John R. Parsons, senior vice president of the Space Systems Group of The Aerospace Corp., has been elected vice chairman for Southern California of the board of directors of the California Space Authority. Alexander C. Liang, general manager of the Vehicle Systems Div. of The Aerospace Corp., has been reappointed as an industry representative on the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee of the U.S. Transportation Dept.
Transportation Security Administration Director John Magaw's recent declaration that there will be no pistol-packing for pilots was likely anchored on input from his federal air marshal program chief, Tom Quinn. Quinn sees mostly problems with allowing guns in the cockpit, a proposition being pushed in competing bills in the House and Senate. Beyond the issues of training and retraining pilots, Quinn says if guns were stored in lockboxes in the cabin, maintenance crews would have access and pilots wouldn't be sure about the condition of the weapon.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is traveling the subcontinent this week, dispatched there by President Bush to try to defuse the latest round of brinkmanship that has India and Pakistan at daggers drawn. The nuclear rivals are on a war footing again over Kashmir, trading lethal artillery fire across the region's Line of Control and insisting they are not afraid of war if it comes to that. Alarmed that a major subcontinent conflict would undercut the war on terrorism in Afghanistan, and threaten U.S. military forces and civilian personnel in the region, Rumsfeld et al.
Raymond Larkin has become director of sales and marketing for the Ottawa-based Satcom Aeronautical Group of EMS Technologies. He was director of marketing at Teledyne Controls in Los Angeles.
Raytheon Aircraft Co. (RAC) has begun flight tests of a T-6A Texan II trainer fitted with an assortment of simulated conventional weapons. Live fire and drop testing is underway at Eglin AFB, Fla., according to RAC officials. David Riemer, vice president of government business, said international customers are ``looking for a trainer that will take them past primary flight training and into weapons training.'' Reconfiguring the T-6A to carry ordnance is projected to increase international interest in the Texan II, he said.
Pascale Sourisse has been appointed president of Eurospace, the European space industries association. She is chairwoman/CEO of France-based Alcatel Space.
Brazil plans to ask the World Trade Organization for permission to impose up to $3.36 billion in trade sanctions against Canada to offset loan subsidies made by Canada to help sell Bombardier regional jets. Brazil, home to Bombardier's arch rival Embraer, alleges that Canada continued to offer the subsidies despite a WTO ruling to halt the practice.
The Eclipse 500 entry-level jet has received a jolt in the arm with a 112-aircraft order from a Swiss operator. The secured $94-million deal, revealed during the European Business Aviation Assn. Convention and Exhibit here last week, was the second blockbuster buy for the Eclipse 500, after an order from Nimbus for up to 1,000 aircraft last year (AW&ST Sept. 24, 2001, p. 17). Eclipse Aviation officials declined to release specific information on orders, but said the first three years of production are sold out.
USCG Rear Adm. (ret.) George Naccara, who had been slated to be federal security director at Washington Dulles International Airport, now will hold that post at Boston Logan International Airport. He was commander of the First Coast Guard District, which is based in Boston.
Driven by pride and strong economic motivations, two communities a half a continent apart have created multimillion-dollar incentive programs that lured AirTran Airways into providing air service that drastically reduced fares in their marketplaces. The ``travel banks'' developed by the business communities in Pensacola, Fla., and Wichita, Kan., are patterned after the inaugural program started in Eugene, Ore. (AW&ST May 15, 2000). The latest travel banks have modified the original but the essentials remain.
WILLIAM B. SCOTT ( ROME, N.Y., HERNDON, VA., AND COLORADO SPRINGS)
Sept. 11, 2001: ``American 11 heavy, Boston Center. Your transponder appears to be inoperative. Please recycle. . . . American 11 heavy, how do you read Boston Center? Over. ``Watch supervisor, I have a possible hijack of American 11 heavy. Recommend notifying Norad.'' At 8:40 a.m. EDT, Tech. Sgt. Jeremy W. Powell of North American Aerospace Defense Command's (Norad) Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) in Rome, N.Y., took the first call from Boston Center. He notified NEADS commander Col. Robert K.
USAF Maj. Gen. Daniel James, 3rd, has been confirmed by the U.S. Senate as director of the Air National Guard. He will be promoted to lieutenant general.
The roof collapse at the Russian Buran shuttle/N-1 Moon rocket assembly building at the Baikonur Cosmodrome was far worse than first let on by Russian officials. New aerial photos show the roof of the entire multibay facility collapsed, instead of just one large bay. It is likely the single stacked Buran/Energia vehicle in the facility, a valuable space artifact, would have been caught under the collapse, the new information indicates. Eight workers were killed.
Dan McDonald has been appointed vice president-fleet planning for US Airways. Jeffery McDougle, who has been treasurer, now will be vice president-finance/treasurer. McDonald was director of fleet planning for Delta Air Lines.
The U.S. Transportation Dept. has created a position of chief operating officer for the Transportation Security Administration and filled it with former Coast Guard Commandant Adm. James M. Loy, who retired May 30 after 38 years of service. Loy took the lead role at the Coast Guard in May 1998 and headed two high-profile aviation efforts during his tenure: the search-and-rescue operations for the EgyptAir Flight 990 and Alaska Airlines Flight 261 crashes. Loy will report directly to TSA Director John Magaw.
Pilots for Ireland's national airline AerLingus staged a 24-hr. strike May 30, forcing cancellation of nearly all flights that day and leading to a shutdown of the carrier during the weekend. The pilots were protesting new work schedules devised to help the airline stem heavy financial losses in the wake of the economic downturn and the terrorist attacks against the U.S. last September, which further crippled transatlantic traffic.
Northrop Grumman has completed first flight of its final prototype RQ-8A Fire Scout unmanned aircraft. Production of the initial batch of UAVs is proceeding, although the Navy has abandoned plans to field the system.
Chicago-based Boeing Co. eliminated about 1,350 more jobs in the Puget Sound, Wash., area. Nationwide, about 1,700 Boeing workers were laid off last week as the company's push to trim 25,000-30,000 jobs--mostly by midyear--continued, a company spokesman said. About 21,300 workers have lost jobs company-wide since Sept. 11. Approximately 13,350 positions were in the Seattle area.
John M. Klineberg, former NASA official, president of Space Systems/Loral and vice president of parent company Loral Space & Communications, has been named to the board of directors of Swales Aerospace, Beltsville, Md.
CFM International expects its CFM56-3 core upgrade package to be certified later this month, and to ship the first kits that will allow customers to add the improvements to their fleets in early July. CFM56-3 improvements are targeted at turbomachinery upgrades that decrease fuel burn by about 1.1% and lower engine operating temperatures by about 15C, boosting time-on-wing (AW&ST Mar. 25, p. 61). In total, the upgrades, which will cost about $1.1 million per engine, should decrease powerplant cost of ownership by about 30%, GE officials said.
Scientists already are modifying Mars exploration plans to accommodate the discovery of vast quantities of water ice just beneath the planet's surface, with new kinds of data on the long-suspected finding possible as early as next year. NASA, which has built its Mars-exploration program on a ``follow-the-water'' strategy aimed at finding life or evidence of it, will shape its missions in the remainder of this decade and beyond against the knowledge that polar soils are as much as half water ice down to a depth of at least a meter.
Dennis Markert has been appointed manager of sales and service for North America airline accounts for Teledyne Controls of Los Angeles. He was a sales and marketing executive for General Dynamics in Redmond, Wash.
An attempt by U.S. airlines to create a ``risk retention group''--an airline-owned provider of war-risk insurance--is intended to reduce carriers' costs and give the FAA an eventual exit from the reinsurance business it has been in since September 2001. Sources say the agency is unhappy with its role and will insist that airlines reduce their dependence on the government as soon as this month.
