Robert Nelsen has been named vice president/chief financial officer of the Signal Technology Corp., Beverly, Mass., and John Cotumaccio president of the company's Keltec Div., Fort Walton Beach, Fla. Nelsen was vice president-finance of the Loral Corp., and Cotumaccio vice president-operations of L-3 Communications Display Systems. He succeeds David Nabozny, who is retiring.
In an atmosphere tense with strike threats, negotiators for Northwest Airlines and its pilots' and machinists' unions are preparing strategies for a return to the bargaining table. Management and pilots will meet on Aug. 17 in a last-ditch effort to avoid a pilots' strike, which could happen at the end of a 30-day cooling off period at 12:01 a.m. on Aug. 29. About 85% of the members of the International Assn. of Machinists (IAM) rejected the proposed contracts for three out of four working groups.
Atlantic Southeast Airlines (ASA) has had the advantage of operating with one of the lowest break-even load factors in the industry. In 1997, it was 39.5%. The advantage has enabled ASA to implement a strategy of serving small-to-medium size markets with high-frequency flights.
U.S. Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.) is a long-time opponent of the International Space Station. He plans to retire this year, after 24 years in the Senate. Aviation Week&Space Technology invited him to take his last best shot at the ISS.
Negotiations on a new open skies bilateral between the U.S. and U.K. will resume the week of Oct. 5 in London, kicking off a busy autumn for both proponents and detractors of the proposed worldwide alliance between American Airlines and British Airways.
Elizabeth K. Levin (see photo) has been elected president of the Boston-based Women's Transportation Seminar. She is senior vice president-strategic planning, marketing and business development of Rizzo Associates.
It's back to square one for Administrator Jane F. Garvey in her search for a permanent deputy at the FAA. Lawyer Carl W. Vogt had emerged as the front-runner. Given his experience as chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board and his Republican party credentials, he was viewed as a shoo-in. The last candidate for the FAA's No. 2 post, George Donohue, withdrew earlier this summer after behind-the-scenes opposition stalled his nomination for months in the Republican-controlled Senate.
Northrop Grumman and British Aerospace unveiled details of their bid for the U.K.'s Airborne Stand-Off Radar (Astor) program, which draws heavily on a classified technology upgrade program for U.S. Air Force Joint-STARS aircraft.
Peter A. Bukowick, president/chief operating officer of Alliant Techsystems of Minneapolis, will also be acting CEO after the Sept. 1 retirement of Richard Schwartz.
Rolls-Royce is offering a more powerful derivative of its Trent engine for the Boeing 777. The 95,000-lb.-thrust Trent 895, which builds upon the Trent 892, is to be certified in 1999 and ready for entry into service in 2000. Rolls-Royce said the additional thrust is achieved by increasing temperature margins cleared on the current engine design. The engine will be capable of 180-min. ETOPS from entry into service, the engine-maker said.
When Keith Butler-Wheelhouse became CEO of Smiths Industries Plc. two years ago, there was ``nothing about the overall company's operation that was broke and needed fixing,'' he recalls. Still, he was sure Smiths could improve the rate at which it converted $1 invested in raw materials into $1 worth of incremental sales. ``Superior asset turnover is essential to any company that expects to be a top competitor, so we have tried to instill in all of our management a greater awareness of this vital business function,'' he said.
Military and commercial satellite builders must start installing sensors on new U.S. spacecraft, enabling rapid detection of an attack on orbiting vehicles, according to the nation's top space commander. Political leaders also should establish policies that guide U.S. military responses to attacks on space platforms, and provide the means to protect on-orbit assets. These actions may require the creation of a permanent interagency government council dedicated to addressing space policy issues, he said.
U.S. passenger airlines are in shock following a tentative decision by the Transportation Dept. to award valuable takeoff and landing slots at Tokyo's Narita Airport primarily to cargo carriers. Out of the 22 weekly slots available, the agency assigned 16 to Polar Air Cargo and two to UPS, the bulk of which will be used for flights between Japan and third countries. Two slots each went to American Airlines and Delta Air Lines for an additional flight a week for existing services.
Japanese Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma said Japan Aviation Electronics Industry, a NEC subsidiary, overbilled the Japanese Defense Agency on a 2.34-billion yen ($16.7-million) award in fiscal 1997. JAEI, which makes autopilots, inertial navigation systems, connectors, switches and other electronic systems, has held some 1,400 contracts in the recent past and all are now being investigated. Kyuma said the company used inflated man-hours figures and will be paid 1.31-billion yen instead.
A RESEARCHER AT THE STATE UNIVERSITY of New York at Buffalo believes she has found carbon-fiber materials that act as superconductors at room temperature, a property that could have a number of uses, including production of intrinsically smart composite structures. Such structures could perform other functions, such as sensing. The research is exploring polymer-matrix composites, reinforced with carbon fibers, which are electrically conducting.
The Foundation to Develop Turkish Aviation is in negotiations to buy the Avanti production line of Piaggio Aircraft. The Turkish company is on the short list to buy the rights to the corporate turboprop, but there is some question whether the line could be moved out of Italy.
In this era of record-breaking profits for the large majority of world airlines, executives serve company and shareholder interests best by achieving sustained growth in productivity. Three airlines emerged as quality-growth producers in the 1998 Index of Competitiveness based on a review of 1997 earnings and performance data from publicly traded carriers. They are KLM Royal Dutch Airlines in the majors; Midwest Express among the nationals, and Atlantic Southeast Airlines in the regionals category.
Indonesian crash investigators have ruled out maintenance, weather and air traffic control as causes of the crash of SilkAir Flight 185 at Palembang last year that killed all 104 on board. Investigators have found no indication of a structural or systems failure that could have led to the incident. Despite seven months' work, they can identify no failure modes that would explain the sequential shutoff of the aircraft's flight data and cockpit voice recorders.
Susan Lewis Sallet has been appointed vice president-corporate affairs of the Comsat Corp., Bethesda, Md. She was deputy assistant Treasury secretary for public affairs. Jose Lucio Natali has become general manager of Comsat Brasil Ltda. He was managing director of Progress Software and Anixter Brasil.
NASA is establishing a new program office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., to detect and track asteroids and comets that could pose a hazard to Earth. The Near-Earth Object Program Office aims to locate by the end of the next decade at least 90% of the estimated 2,000 asteroids and comets approaching the Earth that are larger than 1 km. in diameter. Such objects are difficult to detect because of their size but large enough to cause ``global effects'' if they hit Earth, according to JPL's Donald K. Yeomans, who will head the new office.
In a move to free up a production bottleneck caused by surging orders, Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. has outbid competitors to purchase North America's largest independent completion center for corporate aircraft. The $250-million cash purchase of K-C Aviation should enable Gulfstream to expand substantially its capacity for completions, the process by which the interior of an aircraft is outfitted to customer specifications, while taking away capacity from Gulfstream competitor Bombardier Aerospace, which currently is K-C Aviation's top customer.
Southwest Airlines expects to add 27 new Boeing 737s to its fleet in 1999, two more than planned. Two 737-700s scheduled for delivery in 2003 were moved into 1999 by mutual consent after Southwest decided Boeing was ``getting its act together.'' Although deliveries of aircraft to Southwest have been late this year, the airline now thinks it will get all 22 on order for 1998. Most of a $6.6-million nonoperating gain in the second quarter was attributed to penalties Southwest got from Boeing for late deliveries.
George J. Berry has become a member of the board of directors of ASA Holdings Inc. of Atlanta, parent company of Atlantic Southeast Airlines. He is senior vice president of Cousins Properties Inc.
Retired Gen. Ronald Fogleman, former U.S. Air Force chief of staff, has been appointed vice chairman of the board of directors of the Mooney Aircraft Corp., Kerrville, Tex.
