Peter LaSalle has been appointed senior vice president-sales and marketing of Aircraft Technical Publishers, Brisbane, Calif. He was president/chief operating officer of Aircraft Parts International.
Josef Felder, executive vice president/ head of product management at Crossair, is scheduled to become general manager at Zurich Airport in October. Felder will be succeeded by Richard Heidecker, former general manager of Deutsche BA.
The International Space Station program is beginning what will be an ongoing assessment of the lessons learned from three years of joint shuttle/Mir operations. The orbiter Discovery was scheduled to land at the Kennedy Space Center at 2 p.m. EDT June 12, concluding the last of 10 flights to Mir, nine of them docking/resupply missions.
The U.S. Senate Appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA approved a bill to provide $13.6 billion for the space agency in Fiscal 1999. The bill would split the International Space Station project from NASA's human space flight account in an effort to help Congress keep a better eye on the program, which has drawn money from other NASA accounts to help pay for cost overruns. It would also break the science, aeronautics and technology budget into two accounts.
NASA may be hailing the 10 recently completed shuttle missions to Mir, but to House Science Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., (R-Wis.) the program was ``an exceptionally bad example of an international scientific partnership.'' Sensenbrenner told a U.S.-South Korea science policy forum last week the Administration's primary motive was to advance relations with Russia, not to advance science. ``We must guard against creating the perception in the minds of the taxpaying public that international science is foreign aid,'' Sensenbrenner warned.
Carlton Holmes and Waymon Whiting have received honors at the 1998 Black Engineer of the Year Awards Conference in Baltimore. Holmes is senior principal engineer in the Boeing Structures Stress and Fatigue Analysis Group, and Whiting is payload systems chief engineer for the Boeing 767-400 program.
PRESIDENT CLINTON HAS ASKED Congress to provide an additional $294 million next year to deal with the threat of biological and chemical weapons attacks on U.S. soil. About $190 million of the preparedness funding would be spent on specialized equipment, training and planning assistance to respond to a BW or CW assault. Nearly $100 million would be used to build stockpiles of antidotes and antibiotics. The rest would finance research on bioterrorist agents and candidate vaccines.
Lt. Gen. James A. Abrahamson (USAF, Ret.) has been appointed a director of the Orbital Imaging Corp., Dulles, Va. He is chairman/CEO of StratCom and Air Safety Consultants.
Anthony B. Oates (see photo) has been named assistant general manager of the Corporate Business Div. of The Aerospace Corp., El Segundo, Calif. He was principal director of business management.
Larry Myers has become deputy director of the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif. He was group leader of the office.
The Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport governing board has filed a lawsuit against American Airlines to prevent the carrier from offering long-haul flights from Dallas' Love Field. The board filed the lawsuit earlier this month in state district court. It marks the fifth legal action filed since last October over proposed long-distance flights from Love Field near downtown Dallas. The cities of Fort Worth and Dallas and Southwest Airlines also have filed lawsuits.
Mark Danin has been named vice president-charter and flight operations of Ray- theon Aircraft Services, Wichita, Kan. He was chief pilot for propeller aircraft de- monstrations for Raytheon Aircraft Co.
The European-U.S. Solar and Heliospheric (Soho) spacecraft observatory captured images of two comets plunging into the Sun's outer atmosphere on June 1 and 2. Shortly after the comets disappeared from view, Soho's Large-Angle Spectrometric Coronagraph observed an enormous coronal mass ejection of hot gas and magnetic energy (lower right in image). Scientists said the ejection was probably unrelated to the comets. They noted the timing of the two occurrences was highly coincidental, however. The comets were vaporized in the Sun's atmosphere by solar radiation.
FedEx says its services to China will be unaffected by its decision to sever relations with EAS International Transportation Ltd. of Beijing, its primary partner in the country. FedEx uses 20 separate local agents serving 100 cities via Beijing and Shanghai. It plans to open an office in Shenzhen, a trade zone near Hong Kong, that will allow direct shipments to the U.S. FedEx currently operates four flights a week to Beijing and Shanghai.
Marsha Bell has become director of marketing for the Seattle Training Center of FlightSafety Boeing Training International. She was Wichita, Kan.-based product manager for FlightSafety International.
A SECOND DASH 8Q SERIES 400 has made its first test flight from Bombardier Aerospace's de Havilland facility at Downsview, Ontario. The aircraft, Serial No. 4002, will be used for certification testing of fuel, powerplant and other mechanical systems at the Bombardier Aerospace Flight Test Center in Wichita, Kan. Three more aircraft will join the 1,300-hr. flight test program by year-end. Since its maiden flight on Jan. 31, the first prototype has accumulated 146 hr. in 66 flights. Aircraft 4002 has flown 16 hr. in six flights.
BEAL AEROSPACE HAS COMPLETED initial test firings of a subscale, first-stage bipropellant rocket motor at its McGregor, Tex., facility. A series of four tests, each lasting about 24 sec., were completed earlier this month and validated design of the injector and thrust chamber, according to David Baker, Beal's business development and government relations manager. The motor burns a mixture of kerosene and a hydrogen peroxide oxidizer.
Federal officials are trying to determine whether one or more FAA employees attempted to stonewall investigations into the near-collision of a DC-9 and Airbus A319 over the runway intersection at LaGuardia Airport in early April. The National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA are investigating the near-collision at the New York airport. In addition, the Transportation Dept. inspector general is looking into the conduct of FAA officials during and after the incident.
A revised accord between Air France management and pilot unions has brought an end to a 10-day-long walkout. Late last week, the French carrier was gradually restoring normal operations on its domestic and international route system. The draft agreement, signed in the wake of tense negotiations, is scheduled to be finalized no later than Aug. 31. Detailed arrangements on specifics and still unresolved difficulties are expected to be discussed in the next few days. Air France was expected to resume normal operations by June 15.
Could Motorola become a leading manufacturer of large commercial communications satellites? The company doesn't plan to go head-to-head with the likes of Aerospatiale, Hughes, Lockheed Martin and Space Systems/Loral in major satcom procurements just yet. But, fresh from its success in building and launching the Iridium network and winning the prime contractor role for the Teledesic constellation, Motorola clearly is eyeing such a future.
Airports Council International will propose to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) that new aircraft noise standards be established to follow the Stage 3/Chapter 3 rules now being implemented. Jonathan Howe, ACI's director general, noted that the phase-out of Stage 2 aircraft (called Chapter 2 outside the U.S.) will be complete at the end of next year, but aircraft already being produced are much quieter than the Stage 3 standard.
Steve Masse has been appointed vice president-finance/treasurer of British Aerospace North America Inc. Phillip Perotta has been named senior legal adviser for British Aerospace Asset Management. He succeeds Paul Briggs, who has become general counsel to Abu Dhabi-based Oasis International Leasing Co.
