Restraints on visual flight rules operations in the U.S., mandated in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks in the U.S., are taking a severe economic toll on segments of the general aviation industry.
Eclipse Aviation Corp., which is now cutting metal for its proposed Eclipse 500 jet, received an order for 1,000 of the aircraft from Nimbus Group. The startup company plans to use them to operate air taxi services in North and South America. The order is backed by an equity investment ``in the tens of millions of dollars'' by Nimbus, Eclipse President and CEO Vern Raburn said. Some flexibility in contractual terms was granted, but the equity investment does not represent a discount off the $837,500 price at which the Eclipse 500 is being offered to customers.
Lufthansa Technik has selected Mint Assistant software for training and scheduling applications. . . . Boeing said it is using PTC's Windchill for collaborative development of its Joint Strike Fighter candidate.
Thomas Conroy has been appointed vice president-national intelligence program development for Logicon Inc., Herndon, Va. He was deputy director for national support for the National Recon- naissance Office.
BAE Systems and the former Defense Evaluation and Research Agency, now called QinetiQ, have teamed to work on future unmanned aircraft and intelligence gathering. The UAV portion will concentrate on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems, electronic warfare applications, and aircraft command and control. Mission planning and image exploitation are also scheduled. The teaming is an attempt to marry R&D work done by QinetiQ during its DERA days with the global marketing apparatus BAE Systems has established.
Star Airlines, a French startup charter operator, is ready to begin serving three destinations in the Caribbean with leased Airbus A330-200 long-haul twinjets. They will be operated in a 363-seat high-density cabin configuration. Star, which currently operates five A320s, seeks to acquire more business in the wake of AOM/Air Liberte's decision to abandon most of its long-haul services to focus on domestic routes.
Bernard L. Han has become executive vice president/chief financial officer for both the America West Holdings Corp. and America West Airlines. He was senior vice president-marketing and planning for the airline. Stephen L. Johnson has been named executive vice president-corporate and J. Scott Kirby has been appointed executive vice president-sales and marketing. Johnson was senior vice president/ chief administrative officer, while Kirby was senior vice president-ebusiness.
U.S. airlines are bracing for a momentous shift in traditional ways of doing business, even to banning meals requiring knives and forks, as new and stricter security regulations are enforced in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Julie E. Silcock and Joseph L. Manson, 3rd, have been named to the board of directors of the Mesa Air Group. Silcock is Dallas-based managing director and head of Southwest U.S. investment banking for Salomon Smith Barney, while Manson is a lawyer with the Washington firm of Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand.
In selecting the Gripen as its future fighter, Hungary has handed Saab and BAE Systems a key win in the competition to provide tactical aircraft to central European countries with limited defense budgets. The Hungarian military wants to lease 14 fighters currently in service with the Swedish air force. The deal would make Hungary the first NATO customer for the Swedish-built fighter. The aircraft are to replace the aging MiG-29A/UB force left over from the days when Hungary was part of the Warsaw Pact.
Ultimately, it will be passengers who restore U.S. and international airlines and related aerospace companies to some level of financial stability. While there are numerous government and industry proposals on the table for dealing with the devastation of Sept. 11, and to provide security from future terrorist attacks, it will be the restoration of confidence in air travel that will ensure the future of the U.S. air transportation system.
OPTICAL AIR DATA SYSTEMS WILL DEMONSTRATE a Lidar airspeed sensor for the V-22 aircraft in April 2002. It is designed to improve V-22 low-speed safety by helping Navy/Marine Corps pilots avoid regimes conducive to the formation of vortex ring state, which was considered a factor in a fatal crash on Apr. 8, 2000. It should also help avoid turbulence and wind shear. The 1.5-micron eye-safe laser system projects beams 150-200 ft. into the atmosphere from three fixed, non-orthogonally oriented lenses, computing the three velocity components from the returns.
The Omani government has selected British Airports Authority over six competing teams to privatize operations at two of its airports--Seeb, near the capital, Muscat; and Salalah, in the south of the country. BAA is teamed with Oman's Suhail Bahwan Group and ABB Equity Ventures. The team will hold a 75% stake (BAA, 25%; Suhail Bahwan Group, 35%; and ABB, 15%) in a new company that will have a 25-year agreement to develop the airports. The remaining 25% stake will be held by the government. The new company plans a $195-million investment to develop the facilities.
NASA Ames Research Center has finished a six-month test of software that brings airliner flight deck data to automated air traffic management systems. The en route data exchange (EDX) software was installed in 48 United Airlines Boeing 777s, using the aircraft's modern avionics and advanced datalink to bring information like flight plan, speed, weight and weather down to the FAA's Center-Tracon Automation System (CTAS) at the Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center.
Bruce Goodwin has become associate director for defense and nuclear technologies and Merna Hurd associate deputy director for strategic operations of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif. Goodwin was B Program/B Div. leader within the Defense and Nuclear Technologies Div. Hurd was senior adviser to the U.S. Energy Dept.
An early need for the Pentagon's war against terrorism will be building up its depleted reserves plus adding an additional 20-25% ``surge capability'' for prolonged combat operations. Air Force units needed to carry cargo, provide reconnaissance or inflight refueling and perform sustained air strikes all need an infusion of spare engines, parts and readiness kits. They also need enough supplies to conduct ``30-60 days of combat operations without logistics support,'' a senior Air Force official said.
Amateur aircraft designers who want software to both analyze and draw their designs can use AirplanePDQ from DaVinci Technologies. AirplanePDQ has sizing and analysis tools combined with the IntelliCAD drawing program, which is compatible with the popular AutoCAD system. The analysis tools include performance and weight-and-balance. An upgraded version available next month can pass data to and from the X-Plane flight simulation program, allowing designers to evaluate their creations on the simulator. The new version also is compatible with AutoCAD 2000 file types.
Definiens Imaging GmbH. of Munich will begin marketing a version of its eCognition software next year that contains advanced synthetic aperture radar (SAR) tools for extracting information from the Earth-imaging Radarsat-1 satellite. eCognition classifies an image based on attributes of objects within it rather than on attributes of its individual pixels. It can be ``trained'' to scour Radarsat-1's worldwide SAR database to selectively extract information based on selective parameters.
Military officers here and defense contractors are running scared, afraid to make the most obvious statements about military activities--even those in no way related to the newly declared war against terrorism--because of the threat of being summarily punished by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. ``We've returned to a high Cold War security environment,'' said an Air Force officer.
U.S. intelligence agencies originally set up to monitor the Soviet nuclear threat were already scrambling to cover the more diffuse dangers of the post-Cold War world when terrorists struck to deadly effect in New York and Washington. In the aftermath, the agencies are likely to get both more resources and more oversight as they try to adapt.
THE NAVY AND FAA ARE FLIGHT TESTING an arc fault circuit breaker that protects against arcing, which poses an increasing fire threat for aging aircraft, while providing the current-overload protection of conventional breakers (AW&ST Aug. 21, 2000, p. 72). The circuit breakers are slated for a six-month flight test on a Navy C-9 and an FAA Boeing 727. Arcing is most apt to occur when insulation is damaged, and can produce temperatures from 3,000-10,000C, hot enough to ignite any material in the vicinity.
Duane Manning and Michael Fenoglio have been named directors of business development for, respectively, Wichita, Kan., and Indiana for Senior Aerospace of Los Angeles. Eric Jensen has become director for global best practices and Ron Turner director-aftermarket services. Manning was vice president-marketing and sales and Jensen vice president-operations for the Raytheon Aircraft Parts, Inventory and Distribution Co. in Wichita. Fenoglio was director of marketing for Dowty Aerospace subsidiary TRI Industries.
