Raytheon is protesting the FAA's intent to award a huge, open-ended contract to upgrade the nation's air traffic control system to Lockheed Martin on a sole-source basis, and will submit its own proposal to the agency.
Aerospace's only mating of manufacturers and their airline customers in a common buy-and-sell electronic marketplace has been officially spun off by its owners into a separate company.
Support for F/A-18, F-14 and SH-60 aircraft based at the U.S. Navy's ``Top Gun'' school at the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center at NAS Fallon, Nev., will continue to be performed by Boeing for the next seven years under a contract worth $150 million. The agreement includes an option to support F-16 adversary fighters that will be based at the facility.
Mark J. Coleman has been appointed chief operating officer of the Mercury Air Group Inc. of Los Angeles. He will continue as president of subsidiary RPA Airline Automation Services Inc. As COO, Coleman succeeds J.R. (Butch) Bouch- ard, who has retired.
Kichisaburo Nomura has been appointed chairman of All Nippon Airways, effective Apr. 1. He was president/CEO and will be succeeded by Yoji Ohashi, who has been senior executive vice president-sales and marketing.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is expanding production of fuselage sections for Bombardier CRJ700 and CRJ900 regional jets. Near-term plans call for doubling the number of aft fuselages to four per month, followed by an increase to eight each month after a new production line is completed at Nagoya Aerospace Systems Works. The increase is intended to help meet demand for Bombardier's regional jets, as well as aid Mitsubishi's efforts to shift work to the civil market from the defense sector. The CRJ900, which seats up to 90 passengers, made its first flight Feb. 21.
Fourteen of 18 members of the Assn. of Asia-Pacific Airlines operate Airbus aircraft, so they were a good group for a case study of how online ordering could cut transaction costs. Ten of the 14 use the SPEC2000 electronic documentation standard that Airbus favors for online ordering. Six of the 14 order parts directly using Spares.airbus.com.
The FAA has issued an airworthiness directive setting limits on when operators of General Electric CF6-50 powerplants should inspect and take corrective actions concerning nozzle locks on the engines' second-stage low-pressure turbine.
It's anyone's guess whether KLM Royal Dutch Airlines has or will make a bid for British Airways' low-cost carrier Go. Conflicting press reports had KLM and a private investment group making a conditional $147.1-million offer for Go. In another report, KLM denied that it made a bid for Go and was still studying whether or not to expand operations in the low-cost market. Some analysts question why KLM would want Go when it already has Buzz, a low-cost competitor based at London Stansted.
Daniel Caron (see photo) has become general manager of Howmet's Laval (Quebec) Casting operation. He was president of the Heroux-Devtek Landing Gear Div.
Sandi Walker, chief information officer and vice president for e-business at Bell Helicopter Textron, says she concentrated on the basics while transforming Bell from ``a company that builds helicopters to a company that does helicoptering.'' The effort was part of a company-wide Textron initiative for meeting 21st century business expectations. Her first task was to assure that Bell had sufficient bandwidth to satisfy customer and supply chain responses for its Vista extranet customer service center last year.
James P. Rankin has become president/CEO of Astral Aviation Inc. of Milwaukee, parent company of Skyway Airlines, The Midwest Express Connection. He was assistant chief pilot and an MD-80 captain for Midwest Express Airlines.
Raytheon Co.'s former Engineers and Constructors International business unit, which was sold to Washington Group International Inc. (WGI) last July, continues to be a problem for the defense contractor.
Don't hold your breath for the Bush Administration's Fiscal 2002 defense budget. Although the overall budget number was out in late February, hopes that details of the $310-billion request would materialize in April are evaporating. The latest guess of Pentagon officials is that specific program requests won't go to Congress until early June.
Three unions at financially beleaguered Aerolineas Argentinas and domestic subsidiary Austral have threatened to strike over the planned shrinkage of the carriers by the majority shareholder SEPI, a Spanish holding company. According to labor leaders, this threatened strike was prompted by an announcement from Argentina's departments of transportation and labor that SEPI planned to lay off 1,117 workers as part of the rescue plan proposed four months ago. Already, management has suspended airline service to eight cities because they were unprofitable.
European no frills-carriers are beginning to expand beyond their original habitat in Ireland and the U.K. into continental Europe, where they threaten to take market share away from traditional airlines. The first victim could be struggling Belgian carrier Sabena. Dublin-based Ryanair, one of the most successful of the low-cost startups, late last month announced that it would set up a continental base of operations at Charleroi airport, a small facility south of Brussels.
The U.K.'s Air Accident Investigations Branch (AAIB) reports that a Boeing 757 first officer suffered temporary paralysis and a chest wound last October when his aircraft was struck by lightning at 5,000 ft. on approach to Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. According to the AAIB, the 16,300-hr. pilot said he felt like he had been ``kicked in the chest'' after hearing a ``loud bang'' and seeing a ``bright flash'' in the windscreen as he guided the aircraft between two decaying storm cells on the approach.
President George W. Bush's defense program, which only two months ago was widely expected to be a scaled-down version of Ronald Reagan's 1980s buildup, is coming to look like a shake-up instead.
The Predator unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, already an operational standout in three conflicts, may be the victim of internecine conflict within the U.S. Air Force that could slow its development as a weapon carrier and as a testbed for future unmanned air combat vehicle designs.
Rolls-Royce Engine Services-Indianapolis has given Epicor Software Corp. a boost by ordering its Impresa software to manage its military and civil turbine engine maintenance and overhaul operations . . . Simulyze Inc. has developed Flight Control as an add-on module to Analytical Graphics' Satellite Tool Kit (STK) to create a 3D virtual battlespace environment. Flight Control is a commercial off-the-shelf tool that allows users to integrate diverse planning data and near-real-time operational and intelligence data with the STK's analysis and visualization capabilities.
Boeing has decided to boost the aerodynamic efficiency of the wing on the planned 747X by reshaping the full span in order to apply 777-and-beyond supercritical airfoil technology. The company had intended to significantly modify the 747 wing for the 747X model with features such as a 105-in. wing root insert and new wingtip design, but recently decided to recontour the entire airfoil to meet program requirements for aerodynamic efficiency.
U.S. and International Space Station managers are initiating a fast-paced effort to define ISS modifications that would regain capability lost by the planned cancellation of the U.S. Crew Rescue Vehicle (CRV) and habitation module under Bush Administration budget cuts. The station modification effort is on a faster track than reformation of the reusable launch vehicle technology program. The accelerated pace is needed because the station changes:
