Occar European armaments procurement agency has awarded a $45-million contract to the Dornier defense electronics division to supply 160 EuroGrid digital map systems for Eurocopter Tiger helicopters.
Schweizer Aircraft Corp. has received certification for its turbine-powered Model 333 helicopter from Italy's Ente Nazionale per l'Aviazione Civile. The first aircraft has been sold by Elialpi Helicopters in Rivanazzano to a private operator. In addition, the company's first Model 300 Cbi has been sold to CSE Aviation Ltd. in Oxford, England. CSE officials plan to exhibit and demonstrate the lightweight, piston-powered helicopter during the Farnborough air show late in July.
John H. Walker, CEO of the Weirton (W.Va.) Steel Corp., has been appointed to the board of directors of the UAL Corp. He will take the seat that had been occupied by Jack Creighton before he was named chairman/CEO.
The Nov. 12, 2001, crash of American Airlines Flight 587--the NTSB's first airline probe involving an inflight failure of a major structural component made of composites--marked a ``new day'' in terms of accident investigation, said NTSB Chair Marion C. Blakey on a recent visit to NASA Langley Research Center. Blakey emphasized ``many more months'' of work lie ahead before it is determined why the tail fin separated from the Airbus A300-600 and led to the deaths of 265 people.
Top NASA managers chose Air Force Maj. Gen. (ret.) Michael C. Kostelnik to be the program executive officer for the International Space Station, although he won't have exactly that job title. Like Pentagon PEOs, Kostelnik will coordinate program activities relating to ISS across the agency, including space shuttle flights to the orbiting facility (AW&ST Apr. 15, p. 19). Kostelnik's Air Force career, which ended with his Jan.
General Electric's F404-102D has been selected to power Boeing's X-45B unmanned combat air vehicle. The engine, a derivative of the one used on the F/A-18 and F-117, will replace Honeywell's F124, which is being used to power the X-45A. The size of Boeing's UCAV has grown and with it the need for a more powerful engine. GE is to supply three engines for the flight test program. It said the new F404-102D is designed specifically for single-engine applications with reliability and redundancy. It will also have low-observable features.
C. Phillip Joy has been named presi- dent of Stewart & Stevenson Tug of Houston. He succeeds John Keating, who has become corporate vice president-special projects. Joy was president of Trilectron Industries.
Faced with a serious aging problem of its trainer aircraft, U.S. Navy officials have devised a shrewd plan to modernize the fleet despite massive procurement bills coming due for other programs. Operational aircraft are growing old, too, with an average age of about 19 years. The situation in the training command is even worse, where aircraft age averages 25 years. The problem is the result of a decade of not buying enough replacements, says Rear Adm. John E. Boyington, chief of Naval Air Training.
George Ferito has been appointed manager and Scott Tidwell assistant manager of FlightSafety International's Fort Worth Learning Center and Mike King manager of FSI's two Learning Centers at Lambert St. Louis International Airport. Tidwell succeeds Ferito as assistant manager of the FSI Training Center at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Tidwell was the center's Gulfstream 200 program manager. King was manager of FSI's Sabreliner center at Lambert.
A USAF F-15E from Edwards AFB, Calif., releases five independently targeted 2,000-lb. Joint Direct Attack Munitions during an Apr. 30 test. Dropped from 25,000 ft., the GPS-guided weapons hit five separate, predetermined targets on the Navy's China Lake, Calif., range.
Administrator Jane Garvey isn't the only top FAA official who will be out the door when her term expires Aug. 4. Monte Belger, who has been de facto deputy administrator throughout Garvey's five-year term--nominated but never confirmed, and serving well beyond the time limit of an ``acting'' designation--will leave the agency July 31. Steve Zaidman, associate administrator for research and acquisition, left recently and is succeeded by Charles Keegan, who has overseen the Operational Evolution Plan and, before that, the Free Flight program office.
Europe's Spot 5 remote-sensing satellite has sent back the first black-and-white images from its high-resolution geometric instrument, which can produce 2.5-meter resolution imagery over a 60-km. swath. The high-resolution stereoscopic imager, intended for very-wide-area and 3D views, was also switched on, along with the Vegetation instrument and Doris orbital determination system. The first adjustment to bring the spacecraft to its final orbit of 832 km. was accomplished on May 7, and final adjustments were planned this week.
Terry Smith has been appointed vice president/chief technology officer of New York-based Sirius Satellite Radio. He was director of DirecTV professional systems for the Sarnoff Corp.
The German parliament's budget committee has cleared the purchase of 10 RAM close-in weapons systems for the navy's on-order K130-class corvettes. The deal is worth 45 million euros ($41 million). RAM is a 50-50 joint development program of Germany and the U.S.
David Shaw (see photo), who is CEO of Dunlop Standard Aerospace, Winnipeg, Manitoba, has been named to the board of directors of Cascade Aerospace Inc., Abbotsford, British Columbia.
President Bush nominated Frederick D. Gregory, a former astronaut recently named NASA's associate administrator for space flight, to be the deputy administrator of the space agency. In that role Gregory will be NASA's chief operating officer, reporting directly to Administrator Sean O'Keefe. A retired Air Force colonel, Gregory flew 550 combat missions over Vietnam and three shuttle missions. He has also served as NASA's associate administrator for safety and mission assurance.
The U.S. Army was on track to fill its shortage of MH-47 special operations helicopters late last week. House appropriators presented for markup a $93-million add to the Fiscal 2002 emergency supplemental that would initiate production of MH-47Gs, the newest version of the helicopter. The need is driven by losses sustained during operations in recent months. The Pentagon already has allocated funds to buy three CH-47s from Singapore and convert them into MH-47E. There is a need for at least three more MH-47s, lawmakers said.
Algeria-based Khalifa Airways has concluded a five-year support/maintenance agreement with Lufthansa Technik covering two Airbus A340-300s and one A320.
Paul Gregorowitsch has been appointed executive vice president-commercial for passenger business of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. He was senior vice president-worldwide passenger sales.
NASA's mothballed Triana Earth-observation satellite could get to space yet. Ghassem Asrar, associate administrator for Earth science, says the agency is examining a commercial proposal to launch the $90-million spacecraft on a Russian Cyclone rocket. The issue is complex technically--Triana was built to fly as a secondary space shuttle payload--and politically, since the U.S. government prefers to deal directly with the Russian government on such matters.
Airlines and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) take a beating in the House Appropriations Committee's $29.8- billion Fiscal 2002 supplemental appropriations bill as presented for markup May 9. Airlines are anguished about the bill's provision to double the passenger security fee to $5 per segment from $2.50, with a per-trip cap of $20 instead of $10. The committee says air travelers should pay an increased share of burgeoning aviation security costs, while airlines say the increase would set back their recovery.
In an attempt to become Europe's biggest low-cost carrier, transporting more than 16 million passengers per year with an eye to rapid expansion, EasyJet is seeking to acquire Deutsche BA and Go. British Airways, Deutsche BA's owner, last week signed ``Heads of Agreement'' to sell its troubled German subsidiary to EasyJet no later than Mar. 31, 2003.
Continental Airlines' ExpressJet Holdings initial public offering may worsen the carrier's future financial results or make them more volatile, the airline said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Continental buys all of ExpressJet's capacity at a negotiated price and assumes the risk of selling the seats. As Continental's ownership of ExpressJet drops to 53.3-59.4%, depending on over-allotments, the effect of this capacity purchase formula will be to increase Continental's fixed costs.
The world's military leaders are watching closely as Israel becomes one of the few organized armies to commit itself to prolonged, large-scale urban warfare, a nightmare that haunts defense planners. UAVs and helicopters, underrated in the past, have quickly proven themselves the Israel Defense Force's (IDF's) most valuable assets in a war where the deadliest fighting has occurred in the rabbit warren of narrow streets and randomly stacked apartment houses of the West Bank cities and Palestinian refugee camps in Israeli-occupied territory.
