An Environmental Protection Agency study of air quality around O'Hare International Airport, begun in June, may help resolve a growing debate over the cancer risks posed by air toxins generated by aircraft using large hubs. Analysis of a prior survey, commissioned by four neighboring suburbs and released last week, said air pollution generated by O'Hare has raised cancer risks beyond acceptable levels in the surrounding area and as much as 100 times the federal target level of 1 in a million persons established in a related court case.
Avtec Systems has received an order to supply high-speed front-end telemetry processing systems to the University of California at Berkeley for a High-Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager spacecraft for the next mission in the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Small Explorer series of space missions.
Pechiney Aerospace, a division of the Pechiney group, expects to double its commercial transport-related revenues and significantly increase its share in the U.S. market in the next five years, according to company executives.
David Weil has been named chief financial officer, based in San Francisco, of TAG Aviation Holding. He was executive vice president/CFO of TAG Aviation USA. Mark Dennen has become vice president-finance.
Philippe Olivier Boutarud has become general manager of Galaxy Brasil for Gal- axy Latin America, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was managing director of consumer products for Johnson&Johnson in Brazil.
SILICON GRAPHICS INC. (SGI) AND NASA AMES plan to collaborate to develop a 1,024-processor Origin 3000 series system for research in aeronautics, earth and life sciences. NASA has ordered two 512-processor SGI Origin 3800 systems which will be combined as a testbed for the 1,024-processor supercomputer, with a target date of February 2001. The new processors will have the largest shared memory configurations currently available. NASA expects the new architecture to deliver about six times the performance of the 512-processor system.
Look for regional jets to be one of the first joint purchases by large international airline alliances. Most airlines don't yet have large fleets of regional jets, and joint purchases wouldn't be complicated by ``legacy'' aircraft types with unique, expensive-to-change configurations, according to Dietmar Kirchner, senior vice president for purchasing and properties at Lufthansa, a Star Alliance member. Increasing co-ownership between alliances will further promote joint purchasing, he said.
ITT Industries Night Vision Div. has won a $43-million contract to produce and deliver 2,252 AN/AVS-9 Night Vision Image Intensifier Sets. Deliveries are scheduled to begin in early 2001.
Glenn Tynan has been named corporate controller of the Curtiss-Wright Corp., Lyndhurst, N.J. He was vice president/corporate controller of the Movado Group.
The U.S. Air Force has exceeded its Fiscal 2000 recruiting goals, recently signing its 34,000th enlistment contract for the year, which ends Sept. 30. Last year, the service missed its recruitment goal for the first time in 20 years. An increase in recruiters, targeted enlistment bonuses in hard-to-fill areas and a first-ever paid television advertising campaign contributed to the success, according to the service.
The Pentagon and the State Dept. are about to name those military items to be granted faster export licensing in support of NATO's modernization program, the Defense Capabilities Initiative. The two agencies are negotiating the final DCI list, says a senior State Dept. official. Under the government's Defense Trade Security Initiative announced last May, some review timelines have already been cut. Commercial satellite licensing has been reduced to 14 from 18 working days within the State Dept., and to 41 days from 70 when other agencies are involved.
Washington scored a rare ``first'' last week--unanimity that space shuttle workforce reductions in the 1990s went too far. Mirabile dictu, NASA agrees with a General Accounting Office (GAO) report lauding the space agency for rebuilding shuttle program staffing both internally and with contractors. Budget cutbacks and moves by NASA Administrator Dan Goldin had reduced shuttle staffing by one-third since 1995.
Parametric Technologies Corp. President and CEO C. Richard Harrison says his company is shifting its e-market strategy in recognition that business-to-business exchanges are rapidly progressing beyond an initial focus on procurement. He sees shared services that make it easier for trading partners to collaborate as a new e-market necessity.
The U.S. Army is evaluating changes it should make to the small fleet of RC-7 Airborne Reconnaissance Low (ARL) intelligence-gathering aircraft to keep it operationally effective for another 15 years. The planning centers on building the next multifunction ARL (ARL-M) for which Congress provided money earlier this year. The Army operates two ARLs that are configured for communications intelligence, while the five existing ARL-Ms are also equipped with a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and imaging sensors. The lone imagery-only ARL crashed last year.
The temporary grounding of three types of U.S. Marine Corps aircraft in the same week has raised some troubling questions about the state of the service's aviation program, although senior service officials say their worries lie with modernization and not the here-and-now.
THE INTERNATIONAL HARM MISSILE UPGRADE program has received the first of Rockwell Collins' NavStrike II GPS receivers, designed for missile and munition applications. The receiver has a Selective Availability Anti-Spoofing Module (SAASM) with a tamper-resistant coating that protects classified elements by self-destructing if anyone tries to probe and read the embedded software. A multichip security module will simplify the logistics of future government software upgrades, using unclassified ``black'' crypto keys, rather than the classified ``red'' keys used today.
Guenter J. Hude has been appointed New York-based general manager for the Americas of Austrian Airlines.He succeeds Franz Zoechbauer, who has been promoted to vice president-cargo and will work at Vienna International Airport. Hude was a manager of sales, service and operations in other international markets.
ARINC has delivered 17 multi-user system environment workstations to London Heathrow Airport. They will allow common use of terminal equipment for airlines, ground handlers, charters and reservations.
An internal study has been launched at Lufthansa to determine the German carrier's requirements in the very large aircraft segment. The airline intends to decide by the first quarter of 2001 if it will order the Airbus A3XX or the Boeing 747X. A Lufthansa order would be a significant boost for either of the two programs.
Israel for years suffered 20-25 or more soldiers killed each year by terrorists attacking army patrols in southern Lebanon before the recent withdrawal of the Israel Defense Force.
Outcome of the vote to have Iberia Airlines' U.S.-based cabin crewmembers represented by the Assn. of Flight Attendants (AFA) will be determined on Sept. 27. According to the AFA, this marks the first time such a union has filed to represent a foreign carrier's cabin crewmembers living in the U.S., and the National Mediation Board has approved an election. About 40 of the Spanish national carrier's flight attendants are domiciled at Miami, from which Iberia operates only to Central and South America destinations.
Former astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Eugene A. Cernan have been enshrined in the National Aviation Hall of Fame, Dayton, Ohio. Also enshrined, posthumously, were Laurence C. Craigie and Thomas B. McGuire, Jr. Craigie was the first military pilot to fly a jet, the XP-59 Airacomet. McGuire was the second leading ace pilot in U.S. military history.
