Eutelsat will add capacity to its Hotbird location at 13 deg. E. Long. to beef up the lucrative orbital slot and free up existing Hotbirds for redeployment. Five existing Hotbird satellites, launched from 1994-98, already serve more than 81 million homes--24 million customers receive broadcasts direct-to-home and 58 million over their local cable network--in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Growth has been especially heavy of late, with demand jumping 28% in 1998 and 35% in 1999.
The FAA is to conduct a special audit of carrier operations beginning July 17. Its aim is to first define, then correct any safety and oversight problems. Some of the carriers to be audited include: American Airlines, America West, Continental, Delta, Northwest, Southwest, TWA, United and US Airways. Several regional and cargo carriers may also be targeted. The findings are expected to be made public in about two months.
Left and right-hand seats in the cockpit continued to be filled at record levels in May, with carriers hiring 1,647 pilots, according to Air Inc. The Atlanta-based airline career consultants say the ``nationals'' or carriers with annual sales of $100 million-1 billion were most active in hiring, signing on 528 pilots. Air Inc. forecasts that if this rate of hiring continues, about 19,150 pilot jobs will be produced in 2000. The number of pilots on furlough at the end of May increased to 479 from 468, or 0.5% of 89,869 active airline pilots.
The Star Alliance announced the formation of a new umbrella organization and welcomed Mexicana Airlines and British Midland Airways as its latest members last week at a meeting of its chief executives in Vienna. Star executives said the alliance's current focus is on the closer integration of current members. And to that end, the new organization was formed, aimed at deepening cooperation and dividing supervisory and management functions.
The House Transportation Committee's former chief, retired Rep. Norman Y. Mineta (D-Calif.), will succeed Commerce Secretary William M. Daley, who quit recently to honcho Vice President Al Gore's presidential campaign. Mineta, a San Jose native who represented Silicon Valley in the House from 1974-95, leaves his post as Lockheed Martin's vice president for special business initiatives.
Until lower-cost digital systems emerged in 1994, only a few hundred thousand people bought television satellite receivers each year. My, how times have changed. By the start of 2000, nearly 10 million people had purchased the devices and were subscribing to direct-broadcast satellite services, establishing the technology as the best-selling wireless product of the '90s.
Japan's National Space Development Agency and Japanese industry are involved in major tests on two of the agency's largest programs. Flying testbed (FTB) tests for the Selene lunar lander are underway at the Multipurpose Aerospace Park at Taiki on Hokkaido. The $200-million Selene mission is being managed by both NASDA and the Institute of Space and Astronautical Sciences. The mission is set for launch to the Moon in 2005 (AW&ST Dec. 7, 1998, p. 60). The 800-lb. testbed measures 11.5 ft.
The turboprop will be around for many years to come, according to BAE Systems and some market forecasters. Underscoring BAE Systems' long-term commitment to the ATP turboprop, the company's Hatfield, England-based Asset Management arm last week announced new business for the turboprop: Palma, Majorca-based Air Europa Express, Air Europa's regional subsidiary, signed a long-term lease for another ATP, bringing its fleet to 17 aircraft.
The Joint Strike Fighter's small radar cross section and reduced infrared signature are expected to make the new fighter design impervious even to the generation of antiaircraft weapons expected to follow the emerging S-400 family. JSF's low radar cross section (RCS) is not as small as the F-22's, which is marble-size or smaller. JSF's RCS has been described as golf-ball size, but its real advantage will be that ``it is 10 times easier to maintain than the signature of the B-2,'' said Frank Cappuccio, Lockheed Martin JSF program manager.
David Olschansky has been appointed director of NASA and civil programs and Frank Garza program development specialist for Spectrum Astro, Gilbert, Ariz. Olschansky was director of the Mars Surveyor Program 2001 at Lockheed Martin Astronautics. Olschansky succeeds Stan Dubyn, who has resigned. Garza was the senior marketing executive at AlliedSignal Aerospace.
Flight delays, which are increasingly infuriating travelers, are believed to increase the European airlines' operating costs by as much as $5 billion per year. But French air traffic controllers claim the European Commission's effort to restructure and unify air traffic management--and stem delays--is really an attempt to privatize air traffic control, a move that would place their jobs in jeopardy. In a show of their determination to deter privatization efforts, they staged a ``preventive'' 24-hr.
Jim Albaugh, president of Boeing Space and Communications; Albert E. Smith, executive vice president of the Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co.; and Jaleh Daie, director of science programs at the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, all have been elected to three-year terms on the board of directors of the Colorado Springs-based Space Foundation.
All signs point to Airbus Industrie being able to launch the A3XX by December, including the imminent formation of the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. and progress toward establishing the Airbus Integrated Co. by year-end. The real question is how much of a trade controversy will erupt between the U.S. and Europe over the $12-billion project.
A majority of Canadian Auto Workers Union members have approved a three-year contract with Bombardier Aerospace. Wages will increase 2% annually and pensions have been improved, as have benefits for retired workers, according to the union.
Jean-Luc Doublet (see photos) has been appointed vice president-industrial operations and Pierre-Emmanuel Gires general manager of the Saint-Quentin production facilities of Snecma Services.
Sue Lyons, Rolls-Royce managing director for defense (Europe), has received an honorary doctorate in science from the University of London's Imperial College.
Michael Barth, manager of Burke Lakefront Airport in Cleveland, has won the National Air Transportation Assn.'s Airport Executive Partnership Award. It recognizes efforts to foster relationships between aviation businesses and airport operators.
Taiwan needs to improve its military. That's the quiet recommendation the Pentagon is communicating to Taipei in a new study on Chinese military capabilities (see p. 32). Among the steps Taiwan should take, the Pentagon indicates, are establishing better pilot training, sufficient logistics support and better maintenance. Furthermore, the Taiwanese air force needs to learn to integrate its disparate aircraft types ``into a cohesive, operational fighting force.'' Other problems the country faces are recruiting and retaining technically qualified personnel.
A financially resurgent, more aggressive Boeing is regaining market share and picking up key sales with less expensive derivative transports, while Airbus is preoccupied with launching the 550-seat A3XX.
The U.K.'s National Air Traffic Services (NATS) is calling in an independent specialist to participate in a review of software problems in its flight data processing system that led to chaos at U.K. airports early last week, just seven days after a previous failure of the same system.
A Wuhan Airlines Y-7 twin turboprop crashed June 22 in central China during a thunderstorm after being struck by lightning, according to the Associated Press. All 42 people on board died in the accident near Wuhan. One of two flight data recorders has been located. Xian Aircraft Corp. began making the aircraft in the 1980s, and there are about 130 operating in China.
IHS Engineering has launched TechSavvy.com (www.techsavvy.com) to provide technical and engineering information to small- and medium-size companies that can't afford its traditional subscription services. TechSavvy can search databases that contain more than 90 million parts, including U.S. government procurement history, as well as standards, historical data, a directory of companies and lists of useful Web sites. The service is either free or fee-based. One use is to input part numbers from old blueprints to find original or alternate suppliers.
Joseph A. Patti (see photo) has been appointed director of marketing for Sextant In-Flight Systems, Irvine, Calif. He was senior marketing manager for Sony Trans Com Inc., also in Irvine.
A Rolls-Royce Trent 500 engine successfully completed its first flight on an Airbus A340-300 flying testbed in Toulouse, France, on June 20. One of seven development Trent 500s, the 56,000-lb.-thrust engine was mounted on the inboard left wing, in place of one of the aircraft's four CFM56-5C4s. The test flight lasted 2.5 hr. and the pilots were able to explore the aircraft's flight envelope up to the maximum 345-kt. operating speed.
RESEARCHERS AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY and Bell Laboratories of Lucent Technologies are using inelastic X-ray scattering (IXS) to study fundamental properties of matter. Earlier knowledge of the electronic states of matter led to the development of semiconductors. The IXS studies started with Mott insulators, which are transition metal oxides. From their small energy gap, conventional theories would predict these materials should be semiconductors, but instead they are strong insulators.
