Charles Gregory (see photo) has been appointed president of Aeroflex UTMC of Colorado Springs. He succeeds Charles (Nick) Ide, who is scheduled to retire in March. Gregory was vice president-business development and engineering.
Bell Helicopter Textron is scheduled to begin construction this week on a new facility dedicated to training pilots and mechanics to fly and maintain the Bell 609 civil tiltrotor, which is in the final stages of development by Bell and program partner Agusta in Italy. According to Bell officials, the 84,000-sq.-ft. complex will be built at Alliance Airport north of Fort Worth and house two full flight simulators that will be certified to FAA Level D standards, as well as cockpit procedures trainers and classrooms. A third simulator will be based at Agusta's facilities.
Lynn Gordon has become vice president of the Airport Solutions Div. of the Arconas Corp. of Toronto. She was Vancouver-based head of the Pacific region of Airports Council International and a consultant to the Greater Toronto Airports Authority.
Shareholders of Eurocopter have changed the status of the company to streamline and simplify operations and to reflect the new structure implemented this summer. Eurocopter is now fully owned by the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. (EADS), formed on July 10 by the merger of Aerospatiale Matra, DaimlerChrysler Aerospace and CASA. As a result, the company will be operated as Societe par Actions Simplifiee, or Simplified Stock Co., with a single chairman, executive and supervisory committees.
RGB SPECTRUM'S SUPERVIEW 500 was selected by Bell Boeing and FlightSafety International's Simulation Systems Div. to provide the processor for the instructor's display on the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor simulator. The instructor in the V-22 simulator has to monitor multiple displays and out-the-window views to evaluate pilots' performance, which requires his console to show a combined view of multiple image sources. The V-22 simulator has nine video and computer sources in use.
The ozone hole over Antarctica earlier this month expanded to about 11 million sq. mi., the largest ever observed in the southern hemisphere over Antarctica. The previous largest depletion area in the region was about 10.5 million sq. mi. two years ago. The measurement was recorded using the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) instrument on NASA's Earth Probe (TOMS-EP) satellite.
Lufthansa Technik AG (LHT) said it has bought about 40% of the common stock of Hawker Pacific Aerospace of Sun Valley, Calif. LHT officials said Hawker Pacific was attractive because it holds about 20% of the world market for overhaul of large commercial jet landing gear. Through the purchase of convertible preferred stock, LHT could increase its holdings to 60% if approved by Hawker Pacific's board.
John A. Hackwell, director of the Office of Spectral Applications in Technology Operations at The Aerospace Corp. of Los Angeles, has been selected to receive the George W. Goddard Award from SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. He will be honored for leadership in the development of Long Wavelength Infrared Hyperspectral Imaging for remote sensing and in the design and construction of the Spatially Enhanced Broadband Array Spectrograph System.
Jim Russell, vice president/general manager of the Components Div. of BFGoodrich Aerospace, Charlotte, N.C., will also be acting president of the Aviation Services Div. He succeeds John Martin, who has resigned.
Gary R. Scott has been appointed president of FlightSafety Boeing International of Seattle. He succeeds T. Wakelee Smith, who is leaving the company. Scott was vice president-finance and business strategy for the Commercial Aviation Services unit of the Boeing Commercial Airplanes Group (BCAG).
Continental Airlines has converted deliveries of two Boeing 767-400ERs in 2004 into deliveries of two Boeing 777-200ERs. The two 777s, which will be delivered in early 2002, will be dispatched on the carrier's recently announced nonstop New York-Hong Kong flights. The carrier also placed an order for five Boeing 737-800s to be delivered in the second half of 2002.
Robert F. Leduc, executive vice president of Pratt&Whitney, East Hartford, Conn., is now also chief operating officer. USAF Gen. (Ret.) Lloyd Newton has become vice president-international military programs and business development. He was commander of the Air Education and Training Command.
A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather satellite was launched successfully from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., on Sept. 21. The NOAA-L satellite was boosted into orbit at 3:22 a.m. PDT by a Titan II vehicle from Space Launch Complex-4-West. NOAA-L, called NOAA-16 following launch, was built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co. of Sunnyvale, Calif. NOAA-16 is the second in a series of five polar orbiting satellites with improved imaging and sounding capabilities.
Di Ann Sanchez has become vice president of the BCAG people organization. She succeeds Peter Morton, who has retired. Sanchez was vice president-human resources for Delta Air Lines subsidiary Delta Technology of Atlanta.
SES Astra plans a new family of Ka-band satellites to meet a growing demand for broadband services. The spacecraft, for which a builder is to be selected by year-end, will have a capacity of about 6 Gbps. and weigh 6-7 tons. SES' existing Ku-band fleet was expanded on Sept. 14 when Astra 2B was orbited by an Ariane 5 booster, along with GE Americom's GE-7. It was the third successful commercial mission for the heavy-lift launcher since it entered service last December.
American Airlines has joined GetThere.Com, a direct online ticketing concern that allows carriers to sell directly to corporate travelers. American joins GetThere participants United, Northwest and TWA. By selling directly to corporations, airlines hope to save millions of dollars in distribution costs due to bypassing traditional computer reservations systems. In August, Sabre Holdings, a Fort Worth-based travel services business, announced it would buy GetThere for $757 million in cash. Earlier this year, American spun off Sabre from American's parent, AMR Corp.
Observations made using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory show evidence of a new size of black hole which could open another field of research. Scientists have previously observed black holes which are about the same mass as stars or which are a million or a billion times larger. The Chandra observations show what may be a black hole with a size in-between the two extremes. ``No one was sure that such black holes existed, especially outside the centers of galaxies,'' according to Martin Ward of the University of Leicester in England.
Congress wants a military that can respond quickly, is always brave, never suffers casualties and doesn't cost too much. So Air Combat Command cooked up a plan to put off-the-shelf Army Hellfire missiles on one of the Air Force's operational Predator unmanned aircraft for immediate, low-altitude, rapid-response attacks on pop-up targets. That saves the cost of developing a missile, developing an aerial platform and training a pilot.
In a clandestine program run by Lockheed Martin's legendary Skunk Works, the U.S. Air Force is developing an armed, stealthy, unmanned aircraft small enough to be carried close to its target under the wing of a manned fighter before being launched.
Former acting FAA Administrator Barry Lambert Harris (see photo) has been named Washington-based vice president-government and international operations of Galaxy Aerospace of Fort Worth.
U.S. refinements of lattice- or grid-fin technology--which has been used for decades on Soviet-designed missiles--appears to have opened the door for smaller air-launched weapons and their effective control when launched from an aircraft or missile at supersonic or hypersonic speeds. A lattice fin looks something like a thick, square tennis racket.
The proposed takeover of the TI Group by Smiths Industries signals a major move in the long-awaited consolidation among first-tier European aerospace suppliers.
The U.S. Air Force is turning to extremely high-speed missiles packed with miniature submunitions to destroy fleeting but extremely critical targets such as mobile air defense weapons and ballistic missile launchers. Hypersonic missiles are a focus of interest, although service officials also are exploring the use of conventionally armed ballistic missiles to strike targets hundreds of miles away within a couple of minutes.
Modifications to the elevator of Raytheon Aircraft Co.'s Premier I have delayed FAA certification and customer deliveries of the entry-level business jet until the fourth quarter of this year.
