A fresh focus on aviation weather forecasting is expected at the National Weather Service (NWS), where a two-year leadership void has been filled. Mark Andrews, who spent 20 of his 21 years in meteorology in the Air Force, is the new chief of NWS' aviation weather services branch. Andrews was named by Air Force Brig. Gen. (ret.) Jack Kelly, NWS director and an apostle of better aviation forecasting.
Patrick Gavin has become senior vice president-customer services of Airbus Industrie. He was chief executive of Eurocopter and is being succeeded by Jean-Francois Bigay.
United Airlines is testing 25 airport self check-in kiosks (USCs) at O'Hare International Airport that will allow passengers to book passage for any mainline, United Shuttle or United Express flights in North America. The kiosks will issue boarding passes after customers answer FAA-mandated security-related questions on USC screens. Passengers can add their frequent-flier numbers to the transactions and receive United first- or business-class upgrades.
British Labour government plans to partially privatize National Air Traffic Services (NATS) were dealt a severe blow last week when the House of Lords voted to delay the controversial move until at least next year. The government was able to stave off a separate amendment calling for NATS to be run along the lines of a not-for-profit trust.
Leisure travel specialist LTU International Airways will become a member of the Qualiflyer Group, an alliance of European carriers affiliated with the SAirGroup. Balair, another affiliated charter carrier, will also join the Qualiflyer Group, alongside Air Europe and Volare, two Italian charter operators. Swissair-led SAirGroup had initially set up a separate alliance, dubbed the European Leisure Group, for its associated charter airlines.
Overall U.S. government spending on space hardware and research probably will continue to grow steadily, if slowly, in the coming years, as the military's push for new space systems to support forces inside the atmosphere is offset by NASA's efforts to cut costs by shifting to commercial spacecraft.
U.S. Navy Adm. (ret.) Charles R. Larson has been named to the board of directors of the Northrop Grumman Corp. of Los Angeles. He is a consultant on defense, foreign policy and education issues to government and industry. Larson was commander in the Pacific and later superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy.
Litton Industries' board of directors has authorized management to explore the sale of the company's Advanced Electronics group, which makes up Litton's navigation and electronic warfare business. The business generated $1.6 billion in revenues during fiscal year 2000, and is involved in avionics systems, inertial navigation, night vision equipment and lasers. The group has about 9,500 employees.
LanChile's year-old joint endeavor with Lufthansa Flight Training in Santiago is set to be the first of a larger training effort for the two in South America.
PricewaterhouseCoopers is making a civilian version of the Los Alamos National Laboratory's Transims program, which was funded by the Transportation Dept. to simulate daily multimodal travel in a region, based on actual census and survey data. Local planning agencies will be able to use Transims to estimate air pollution, which can be a factor in airport expansion.
The U.S. Air Force and its F-22 Raptor contractor team completed the first AIM-120C Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile test launch last week, meeting a critical milestone required to release production funding. The unguided Amraam was fired in wings-level flight at Mach 0.9 and 15,500 ft. over the Navy's China Lake ranges north of Edwards AFB, Calif., on Oct. 24. The shot followed an intense period of ground testing, which included ejecting dummy AIM-120Cs into a sand pit to verify end-to-end operation of the launcher system.
Deutsche Post has agreed to abandon discounts allowed for large mail-order clients--an arrangement that had been opposed both by the European Commission and the German government. New evidence of Deutsche Post's mail order practice, including fidelity and target rebates, had led the EC in early October to widen ongoing proceedings against the postal authority for abuse of dominant position. The EC is also investigating the postal authority for illegal state subsidies (AW&ST Oct. 23, p. 79).
A Continental Airlines official says the design of the Air France Concorde that crashed July 25 after takeoff from Paris may be flawed if a blown tire can lead to a catastrophic accident. The remarks came in response to two lawsuits filed against the carrier, one by families of passengers killed in the accident, and another by Air France.
At the urging of the U.S., and particularly the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on basic telecommunications included satellite services. With the world's largest private satellite fleet, U.S. industry expected to benefit greatly from the opening of domestic satellite markets to competition from around the world. And it has. But the inclusion of satellite services in the WTO has had consequences that do not seem to have been fully anticipated--or fully accepted--by the FCC and some U.S. satellite operators.
A moving aircraft assembly line modeled after the Toyota production system is about to begin preliminary operations at Boeing's 717 assembly facility in Long Beach, Calif. Michael E. Graziano, lean enterprise director at Boeing's Long Beach Div., said six 717-200s will be mounted on rolling support stands guided by rails down the 1,140-ft. assembly line. The line is moved by two large chain drive systems installed under the floor of the 600,000-sq.-ft. factory (AW&ST June 19, p. 43).
Sir Richard Branson, founder/chairman of Virgin Atlantic Airways, has received the 2000 Tony Jannus Award, which is sponsored by the Greater Tampa (Fla.) and St. Petersburg Area Chambers of Commerce. The award recognizes contributions within the commercial aviation industry. Jannus was the pilot of the sole aircraft belonging to the first scheduled airline, which began service on Jan. 1, 1914. The aircraft, a Benoist airboat, flew daily round-trips between Tampa and St. Petersburg.
Thomson-CSF Sextant has delivered the first Quasar 3000 next-generation inertial guidance system for the Ariane 5 heavy-lift launch vehicle. The system is derived from Thomson's Pixyz 22--a 22-cm.(8.6-in.), three-axis ring laser gyro that offers weight, volume and cost savings while increasing reliability and performance. The initial unit will be used to qualify a new Vehicle Equipment Bay being developed by Astrium under the Ariane 5 cost-reduction initiative. The first production system is scheduled for a mission early in 2002.
Just six years after its total privatization, LanChile has emerged as Latin America's leading airline, both financially and in service quality. While most carriers in the region have struggled, lost money and market share to their larger U.S. rivals, and others have been bankrupted, LanChile has endured without a scratch. In fact, the small Chilean carrier has strengthened during a two-year period during which time the best term to describe Latin American airline operations is ``consistently chaotic.''
Bombardier Aerospace is previewing a customer e-business site with selected customers that it intends to launch in the first quarter of 2001. Rob Gillespie, president of Bombardier Aerospace Business Aircraft, said that besides delivering basic information, the site will serve as an application service provider to make aircraft-management software tools available to customers.
Telemedicine is coming back down to Earth. A few years ago, anyone talking about telemedicine was probably talking about mostly satellite-based transmission of complex medical data, moving video images, radiology films and the like. It was sci-fi--live consultations, across continents, with the top surgical experts in the world watching a TV screen to see images of a surgery taking place and medical colleagues doing the work.
Jeffrey R. Probst has been named director of North American marketing, Gary G. Adkins director of federal sales for North America, Howard J. Klayman director of the customer service center in Lanham, Md., Todd F. Anderson director of international sales and marketing and Charles F. Visser director of international operations, all for Space Imaging, Thornton, Colo. Probst was vice president of marketing and business development of Mark VII Equipment Inc.
Matra BAe Dynamics has unveiled the Tetral naval air defense surface-to-air system that is tentatively set to enter service in late 2002. European and Asian navies have expressed interest, and launch orders could be concluded soon, according to a company executive.
NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission came closer than any spacecraft has been to an asteroid when it passed just 5.3 km. (3.3 mi.) above the surface of 433 Eros on Oct. 26. The pass produced images with three times better resolution than anything seen to date. The spacecraft has been raised to a 125-mi.-high parking orbit. Its next big test comes Feb. 12 when it will undergo a controlled descent onto Eros' surface. Scientists hope to get images with 12-times higher resolution in the final moments of that operation.
