The union representing Boeing's engineering and technical workers is urging members to ``Work to Rule'' as a means of increasing pressure on the Seattle-based aerospace manufacturer during contract negotiations. The tactic lowers productivity as workers follow all work rules and procedures to the letter. The union, called the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, also is asking members to refuse voluntary overtime. SPEEA represents 22,600 Boeing technical workers throughout the U.S.
Defense Secretary William Cohen announced late last week an effort to improve housing benefits for members of the military by reducing out-of-pocket expenses for personnel living off-base. The program will cost about $3 billion over five years and is included in the Fiscal 2001 budget due to be unveiled next month. The Defense Dept. wouldn't say where the money is coming from. The new budget also will see the Pentagon meet its long-standing goal of allocating $60 billion for modernization, Cohen said.
Vic Bonneau (see photos) has been named president of the Dayton, Ohio-based Leland Electrosystems unit of Smiths Industries Aerospace. He was vice president-engineering and has been succeeded by Rene Spee, who was chief scientist for Maxwell Technologies in San Diego. G. Austin Schaffter has become vice president-programs and business development. He was vice president-marketing.
Raytheon Systems Ltd. has signed a $1.3- billion contract to build the U.K. Ministry of Defense's Airborne Stand Off Radar surveillance system. Raytheon was selected as preferred bidder in June.
Boeing closed the century with a bang, not a whimper, logging orders for about 210 transports worth more than $13 billion in December. The sales brought the aerospace manufacturer close to market share parity with archrival Airbus and deflated the European consortium's claims of a two-to-one order advantage for the year.
The worldwide civil turbine helicopter fleet is projected to grow at about 3% each year for the next four years, with deliveries of new aircraft exceeding 2,300 units during the period spanning 1999-2003.
Managers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) investigating the failure of Mars Polar Lander (MPL) say it is estimated that only about 5% of the terrain within the projected MPL landing ellipse has slopes greater than 10%. The best estimate of a possible MPL landing location to date--which includes data on atmospheric conditions and the spacecraft's aerodynamics--indicate Mars Polar Lander nominally would have landed on terrain with slope angles of a degree or two, but only about 10 km.
William Miller has been named president of the Hartford, Conn.-based United Technologies Corp.'s International Fuel Cells and ONSI Corp. He succeeds Robert Suttmiller, who has retired. Miller was president of North American operations for UTC's Otis Elevator Co.
Dallas Bienhoff has become chief technology officer/vice president-engineering, responsible for development of the Lunar Retriever spacecraft, at Applied Space Resources Inc., Bethpage, N.Y. He was chief engineer for the International Space Station crew return vehicle.
Continental Airlines has acquired a minority stake in Miami-based regional carrier Gulfstream International Airlines. According to Greg Brenneman, Continental president and COO, the acquisition will allow the two airlines to maintain and expand their code-share agreement that began in 1997. Gulfstream, which is privately owned, operates a fleet of Beechcraft 1900s serving 10 cities in Florida as well as destinations in the Bahamas and Caribbean islands. At San Juan, Puerto Rico, Gulfstream connects with Continental's service to its three main hubs in the U.S.
Regardless of how one may count Boeing and AirbFus Industrie commercial aircraft orders, there is no doubt that 1999 was a good year for the European consortium. For the first time in three decades of competition, Airbus compiled more aircraft orders in the year than Boeing. Shagging more orders has been a solid achievement, a milestone of progress for the distinctly European enterprise. Not that the Boeing Co. did badly. A rush of orders at the end of the year closed much of the sales gap which had looked like a wide chasm in November.
MEMBERS OF THE FAA'S Fractional Ownership Aviation Rulemaking Committee have completed a preliminary draft of recommendations to the agency regarding how fractional ownership operations should be governed. The call for recommendations stems from disagreement within business aviation regarding how fractionals, which are the fastest-growing segment of the industry, should be controlled.
The U.S. Naval Air Systems Command moved with exceptional swiftness to use a congressional Fiscal 1999 Kosovo emergency supplemental appropriation intended to speed up procurement of essential equipment already in production. The case in point was jamming improvements for the EA-6B aircraft.
A new HF surface wave radar developed by Raytheon Systems Canada offers long-range oceanic surveillance at a fraction of the cost of alternative systems, according to the developer.
The blistering sales pace set by business aircraft manufacturers is projected to continue through 2002, but at a slower rate than in the blockbuster years of 1997-99. If the U.S. economy continues its sizzling performance during the next few years, builders of business aircraft, especially jets, are positioned to do well in the marketplace. Aiding their cause is growing public and corporate concern about airline safety, the threat of terrorism and a general decline in the level of service afforded passengers by the airlines.
Engineers and technicians at General Electric are hustling to replace high-pressure turbine blade dampers in GE90 powerplants built before November 1998 to eliminate a problem that has been linked to three inflight engine blade separations on board 777 transports over the past year.
THE NEXT BIG LEAP IN INTEGRATED CIRCUITS will be expanding them vertically with chips that are three- rather than two-dimensional. And the key to that advance will be simpler connections to the devices' electrodes, according to IBM Microelectronics Div. researchers, who foresee making the connections part of the chip structure. One result they expect from the increased volume will be higher performance, combining logic and memory in a single chip. To shrink feature size further, optical lithography can reach only 0.1 micron.
Barring a collapse in crude oil prices, the steep rise in the cost of jet fuel in recent months almost certainly will add billions of dollars to the airline industry's operating expenses this year and likely dampen profits. On a more encouraging note, there is evidence that crude oil prices may moderate by mid-year, according to some energy analysts.
SCIENTISTS AT PHILLIPS SEMICONDUCTORS Image Sensors in the Netherlands have developed a charge-coupled device image sensor with resolution that they say is comparable to the performance of 35-mm. film. The first application for the 2/3-in. full-frame CCD sensor is apt to be for digital still cameras and lensless applications. With pixels on the sensor measured at 3 X 3 microns, a performance of 1,000 line-pairs/cm. has been measured, and researchers say the imager has the potential for even higher resolution--1,600 line-pairs/cm.
William Hiatt (see photo) has been appointed general manager of The Aerospace Corp.'s Reconnaissance Systems Div., Chantilly, Va., and Sumner Matsunaga general manager of the Electronic Systems Div., El Segundo, Calif. Hiatt was principal director of the company's Northern Virginia office and Matsunaga principal director of the National Systems Group's Technology Development and Applications Directorate. Art Falconer (see photo) was promoted to principal director of Titan operations in the Launch Programs Div.
Kirk Rowe has been appointed vice president-commercial services of the Innotech-Execaire Aviation Group of Montreal and Amin Alibhai has been promoted to vice president-finance from corporate controller. Rowe was director of commercial services of Air Atlantic, St. John's, Newfoundland.
A faulty attitude director indicator is the leading suspect in the crash of a Korean Air Boeing 747-200 freighter at London's Stansted airport on Dec. 22.
A Russian launch vehicle incident at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in late December with an SS-19 Rokot booster caused less damage to the vehicle than initial reports indicated, although the Khrunichev vehicle's flight will be significantly delayed (AW&ST Jan. 1, p. 25). During a prelaunch test an electrical or sequencing problem caused the separation system for the vehicle's large payload shroud to fire with the vehicle on its launch pad. The large shroud sections separated and fell from the vehicle.
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) has created Syntonics LLC as a startup company to commercialize portions of its space research and test facilities. It will be a stand-alone company developing, producing and selling ultrastable oscillators on the commercial market, while APL will continue to conduct ultrastable oscillator research and produce one-of-a-kind systems. APL has developed more than 400 oscillator and clock systems for U.S. government customers in the past.
