The U.S. National Mediation Board plans to resume negotiations between American Airlines and the Assn. of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA) on May 3-4 in Washington. Discussions ended in March, and meetings scheduled for this month were delayed. APFA and American have been discussing a new labor contract since 1998.
The Air Force is in the odd position of needing more pilots, but is reducing the number of training slots over the next five years. The training pipeline is full, leaving 500-1,000 officers waiting 6-14 months to start their courses. In recent years, the service has been producing an average of about 1,300 pilot candidates a year, exceeding what the pipeline can handle. As a result, there will be 50-75 fewer pilot slots allocated among the Air Force Academy, Officer Training School and ROTC this year.
FRACTIONAL OWNERSHIP OPERATOR Executive Jet Inc. and Ohio State University's College of Engineering are exploring creation of an accelerated flight training program to serve Ohio State students, recipients of Executive Jet scholarships, and experienced pilots seeking advanced instruction. In addition, Executive Jet will study whether to commercially offer products and concepts developed by the university's faculty and students.
Ball Aerospace is modifying its standard low-Earth-orbit remote-sensing spacecraft to accommodate lightweight cameras that a commercial space imagery venture plans to put in geostationary orbit. AstroVision International has ordered two BCP 1000 satellites from Ball and taken options on three more as it works toward a June 2003 startup in orbit.
Chinese F-8II aircraft that intercepted, buzzed and damaged a U.S. Navy EP-3 intelligence-gathering aircraft were each carrying two indigenously built copies of Israel's Python 3 air-to-air missiles, say Pentagon analysts.
St. Petersburg-based defense electronics firm Leninetz has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese government to develop hypersonic aircraft technology, in association with Russia's Hypersonic Systems Scientific Institute, according to reports from Moscow. The project, which is to be made final in September, will be based on Ayaks, a concept launched in the early '90s. The MOU will also cover avionics, satellite navigation and other electronic activities.
President Bush has nominated three businessmen to senior Pentagon posts: former Lockheed executive Gordon England as Navy secretary; Thomas White, an Enron Energy Services vice chairman and former Army brigadier general as Army secretary; and James Roche, a vice president at Northrop Grumman and retired Navy captain as Air Force secretary.
Thomas W. Martino has been named vice president-program management for passenger systems, based in Pomona, Calif.; Kelly L. Holland manager of media relations for passenger systems, based in Irvine, Calif.; and Linda S. Snow-Solum director of navigation systems engineering, all for Rockwell Collins, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Martino was senior director of passenger systems operations there, while Holland was manager of media relations for the Gulfstream Aerospace Corp., Savannah, Ga.
On May 14 the Regional Airline Academy and Aeroservice Inc. will inaugurate the Multi-Crew Jet Transition Program aimed at preparing pilots for employment with regional airlines. Instruction centers on easing the transition from piston-powered aircraft to turboprop- and jet-powered regional transports. The course is being developed in response to growing demand for pilots at the regional level.
Russia's decision to send space tourist Dennis Tito to the International Space Station in the face of unanimous opposition from its ISS partners sets an obvious bad precedent, but there is also a lesson for commercial spacefaring in the whole debacle.
Defense officials are puzzling over President Bush's offer to sell military equipment to Taiwan. The P-3 patrol plane production line, for example, has been shut down since 1995. But there are about 40 relatively low-mileage P-3Cs in storage at Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz.
A government-backed panel expects an in-depth analysis of flight delays will help determine solutions for France's domestic route system. Last year, an average 35% of French domestic carriers' flights suffered from 15-min.-plus delays, down from a record 39% in 1999. The average delay was as high as 41 min., which travelers found particularly irksome, as flight time on the country's busiest city pairs does not exceed 90 min., according to a survey completed by Comuta, the group formed under the auspices of DGAC French civil aviation authority.
Intercepting communications with spacecraft no longer makes economic sense to many congressional staffers, says James Bamford, whose new book Body of Secrets is his second on the National Security Agency. He says the NSA is concentrating on finding new ways to tap into, sort and manipulate fiber-optic, cell-phone and Internet data. Senior officials in other national intelligence agencies also see declining effectiveness of signals intelligence satellites. They are pushing for increased production of the Global Hawk UAV (see p.
NASA AMES IS USING A POWERFUL supercomputer it developed with Silicon Graphics (SGI), wiring two 256-processor SGI Origin 3800 systems together. They plan to connect two 512-processor systems to form the world's first 1,024-processor system in the next few months (AW&ST Sept. 4, 2000, p. 88). The system is wired so each of the central processor units (CPUs) sees each byte of random access memory as the same image, so each change to the memory is seen by all 512 CPUs at once, speeding up processing tenfold.
American Airlines chief Don Carty was in town last week with his own perplexing prescription. He told the Aero Club he wants all in the aviation community--airlines, regulators, labor, you name it--to be ``civil'' toward one another and collaborate on finding solutions to tough problems like capacity. We are all sitting in the same boat and the boat is looking ``mighty flimsy,'' he told the club. Unfortunately, he said, the ``cutthroat'' and ``bare-knuckle'' tactics employed by various parties have polarized the aviation community.
Mark Simmons has been appointed vice president-finance and Joseph Smith director of operations for Triumph Air Repair in Phoenix. Simmons was director of finance and administration for L3 Communications in Philadelphia. Smith was general manager for IMC Magnetics. Lee Jacobs has been named general manager of the Triumph Aftermarket Services Components Repair and Overhaul Group. He was a product line manager in the Honeywell Hardware Product Group.
Singapore Airlines has ordered two additional Learjet 45 business jets for use in training pilots in systems, handling characteristics, and high-altitude flight operations associated with jet-powered airplanes operated by the carrier. The latest order brings to six the number of Learjets in the airline's training fleet. In addition to Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific Airways has ordered a Learjet 45 for use in its advanced pilot training program beginning in the third quarter, and holds an option for a second aircraft, according to Bombardier Aerospace.
Scandinavian Airlines System has selected the Rolls-Royce Trent 772B engine to power its fleet of Airbus A330-300s. SAS said the Trent 772B, rated at 72,000 lb. of thrust, offered capacity for further thrust growth. The order is for four -300s, plus options, which will replace SAS' Boeing 767s. First delivery is set for August 2002. The deal is worth a potential $200 million for Rolls-Royce.
The U.K.'s National Air Traffic Services has introduced reduced vertical separation minima throughout the country's upper airspace more than eight months ahead of the rest of Europe. The capacity-boosting scheme, introduced on Apr. 19, allows aircraft equipped to meet reduced vertical separation minima (RVSM) standards with qualified crews to operate with 1,000-ft. vertical separation at altitudes of 29,000-41,000 ft. The previous requirement, which remains in force throughout the rest of Europe, was for 2,000-ft. vertical separation.
The agreement for a contract valued at more than $2 billion between Delta Air Lines and its pilots' union buys labor peace for the nation's third-largest carrier but demonstrates the money-making power of union muscle that will likely reverberate across the global industry.
A GROUP OF INVESTORS FROM TAIWAN has agreed to provide $100 million to complete certification and initial production of the Sino Swearingen SJ30-2 business jet. The airplane is tentatively scheduled for FAA approval in August 2002 following a year-long flight test program. The first SJ30-2 conforming to production configuration flew in November 2000. The twin-engine jets will be assembled at the company's facilities in Martinsburg, W. Va. Sino Swearingen reports orders for more than 170 airplanes.
Eutelsat has awarded Astrium a contract to build W3A, a mixed Ku/Ka-band satellite intended to develop multimedia services in Europe and Africa and provide additional in-orbit redundancy (see picture). W3A will be colocated with W3 at 7 deg. E. Long. where it will form the nexus of Eutelsat's new open standard multimedia and high-speed Internet service, Open Sky (AW&ST Jan. 29, p. 40). The 4.3-metric-ton, 9-kw.
The board of directors of El Al Israel Airlines has approved a major cost-cutting plan, including halting flights to 10 destinations and selling off a number of 767s. This is in response to a sizable drop in passenger levels as tourism declines owing to increased Israeli-Palestinian violence. Last week, the Israeli government named a new chairman of the board for the state-run carrier. Michael Levy, formerly head of a textile company, succeeds Joseph Ciechanover, who held the post for six years.
TRW Aeronautical Systems has begun a repair and overhaul e-business program, TRWAeroservices, that is available for all aircraft parts regardless of the original manufacturer. A company official says the product gives customers a ``one-stop shop'' for repairs by directing shop orders to TRW-owned or independent facilities worldwide with the lowest turnaround times.
Corporate air charter broker Air Partner has teamed with British Airways to launch a new service that offers the use of executive aircraft for the airline's customers. Known as Business Jets, the program allows passengers to book a jet to fly to smaller airports not served by British Airways. The service is scheduled to begin Apr. 30. Air Partner will use its worldwide network of independent operators to provide the airplanes.
