Alaska Airlines is studying voluntarily requiring its ticketing agents to ask a third security question of passengers at baggage check-in: ``Have you packed a firearm or any other hazardous material in your baggage?'' The airline hopes to prevent recurrence of an Apr. 26 incident in which one of two loaded guns improperly packed in a piece of baggage discharged while being placed in the cargo hold of one of its jets. The bullet pierced the passenger cabin floor and lodged in a diaper bag under a seat.
French and U.S. officials are discussing changes in the schedule and details of their proposed joint Mars Sample Return mission but remain committed to the project, French space leaders said earlier this month.
The Pentagon's next test of the national missile defense system is being delayed because of a problem with the kill vehicle's telemetry system. Currently, program officials hope to conduct the test, initially planned for June 26, around July 8.
Astrium will build three heavyweight I-4 spacecraft for Inmarsat that will boost the international telecommunications organization's capacity in the soaring mobile data system market. Inmarsat's I-4s, which will be based on Matra Marconi Space's (MMS) Eurostar 3000 platform, will have 9-kW.-onboard power and 200 spot beams to cover Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia in L-band frequencies. In addition to Internet links for laptop and palm-sized computers, they will provide mobile and navigation/air traffic services.
STARTUP MANUFACTURER ECLIPSE AVIATION has chosen Albuquerque, N.M., as the location of its corporate headquarters. The facility will be built at Double Eagle II Airport. Eclipse plans to build and market a twin-engine business jet priced below $800,000.
Korean Air is restructuring its flight operations division, replacing four out of five vice presidents and seven chief pilots. The unit also is adding U.S. safety expert Capt. George Snyder as its managing vice president. The moves are aimed at accelerating the Seoul-based airline's safety reforms. Snyder formerly was vice president of safety and regulatory compliance at US Airways. Before that he held various positions at the airline including director of flight safety.
Faced with an enemy that is only a few minutes' flight time from its bases, the U.S. Air Force is increasing the training pace for its pilots here even beyond the high rate that has been maintained for years. Although the single-mission focus has existed here for a long time, the U.S. Air Force decided only recently to further intensify the pace of flying in South Korea. Squadron commanders have been told to get their pilots, particularly less experienced pilots, into the cockpit more often.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center is developing space sail technology with an eye toward powering future space exploration missions that may go beyond our solar system. (See rendering) The reflective sails--which could be propelled through space by sunlight, microwave beams or laser beams--would unfurl to span more than 400 yards across. Marshall engineers are conducting laboratory experiments to evaluate and characterize materials for the sails. A leading candidate is a carbon fiber material with a density of less than 1/10 ounce per square yard.
Delta Air Lines is interested in starting talks with Alitalia that could result in the Italian flag carrier joining the Delta/Air France alliance. Paul Matsen, Delta's senior vice president for alliance strategy and development, said at a recent conference in Phoenix that Alitalia could fit the alliance's European plans well. He said Delta would be willing to talk to the carrier, if Alitalia was prepared to do so.
Alaska Airlines has conducted one test of a Required Navigational Performance-based approach at San Francisco International Airport and plans another soon. The procedure, based on the high accuracy of modern cockpit navigation systems, would help alleviate inbound flight delays by allowing properly equipped transports and qualified crews to continue to fly an offset approach to Runway 28R when cloud ceilings descend and traffic normally is merged into one stream.
IN THE WAKE OF A RECENT USAF REPORT that its analysis indicated air strikes in Kosovo had destroyed fewer Serb tanks and armored personnel carriers than earlier claimed, MIT's Lincoln Laboratory reported moderate success in using synthetic aperture radar to distinguish Russian T-72 tanks from other vehicles. Results of the automatic target recognition effort, sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, were reported at the Radar-2000 conference. However, Lincoln Laboratory's L.M.
Lockheed Martin and Aerospatiale Matra will not submit a joint bid for a 30% share of Korean Aerospace Industries, leaving a joint Boeing/BAE Systems proposal as the only bidder to be a foreign investor. Lockheed Martin said that its bid to join the Korean Aerospace (KAI) team was held off because Aerospatiale Matra was busy with the formation of the European Aeronautics Defense&Space Co. (EADS). This prevented the French firm from meeting KAI's Apr. 21 bid deadline (AW&ST May 8, p. 25).
The launch of both the space shuttle Atlantis and the new Russian-powered Lockheed Martin Atlas III were rescheduled late last week after weather and technical problems scrubbed three Atlas attempts, affecting launch plans for the two important flights. Launch of the first Atlas III was being recycled for sometime after May 19 following three scrubbed countdowns on May 15-17. On the first attempt a problem with a tracking radar on Bermuda forced a cancellation, followed by a second scrub on May 16 due to winds aloft.
Stanley Rivers, former director of the FAA Airway Facilities Service, has become senior vice president-advanced programs of Crown Consulting of Washington.
GALAXY AEROSPACE HAS DELIVERED three of its super mid-size cabin Galaxy business jets to customers since January and plans to deliver aircraft at a rate of two per month by this summer, according to Brian A. Barents, president and CEO. He said the Galaxy is beginning to attract sales from operators of other mid-size aircraft. The Fort Worth-based company has orders approaching $1 billion for the twin-engine jet, Barents said.
Valdemar Eggers, formerly director-general of civil aviation in Denmark, has been named senior vice president-Europe of the International Council of Aircraft Owners and Pilots Assns.
The U.S. Air Force is expanding the capability of the AIM-120 Amraam air-to-air missile, which could ensure a future for the Raytheon product even after Britain's decision to back the competing European Meteor. USAF requirements officials at Air Combat Command only recently asked weapons developers to make changes to the missile to expand its engagement envelope. ``We are embarking on putting a high off-boresight capability into Amraam,'' said Judy Stokley, USAF's Amraam program director at Eglin AFB, Fla.
Jeffrey Isaacson has been appointed vice president of RAND and director of its National Security Research Div. in Washington. He was director of the divi- sion's International Security and Defense Policy Center.
The European Space Agency and the European Commission have opened a joint program office in Brussels to manage the next-generation Galileo satellite navigation system. EC transport commissioner Loyola de Palacio noted that the office is the first permanent physical link between the two European institutions, which are jointly sponsoring the system. A firm go/no-go decision on Galileo, currently in the definition phase, is to be made toward the end of the year.
NASA is approaching the selection of two $56-million Phase I International Space Station Crew Rescue Vehicle (CRV) study contracts. International contractor participation is a key element of two of the three teams in the competition. Boeing has as part of its team Alenia from Italy, DaimlerChrysler Aerospace and MAN Technologie in Germany. Lockheed Martin has Dassault in France as part of its team. The other team in the competition, Orbital Sciences, does not have any major international partners, but initially discussed a role for Alenia.
Mesaba Holdings Inc., parent company of regional carrier Mesaba Aviation Inc. (see p. 13), last week posted a 46% increase in net income for the fiscal year ending Mar. 31, to $31.1 million, on 22.4% higher operating revenues, to about $406 million. Earnings rose 49.5%, to $1.48 per diluted share.
Australia's drive to enter the commercial launch arena took a friendly environmental turn recently with approval of an environmental impact study by the minister for the environment of a launch site request on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. The request was made by the Asia-Pacific Space Center Pty Ltd. (APSC) of Sydney, which has staked out a site with about a 3-mi. radius on the southern portion of the island. The island, an Australian possession, is located at 10.5 deg. S. Lat., which is south of the Indonesian island of Java.
As part of a ``marvelous regulatory renewal,'' India has opened the door wider for satellite and Internet services by clarifying rules and procedures for private domestic firms and foreigners to follow as they compete alongside the state-owned Insat system.
In a bit of last-minute one-upmanship, Preussag last week took over the Thomson Travel Group of the U.K. for 1.8 billion pounds ($2.7 billion), snatching the U.K. charter/tour operator from under the nose of rival C&N Touristik and paving the way for another round of consolidation in the European travel industry.
