The seven biggest U.S. airlines stayed in their spring-summer traffic doldrums in August, but international cargo data seemed promising. Prospective code-share partners US Airways and United Airlines, the former in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and the latter threatened with it, remained the furthest below year-earlier, pre-Sept. 11 traffic levels in percentage terms (see table). They also have cut back capacity the most, so their August load factors were little different from most others.
Karel Lebeboer has become chief operating officer of Swiss. He is a former executive at KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and the International Air Transport Assn.
L. Peter Larson has been appointed president/CEO of Mooney Aerospace Group Ltd., Long Beach, Calif. He succeeds Roy H. Norris, who has resigned. Larson was chief operating officer/chief financial officer, and had been CFO of the Cessna Aircraft Co. Larson has been succeeded by Dale Ruhmel, who has been executive vice president-operations.
Phillip Campbell has become director of security for Air Jamaica. He was managing director of Marksman Ltd. and the Dual Security Co. Ltd. Campbell succeeds John Sinclair, who is retiring.
As urgency mounts for better intelligence on Iraq to guide U.S. diplomatic and military policy, six secret National Reconnaissance Office high-resolution imaging satellites, each costing $1 billion, are maintaining an almost hourly watch on specific Iraqi facilities. Three Advanced KH-11s with optical and infrared sensors are teamed with three Lacrosse imaging radar spacecraft with night/all-weather capabilities to search for evidence of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons development, along with missile production.
Displacing the memory of three major space failures, Japan has moved its space program ahead with the third straight success of its new H-IIA launcher and now looks forward to seven key missions by the end of 2003. The decision to simplify construction and processing of the Mitsubishi H-IIA appears to be paying off for the National Space Development Agency, which saw the third launcher lift a $265-million data relay satellite for Japan's International Space Station program into orbit on Sept. 10, along with a super-conductivity experiment.
Eclipse Aviation Corp. has for the first time detailed its order book for the Eclipse 500: 1,357 firm orders and 715 options. President and CEO Vern Raburn said the company has secured $65 million in nonrefundable deposits for the lightweight, six-place twin-turbofan that is scheduled for first customer delivery in January 2004. He anticipates delivery of about 140 aircraft in 2004, 500 in 2005 and 900 in 2006.
Lufthansa Cargo has asked the FAA to exempt it from new regulations requiring reinforcement by Apr. 9, 2003, of cockpit doors on all-cargo aircraft that have them. Noting that aircraft without cockpit doors needn't be modified, the carrier said spending more than $100,000 per aircraft to replace doors on three of its eight Boeing 747-200Fs and all 14 of its MD-11Fs would put it at a disadvantage against competitors whose aircraft have no doors.
Exploiting regional rivalries, the Delta Air Lines/Air France-led SkyTeam alliance is wooing Thai Airways International to jump ship from the United Airlines/Lufthansa-led Star Alliance. Thai is the original Asian partner in the Star Alliance, which has 14 members, including Japan's All Nippon Airways and Singapore Airlines (SIA). (South Korea's Asiana is to join next year.) It's the SIA linkup that has rubbed Thai the wrong way and opened the door for SkyTeam to try to gain another Asian carrier. SkyTeam already includes Korean Air.
Nelson Gentiletti has been appointed vice president-finance and administration/chief financial officer and Louise Piche corporate vice president-human resources for Montreal-based Transat A.T. Gentiletti was CFO of BCE Emergis Inc. Piche held the same position at the Business Development Bank of Canada. Lorraine Maheu has been named vice president-finance and administration of Transat Tours Canada.
A decision by Boeing to outsource key Kennedy Space Center work to small businesses was a key factor in its selection over Lockheed Martin for a Kennedy payload processing contract worth $810 million over the next 10 years (AW&ST Sept. 2, p. 21). Boeing inherited the original contract with its acquisition of McDonnell Douglas. Kennedy, however, rebid the work under its Checkout, Assembly and Payload Processing Services contract, which is worth an initial $332 million through 2006.
NLX Corp. has received FAA Level D qualification of its Cessna CitationJet full-flight simulator located at the CAE SimuFlite Dallas Center at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. The simulator is the third of five Level D units planned for delivery to CAE SimuFlite. A Falcon 900B device, convertible to the Falcon 900C and Falcon 900EX, and a Falcon 2000 simulator are scheduled to be delivered in the first half of 2003. ``The CitationJet unit marks our third full-flight simulator delivery in the past 10 months,'' said Tony Syme, president of NLX.
Timothy Thornton has been appointed director of customer care and service at Frontier Airlines' hub at Denver International Airport. He was director of airport services for America West Airlines.
International Space Station program management is beginning to take on new planning, logistics and flight operations challenges as the ISS project transitions from adolescence to maturity under a tightly constrained budget. Since launch of the initial station element in late 1998, the facility has grown to about a 300,000-lb. complex with Russian segments, a U.S. laboratory, but with minimal thermal control capability and only about 25% of its planned electrical power.
Patrick Keating (see photo) has become a partner concentrating in aviation and transportation issues in the Chicago law firm of O'Hagan, Smith & Amundsen.
Most satellite analysts are convinced that Echostar boss Charlie Ergen hasn't sold either the government or the public on the pending merger with Hughes Electronics, and that the deal won't fly. ``Congress doesn't like it, and no matter how the market is defined, the merger does not pass normal antitrust analysis,'' said J. Armand Musey of Salomon Smith Barney. Noting that the Justice Dept. is always particularly strict on consumer services, Musey gave the deal only a 20% chance of going through.
Jay E. Bosch has been appointed vice president-engineering and Douglas P. Nowinski vice president-regional airline accounts for Sinex Aviation Technologies, Duluth, Minn. Nowinski was vice president for international jet engine sales, purchasing and leasing for the AAR Corp.
Satellite hardware makers are not the only ones taking a keen interest in Europe's Galileo satnav system. Eutelsat chief Giuliano Berretta said his company is proposing a project to test the system as an adjunct to its Euteltracs fleet management system, operated in association with Alcatel. Berretta said the company could also provide know-how for satellite definition and procurement, and help develop and manage new services.
USAF Brig. Gen. (ret.) Donald R. Walker (see photo) has been named Washington-based vice president-national space systems engineering for The Aerospace Corp., El Segundo, Calif. He was an independent consultant to the government on intelligence and defense space systems and had been president/CEO of Veritect.
Now that there is a new head of the U.S. Transpor- tation Security Administration, it's the perfect time for the agency to stop, look and listen to the general aviation community--a time to shift perception of the industry and its operators as Public Enemy No. 1 to being valuable resources that are part of the solution. General aviation officials should be honored guests at the TSA's table of current and future rulemaking.
Business jet manufacturers are cautiously optimistic about the next 12-24 months, despite the fragile U.S. economy and the specter of the U.S. expanding the war on terrorism to include military strikes on Iraq. Their reasoning is sound. Most airframe builders believe their backlogs of aircraft on firm order are large enough to ensure healthy, though significantly reduced, levels of production through the next year or so. Industry-wide, backlogs stand at 1,800-1,900 aircraft.
Switzerland's Federal Office for Civil Aviation has taken delivery of a Cessna Citation Excel business jet for use as a transport for government and ministerial officials. The twin-engine jet was selected chiefly because of its ``efficient operation in European airspace,'' according to a Swiss official. The Excel is powered by Pratt & Whitney PW545A engines. Cessna has received orders for more than 200 Excels--and had delivered 270 as of late last month, according to the company.
The U.S. Senate confirmed National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Marion Blakey's nomination to be administrator of the FAA. The unanimous vote, taken Sept. 11, followed withdrawal of at least one anonymous ``hold'' that threatened to delay her confirmation (AW&ST Sept. 9, p. 41).
Will U.S. airlines wind up issuing another Mayday if American forces invade Iraq? While no one can predict how a conflict would affect the already fragile U.S. economy, it's probably a safe bet that sudden, sharp rises in world oil prices will ensue, at least in the short-term. This must be a chilling prospect indeed for carriers, given the tremendous financial pressure they're already under--a condition that would only be exacerbated by a war that could send prices skyrocketing and perhaps even decrease the oil supply for a while.
The U.S. Navy wants to equip its MH-60 multimission helicopters with a navigation, targeting and search system that is better than the AAS-44 forward-looking infrared system the service currently relies on. Instead, the new MH-60Rs and MH-60s are slated to receive a third-generation Flir and electro-optical sensor that could provide operators multiple fields of view. Additionally, the device is to include a laser designator so the Navy can launch Hellfire or other laser-guided weapons from the helicopters.
