Marcus C. Hansen, president of Lockheed Martin Management and Data Systems, King of Prussia, Pa., has received the Outstanding Science Alumni Award from Pennsylvania State University's Eberly College of Science. He is Lockheed Martin corporate liaison to Penn State and serves on the advisory board for its School of Information Sciences and Technology.
Kenneth Sowa has been named director of aircraft sales of Rifton Aviation Services, Newburgh, N.Y. He was vice president-aircraft sales for the Flight Services Group.
Irish charter and wet-lease specialist TransAer has filed for liquidation after failing to win financial backing from potential investors. Established in 1992 under the name Translift, the carrier has a fleet of nine Airbus A320s and four A300s, and employs more than 500 people. Clients include Air France and Libyan Arab Airlines, both of which have wet-leased two A320s from the Dublin-based carrier. This month TransAer received a contract to assist in the startup of an airline in Kosovo--AirKosova.
UAL Corp. has formed United NewVentures, a company designed to seek out emerging business opportunities for United Airlines, including e-businesses and frequent-flier partnerships. Doug Hacker, executive vice president and chief financial officer of United Airlines, also will serve as president of United NewVentures.
Bruno Matheu has become board chairman of Regional Airlines, an Air France subsidiary. He succeeds Jean-Paul Dubreuil, who has retired. Matheu will remain senior vice president-network management of Air France.
Olivier Boulart (see photo) has been appointed director of e-services for Thomson-CSF Sextant In-Flight Systems, Irvine, Calif. He was vice president-information systems at Thomson-CSF in France.
Northrop Grumman is entering the space launcher business under a teaming agreement with Orbital Sciences Corp. Northrop Grumman will provide systems integration and composite structures for Orbital on projects related to NASA's next-generation reusable launch vehicle and other space systems.
Longstanding frictions between Turkey and Greece regarding territorial issues in the Aegean Sea erupted once again during a NATO military exercise in the region.
Criticism is eddying all around schemes for a sea-based missile defense in response to the George W. Bush presidential campaign's endorsement of a broader system that would not depend solely on 100 or so ground-based interceptors, as the Pentagon's current plan does.
Swiss regional carrier Crossair is looking at dropping loss-producing routes in the next few months and selling 5-10 aircraft as part of a plan to regain profitability.
United Airlines is taking daily advantage of the shorter distance over the North Pole for its Chicago to Hong Kong flight and plans to start daily nonstop flights to Delhi on Apr. 1. Although revenue flights, these are technically operating on a ``demonstration'' basis, approved by Russia monthly, pending a revision of the U.S./Russian bilateral aviation agreements. The new routes result from a joint study by Nav Canada and the Federal Aviation Authority of Russia which concluded that flights over the pole were feasible (AW&ST Oct. 16, p. 25).
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.
