British Airways has agreed to acquire the British Regional Airlines Group for approximately $113.8 million as part of its effort to consolidate its loss-making short-haul operations. The group, which posted pretax profits of $14.6 million in 2000, includes British Regional, a BA franchise operator since 1995, and Manx Airlines. The acquisition is subject to review by the U.K.'s Office of Fair Trading. BA plans to combine British Regional Airlines Group's operations with those of its Brymon Airways subsidiary.
The Assn. of European Airlines (AEA) has asked the Belgian government to review security measures at Brussels national airport, Zaventem, as a result of numerous thefts during the last six years. In a letter to Transport Minister Isabelle Duran, the AEA urged that additional control measures be implemented to prevent unauthorized access to the airport by vehicles or persons. Should security not improve, AEA airlines could be forced to decline to carry valuable goods from and to Brussels, the letter indicated.
Raytheon Systems Ltd. has signed a contract with the United Arab Emirates General Civil Aviation Authority for an off-mounted Monopulse Second- ary Surveillance Radar, which will be installed at Tarif in Abu Dhabi.
HELICOPTERS TRYING TO SHOOT APPROACHES to oil rigs in low-visibility conditions or performing search-and-rescue (SAR) missions need radars that help them get in as close as possible. While most older radars are blind to targets inside of 1,000 ft., Telephonics has developed a low-cost RDR-1600 radar that the company says will allow pilots to maintain radar contact to within 450 ft. of a target. The RDR-1600 is designed with standard interfaces so radar images can be presented on existing displays in glass cockpits.
Three years ago, the National Civil Aviation Review Commission (NCARC) identified the mismatch between a tax-funded government bureaucracy (the FAA) and the aviation community's need for a high-tech, 24-hr.-a-day air traffic control service business. Spinning off ATC to some form of user-funded corporate entity was not a new idea then; the Air Transport Assn. endorsed it as far back as 1985, the Baliles Commission agreed in 1993, and the Clinton Administration proposed an ATC corporation in 1995. But none of these ideas went anywhere.
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.
