AVPK Sukhoi and several Russian aviation research and development companies have signed a strategic partnership agreement on development of a new fifth-generation fighter.
CALIFORNIA MICROWAVE SYSTEMS WILL START work on the Army's sixth RC-7B Airborne Reconnaissance Low-Multifunction (ARL-M) aircraft, under a $27.4-million contract, which includes purchase of the aircraft, modification and testing. The RC-7B, a modified de Havilland DHC-7, is a manned airborne collection platform, using imagery, synthetic aperture radar, communications intelligence and data links to provide tactical commanders with near-real-time intelligence (AW&ST Sept. 4, 2000, p. 38).
Larry Kellner has been promoted to president of Continental Airlines from executive vice president/chief financial officer. He succeeds Greg Brenneman, who is returning to his consulting firm. C.D. McLean, who was executive vice president-operations, is now executive vice president/chief operating officer.
U.S. aerospace companies are out of the Czech fighter competition. Boeing was offering F/A-18s, Lockheed Martin the F-16. A senior industry official says there were concerns about demands for huge, 150% offsets and the potential for bribery, because the selection process was ``not transparent . . . those were not the showstoppers.'' But what really derailed any U.S. sale was Czech insistence that the contract proposal be written in Czech and that the deal be negotiated in Czech currency and governed by Czech law.
The Lagardere group intends to remain a major player in EADS and has no plans to sell its stake in the consortium, according to Chairman/CEO Jean-Luc Lagardere. He was responding to increasing speculation that the highly diversified group will shift its focus from aerospace to media businesses. A clause in the cross-border protocol signed last year, shortly before EADS was incorporated, prohibits founding partners from disposing of their stake until mid-2003.
If there were any doubts about the seriousness of Northrop Grumman Corp.'s interest in acquiring Newport News Shipbuilding, the company put those to rest last week with a strong bid that should give rival General Dynamics Corp. pause. But that doesn't necessarily mean the industry will see a heated bidding war if GD decides to counter. ``Northrop Grumman will be prudent in its bidding, given its track record in its losing bids for Lockheed Martin Sanders and the Hughes defense business,'' SG Cowen analyst Cai von Rumohr said.
Preston A. Cooper has been named president of the Ingenuity Research Corp., Black Forest, Colo. He was an associate fellow member of the senior technical staff at CSC/Nichols in Colorado Springs.
NASA is reversing its strategy for developing a new reusable launch vehicle under the $4.8-billion Space Launch Initiative, letting technology drive the final shape of a new vehicle instead of driving the technology with the X-33 concept it dropped earlier this year.
British Airways posted a sharp rebound in profits for the full year, but warned of slower growth following lower traffic figures in the first few months of the current year. The U.K.'s largest airline saw pretax profits grow to 150 million pounds ($214.5 million) for the fiscal year ending Mar. 31 compared with just 5 million pounds the previous year. Operating profit more than quadrupled to 380 million pounds.
The Indian Space Research Organization is developing a largely reengineered version of its Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle that is intended to double or triple the launch capability of the new medium/heavy booster, enabling it to compete with the Ariane 5, Delta IV, Atlas V, Proton and other heavy-lift launchers.
As a pilot with over 20,000 hr. of flight time, I speak from experience when I say that pilot fatigue is a very real and serious threat to aviation safety. And it's going to get worse if the FAA fails to update hours of service regulations quickly. Here's just one reason: more and more flights are being shifted to the off-peak hours in response to airport gridlock. Unfortunately, these ``red-eye'' flights are flown when human performance is known to be at its lowest level.
Construction has begun on MTU Aero Engines' Maintenance facility in Zhuhai, China. The joint venture with China Southern Airlines is planned to become operational in late 2002 with a staff of 730. MTU Maintenance Zhuhai will maintain and overhaul V2500 and CFM56 engines. MTU and China Southern expect sales to reach $220 million in 2009.
European Space Agency officials have agreed to launch the Artemis telecom relay satellite and Japan's BSAT-2b satellite on July 12. The agency shifted Artemis to Arianespace in February after the original agreement to use Japan's H-2A rocket had to be scrapped because of delays with the vehicle's development program (AW&ST Feb. 19, p. 21). The $720-million satellite, built by Alenia Spazio, will carry a key navigation payload for Europe's Egnos wide-area augmentation network along with experimental Ka-band, laser data link and L-band mobile systems.
UAL Corp. is holding discussions with U.S. and European business jet manufacturers in preparation for placing major orders to supply its new fractional ownership program.
ANNUAL UTILIZATION OF BUSINESS JETS by members of the National Business Aviation Assn. (NBAA) in 1999 averaged 456 hr., with piston-powered aircraft utilization averaging 257 hr. and turboprop aircraft at 407 hr. Helicopters, which account for 7% of the NBAA fleet, flew 322 hr. that year--the latest for which information is available. Fortune 500 companies operated 1,372 aircraft including large-cabin jets (33.2%), midsize-cabin jets (44.1%) and entry-level jets (0.4%), according to AvData. Turboprop-powered aircraft accounted for about 8% of the Fortune 500 fleet.
Israel Aircraft Industries plans to expand its business aviation enterprise despite the sale earlier this month of its Galaxy Aerospace Corp. subsidiary to General Dynamics. The super midsize-cabin Galaxy, along with the midsize Astra SPX jet, is assembled at IAI's facilities in Tel Aviv and ferried to Galaxy headquarters at Alliance Airport north of Fort Worth, for completions and customer deliveries. Plans call for that procedure to continue under General Dynamics' ownership.
NASA is completing the first phase of its massive Earth Observing System--a $7-billion effort that has built 22 spacecraft to monitor the interaction between humankind and the Earth's climate--and is moving into a second generation of platforms that will see many EOS data streams converted to operational weather satellites.
Aviation regulators have ginned up a plan to help airports build more runways faster--widely regarded as the linchpin for easing aviation gridlock. FAA Administrator Jane F.
USAF Lt. Col. Bob Catlin has become director of contract policy at the National Reconnaissance Office in Washington. He has been commander of Air Force Plant 42, Palmdale, Calif. Succeeding Catlin will be Lt. Col. Celeo Wright, an instructor in the Contract Management Dept. at the School of Systems and Logistics of the Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.
Aeroflot Russian Airlines, which has recently seen changes in its shareholder structure, saw significant improvement in its financial performance last year.
Retired Rockwell International Chairman Donald R. Beall has been appointed ``non-executive'' chairman of Rockwell Collins Inc., which is being spun off from its parent company. When the planned spinoff was announced last December (AW&ST Dec. 18/25, 2000), Clayton M. Jones, president of Rockwell Collins, indicated he would become chairman and CEO upon the spinoff's completion. Now he's being identified as president and CEO-designate.
Mark Champion has become manager of group public affairs for Air New Zealand. He was manager of corporate communications for Vodafone New Zealand. Champion succeeds Alastair Carthew, who is now director of corporate communications for Asia for Star Alliance.
Thales is proceeding with a technology demonstration program for its pod-mounted synthetic aperture radar/moving target indicator (SAR/MTI) under contract to the U.K. Ministry of Defense. The demonstration would center on high-resolution imaging by the radar, installed in a reconfigurable pod on Tornado jets, and for gathering high-bandwidth MTI and SAR data from a maneuvering platform. Flight testing of the radar is to begin in 2003.
Operating with limited funding, Australia's military research organization has opted to concentrate on a few areas of expertise, rather than pursuing projects across a broad technology spectrum. The Defense Science and Technology Organization has an annual budget of about $110 million. While that level may increase in the near future as a result of last year's defense white paper, it is not expected to drastically shift the scope of work DSTO undertakes.
Global commercial launch companies face a deepening financial crisis, the collapse of weaker projects and growing pressure for more consolidation, as the market for heavy commercial payloads continues to stagnate. Projections show a sustained market for the launch of at least 30 commercial geosynchronous satellite missions per year. But it also shows little growth to support multiplying launcher developments and dwindling insurance reserves.
