Air France has confirmed that it will seek to acquire Air Liberte, British Airways' French subsidiary. Swissair parent SAirGroup is expected to make a rival offer. Long-troubled Air Liberte, which operates 24 aircraft on domestic routes, had $554 million in revenues in 1999 and is expected to announce massive losses soon.
Sabre Holdings Corp. is linking the 350 corporate travel offices that use its Sabre Business Travel Solutions with a new ``Private Seats'' online registry of corporate jets called flightserve.com. The idea is to offer an executive jet alternative to regular business-class seats. Flightserve.com is to begin offering private flights from Teter- boro (N.J.) Airport and Atlanta's DeKalb-Peachtree Airport on Apr. 17. It expects to offer 100 connections by year-end.
MicroE Encoder Systems have sensors which feature PurePrecision Optics, a technology that enhances the first orders of diffraction to create a pure signal via a laser light source. Engineered to OEM customer requirements, a variety of rotary and linear grating are offered, along with a choice of three electronic modules. Suitable for densely integrated machines, they can have rotary gratings 1-6-in. O.D, or linear gratings 1/2 in.-1/2 meter long. The system provides broad alignment tolerances. MicroE Systems Corp., 8 Erie Drive, Natick, Mass. 01760.
William Gianopulos, vice president-strategic initiatives for Lockheed Martin Space Electronics and Communications, Manassas, Va., has won the 1999 Information Systems Award of the Reston, Va.-based American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Other recent AIAA prize winners are: History Manuscript Award, USAF Lt. Col. William P. Barry, an international political military affairs officer serving at the U.S. European Command, Stuttgart, Germany; Losey Atmospheric Sciences Award, Donald J.
Major aircraft operators and U.S. officials have agreed on a plan for averting a repeat of the major flight delays that plagued the skies last summer. ``As we work to keep air travel as safe as it can be,'' President Clinton said Mar. 10 in unveiling the plan, ``we should also do everything we can to make it as efficient as it can be.''
The U.S. Defense Dept. has awarded Boeing a $162-million contract for production of the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), 247 for the U.S. Air Force and 916 for the Navy.
Investigators with Japan's Defense Agency suspect a leak in the fuel regulator system caused an inflight fire and engine failure on a Lockheed T-33A that crashed near Tokyo last Nov. 12, killing both pilots. The pilots reported smoke in the cockpit prior to hitting a transmission line that cut power to more than 800,000 people.
Heavy emphasis on cost and schedule in the application of NASA's ``faster-better-cheaper'' (FBC) management philosophy has too often compromised scientific results of space science missions, according to a National Research Council (NRC) report. It was one of three reports released last week grading the space agency's overall management of space science exploration since the early 1990s and providing a broader look at the failure of the Mars Climate Orbiter mission last year (see next story).
The co-CEOs of the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. (EADS), Philippe Camus and Rainer Hertrich, have made their first joint appearance in Washington. They say transatlantic industrial cooperation should begin on a program-by-program basis, not as a grand philosophical discussion. However, they add, one broad policy area that must be changed is U.S. export controls and regulations on ``technical exchange,'' the term Camus prefers to tech transfer, ``which has a one-way flavor.'' One glimmer of hope for those seeking relaxation of U.S.
British Airways has begun a search for a new chief executive to replace Robert Ayling, 54, who has cut short his own troubled tenure, saying the demands of the job ``have taken their toll.''
American Airlines earlier this month conducted a route-proving flight between Chicago and Hong Kong, using a twin-engine Boeing 777-200. The 15-hr. 13-min. flight passed within 37 mi. of the North Pole, then followed newly authorized airways over Siberia to Mongolia before joining a Chinese airway and heading southwest to Hong Kong. Although 100 naut. mi. longer than traditional North Pacific routes between the two cities, the flight encounters reduced headwinds and can arrive up to 2 hr. sooner, the Dallas-based airline said.
Impending go-aheads for several large weapon system contracts, led by the NH-90 frigate/transport helicopter, promise to fuel new growth in the European aerospace and defense industry, and to mute U.S. criticism over Europe's failure to modernize its armed forces.
Investigators were unable as of late last week to duplicate systems or mechanical failures that led to the Mar. 14 emergency landing of a Delta Air Lines 727-232 at San Francisco International Airport. Flight 1972 departed San Francisco for Salt Lake City at 6:40 p.m. PST, but the right main landing gear failed to retract fully. The flight crew also was unable to fully extend the right gear.
Blue Wave Systems has combined its ComStruct CPCI/C6600 DSP board, its PMC/SB3410 front-end module and development tools to ensure time-efficient building of the next generation of test and measurement systems while minimizing project risk. The PMC/SB3410 is linked to the PXI/C6600 by a high-performance PCI interface. The company's C compiler allows developers to write code in a familiar environment, removing the need for specialized DSP assembly code knowledge. The development package strikes a balance between maximizing performance while minimizing development time.
Flight testing of the Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle has resumed following a Dec. 6 incident in which an aircraft was damaged after landing. Opera- tions resumed with a 6-hr. 32-min. mission on Mar. 11 at Edwards AFB, Calif.
This Aviation Week&Space Technology editor received an up-close look at full-scale drone operations by flying in a QF-4 here at Tyndall AFB. The mission was a regularly scheduled recertification sortie for Lockheed Martin ground controllers, who must fly the QF-4s remotely every 15 days.
Curtis Brock (see photo) has been promoted to vice president-internal audit and shares services from director of internal audit for Alliant Techsystems of Minneapolis.
NASA Ames Research Center has signed a memorandum of understanding with Carnegie Mellon University to plan information technology research and development and education partnerships at Ames. Carnegie Mellon may design a graduate professional development program in infotech to alleviate a skills shortage. . . . The Air Force Materiel Command has chosen Tivoli Systems, working with Logicon, to manage its more than 120,000 desktops at 17 bases.
The first example of Japan's push for greater cooperation among its space agencies will be research on a dead rocket. The Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) will lead experiments using solid rocket boosters from the H-2 program, which the National Space Development Agency canceled last year after back-to-back failures. NASDA's replacement is the H-2A, which uses different SRBs. NASDA had only one $170-million H-2 booster left in its inventory and was preparing to shift all launchers to the H-2's successor, the H-2A. But on Feb.
FAA officials said the left rear galley door of an American Airlines Boeing 727 was not opened in flight Mar. 8 to retrieve a strap dangling outside of the aircraft. According to the FAA's investigation, the captain depressurized the aircraft at 12,000 ft. and, following approved Boeing procedure, the flight engineer was able to pull the entire strap through the door seals. The door was never unlocked. A newspaper story, however, erroneously reported that the door had been opened in flight to retrieve the strap, which American officials denied vehemently.
China has voiced strong opposition to the U.S. providing missile defenses to Taiwan. But Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the head of the U.S. Pacific Command, tells the House Armed Services Committee that Beijing itself holds the key to whether that ever happens. Blair, who recently visited China, says he told Chinese officials that if they continue to build up rocket and missile forces on their side of the Taiwan Strait, ``we will have to think about theater missile defense for Taiwan'' to correct an imbalance in force across the Strait.
The Model 1522 handheld thermometer is the first to achieve accuracies as high as 0.005C and provide complete data logging functions, according to Hart Scientific. The battery-powered 1522 reads both PRTs (to 0.025C) and thermistors (to 0.005C) with user-selectable resolution as high as 0.001C. Using the automatic data log function, up to 10,000 measurements can be stored in intervals from 1 sec. to 1 hr. in multiple log sessions. Data sets are tagged internally with user-defined labels for ID and downloading to a PC using a high-speed IR link or standard RS-232 link.
Some members of the House Armed Services Committee are fuming that Middle East oil-exporting countries defended by U.S. troops have tightened the supply of crude oil, causing the fuel prices to skyrocket. But Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, who oversees U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf area and acts as a roving ambassador to those countries, is urging a more measured view. He notes that in recent years crude oil prices were at historic lows, straining the economies of those oil-exporting states, and now the pendulum has merely swung to the opposite extreme.
The UScan optical 3D measurement solder paste inspection system reduces the defect rate in the manufacture of printed circuit modules by roughly two-thirds via a patented confocal, multichannel sensor system. It simultaneously generates 160,000 high-precision height measurements and 160,000 gray-scale images per sec. while transmitting them to a PC for evaluation. Performance criteria are characterized by: a pseudo defect rate of less than 50 defects per million, high light sensitivity and gray-scale image dynamic, high 3D accuracy and large height measuring range.
Joel E. Biggerstaff, president/chief operating officer of AirNet Systems Inc., Columbus, Ohio, will also be CEO. He succeeds Gerald G. Mercer, who will continue as chairman. William R. Sumser has been named chief financial officer. He was acting CFO and vice president-finance/secretary/treasurer. Wynn Peterson has been promoted to vice president from director of corporate development of AirNet Systems and Craig Leach to vice president from director of information systems of subsidiary AirNet Express. James Ernest Riddle has been named a director.
