Hugh Colver has been named corporate communications director at BAE Systems. He was director of public affairs for the British Aerospace Defense Co. and succeeds Locksley Ryan, who has become a partner at international public relations consultancy Brunswick.
Bombardier Inc. has reported a 30% increase in net income (adjusted for unusual items) on an 18% rise in revenues, to $13.6 billion, for the fiscal year ended Jan. 31, 2000. The company's aerospace backlog rose to $18.9 billion.
Bill G. McKnight has been named executive vice president-marketing and sales, Peter Wilander vice president-inflight services and Dan Ryan president of subsidiary Chicago Express, all at American Trans Air. McKnight was vice president of the U.S. transportation practice of A.T. Kearney Inc. Wilander was managing director of onboard services and catering for Northwest Airlines, and Ryan was vice president-customer service for Midway Airlines.
A U.S. software company has joined forces with a pair of Israeli aerospace companies to collect high-resolution Earth imagery with a fleet of small satellites and sell the data over the Internet. While all of the companies selling or planning to collect high-resolution satellite imagery for sale use Internet Web sites as cybercatalogs of their products, West Indian Space (WIS) counted the U.S. company--Core Software Technology-- as a founding partner, along with Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) and Israel's El-Op.
Ballistic Missile Defense Organization officials are putting their heads together again here with air force and industry research-and-development types from Israel as the Israelis begin looking for long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to include in their new missile-defense plan. Last month, Israel turned the first Arrow ballistic defense missile battery over to its air force. Now researchers want to concentrate on how to find and destroy enemy missiles either before or immediately after they fire.
British Airways Chairman Lord Marshall has reportedly asked Ansett Executive Chairman Rod Eddington to become the airline's CEO, filling the vacancy left by the departure of Robert Ayling. Eddington said he has accepted no job offer yet. Air New Zealand completes its takeover of Ansett on Apr. 30.
Michael Rossi has been promoted to chief operating officer from chief financial officer of Flight Options Inc. of Cleveland. He has been succeeded by Stephen Nevin, who was CFO of Atlas Air Inc.
A new entrant has joined the scramble to establish an electronic marketplace for the aerospace and defense sector. It doesn't have a dot.com name yet, its services are more concept than reality and its software is yet to be refined. But it is big, and that may make all the difference.
Donna Coles has been named vice president-customer service and Steve Pfannkuche director of quality assurance and compliance for Dobbs International Services, Memphis, Tenn.
Laurent Jossart has been appointed chief financial officer of Virgin Express. He was CFO of City Bird Holdings. Jossart succeeds Brett Godfrey, who has become CEO of Virgin Australia. Neil Burrows has been named director of flight operations, Hugo Lucke director of customer services, Ignace Bral legal counsel and Yves Panneels communications and public relations manager, all of Virgin Express.
NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center plans to conduct follow-on testing of a wing design that achieved supersonic natural laminar flow over more than 80% of a test article during initial flights.
Lufthansa German Airlines will outsource all of its e-mail and e-commerce functions to a stand-alone subsidiary it created last month called Lufthansa e-Commerce. Creation of the subsidiary is in keeping with the airline's practice for top priorities that are expected to flourish on their own, such as Lufthansa Technik does in maintenance. Senior Vice President Thierry Antinori said Lufthansa expects to earn DM100 million ($50 million) this year in e-commerce sales. There are some 20th century hurdles to be overcome, however.
The Mars Program Independent Assessment Team found that the two Mars '98 spacecraft were underfunded by about 30% and suffered from understaffing, inadequate margins and unapplied institutional expertise that contributed to their failures.
The IAI Elta Div. last week was demonstrating its EL/M-2060P synthetic aperture radar system for combat aircraft on a U.S. Air Force F-16 in the Washington area for Pentagon review. The flights were designed to demonstrate that the system can provide a solution to the USAF need for a targeting system, according to Baruch Reshef, deputy director of marketing and sales. The Elta system fits into a module designed to fit onto the undercarriage of an F-16.
Martin E. Dandridge has been promoted to sector executive vice president from vice president-airborne ground surveillance and battle management systems at Northrop Grumman Integrated Systems and Aerostructures, Melbourne, Fla. He has been succeeded by Alan Doshier, who was Dallas-based sector vice president-program operations. Succeeding Doshier is Philip Teel.
Bowing to competitive pressures from Singapore Airlines and others, Qantas says it will spend $186 million on the Rockwell Collins Total Entertainment System to provide seat-back videos in all classes of its 747-400s.
The European Space Agency plans to farm out operation of its portion of the International Space Station to private contractors. An RFP is due soon for industrialization tasks, including production and operation of the automated transfer vehicle, payload integration and procurement of Ariane 5 launch services.
The explosive growth in commercial satellite services has created new ways for the Pentagon to meet its vast communications and intelligence demands. But now the Defense Dept. is facing a problem: Can it afford to take advantage of these new tools?
National Medals of Technology were awarded to Glen Culler, retired chairman of the Culler Scientific Systems Corp., Santa Barbara, Calif., and Robert Taylor of Woodside, Calif., for pioneering work and leadership on the ARPA-net and multiple branches of computing.
Alenia executives should recommend to directors and the Italian government by mid-month whether to merge with the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. or BAE Systems, or neither, said Alenia Senior Vice President Carmelo Cosentino. The reason to choose a suitor quickly is to avoid throwing a monkey wrench into the initial public offering of stock in parent Finmeccanica whose privatization is due to be completed by June. If Alenia does not determine its preferred direction this month, don't look for any movement until well into the summer.
SGI has agreed to sell its Cray supercomputer unit to Tera Computer, a Seattle-based company developing a ``multithreaded architecture'' (MTA) approach to supercomputing (AW&ST Feb. 7, p. 17). The enlarged company will be called Cray Inc. and will focus on the high-performance market by offering both technologies--MTA and Cray's vector-processing approach. The company will continue development of the Cray SV2 vector supercomputer, due out in 2002. Company officials expect the SV2 will restore U.S.
PanAmSat Corp.'s stock plummeted 15 1/4 or nearly 25%, to 47, last Wednesday after the company unveiled its Internet strategy based on a new high-speed bandwidth-intensive global network. Analysts attributed the fall to potential earnings dilution as a result of the Internet venture, along with significantly lower management guidance for the core business in 2001 and a general decline in the technology-weighted Nasdaq.
Mike Hess has been appointed vice president-marketing, Doug Lanner controller and Steve Jackson, Jr., college marketing specialist, all of Phoenix-based europebyair.com.
AOM and SR Technics, the SAirGroup's maintenance and overhaul arm, have formed a joint subsidiary at Paris-Orly Airport to support the Qualiflyer Group's aircraft.
The featured speaker at the Aero Club was FAA Administrator Jane F. Garvey, who addressed the agency's accomplishments and the challenges remaining halfway through her tenure as the first FAA head with a fixed, five-year term. Garvey often reminds people with whom she speaks exactly how many days remain in that term. At the luncheon, she pointed out the many senior Transportation Dept. officials in the audience, all political appointees that stand to lose their jobs when the presidency changes hands next year.
