ARINC will supply Aero-H, Aero-H+, and Aero-I satellite voice and data services for Continental Airlines' fleet of Boeing 767 and 777 aircraft, under a five-year contract.
Elbit Systems Ltd. of Israel has received a contract to upgrade F-5 aircraft for the Royal Thai Air Force. Elbit is expected to provide equipment, maintenance and logistic support for 31 aircraft under the four-year, $66-million work order.
As a key congressional committee tries to tighten the Clinton Administration's proposed reforms on licensing of weapons exports (see p. 57), the same panel moves to make life easier for exporters of commercial satellites. The House International Relations Committee adopted measures by Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) and Sam Gejdenson (D-Conn.) that would end congressional review of the satellites for export for launch, as long as they are to be launched from, or by nationals of, NATO members, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the Russian Federation and Ukraine.
Chief Executive Michael O'Leary would be the first to point out that Ryanair Holdings plc could never have survived--let alone excelled in its niche--if Europe's commercial air transport industry had not been deregulated, anymore than Southwest Airlines could have achieved its legendary success in a regulated U.S. industry. ``Southwest set the example for disciplined growth by a low-fare, no-frills carrier. All we're trying to do is copy the master and pay homage to the Southwest model in Europe,'' he said.
India Defense Ministry's continued delay in introducing the Sukhoi Su-30MK into service has drawn sharp criticism from the country's comptroller and auditor general. The CAG points out only eight aircraft--of an expected 20--have been received and that these are ``only air defense versions.'' Not one upgraded Su-30MK multirole aircraft has been delivered since the beginning of 2000, despite an investment of $600 million and a delay of 24 months, according to the CAG's latest defense services report.
EDS has won a $2.1-billion contract running until 2012 to provide global information technology services, including electronic business, consulting and supply-chain management, for Rolls-Royce. EDS already provides information technology services to Rolls-Royce in the U.K. and North America.
The European parliament and a French prosecutor, in unrelated moves, plan to investigate the U.S. National Security Agency's Echelon electronic surveillance network. European politicians and economic intelligence experts in the last few months have claimed repeatedly that NSA's highly classified Echelon network, believed to involve up to 120 geostationary spacecraft, is being used to intercept phone, fax and e-mail communications to obtain sensitive economic, military and industrial information.
European aerospace companies continued their steady growth in 1999 as overall revenues rose 5% to 65.6 billion euros ($62.3 billion), or 2.9% when adjusted for inflation, amid consolidation moves that began in earnest last year.
Responding to the latest uproar about security at Los Alamos National Laboratory, current and former senior officials at several Energy Dept. labs are citing a litany of problems beyond their control. Rather than a lax attitude about security, they say, the root cause of security lapses can be found in myriad shifts in policies under several presidential administrations, a string of poor Energy Dept. leaders in Washington, a decade of stingy budgets, evolving technology and antinuclear arms agendas.
The final element in an international space fleet intended to perform the most comprehensive study ever of solar activity, and its effect on the terrestrial environment, is scheduled to begin deployment this week with the launch of two Cluster II satellites.
The FAA has issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would require U.S. airlines using a Flight Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA) program to share data with the agency. FAA officials would use the information to help identify safety trends stemming from daily flight operations, training, maintenance, engineering procedures and air traffic control. Data would not be used for enforcement purposes, except in ``egregious cases'' where an intentional or flagrant violation of the regulations was committed, according to the agency.
UNITED AIRLINES IS STARTING a new wireless service that will let users check on flight arrival time and gates, as well as verifying the type of plane used and the on-time performance for that route. Travelers can also register for a United Proactive Paging Service that will confirm that a flight is on time and the gate number, as well as notifying of delays or cancellations. To use the service a Palm VII handheld computer using Palm.Net service, or an OmniSky-equipped Palm V or Vx will be needed.
The crash of John F. Kennedy, Jr.'s, Piper PA-32R-301 Saratoga on July 16, 1999, near Martha's Vineyard, Mass., was caused by the ``pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane during a descent over water at night, which was a result of spatial disorientation,'' according to the NTSB.
Despite procurement reforms introduced nearly two years ago, cost overruns on 25 major U.K. defense projects since their inception declined only slightly--from 2.9 billion pounds to 2.7 billion pounds ($4.38 billion to $4.08 billion)--through the year ended last March, according to a National Audit Office (NAO) report. The average in-service date delay rose by four months to 47 months. The NAO pointed to signs, however, that the Ministry of Defense's ``smart procurement'' initiatives were starting to yield results on several programs.
John W. Kilpatrick Jr., and W. Neill Myers have won NASA's Distinguished Service Medal, the agency's highest honor. Kilpatrick, who is deputy director of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center's Engineering Directorate, was cited for leadership in the conception, formulation and implementation of a systems management oversight capability for the center.
Kevin C. Campbell has been appointed director of crashworthiness research, Rolf T. Rysdyk a research scientist with expertise in advanced flight control and Vicki S. Johnson associate director of research and development at the National Institute for Aviation Research at Wichita (Kan.) State University. Campbell was an aviation consultant, and Rysdyk a research engineer in the Aerospace Engineering Dept. of the Georgia Institute of Technology.
The U.S. Navy is at sea about what is needed from the fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles it wants to operate from ships, but there are a lot of ideas afloat.
The U.S. Congress is considering yet another NASA effort to dramatically increase the safety and reliability and drastically lower the costs of launching spacecraft into Earth orbit. The Space Launch Initiative (SLI) aims to begin the development of a commercially competitive, privately owned and operated, ``second-generation'' reusable launch vehicle (RLV) that would be flying by 2010. The Clinton Administration is proposing to spend $4.5 billion on this effort through Fiscal 2005.
Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have placed wireless sensor webs in two gardens in California to test planned solar system exploration strategies. The pod-based sensors collect data from the environment--in this case monitoring local temperature, humidity, soil moisture and light levels--and use a communication chip to share the information with other pods as well as move it to primary pods. The primary pods transmit the data to the Internet or an overhead satellite.
A group of industry specialists is forming an online electronic marketplace, the Aerospace Hardware Exchange, to streamline the low-end ``commodity hardware'' procurement process for aerospace manufacturers and distributors. Although hardware such as fasteners, bearings, connectors and electrical pieces represents about 5% of the cost of building a new aircraft, it accounts for a $30-billion a year global market, according to Nigel Duncan, chief strategy officer.
Maj. Gen. John F. Phillips (USAF, Ret.), former deputy under secretary of Defense and now vice president-aftermarket growth for Honeywell, has received the 2000 Logistician Emeritus Award from the Washington-based National Defense Industrial Assn. As principal adviser to the undersecretary for Defense for acquisition and technology, Phillips provided oversight and counsel on logistics including material management, maintenance, transportation and system development.
The sophisticated sensors, unfilled spaces and radar-evading potential of the Pentagon's two new stealth fighters are being reanalyzed with an eye to adding electronic warfare capabilities, thereby pushing their usefulness well beyond the primary air-to-air and air-to-ground missions.
To restock its largely depleted inventory of Conventional Air-Launched Cruise Missiles (Calcms), the U.S. Air Force plans to develop and field a new weapon without asking for major improvements in capability. Although the missile's range will be extended, upgrades such as greater survivability or in-flight retargeting will be deferred for a follow-on program around 2010.
U.S. airline service is still falling short of the targets each of the carriers agreed to last September, a move that forestalled a congressional mandate for a passenger bill of rights. A report issued last week by the Transportation Dept.'s Inspector General (IG) comes six months after the carriers' detailed plans to comply with the 12 provisions of the Airline Customer Service Commitment took effect. The IG will make a final report on airline service to Congress by Dec. 31.
