (AW&ST Jan. 20, p. 13). In the Feb. 3-8 test, economy-class passengers on flights between New York-JFK and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood (Fla.) were presented a menu consisting of snacks, salads and sandwiches, from $2-7. If Delta receives a positive response, it will offer these items on certain mainline flights as well as on new low-fare subsidiary, Song, which is scheduled to launch Apr. 19.
Frank Morring Jr. (Washington), Michael A. Taverna (Paris), Alexey Komarov (Moscow)
Russia can keep the International Space Station supplied and flying through 2003 without help from NASA's remaining three space shuttles, but the long-term future of the orbiting laboratory will depend on how fast the U.S. agency can find and fix the problem that brought down the shuttle Columbia.
Following government authorization late last week, the British Defense Ministry is to begin deployment of a 100-aircraft force to the Persian Gulf region in preparation for potential war with Iraq. The deployment represents around one-third of the total operational strength of the Royal Air Force, according to defense officials. Some 25 air force aircraft are already in the region, and additional deployments were slated to begin within days.
Bahrain will acquire six Hawk 127 jet trainers under a deal inked late last month. The aircraft are part of a training package provided by BAE Systems.
Mar. 10-11--European Transport Leaders Conference. Landmark Hotel, London. Mar. 12-13--Toulouse Symposium. Toulouse (France) Congress Center. Mar. 27-28--Defense Budget Conference. Holiday Inn, Rosslyn, Va. Apr. 15-17--MRO 2003 & MRO Latin America. Broward County Convention Center, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. 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.
The buildup of U.S. military forces around Iraq, continuing unabated, has cost $2.1 billion so far, Rumsfeld tells the committee, and other operations in the global war on terrorism are costing about $1.5 billion a month. The Fiscal 2003 budget doesn't cover these costs, so the outlays are putting the Defense Dept. in a financial hole. Pentagon Comptroller Dov Zakheim warns that the military may have to rob training accounts in the spring, the third quarter of the fiscal year, and hope Congress approves a supplemental appropriation to restore those funds.
The Transportation Security Administration plans to improve the ability of federal air marshals to communicate with flight and cabin crews as well as with organizations on the ground. In a discussion of the TSA Fiscal 2004 budget, Adm. James M. Loy said there are a number of interesting initiatives in this area and commercial-off-the-shelf equipment will provide the agents with a more sophisticated capability. Being able to communicate with the pilots if something is going on in the cabin while keeping the cockpit door closed is "enormously important," Loy said.
share Claude G. Luisada's sadness at Boeing's decision to shut down the Sonic Cruiser program. However, in advocating a 200-250-passenger Mach 1.15 transonic transport, Luisada left out two important advantages that were established more than 40 years ago by a team led by James Floyd at Hawker Siddeley Aviation's Advanced Projects Group in the U.K. The sonic boom from a properly designed Mach 1.15 transport, such as Floyd's Type 1011, would not reach the ground.
The loss of the shuttle Columbia made NASA's human spaceflight budget request for Fiscal 2004 academic even before it was unceremoniously released two days after the accident, but the agency's $15.469-billion spending plan includes a challenging new nuclear-powered robotic mission to Jupiter and several other initiatives that don't need the shuttle to go forward.
Textron Inc. is forming an independent panel, led by former FAA official Michael J. Dreikorn, to advise on safety, quality and compliance systems and processes at its Lycoming business unit. The initiative is part of a broad-based program to address reliability of components and recalls that affected certain Lycoming engines.
AMR Corp. is calling for $1.8 billion in concessions from unions at American Airlines as the struggling carrier turns to labor for crucial help in its fight to stem the increasing flow of red ink.
The British Defense Ministry was expected to announce Feb. 7 it had down-selected Thales and Northrop Grumman to complete the final phase of its Watchkeeper unmanned aerial vehicle program. Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems were the two unsuccessful bidders. BAE could yet emerge, however, as part of the Northrop Grumman team.
STAT MedEvac has awarded Fidelity Flight Simulation a contract to complete a full-motion flight simulator device for the Eurocopter EC135. The Pittsburgh-based consortium of hospitals uses a fleet of the helicopters for emergency medical services. The simulator, which would allow pilots to be trained in Pittsburgh instead of traveling to Florida, will be the first full-motion FSD in North America for Eurocopter aircraft, according to the company.
Mission specialist Kalpana Chawla, 41, brought a high-achievement profile to the astronaut program from Karnal, India. Holder of a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering from Punjab Engineering College, she left home for post-graduate studies in the U.S. and became a citizen, although she remained close to Indian education programs and was regarded as a leader of India's diaspora. She earned a master's degree at the University of Texas and a doctorate from the University of Colorado, both in aerospace engineering.
Military planners are looking for ways to attack or encircle an adversary even in the face of modern, sophisticated defenses. The proliferation of better air defenses and ballistic missiles is creating what the Defense Dept. terms an "anti-access" problem. To deal with it, U.S. experts are turning to technology, including stealth, to mitigate an enemy's advantage. A big part of the problem is that the military is tied to arriving at ports and airfields, says Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James E. Cartwright, the Joint Staff's director of plans and resources.
