After four years of record airline pilot hiring, a shortage of flight simulator and training capacity might slow this year's intake. U.S. carriers tracked by Air Inc., an Atlanta-based pilot career services firm, hired a total of 15,747 cockpit crew last year, up from 14,143 new pilots in 1998. However, several big airlines are running out of pilot training capacity, according to Kit Darby, president of Air Inc. Third-party training and excess simulator capacity at other airlines also is limited, he said.
SILICON GRAPHICS INC. (SGI) IS EXPANDING its family of open-source Linux computer operating systems to provide a range of computer clusters for increasingly complex problems. Linux competes with proprietary Unix and NT systems. Solutions range from the SGI 1200 at the low end to high-end clusters with 512 processors. SGI provides software called the Advanced Cluster Environment which allows customers to manage a cluster as a single system.
Col. C.D. Moore, Lt. Col. David (Doc) Nelson, Lt. Col. Steve Rainey and the government/industry F-22 flight test team, for rapidly achieving critical program milestones under an aggressive testing schedule. As F-22 Combined Test Force leaders, Moore, Nelson and Rainey resisted external pressures to cut corners, while providing unprecedented daily visibility into test team activities, successes and problems.
Herve Arditty, president of Paris-based Comite Richelieu, an association of more than 200 small, high-technology companies, and founder/chairman/CEO of Photonetics, for fostering a strong role for small- and medium-size high-tech companies in a world of aerospace giants. Raymond Deque, who recently retired after heading the Aerospatiale Matra avionics team that developed Airbus Industrie's fly-by-wire control systems and established new standards in the commercial transport industry.
Senior Pentagon and aerospace industry officials expect Congress to resist the temptation to slash the 2001 defense budget through the expedient of attacking major aviation programs and to instead turn its efforts to getting through budget duties early in order to focus on this fall's presidential elections.
Aviation Week&Space Technology has selected the following Laurels Legends for 1999. The Legends are Laurels winners from prior to 1988, when the selection of Laureates started, as well as Laurel awardees from recent years. The descriptions are from the actual Laurels citations in the magazine. The Legends also will be recognized at the Apr. 12 dinner in Washington. Eugene Adam, McDonnell Douglas
NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin's patience with Russia has finally run out. Goldin has ordered that the station's backup Interim Control Module (ICM) be launched by the end of the year, after Russian space officials said their ``Zvezda'' service module now won't be launched until August. Goldin also says he is pushing station prime contractor Boeing to complete development of a more robust U.S. propulsion module and ordered accelerated work on environmental control and life support systems.
Kansai International Airport may have given Japan a 24-hr. gateway, but the traffic has not lived up to expectations and that means continuing operating losses. The offshore airport, which serves the Osaka-Kobe region, has accumulated losses since opening in 1994 that have reached about $1.2 billion. For instance, the airport projected 129,000 movements for the fiscal year ending April 1999 but handled only 118,000. It also carries a heavy debt--and interest payments that account for about 33% of its expenditures. They were about $442 million in the last fiscal year.
The Federal Communications Commission has cleared the way for Europe's largest satellite operator, Eutelsat, to enter the U.S. market. The FCC last week authorized CBS Broadcasting and BT North America to provide satellite services to and from the U.S. via Eutelsat's II-F2 satellite, which is stationed at 12.5 deg. W. Long. and has a footprint covering the northeast U.S. Eutelsat plans to expand its coverage to the eastern halves of the U.S. and Canada and most of South America by mid-2001 with Atlantic Bird 1, a satellite now under construction.
THE NAVAL AIR SYSTEMS COMMAND INTENDS to issue Lockheed Martin Sanders a contract in November to begin low rate initial production of the AN/ALQ-214 radio frequency countermeasures system (RFCMs) and fiber optic towed decoys (FOTDs), major elements of the Integrated Defensive Electronic Countermeasures (IDECM). Up to 80 RFCM systems can be procured under the contract, with an additional 13 sets of interim spares and up to 340 FOTDs to support U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force and foreign military sales customers.
Russia's launch of the first new Progress M1 tanker/transport to Mir on Feb. 1 is a major step toward reactivating the 14-year-old space station and an important flight test for the advanced resupply spacecraft that will be used for International Space Station operations. The spacecraft, designated M1-1, docked with Mir about 11 a.m. Moscow time Feb. 3 as they were flying about 200 mi. above Russia. The automatic docking went smoothly, indicating that Mir's avionics continue to work properly after the station has been flying unmanned for about six months.
Capt. Devi Sharan, for remaining calm, alert and in good humor during the hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight 814 from Kathmandu to New Delhi on Dec. 24. Sharan's demeanor was credited by passengers with helping to keep the situation bearable in a week-long standoff.
Requests for bids for two spacecraft and a ground spare will go out this month from Inmarsat for the $1.4-billion mobile multimedia satellite system. The recently privatized company is to launch in 2004 (AW&ST Dec. 19, 1999, p. 42). The L-band spacecraft are to serve laptops or palmtops at connectivity rates as high as 432 kilobits per sec. instead of today's high rate of 64 kbps.
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines President Leo van Wijk and Alitalia Chief Executive Domenico Cempella, for implementing in late 1999 the European airline industry's first ``near-merger.'' KLM and Alitalia jointly operate a three-hub route system as a unified company, and are gradually strengthening the Wings global alliance.
Flight.com (http://Flight.com) is a new Web site for aviation enthusiasts, and features Flash Pilot, a flight simulator that runs within a Web browser. . . . To help its ability to support business-to-business commerce, particularly the selling of spare parts, the Enigma electronic publishing software company has purchased the DynaWeb/Text and Synex technical publishing product lines from Inso Corp. . . .
The National Transportation Safety Board has issued several recommendations to the FAA following the board's inquiry into the crash of Korean Air Flight 801 on Guam on Aug. 6, 1997. One calls for installation of vertical guidance equipment on airline transports, which would enable aircraft to maintain a constant angle of descent during nonprecision approaches. Further, the board recommends the FAA mandate the use of the equipment within 10 years. The NTSB also says the agency should evaluate the depiction of terrain or obstacles on the profile view of approach charts.
DaimlerChrysler has agreed to invest $100 million in the Sirius digital satellite radio network in return for the right to install Sirius receivers on its U.S. cars and trucks on an exclusive basis. Sirius (formerly CD Radio), which earlier signed a similar agreement with Ford, plans to begin operations with four Loral satellites in the fourth quarter of the year.
The U.S. Air Force Academy's FalconSat-1 was declared operational late last month, following a successful launch on board a new hybrid Minuteman/Pegasus rocket on Jan. 27. Designed, built and operated by academy cadets, the microsatellite carries a long-duration ``wake'' experiment to study the buildup of electrical charges on a spacecraft. FalconSat-1 also will be used as an orbiting laboratory for astronautical engineering and space operations courses at the academy.
British Airways is revamping its fleet with a 600-million pound ($966-million) package of new products, including introducing an economy-plus fourth class of service. The two-year effort is the latest gambit in the airline's overall strategy to downsize its fleet and focus on higher paying premium-class passengers in order to bolster sagging profits. BA is expected to post a pre-tax loss for the current fiscal year of about 280 million pounds before exceptional gains from asset disposals.
Larry W. Whitfield has been appointed president of the Exigent International subsidiary Software Technology Inc., Melbourne, Fla. He was vice president-government communications for the Harris Corp.
D.C. (Pete) Sanderlin has been named vice president/general manager of Kitty Hawk International, Ypsilanti, Mich. He was general manager/director of operations for American International Airways. Charles C. Carson, 2nd, has become vice president-global marketing of parent company Kitty Hawk Inc. of Dallas.
