AMR Corp. Chairman and CEO Donald Carty has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission his intention to sell 57,200 common shares valued at $2.1 million, while Vice Chairman Robert Baker filed to sell 47,400 shares worth $1.8 million. The options had reached their 10-year maturity and were set to expire unless they were exercised, according to an AMR official.
Continental and Northwest airlines are the latest suitors to line up for certain assets of bankrupt Trans World Airlines, a carrier that American Airlines wants to buy whole for around $500 million. In separate filings submitted last week to a U.S. bankruptcy court, Continental offered up to $400 million for TWA's slots, gates and airport facilities at New York LaGuardia, Chicago O'Hare and Reagan National airports. Northwest stated it would pay around $200 million for TWA's 26% stake in Worldspan, a computer reservation network.
Raytheon Co. will provide information technology services to the NASA/Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. The company is teaming with NCI Information Systems, Analytical Services and Materials, Aerospace Computing and the Software Factory to support Web-enabled applications development, hardware/software maintenance, systems administration and database design at Langley.
The poor performance of several commercial satellite ventures and other factors that have caused capital markets to become more stingy are making it increasingly difficult for new and on-going projects to raise the equity they need.
The Air Force plans to delay the purchase of 14 F-22s so it can finance $475 million in initiatives designed to cut production costs, says acquisition official Darlene Druyun. The goal is to offset $2 billion in anticipated manufacturing costs to get the program under its congressionally imposed production cap of $48 billion. However, the money won't be enough to offset a larger overrun of $8 billion that independent cost estimators project. The ``investment'' will be used to finance production improvements.
U.S. and foreign air carriers transported 137 million passengers between the U.S. and abroad for the year ending June 2000, a 6.9% increase over the previous year, a Transportation Dept. report says. U.S. and foreign airlines hauled 7.9 million freight tons to and from the U.S., a 4.9% increase from the previous 12 months. The U.K., Canada, Mexico, Japan and Germany were the top five foreign countries in passenger traffic to and from the U.S.
Michael Sands has been named vice president-marketing, Michael Sites vice president-product marketing and Gerhard Romanescu vice president-customer care for Chicago-based Orbitz. Sands was a marketing executive at the Oldsmobile division of General Motors. Sites was vice president of e-commerce at Sabre. Romanescu was vice president-customer care management in Zurich and Brussels for Swissair/Sabena AMP.
Japan Airlines (JAL) has taken 100% ownership of JALways, its low-cost subsidiary that serves resort destinations in Hawaii, Guam, Saipan and Bangkok. JAL had owned 80% of JALways stock, with the remainder held by various shareholders, including banks and Japan Asia Airways.
The first of eight Sikorsky S-70B Seahawk helicopters for the Turkish navy made its first flight at the company's Stratford, Conn., headquarters earlier this month. The aircraft is equipped to conduct antisubmarine, antisurface warfare, maritime patrol and search and rescue missions. The Turkish S-70Bs will operate from MEKO and FFG-7 class frigates. Aircraft deliveries begin this year and should end in 2002.
As the Bush defense mavens settle in, they are expressing an early predilection to press on with the F-22 program and go slow on development of a National Missile Defense (NMD). One idea afloat is to start with the more flexible boost-phase missile defense system on Aegis cruisers and then migrate missile defenses to space, thereby ``getting away from [a land-based] umbrella defense concept for all of the U.S. and its allies,'' a senior military official said. Military planners want to make sure that NMD expenses don't derail aircraft modernization.
Burt Rutan and 10 investors have reacquired Scaled Composites after owner Wyman Gordon was bought by Precision Castparts Corp. The Mojave, Calif.-based research and development company has been renamed Scaled Composites LLC, with Rutan as president/CEO. Precision Castparts had placed Scaled Composites on the market and Rutan feared that a new owner, especially a large aerospace business, would cripple the company's innovative spirit. Its Proteus high-altitude aircraft has been bought from Precision Castparts by Northrop Grumman as a sensor and mission platform.
Skynet Asia plans to become the fourth Japanese low-cost airline in March 2002, with the initiation of three daily round trips with a leased Boeing 737-400 between its base at Miyazaki on Kyushu Island--a popular honeymoon destination--and Tokyo. The other three low-cost carriers are Skymark, Air Do and Fairlink. The market, one of the most profitable in Japan, is now served by Japan Airlines, All Nippon Airways and Japan Air System with a total of 11 flights daily. In 1999, Tokyo-Miyazaki services carried 1.25 million passengers.
Stanley J. Hill has been appointed to the board of directors of First Aviation Services Inc., Westport, Conn. He recently retired as president/CEO/chairman of the Kaiser Aerospace and Electronics Corp. Hill succeeds Joshua S. Friedman, who has completed his term as a director.
Hamburg-based Lufthansa Technik AG is simultaneously expanding its repair of airframe components into North America and Asia. It has acquired Composite International in Tulsa, Okla., and is establishing a joint venture with two local companies in Shenzhen, China, to create a repair facility. Composite International has two autoclaves for curing composite materials. The repair station would specialize in wheel and brake maintenance.
Monte E. Ford has been named senior vice president/chief information officer of American Airlines. He was executive vice president/CIO of the Associates First Capital Corp. Ford succeeds Scott D. Nason, who is now vice president-research and analysis. John R. Samuel, who has been vice president-interactive marketing, has become vice president for e-business.
The U.S. Air Force has retired its Advanced Fighter Technology Integration F-16 after more than 22 years of service to the flight test community. It was flown to Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, early this month where it will be displayed in the Air Force Museum. The airplane, which first flew in April 1978, was the sixth F-16A built and the seventh of eight F-16s used in the Full-Scale Development program. During its service life, the airplane underwent a wide range of modifications and demonstrated advanced technologies developed through 10 different test programs.
As efforts begin to streamline export controls (see p. 30), a key intelligence report says policing trade will become much harder in the next 15 years. Export sanctions will continue to lose their punch, not only because of the global diffusion of technology, but also because of defense industry consolidation and heightened reliance on foreign markets to maintain profitability. The analysis predicts dual-use technologies such as GPS, satellite imagery and communications will make it ever more difficult to maintain technological superiority for very long.
The FAA is investigating what caused the near-collision of two MD-80 aircraft last week at Seattle-Tacoma airport. The tower apparently directed arriving American Airlines Flight 1991 from Dallas to exit from Runway 16R and cross departure Runway 16L, according to the FAA Northwest Mountain Region spokesman. As American crossed 16L, departing TWA Flight 24 lifted off, just clearing Flight 1991--but exactly by how much has not yet been established, says the FAA.
Spain has signed a 109-million-euro ($102-million) contract with EADS' Military Transport Aircraft Div. to upgrade five P-3B maritime patrol/anti-submarine warfare aircraft with new mission systems. The first modified aircraft will be delivered in September 2003. The work will be performed at EADS' facility in Getafe, Spain.
A legal challenge to parcel express company DHL by competitors FedEx and UPS threatens to carry the imbroglio over the growing integration of mail and parcel express activities from Europe to the U.S. FedEx and UPS filed separate complaints last week asking the U.S. Transportation Dept. to rescind the licenses of DHL Airways to operate in the U.S. Redwood City, Calif.-based DHL Airways is partly owned by DHL International of Brussels, which was taken over by the German postal service, Deutsche Post, last fall (AW&ST Sept. 25, 2000, p. 70).
Turkey's sudden decision to scrap a $249-million deal for surveillance satellites with Alcatel of France has reopened the door for Israeli and U.S. bidders. Turkey took the action in retaliation against a resolution passed by the French parliament that labeled the killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks more than 85 years ago as genocide. Senior Turkish officials warned that additional French companies could be excluded from bidding for several other lucrative arms contracts if the resolution was not reversed.
According to Pakistani press reports, scientists there are awaiting approval from the military government to test-fire the country's 3,000-km. long-range Ghauri II missile. Such action would likely be in response to India's test this month of its upgraded two-stage Agni-II intermediate-range ballistic missile--which Pakistan viewed as a direct threat (AW&ST Jan. 22, p. 19).
The Russian unmanned Progress M1-5 spacecraft carrying nearly 2,700 kg. of propellant to deorbit the 140-ton Mir space station was launched on Jan. 24 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. A different Progress M-43 spacecraft that had been docked to Mir's aft port was undocked on Jan. 25 to clear the way for the new Progress that was to dock on Jan. 27. The launch was delayed several days until Russian ground controllers could regain the station's attitude control. Deorbit of the station is planned by mid-March.
Like those after-Christmas offerings in the mail, this is the season for the industry's e-catalogs. Rockwell Collins' Government Systems 2001 is one e-glossy example, offering product overviews, descriptions, pricing, specs, etc. for its customers at www.collins.rockwell.com/ecat. . . .Japan Airlines says it will outsource its information technology systems development, operation and maintenance to IBM Japan. The agreement calls for IBM Japan to provide general IT expertise in support of the airline's JAL Infotech subsidiary. . .
