KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, which is scheduled to rejuvenate its long-haul fleet in the next three years, decided to order eight Boeing 777-200ERs and three extended-range 747-400ERF freighters to replace 12 aging 747-300s. According to a newly completed fleet plan, KLM later plans to order a combination of additional 777s and Airbus A330-200s to replace 10 MD-11s and 12 767-300ERs, a carrier official said.
Newly streamlined Air Lib this week is scheduled to inaugurate low-fare services on France's key domestic city-pairs such as nine daily round trips between Paris and Toulouse. At 29-119 euros ($25-104), Air Lib's one-way fares for the 1 hr. 15 min. flights are significantly cheaper than the best prices charged by Air France and the TGV high-speed train. Similarly, Buzz, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines' U.K.-based low-cost affiliate, has entered an agreement with Voyages Carrefour to market flights at minimum fares between French provincial airports and London.
The vexed issue of how to bridge the gap between political ambition and fiscal reality remains stark for Galileo, in spite of last week's progress. In stitching together a patchwork political agreement, the European Union has identified the so-far-vague concept of a public-private sector partnership as the route to securing the necessary total financing.
Matcom International Corp. has re-ceived a five-year FAA contract for lightning protection and bonding upgrades at up to 750 sites throughout the U.S. in support of the Air Traffic Control Beacon Interrogator-6 program.
Ten months of trade studies has steered NASA's $4.8-billion Space Launch Initiative (SLI) away from an all-cryogenic next-generation reusable space launch vehicle toward a smaller vehicle that uses hydrocarbon fuel in its first stage and liquid hydrogen in its second.
The Bush Administration is embarking on a reassessment of U.S./Chinese space cooperation just as China has launched the third unmanned flight test of its Shenzhou manned vehicle to carry the first Chinese astronauts into space over the next 1-2 years.
Curtis Hill has been appointed general manager of Woodland (Calif.) Aviation Inc. He was director of operations and customer service for Northwest Airlines' Cargo Div.
In the wake of UAL Corp.'s decision to abandon business aviation, Dassault Aviation is scheduled to reduce the Falcon business jets' production rate to five aircraft per month, down from seven. Avolar, UAL's newly formed business aviation unit set to establish fractional ownership programs, last year had ordered 46 Falcon 2000EXs and Falcon 900EXs and optioned 56 more aircraft.
The outlook for the world's airlines, while improving, is still clouded with uncertainty, a condition shared by the carriers serving Latin America. The 2001 downturn, accelerated after Sept. 11, has deepened the airline crisis on the southern continent of the Americas, resulting in the loss of familiar airline names.
Bonnie Soodik has been named president of Boeing Shared Services, senior vice president of the Chicago-based company and a member of the executive council. She succeeds Laurette Koellner, who has become chief people and administration officer in the Office of the Chairman. Soodik was vice president-human resources for Boeing Space and Communications, Seal Beach, Calif.
Pamela A. Drew has been appointed vice president-engineering and information technology for Boeing Phantom Works, Seal Beach, Calif. She was director of math and computing technology/chief information officer.
Michael P. Field has become head of commercial engines marketing and sales for Pratt&Whitney, East Hartford, Conn. He succeeds Dan Webb, who is scheduled to retire May 31 as senior vice president-marketing and sales. Field was senior vice president-sales and customer support at International Aero Engines.
Stadiums, museums and such once were named for heroes of one sort or another (or at least for humans), not companies. The National Air and Space Museum had its Samuel P. Langley Theater named for the aviation pioneer and third secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and the Albert Einstein Planetarium named for, well, you know. Say goodbye to those days. To the dismay of some curators, the museum is scraping Langley's name off the theater in favor of that of Lockheed Martin Corp., which recently donated funds for theater upgrades and the Dulles annex.
Louis Mancini has become vice president-maintenance operations services of Boeing Commercial Aviation Services. He was vice president-engineering and technical support at United Airlines.
In a sharply worded legal brief, Northrop Grumman Corp. is asking the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio to declare that state's tough anti-takeover laws unconstitutional and to block TRW Inc. from disrupting Northrop's attempt to acquire it. At the center of the legal firestorm is the Ohio Control Share Acquisition Act, which makes it extremely difficult to purchase an Ohio-based company when it does not wish to be acquired.
Since the development and entry into service of the A320 in 1988, Airbus has strived to keep a commonality in its fly-by-wire flight control systems, cockpit instrumentation and general airborne handling between its line of transports. Since the introduction of the single-aisle transport, Airbus production has encompassed the A330, the A340 and other variants of the A320.
The U.S. Air Force is looking for a way to detect a shoulder-fired missile launch and provide information to attack the shooter. Specifically, the service's UAV battlelab wants to demonstrate infrared sensors that could be put on a UAV to discern the launch point for the man-portable missile and track it in flight. Moreover, the system would be used to cue other sensors (on-board and off-board) to watch the launch position and provide target coordinates so the location can be attacked.
An FAA-sponsored study confirms a long-standing criticism of some of the agency's most basic internal workings: Inadequate communication between two FAA services--Aircraft Certification, which certifies the safety of aircraft types, and Flight Standards, which oversees their operations--sometimes blocks the most effective use of available safety information. As a secondary effect, designers and operators in industry don't get information they need, either.
The Airborne Laser's first attempt to shoot down a ballistic missile will likely occur a year later than planned because of problems assembling the Boeing 747-based weapon.
Security is the new rage among computers and software, and even Bill Gates has switched from forcing useless features on us that we don't want, to being a security evangelist. One trend is hardware-based security, said to be more difficult to crack than software-based techniques. New widgets include a fingerprint reader built into a laptop PCMCIA card, presented by Targus and IBM, that lets you access secure data by fingerprint instead of password. And IBM has partnered with a different company for another access scheme.
Some of Wall Street's leading sell-side analysts who track the aerospace/defense industry continue to believe virtually all military contractors will benefit from the Bush Administration's aggressive push to increase procurement spending, and there even could be moderate upside to projected growth estimates--some of which are quite healthy. But Standard&Poor's latest semiannual assessment recommending investor caution offers a contrarian view, if not a sobering reality check.
Linda Leukhardt has been promoted to vice president-business management/ chief financial officer of the Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Newport News (Va.) Sector. She was vice president-finance/controller for the company's Electronic Systems Sector in Baltimore.
Deutsche BA, British Airways' German subsidiary, will seek to restore profitability in the next 18 months after 10 years of continuous losses. To achieve such a long-overdue goal, it plans to devise a new strategy and become a low-cost carrier.
The Transportation Dept. threatened last week that it would withdraw U.S. cargo rights from one or more Japanese airlines, unless Tokyo reversed its plan to prevent FedEx from reacquiring 14 Tokyo Narita airport slots it leased to Delta Air Lines. Delta took down most of its Japan service after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and agreed to return the slots to FedEx, but Japan notified the U.S. that it would block the transfer and reallocate the slots to other airlines. Reassigning unused FedEx slots to U.S.
