Joseph Beery has been promoted to senior vice president from vice president/chief information officer of America West Airlines. Jeffrey McClelland, who has been executive vice president-operations, also will be chief operating officer. Larry Massaro has been appointed vice president-airport customer service and field stations and David Seymour vice president-operations control and planning. Massaro was senior director of airport customer service for the airline's Columbus hub and the Eastern U.S. Seymour was senior director of materials and planning.
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.
As United Airlines settles into what it hopes will be a successful restructuring that requires no more than 18 months of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection (see pp. 22-31), the U.S. Air Transportation Stabilization Board (ATSB) is taking heat from unions and a gaggle of congressmen sympathetic to labor and/or the airline.
EchoStar Communications paid Hughes Electronics a $600-million breakup fee after abandoning its $18-billion merger with Hughes Electronics after U.S. antitrust regulators and the governments of 23 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia rejected the proposed deal. Hughes, a subsidiary of General Motors, will not force Echostar to buy its 81% stake in PanAmSat for $2.7 billion as required in the original merger agreement.
It is always a pleasure to meet people who have the professional expertise, drive and dedication to accomplish something unique and worthwhile. Ken Hyde and his fellow workers at The Wright Experience fit this description.
Some commercial aerospace suppliers are still trying to assess what UAL Corp.'s recent bankruptcy filing may mean for their businesses (see related stories, pp. 22-31).
Thomas R. Jaske, who was senior project manager for Continental Airlines for the Global Gateway construction program at Newark (N.J.) Liberty International Airport, has been named aviation operations director for the Mid-Atlantic states for Atkins Hanscomb Faithful & Gould of New York.
Eclipse Aviation's stunning cancellation of its contract with engine maker Williams International has left the business aviation community speculating whether Eclipse's dot.com management style, combined with an unproved market, will result in a permanent "log-off" of the Eclipse 500 twin-engine business jet program.
The U.S. Air Force has ordered an additional 35 T-6A Texan II trainers from Raytheon Aircraft Corp. Deliveries of the turboprop-powered aircraft are scheduled to begin in April 2005. To date, the Air Force and Navy have ordered 250 of the airplanes and could eventually accept up to 800 by 2017 through the Joint Primary Aircraft Training System program.
Given the time constraints, NASA should consider building a modular spacecraft for the International Space Station emergency escape vehicle. It would be cheaper, easier and faster to build than a spaceplane. A shuttle could carry one up and attach it to the ISS, and bring another down for reservicing and reuse. It should be instrument compatible with the Soyuz, in case of emergency escape crew crossover. The descent module would, of course, be an "American-style" water lander.
In refusing to bail out United Airlines, the Bush administration is betting that United's bankruptcy will not fundamentally "endanger the airline network." So says Willis Emmons, author of The Evolving Bargain, a Harvard Business School Press book on the strategic implications of deregulation that argues even in deregulation, "the state was never in full-fledged retreat." Applying his thinking to recent events, he says it wasn't necessarily inconsistent for the administration to intervene to stop the West Coast longshoremen's strike while refusing to do so with United.
Green Hills Software and Express Logic have gotten together to make life easier for programmers of embedded software. Much of aerospace software is embedded programs running on dedicated computers, and with increasingly powerful processors a recent trend is to run several embedded applications on a single machine. Express Logic's ThreadX is one of the real-time operating systems that orchestrates the multiple tasks, and Green Hills' Multi is a set of tools for programmers to program, analyze and test embedded systems.
Raytheon and TRW have snagged Air Force contracts to develop and build 25-kw. solid-state lasers that should pave the way for the service to get a 100-kw.-power system by Fiscal 2007. The Air Force Research Laboratory awarded Raytheon a $17-million contract and TRW a $21-million deal to spend the next two years working on competing 25-kw.-class, near-diffraction limited, diode-pumped solid-state systems. The laser should run for more than 300 sec. and be able to reach full power from startup in 1 sec.
Lauda Air, a part of the Austrian Airlines Group, and the Star Alliance have drawn the wrath of a human rights group for becoming the first European carrier to serve Myanmar. Burma Centrum Netherland is planning a boycott of the carrier that now offers weekly flights--marketed as "cultural and beach holidays"--from Vienna to Yangon (Rangoon) using a Boeing 767-300ER. Myanmar's military regime has been shunned for suppressing democratically elected leaders.
With up to 50,000 laborers at work since March 2000, the New Baiyun International Airport's runways are nearly complete and its passenger terminal is past the halfway mark for an October 2003 opening. Built 18 mi. north of downtown on a greenfield site in the Huadu district, the 21-billion-yuan ($2.6-billion) airport is designed to handle 12 million passengers a year in its first phase, which is expected to last until about 2010. The 7.2-km.-long (4.4-mi.) site has space to more than double its opening capacity.
Michael A. Taverna (Paris), Michael A. Taverna (Kourou, French guiana)
European satellite makers are looking for ongoing restructuring efforts, sustained research into key telecom technologies and the emergence of new military programs to position them for success in the marketplace, once the present market downturn ends.
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.
Viapure is an optical-grade polyurethane interlayer material designed for protection and surface quality in laminated security glass applications. Double interleaving superimposes thin, easy to remove, protective sheets of polyethylene onto both sides of the tacky surfaced Viapure interlayer material. The material is provided in roll form.
One huge factor in the airlines' woes is the decision, made years ago, to compete on the basis of schedule. The idea seemed to be "have a plane ready any time someone wants to fly." They all polled their travelers and then went on a buying binge of equipment to meet the "demand" that business travelers have for a flight every hour to almost any key destination.
Ryanair is considering additional operational bases in continental Europe to sustain its double-digit traffic growth. The Irish low-cost carrier's brisk expansion is expected to further boost its aircraft acquisition plan. More options on Boeing 189-seat 737-800s are tentatively planned to be converted into firm orders in the next few days, executives said.
Roger Launius has been named to receive the History Manuscript Award from the Reston, Va.-based American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics for his "Base Camp to the Stars: The Space Station in the Twentieth Century." Launius is chief historian at NASA headquarters in Washington.
StanVision is a door sensing system that uses digital video camera technology to perform the functions of both a door sensor and security camera. The product uses digital video camera technology to evaluate pixel changes in the video image to detect motion. A camera is placed above the inside and outside of the door, transmitting exactly what happens on each cycle at all times, extending the security perimeter at each door by 10 ft. It costs $1,000 to add to a new automatic door and up to $2,500 to retrofit an existing automatic door.
