GE Engine Services, under a $34-million, five-year agreement completed earlier this month with Northwest Airlines, will maintain and overhaul powerplants on Bombardier Regional jet aircraft flown by the carrier's regional operators--specifically, CF34-3B1 engines in Northwest's CRJ440 and CRJ200 fleets. Northwest Airlink operator Express Airlines 1 currently operates 23 CRJ200s and has 19 additional scheduled for delivery.
The French Labinal group, Royal Air Maroc and Boeing Commercial Airplanes have formed Casablanca-based Morocco Aero-Technical Interconnect Systems to produce aircraft wiring.
International Launch Services has shifted launch of the DirecTV 5 spacecraft from its original Atlas IIAS ride to a Russian Proton. The big Ku-band Tempo-class satellite built by Space Systems/Loral wasn't ready in time for its original launch date in the spring. When it did become ready, ILS found that its Atlas schedule at Cape Canaveral AFS, Fla., was filled for the rest of the year. To get the satellite in orbit as soon as possible, ILS offered SS/L a Proton launch, which it accepted.
When Kuala Lumpur International Airport was opened in June 1998, the $4-billion facility was expected to become a Southeast Asian regional hub that would dovetail with Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed's ``Vision 2020'' program to develop a high-tech industrial base for Malaysia.
NASA plans to keep operating the Hubble Space Telescope for the rest of this decade, but after that it's shutting down to make way in the budget for the Next-Generation Space Telescope (NGST). Edward J. Weiler, NASA's space science guru, says that by 2010 telescopes on the ground will have comparable capability in many ways. Hubble technology will be 30 years old.
Roy Rimmer has been named chairman/CEO of the Aviation Sales Co., Miramar, Fla. Rimmer, who has been a member of the board of directors, succeeds Dale S. Baker, who has resigned but will remain a consultant.
A combination of Typhoon Utor and a work slowdown by its pilots knocked the bottom out of Cathay Pacific Airways' business in July. The carrier said passenger traffic was down nearly 20% and cargo 23%. It attributed some of the fall-off to weakness in global aviation markets.
Paul Hawthorne has become director of quality assurance for Chicago-based AirLiance Materials. He held the same post at the Aviation Sales Distribution Co.
U.S. Navy and Northrop Grumman officials are finding growing interest abroad in their RQ-8A Fire Scout vertical take-off and landing (Vtol) unmanned aircraft, although the bulk of its development still lies ahead.
Arianespace successfully orbited the Intelsat 902 telecom satellite on Aug. 30 from Kourou, French Guiana. The launch, by an Ariane 4, had been delayed one week for additional checks on the Space Systems/Loral-built spacecraft. The next Ariane mission, on Sept. 25, will orbit Eutelsat's Atlantic Bird 2. Intelsat 902 is a Space Systems/Loral FS 1300 with 72 C-band and 22 Ku-band operating transponders. It will be placed at 62 deg. E. Long. to serve Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Dennis D. Fitzgerald has been named deputy director of the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office. He succeeds David A. Kier, who is retiring. Fitzgerald was associate deputy director of the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology.
Curtis C. Fatig of the Orbital Sciences Corp. is one of six industry or academic employees at the Goddard Space Flight Center to receive NASA Public Service Medals. He was honored for work on the Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Mission Test Effort as was Thomas Pfarr of the Computer Sciences Corp. The other recipients are: Donald R. Baker of NSI Technology Services Inc., for structural dynamics and data analysis; Kannappan Palanippan of the University of Missouri, for scientific visualization tools; Richard E.
Capt. David S. Bushy, senior vice president-flight operations for Delta, has been named vice president of the Council of Aviation Accreditation, which evaluates aviation programs at U.S. colleges and universities.
Michael C.Y. Niu has been named a senior specialist for Advanced Aerodynamics and Structures Inc., Long Beach, Calif. He also is president of the AD Airframe Consulting Co.
Paul Kaminski has been appointed to the board of directors of Eagle-Picher Industries of Cincinnati. He is chairman/ CEO of Technovation Inc., senior partner in Global Technology Partners and a former under secretary of Defense for acquisition and technology.
Douglas A. Carty has become senior vice president/chief financial officer of Atlas Air, Purchase, N.Y. He held those posts at Canadian Airlines International.
The Aug. 24 shutdown of both 71,000-lb.-thrust Rolls-Royce Trent 700 engines on an Air Transat Airbus A330-200 transiting the Atlantic Ocean stunned industry--and promptly stirred regulators, airlines and manufacturers to action, initiating engine and fuel system inspections and probes of training and maintenance practices. In the wake of the near-catastrophic event, flight safety experts can be expected to revisit all aspects of extended twin-engine overwater operations.
A Grumman S-2T air tanker drops retardant on a 1,500-acre brushfire about 20 mi. northwest of Los Angeles on Aug. 27 (left). The blaze destroyed a house and resulted in about 100 families evacuating their homes in the Castaic area. The same day in Northern California, two S-2 aircraft operating north of San Francisco collided about 6:55 p.m. PDT while battling a wildfire in the vicinity of Ukiah, killing both pilots (right).
U.S. Customs Service agents have arrested two men on charges linked to an alleged scheme to acquire and ship sensitive encryption devices to China. The devices, identified as the KIV-7HS, are among the most sensitive items on the U.S. munitions list. They are produced by Rainbow Mykotronx, a small Torrance, Calif., company that manufactures network security products for both government and industry. The KIV-7HS is a compact, high-performance communications security device specifically designed to meet PC users' needs for secure data communication links.
Raytheon Australia completed the prototype installation of a crash data recorder (CDR) in a Royal Australian Navy (RAN) Sea King helicopter as part of its contract to design, integrate and install the system in that aircraft as well as in RAN Seahawks. The CDR includes a cockpit voice recorder and crash position indicator.
David E. Berges has been named chairman/CEO of the Hexcel Corp. He succeeds the late John J. Lee. Berges was president of the Honeywell Automotive Products Group.
U.K.-BASED OXLEY AVIONICS HAS DEVELOPED light emitting diodes (LEDs) for navigation lights on military aircraft that come NVG (night vision goggle)-friendly for viewing with NVGs, or infrared for NVG covert formation flying. They can be incorporated in the same housing as the standard red, green or white visible lights, or mounted separately. The EZELED system replaces filament bulbs with LED, without requiring any aircraft wiring changes and plugs into the existing bayonet fittings in the aircraft's navigation lights.
THE U.S. AIR FORCE RESEARCH LABORATORY in Rome, N.Y., has selected Northrop Grumman to develop real-time information and systems recovery for distributed command and control (C2) systems, such as air traffic control and air defense. The third award in the Air Force's data resiliency in information warfare (DRIW) program, DRIW2's goals are to demonstrate the technology is applicable for distributed systems and to reduce the amount of data and time required to reconstitute a network.
