P.K. Chan has been appointed managing director of the Swire Group's Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Co. Ltd., effective July 1. He will succeed John Slosar, who will become managing director of Swire Beverages Ltd.
Long-time Boeing customer Qantas Airways will stay that way into the next century, sticking with 737, 747 and 767 models, and disposing of four Airbus A300s it acquired with its takeover of Australian Airlines in 1993.
The U.S. Air Force will use an unmanned aerial vehicle for the first time for active and passive electronic warfare during the same mission in an upcoming demonstration. The Air Force's UAV battlelab wants to show how an EW-configured UAV can function as a powerful adjunct to a strike package.
Mike Costello has become hub vice president for American Eagle at Dallas-Fort Worth. Other hub vice presidents named were: Terry Hart, Chicago; Dave Brown, Los Angeles; Jacques Vachon, Miami; Bob Hamilton, New York Kennedy; and George Hazy, San Juan.
There's going to be congressional pressure on the Air Force to buy at least one squadron of Block 60 F-16Cs similar to those approved for sale to the United Arab Emirates, said a senior aerospace industry official (see p. 33). Lawmakers are noting that for the first time in history the U.S. is selling weapons overseas that are better than USAF equipment. The Block 50 is currently the top-of-the-line F-16 in U.S. service with less sophisticated radar, communications, cockpit, engine and infrared sensors than those to be delivered to the UAE.
Paul Briggs has become general counsel, Michael Darch finance director and Mark Hughes director of lease finance, all for Oasis International Leasing, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Briggs was senior legal adviser, Darch a finance director and Hughes manager of corporate finance, all for British Aerospace Asset Management.
BRITISH AEROSPACE HAS SIGNED a contract worth up to 350 million pounds ($574 million) to provide 18 Hawk Mk115 trainers to Bombardier, the prime contractor for the new NATO Flying Training in Canada (NFTC) program. Of the total, 170 million pounds ($278.8 million) is for the basic aircraft and the remainder for initial spares and support. Bombardier has an option for a further eight Hawks, which would increase the value of the contract to more than 450 million pounds ($738 million).
Non-proliferation efforts have suffered a serious blow from India's resumption of nuclear testing, clouding the future of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, nuclear specialists here caution. The CTBT was in trouble in the U.S. Senate anyway, and any chance of ratification this year is out of the question, they fear. India's five tests are expected to strengthen the hand of treaty opponents, among them Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Hughes has been making clever use of the Moon to salvage the former AsiaSat-3 from a worthless orbit, but company officials acknowledge the ``catalyst'' to consider the Moon was contact from the outside (AW&ST May 4, p. 38). Edward A. Belbruno and Rex W. Ridenoure, a former Jet Propulsion Laboratory colleague of Belbruno's and former Hughes employee, contacted Hughes three weeks after the Proton upper stage failure in December. Belbruno is now president of Innovative Orbital Design in Ardsley, N.Y., and Ridenoure works for Microcosm Inc., in Torrance, Calif.
Photograph: THE EAGLE EYE VTOL (shown above) and Bombardier CL-327 unmanned aerial vehicles are nearing completion of a 50-hr. test and evaluation program being conducted by the U.S. Navy at the Yuma (Ariz.) Proving Grounds. The Bell Helicopter Textron Eagle Eye has achieved an altitude of 9,200 ft. and speeds of up to 183 kt., and its day/night Flir system has provided ``jitter-free'' imagery to ground stations controlling the flights. The aircraft also has demonstrated the ability to hover out of ground effect with a more than 200-lb. payload and 350 lb.
The shootout is intensifying among makers of regional jets--with two new aircraft set for delivery in 1999 and another in 2000--but turboprops continue to be the mainstay of the regional airlines' fleets. Coming to an airport near you next year are the 37-seat Embraer RJ-135, rolled out last week, and the 32-34-seat Fairchild Dornier 328JET. In 2000, the 70-seat Canadair Regional Jet (CRJ) Series 700 will begin joining airline fleets. Still pending are Fairchild Dornier's plans for the 428JET, a 42-44-seat derivative of the 328JET.
The U.S. Air Force is readying a request for proposals it plans to issue next month for definition of the low-Earth orbit component of the Space Based Infrared (SBIRS) missile warning system. The government is expected to award a pair of definition contracts for SBIRS-low this fall, followed by a downselect to a single contractor two years later for an estimated $3.8-billion contract to build the 20-30 satellite constellation. A TRW/Raytheon team is competing with a Lockheed Martin/Boeing/Aerojet team.
The Air Force's only nuclear sampling aircraft was back in service last week after a scramble to reinstall particulate and gas collection systems. Scheduled for six months of depot maintenance, the TC-135 already had been stripped of its sampling gear when India resumed nuclear testing. Overnight, the airborne sampling capability was needed again, but the sampling airfoils and gas-collection equipment were on a truck headed for California. The shipment was intercepted and the TC-135 restored to mission-ready status.
As the first chief of the Pentagon's new command, control communications and intelligence (C3I) office, Arthur L. Money has been given a task ``just short of solving world hunger,'' a senior Pentagon official said. Over the years, people have built up fiefdoms around signals, communications and electronic-intelligence gathering. Money's task is to get his four deputies to break down the functional walls so that intelligence can go directly to the warfighters, the official said.
LOCKHEED MARTIN Telecommunications has won a $600-million contract from ASC Enterprises Ltd., an Indian consortium, to build the Agrani multimission satellite system. The spacecraft will provide handheld telephone and television services and is designed to benefit India's large rural population.
A new approach to aircraft anti-icing and deicing may result from experiments being performed by a physicist from Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. Victor Petrenko has discovered that applying a small electrical voltage across an ice-metal interface can break the bond between the surfaces. Simply put, ice's unusual molecular structure results in an electrically charged surface which creates a strong attraction, or bond, to other materials it comes in contact with.
Boeing is studying startup of a second 737 transport manufacturing line at its recently acquired Long Beach, Calif., facility to ease current delivery delays and backlogs. The capability also could give the Seattle-based aerospace manufacturer the ability to offer increased near-term 737 deliveries to better compete with Airbus' successful A320 transport family.
Energia Space Rocket Corp. (RKK) and Russian gas monopoly GazProm have contracted to provide four Yamal telecommunicatons/broadcasting satellites for the Russian space agency (RSA). The geosynchronous-orbit satellites are part of a plan to modernize the country's fixed space telecom network, currently served by 10 aging Horizont satellites. RKK was short-listed for the upgrade program in February, in response to a call for tender issued last fall.
LOCKHEED MARTIN FACES at least 23.5 million pounds ($38.5 million) in damages for delays in delivering 25 C-130J transports to the Royal Air Force, according to the U.K.'s National Audit Office (NAO). According to a revised September 1997 schedule, the first 16 aircraft are to be delivered late. This April the U.S. firm started making monthly penalty payments based on 0.5% of the price of an aircraft for each month it is late.
Long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) suffered mixed reviews last week. Teledyne Ryan's 1-ton-payload Global Hawk made its second successful flight on May 10, stayed aloft for 2 hr. 24 min. and reached 41,000 ft. Program funding increases of $32.5 million were recommended by both House and Senate committees. Meanwhile, the Senate Armed Services Committee called for terminating Lockheed Martin's stealthy DarkStar UAV because it has been 25 months since one of the two test aircraft crashed on its second flight.
NTSB INVESTIGATORS last week were reviewing the cockpit voice and flight data recorders from an AirTran Airlines DC-9-32 that was severely damaged by hail on May 7 during a Miami-Chicago flight. With constant guidance from air traffic controllers, the flight crew made an emergency landing in Chattanooga, Tenn., despite the fact the hail had shattered the aircraft's three front windshields and disabled the airspeed indicators.
PAUL MANNHong Kong Bureau Chief Bruce Dorminey contributed to this report.
India's series of five underground nuclear tests has upset the world's nuclear status quo, but neither a frenetic regional arms race nor a war has to result, American, Chinese and Indian security specialists say.
Canada hopes to release a new, liberalized charter airline policy by year-end, updating a 20-year-old document. The review coincides with complaints that the Canadian Transport Agency, which oversees the licensing and economic regulation of the country's scheduled and charter carriers, is not enforcing the current policy. At issue are complex restrictions on international charter flight tickets that require advance purchase, length of stay at the destination and sometimes integration of ticket cost within a travel package that includes accommodations.
The Theater High Altitude Area Defense (Thaad) program's fifth successive failure to achieve its first intercept has caused widespread consternation within the Defense Dept. and is prompting even strong congressional supporters to tighten the screws on the missile defense program's management.
Donald A. Graw, who has been president/CEO, has been named chairman of Avteam Inc., Miramar, Fla. He succeeds Leon Sragowicz, who has resigned. Sanford Miller has been named to the board of directors. He is chairman/CEO of the parent company of Budget Rent A Car.
