Terry Hall has been promoted to chief operating officer from senior vice president/chief financial officer and Yasmin Seyal to senior vice president-finance and acting CFO from corporate treasurer of GenCorp., Sacramento, Calif. Mike Martin has been named president of subsidiary Aerojet. He was acting president of Aerojet Missile and Space Propulsion and had been vice president/controller of GenCorp.
Conferees from the House and Senate appropriations committees added $282 million to the Administration's Fiscal 2002 NASA budget request, boosting science probes to the Sun and Pluto but cutting the International Space Station by $95 million. Overall spending for the agency in Fiscal 2002 would be $14.8 billion under the conference action.
London Heathrow Airport slots, the key issue when American Airlines and British Airways applied unsuccessfully for antitrust immunity five years ago, remains the key issue this year in their second try. Despite heavy pressure to work out an immunity deal quickly, the Heathrow problem isn't getting any easier.
More than 5,000 petitions demanding that airline pilots be allowed to carry guns in the cockpit will land on the desks of a House-Senate conference committee forging a final airport and airline security bill this week. A message accompanying those petitions states that ``either we get the right to be screened, trained and armed, or we're going to suspend service,'' a leader of a grassroots pilot campaign declared.
A German offer to mobilize up to 3,900 troops to support the U.S.-led war against the Taliban may be compromised by a rift in the Green Party that is part of the ruling coalition. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder would not say where or when he would deploy the troops, which he and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, a member of the Greens, view as a sign of Germany's will to stand up and be counted in Europe. However, Green opposition to the plan, which is to be submitted to the Bundestag for approval on Nov. 13, has proven much stronger than expected.
Group Capt. John Cunningham has received the Award of Honor from the London-based Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators. He was cited for spearheading the application of airborne radar to night fighter tactics in 1941 and his post-World War II accomplishments as chief test pilot for de Havilland Aircraft, for which he made the first global jetliner flight in 1955 with the DH106 Comet.
Paul H. Tate has been named vice president/chief financial officer of Frontier Airlines. He was executive vice president/CFO of US Airways Express carrier Colgan Air.
The Italian government is trying to engineer a compromise that would allow Italy to participate in Europe's A400M airlifter project without fomenting a revolt in its ranks. Under the compromise, the government would finance the 16 aircraft that Italy is committed to buy, valued at around 1.4 billion euros ($1.26 billion), using money from the Ministry of Industry's research and development budget, instead of from the defense budget.
AAR has signed a three-year agreement with KLM UK Engineering under which AAR Aircraft Component Ser- vices will provide component management and repair for 15 Fokker 100s.
The Blair government has told Parliament that accelerating the procurement of two new aircraft carriers would be unwise, given the ships' size and complexity and the need to keep their development in sync with other forthcoming weapons systems, including the Future Organic Airborne Early Warning Aircraft. If the two carriers, which are slated to come into service in 2012 and 2015, are to have the best fit with future operational requirements, then time must be invested at the outset in assessing designs and development, the government contends.
Airlines that voluntarily share closely-guarded error trends with federal regulators will have guaranteed immunization from federal en- forcement actions for those faux pas under a proactive new safety program that becomes law on Nov. 30. But just how that data is ``shared'' remains a touchy subject that industry analysts say may cause airlines to avoid taking part in the Flight Operational Quality Assurance (FOQA) program.
Any such agreement, coming on top of Moscow's recent westward turn, would cost Beijing prime leverage in its bid to block U.S. deployment of missile defenses. It's hard for most China watchers to see how a deal could be struck here. A discussion at the Cato Institute explored the idea last week. The Bush Administration insists missile defenses have nothing to do with China and seems determined to deploy them.
Speedbirds migrated back to New York airspace last week. Air France F-BTSD`s and British Airways' G-BOAE ``Speedbird Concorde One'' arrived 1 hr. apart at New York's JFK International Airport on Nov. 7, marking the Concorde's return to scheduled service after a 15-month grounding.
Cloudy weather is beginning to limit the ability of U.S. analysts to maintain surveillance of Taliban and Al Qaeda forces, while heavy icing has downed a special forces helicopter and a third Predator unmanned reconnaissance aircraft in Afghanistan. Such incidents are triggering a reexamination of how the U.S. is going to confront harsh, cold-weather flying conditions and continue to conduct aggressive air operations throughout the winter. First among their foul-weather needs are air bases closer to the battlefield.
ROCKWELL COLLINS PROPOSED SOME SOLUTIONS to the problems of aging avionics last week, conferring with representatives of the U.S. military on strategies for dealing with obsolescence and inserting new technologies. The Collins Flight2 approach would add capability by using open slots in an integrated processing center, analogous to adding a card to an empty slot in a home PC or the military's VME bus. Open systems architecture should allow other vendors' capabilities to be added to refresh technology and provide a broader base for dealing with component obsolescence.
Arnold J. Grossman has become director of sales for Chicago-based TravelClick. He has been a member of the board of directors and is a retired vice president-international planning for American Airlines.
After analyzing the collision of a Japanese fishing ship and a U.S. submarine, which greatly disturbed Hawaiian politicos, the Navy has begun adapting small airborne radars for installation on submarines. Such small radars have already been tested on helicopters and unmanned aircraft. The Naval Air Warfare Center at China Lake, Calif., is conducting the integration of high-performance cylindrical search radar on periscope masts. The radar would supplement the optical system and give better awareness of nearby ships in bad weather.
U.S. Army Maj. Gen. (ret.) Charles Cannon, Jr., and Edward (Pete) Phelan have been appointed directors of business development for DynCorp International, Reston, Va. Cannon was chief of staff for the Army Materiel Command, while Phelan was director of administrative, logistics, communications and information technology services for United Nations peacekeeping missions.
Hexcel Corp. will shrink the size of the company to reduce costs and increase cash flow. Anticipating lower revenues in 2002, Hexcel expects to reduce its total work-force by 25% or 1,500 people by the end of 2002. In addition, the company plans to reduce 2002 capital expenditures to no more than $25 million, from about $40 million this year.
P. Roger Byer, who has been CEO of Stellex Technologies Inc. of New York, is now president/CEO and a director of Stellex Aerostructures Inc. Other members of the new board of directors are: Roger G. Pollazzi, chairman/CEO of Harvard Industries Inc.; Robert H. Maskrey, executive vice president/chief operating officer of Moog Inc.; Ben E. Waide, 3rd, former chairman/CEO of the Atlantic Aviation Corp.; and Ronald W. Stahlschmidt, retired partner in Ernst&Young.
One of the first big space launches of Daniel S. Goldin's long tenure as NASA Administrator came on Sept. 25, 1992, when a Titan 3 booster lifted off from Florida with the Mars Observer scientific spacecraft on board. Eleven months later the sophisticated billion-dollar probe vanished without a trace shortly before it was to enter orbit around the Red Planet, leaving engineers wondering whether it wound up in Mars orbit or bypassed the planet completely.
Brad Hatt (see photos) has been named acting vice president-aircraft business of the Raytheon Aircraft Co., Wichita, Kan. He was vice president-global general aviation sales and succeeds Richard Danforth, who has resigned. Ed Dolanski has been appointed acting vice president-customer support. He was vice president/chief information officer and succeeds John Ferney, who has retired. Dolanski has been succeeded by Doug Debrecht, who was director of strategic planning and technology development.
