EDITED BY BRUCE D. NORDWALLEDITED BY EDWARD H. PHILLIPS
THE NORTH EUROPEAN ADS NETWORK (NEAN) consortium, led by the Swedish CAA, has awarded Thales ATM a contract to develop five preoperational communication, navigation and surveillance (CNS) ground stations using VHF Data Link Mode 4 (VDL-4). The CNS ground stations will support the air-ground transmission of automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) data and distribute time-critical data to mobile users. In ADS-B, aircraft and ground vehicles continually broadcast their positions for use by air traffic controllers and for traffic awareness by other pilots.
European industry is offering a revised private financing scheme in what may be a final effort to secure a green light for the Galileo global navigation satellite system. European Transport Commissioner Loyola de Palacio said here last week that industry had sent nine letters of intent to invest in the project, which aims to begin operating a network of 30 medium-Earth-orbit navigation satellites in 2008.
Louise Kendle Mnich (see photo) has become vice president/assistant general counsel for Boeing Commercial Airplanes. She was deputy chief counsel for the Boeing Space and Communications Group.
Jose de Jesus Martins has been appointed Miami-based regional manager for the Southern U.S. for Varig Brazilian Airlines. He succeeds Marcelo Bottini, who has been transferred to London. Martins was general manager in Recife, Brazil.
Does aircraft noise affect learning? Port Authority of New York and New Jersey officials think so. Its board of commissioners recently approved $30 million in funding to soundproof 33 schools in New York and New Jersey against the distractions of aircraft noise. Twenty-one New York schools in range of aircraft operating out of JFK and LaGuardia airports and 12 New Jersey schools in the vicinity of Newark International and Teterboro airports will be hushkitted, so to speak. The Port Authority operates all the airports.
C. Patrick DeWitt has been appointed executive vice president, Christopher F. Hoeber senior vice president-business development and strategy, Neil J. Barberis senior vice president-spacecraft programs, Robert J. Owiesny senior vice president-engineering and manufacturing and Ronald A. Haley senior vice president-finance and administration, all for New York-based Space Systems/Loral. DeWitt was executive vice president-business and administration, Hoeber vice president/ chief engineer and Barberis vice president-broadband programs.
EADS' Dornier subsidiary has received a contract from NATO to develop software systems for the future Air Command and Control System (ACCS). Under terms of the $16.6-million contract, Dornier will build on its DIPLAS mission planning system developed for the German air force. The company will supply software for ACCS in conjunction with Raytheon and Thales, which are jointly developing the common, automated air operations command and control system for NATO.
Boeing has moved two doors just ahead of the wing on the Longer Range 767-400ER forward by about 4 ft. because of the larger engines selected for the new derivative. The engines, the Rolls-Royce Trent 600 and Engine Alliance GP7100, are the same propulsion systems intended for the planned Boeing 747X series. The new 767 aircraft, scheduled to begin major assembly in early 2003, is designed to have the passenger-carrying capability of the 767-400ER while matching the longer range of the smaller 767-300ER.
Five European aerospace companies have formed a joint venture to develop a stand-off surveillance and target acquisition radar for NATO's alliance ground surveillance (AGS) program. The new company, Sostar GmbH., comprises EADS (28%), Thales (28%), Italy's FIAR (28%), Spain's Indra (11%) and Fokker Space of the Netherlands (5%). It will have its headquarters at EADS' Dornier subsidiary in Friedrichshafen, Germany.
British European will acquire 20 Avro RJX-100 airliners worth more than $600 million from BAE Systems. British European, the third airline to commit to the new Avro RJX family, signed a memorandum of understanding for 12 firm orders and eight options for 112-seat Avro RJX-100s, bringing the total commitments for the Woodford, England-built Avro RJX to 14 orders, 14 options.
In a sure sign of a shift in direction, Exostar has taken on a new software partner and is leaving the realm of the pure electronic marketplace business model it began with a year ago to provide Internet-based manufacturing services.
Bombardier Aerospace delivered 370 new airplanes during fiscal 2000-01 compared with 292 in the previous fiscal period. Regional jets accounted for a majority of the increase with 157 deliveries--up from 104 last year. Of these, 103 were CRJ Series 100 and 200, 52 were turboprop-powered aircraft, including seven Series Q100/200, 17 Series Q300, and 28 Series Q400. As for business jets, Bombardier reports delivering 203 units during the period, with 36 Global Express, 38 Challenger 604, 36 Learjet 60, 67 Learjet 45 and 26 Learjet 31A aircraft.
Years before confusion between English and metric measurements triggered the loss of the Mars Climate Observer spacecraft in September 1999, NASA had dropped procedures that required waivers for the use of nonmetric units. Noting that, the agency's inspector general (IG) suggests reviving the procedures before there is another costly and embarrassing mistake.
NASA managers will spend this month tightening the agency's belt to reconcile a flat Bush spending proposal for Fiscal 2002 of $14.5 billion with a $1-billion shortfall in the International Space Station program for the same period. In the process, they will try to protect advanced research on space launch technology and even squeeze out a little extra money for a ``smart'' Mars lander as they go.
Astronaut Story Musgrave, who has flown six space shuttle flights including the critical first repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, is taking his experiences on the road with a theatrical presentation set to music. The performance, called ``Space Stories,'' has Musgrave teaming with Jonn Serrie, a composer of ``space-ambient'' music, for the show that combines music with pictures Musgrave took in space projected on a planetarium dome. He will add a theatrical narrative. ``Space is theater,'' said Musgrave.
Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific Airways expanded its Airbus A340 fleet last week with three orders for ultra-long range -600s due in 2002-03, three additional -300s due in June, July and September, and one A330-300 due in November. The A340-600s will be leased from International Lease Finance Corp. The A340-300s are to be leased from Boeing Aircraft Trading and are part of Singapore Airlines former fleet.
BAE Systems reported stable profits for 2000, buoyed by strong sales and orders, reassuring investors after an unexpected profit warning sent shares plunging earlier this year (AW&ST Jan. 15, p. 438). Earnings before interest, exceptional items and goodwill amortization were 950 million pounds ($1.4 billion), down marginally from 1.1 billion pounds (proforma) in 1999. A resumption in earnings growth is forecast for 2002 and beyond.
Delta Air Lines and the Air Line Pilots Assn., which represents the carrier's 9,800 pilots, requested a proffer of arbitration last week from the National Mediation Board (NMB) because a tentative agreement was not reached by the self-imposed Feb. 28 deadline.
For years, software vendors have tried to convince airline maintenance executives of the need to purchase costly new infotech tools to manage their base- and line-maintenance operations.
U.S. Navy aviators were hoping to spend the next several months getting the F/A-18E/F ready for its first deployment, but instead are being distracted by an unusual budget crunch that could reduce the number of aircraft available in the near term.
President Bush's defense program funding levels and policy initiatives won't be announced until the Pentagon's strategic review is completed in a month or so, but the skeletal Fiscal 2002 defense budget of $310.5 billion issued last week calls for a $2.6-billion R&D initiative for missile defense and new technologies. No breakout was proffered on how the $2.6 billion would be split up, but the new money is to be applied to missile defense alternatives that go beyond the Clinton Administration's limited ground-based scheme of 100 interceptors.
Controllers at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory sent a final series of commands to NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) probe last week, after researchers gathered an unexpected 14 days of gamma ray spectrometry on the surface of the asteroid Eros. The probe, designed as an orbiter, became the first to land on an asteroid following a Feb. 12 descent to the surface intended only to give scientists close-up images of the 21-mi.-long space rock (AW&ST Feb. 19, p. 24).
Ed Napierkowski (see photos) has become vice president-OEM sales and marketing, Marc Alter vice president-technology and Rick Paolella vice president-operations of Seal Dynamics Inc., Deer Park, N.Y.
Sikorsky Support Services Inc. will provide service support for U.S. Navy F-5E/F Tiger II aircraft in the Tactical Air Warfare program. The one-year service contract with six one-year options is valued at more than $100 million.
Intersputnik has contracted with Khrunichev to build and launch the first two units of a new family of small telecommunications satellites that are intended to develop unoccupied orbital positions more quickly and cheaply than standard spacecraft. The satellites will use the new Yacht bus developed by Khrunichev for telecommunications, remote sensing and space exploration applications. This bus features a useful life of 10-12 years and provides 2.7 kw. of power end-of-life (AW&ST Mar. 6, 2000, p. 52).
