Regional carriers are struggling to eke out profits in a consumer environment dominated by discount fares and low yields, while attempting to lure back lucrative business travelers as well as brace for a series of operational and regulatory fights that loom on the horizon. According to the Regional Airline Assn. (RAA), passenger traffic this summer is poised to return to levels approaching those experienced before Sept. 11.
European space leaders are looking at a new set of support measures for the Ariane launch system and attempting to avert a clash over the X-38 experimental vehicle that could cloud relations with NASA. It had been hoped that a nearly 2-billion-euro ($1.8-billion) support plan approved at the last European Space Agency ministerial summit in November would be enough to ensure to secure a sound future for the European launch industry.
Germany is pondering a purchase of as many as 600 Taurus KEPD 350 standoff missiles, with a political decision anticipated in June. The long-range precision strike weapon would equip the Luftwaffe's Tornado combat aircraft and later the Eurofighter. A successful all-up test firing of the missile was carried out Apr. 25 at the Overburg range in South Africa. The test saw the missile fly over its publicly released maximum range of 350 km. (219 mi.), though its actual range is considerably greater.
Unscheduled landings by military aircraft at Japanese civil airports remain a bone of contention with nearby residents who don't like the noise. Japanese regulations require advance notification for all military aircraft prior to using civilian facilities, except for emergencies. U.S. military aircraft are said to frequently break that rule, without explanation. U.S. use of civilian fields has been declining--808 reported landings in 2001 versus 832 in 2000. However, Japanese military landings increased last year to 36,528--1,286 more than in 2000.
Lewis G. Russell has been named chairman of the Aviation Technologies Dept. at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. He has been an assistant professor and succeeds Larry C. Staples, who has retired.
U.S. Senate advocates for arming flight crews expect to have a bill completed this week that would give pilots and flight attendants some artillery to fight terrorists, two weeks after a pilots-only measure was submitted in the House. Senate sources said in addition to allowing pilots to carry firearms, their legislation would attempt to address flight attendant unions' concerns: More self-defense training, a communications device that would let them talk to other attendants and the pilots, and nonlethal weapons, possibly steel batons.
Francisco Escarti has been named vice president-business development for Europe and Tim Neale director of communications for Seattle-based Boeing Air Traffic Management. Escarti, a former general director of Iberia Airlines, was head of Services Improvement. Neale was aviation safety communications manager for Boeing Commercial Airplanes.
Juan Ricardo Castillo has been appointed Los Angeles-based West Coast sales director for LanChile Airlines. He was assistant marketing manager for North America.
DAVID A. FULGHUMROBERT WALL ( PALMACHIM AFB, ISRAEL)
While a test aircraft from a new family of UAVs buzzed in circles overhead, the pilots of Israel's lone squadron of unmanned reconnaissance aircraft showed visitors a film taken from one of their robot planes. A bucolic black-and-white scene in a suburban neighborhood was suddenly destroyed with the explosive launch of a pair of Katyusha rockets from a small stand of trees between houses. Moments later a motorcycle darted from the grove, entered the local highway and apparently made a clean getaway.
FORGOTTEN EAGLE Wiley Post, America's Heroic Aviation Pioneer By Bryan B. Sterling & Frances N. Sterling Carroll & Graf 371 pp. Hardcover, $27.00 The team of Bryan and Frances Sterling has done an admirable job in telling the neglected tale of Wiley Hardeman Post, one of aviation's premiere record-setting aviators of the 1930s. Post, a former oil field roughneck from Oklahoma, learned to fly in 1927, buying his first airplane with money received as a settlement for an oil field accident that caused the loss of his right eye.
Southwest Airlines plans to launch nonstop flights in September between Baltimore and Los Angeles, marking a first for the low-fare carrier as it attempts to lure back business travelers by offering competing service in long-haul markets dominated by larger competitors. Initial one-way fares will be $99. To inaugurate the BWI-LAX service, plans call for the airline to accept delivery of four new Boeing 737-700s. At 2,329 mi., the flights will be the longest in Southwest's history, according to the airline.
Robert W. Carroll has become manager of air service marketing and development at Tweed-New Haven (Conn.) Regional Airport for the Amports Aviation Group. He was an account manager in the Boston area for Delta Air Lines.
The European Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA) has established rules aimed at educating pilot and cabin crewmembers on health risks associated with exposure to high levels of cosmic radiation at altitudes above 49,000 ft. According to Flight Safety Foundation's Human Factors and Aviation Medicine report, the JAA prohibits flight above 49,000 ft. without an instrument capable of measuring and indicating the dosage of cosmic radiation received by the crew. The recommended limit per person is 1 Millisievert (mSv) per year.
Vietnam Airlines is acquiring long-haul aircraft as part of a $2.2-billion fleet modernization program to help it penetrate international markets, including limited operations to Europe and the U.S. It has four Pratt & Whitney PW4084D-powered Boeing 777-200ERs on order with delivery slated for August next year through to 2005. Two more leased aircraft arrived in March to replace 767-300s operating to Paris from here in the nation's capital and Ho Chi Minh City. Both routes, Vietnam Airline's only European services, are operated three times a week via Dubai.
Airline security expenses may soar as much as $11 billion a year in the wake of the September terror attacks, adding about 11% to the cost of air travel and costing the national economy about 0.1% of gross domestic product, according to preliminary outside estimates compiled by the congressional Joint Economic Committee. Cautioning that the total economic impact will not be known for some time and is likely to go a lot higher, the committee said in a new analysis that if Sept.
General Electric and its teammate, Rolls-Royce, expect to complete detail design of the F136 powerplant this year, with the goal of bringing the first engine to test in mid-2004. The powerplant, which is being developed as the second engine for F-35, is in a presystems development and demonstration or risk-reduction phase, which began last October with the award of the Joint Strike Fighter program to Lockheed Martin.
United Airlines last week was found in violation of a union contract and ordered by the carrier's grievance hearing board to pay $8.89 million to the Assn. of Flight Attendants. United bought Air Wisconsin in 1992, but operated it as a separate carrier, not hiring cabin crew from United's seniority list, according to the AFA.
Michel Boucher has been appointed vice president-industrial affairs of Hispano-Suiza. He was quality director and head of the Precision Mechanics Div. Boucher has been succeeded by Joel Remond, who was vice president-industrial operations for Snecma Moteurs.
Andrew Drysdale has become regional director for Asia-Pacific in the International Air Transport Assn.'s Singapore office. He is the former CEO of Fiji's Air Pacific and Australia's Hazelton Airlines.
Ten years ago, turboprops dominated the regional airline fleet in the U.S. and turbofans ruled the airline fleet. The division worked well from an air traffic perspective: Turboprops cruised most efficiently at about 17,000 ft. and the physics of turbofans dictated a cruise altitude about twice as high. The system had evolved into a ``dynamic flow, broken up vertically,'' recalled one former air traffic controller. Then came the RJ revolution.
Marie Colton has become director of the Office of Research and Applications at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service. She was deputy director and succeeds James Purdom, who has retired.
Reduced Vertical Separation Minimums (RVSM) are coming to domestic U.S. airspace and could be operational by December 2004, according to the FAA. RVSM decreases the separation from 2,000 ft. to 1,000 ft. between suitably equipped aircraft flying at 29,000-41,000 ft. (Flight Level 290 and FL410). That change has already been implemented in Europe, Canada and oceanic airspace in the Northern Atlantic and Pacific (see p. 40).
