Aerospac e/aviation products and services supplier AAR Corp. has never been a significant player in the General Electric CF6 engine market, but that soon will change.
The Paris-based Economic and Social Council plans to issue a report to the French government calling for closer integration of French and European space activities and in particular the creation of a new high-level European body to define common space strategy. The council is an independent organization that serves as a forum for discussion of public policy and a source of recommendations to the French government.
It is quite likely that U.S. airline industry profits will decline modestly for the March-June quarter, although certainly not by enough to trigger anxiety among the aerospace suppliers that correlate their fortunes with carriers' financial well-being.
Alenia Aerospazio expects to start hiring again in 1998, even though company executives believe that Europe still suffers from an excess manufacturing capacity in aerospace and defense.
Kristina A. Redline has become corporate controller of Banner Aerospace of Washington Dulles International Airport. She was a manager with Arthur Andersen in Cleveland.
Ken Burns has been promoted to president/chief executive officer from president/chief operating officer of the Fairfield Manufacturing Co., Lafayette, Ind.
An Israeli government-appointed commission is recommending a stock flotation for El Al Israel Airlines by the end of the year. Employees would be offered 10% of the shares at discount prices, with the rest to be sold to the public. The long-awaited report on privatizing the state-owned carrier also would let shareholders decide whether the airline could operate on the Jewish Sabbath, a change which has been opposed by ultra-orthodox religious groups who have considerable clout in the Likud government coalition.
SKY COMPUTERS SHARCpool provides front-end signal processing for radars, sonar and signal intelligence (sigint) and can be scaled up to give nearly 1.46 Teraflops of processing power, according to the company. Second Order Systems bought the first systems for integration into a U.S. intelligence agency's sigint system. Twelve processors give each SHARCpool daughtercard 1.44 Gflops of power. The system can be scaled up to 256 boards, with up to four daughtercards per motherboard.
Adrian Tighe has been named area manager for Central and Eastern Europe and Brian Tickle area manager for Scandinavia, Finland and the Baltics, for British Airways.
ELBIT SYSTEMS IS TO EQUIP the Israeli Defense Forces with the newest version of the Hermes 450 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), which offers extended mission duration. The total number of systems involved was not disclosed. The Hermes 450S was developed by Silver Arrow, which is 50% owned by Elbit. The new ``S'' model is powered by a single engine versus the two 38-hp. rotary engines on the standard Hermes 450, which can stay aloft for 24 hr. The wing design also has been modified.
One promising emerging fire suppression technology is electrostatic atomization. Now nearing prototype stage at Charged Injection Corp. of Monmouth Junction, N.J., the technology uses a peanut-sized electron gun to electrically charge a liquid or powder extinguishant. The economical technique forms self-repelling droplets or particles less than 100 microns in diameter that disperse and envelop similarly to a gas and flow to surfaces and flames, according to company President Arnold Kelly.
A fire alarm was set off, releasing 450,000 gal. of water and foam inside Delta Air Lines' hangar at the Cincinnati/ Northern Kentucky International Airport. The area recently was being set up for an evening of entertainment to celebrate the airport's 50th anniversary. An airport official said an employee, who was looking for an electrical plug, accidentally tripped the alarm. The 4-ft.-deep foam and water covered sound stage equipment, television cameras and musical instruments. The event was canceled as airport officials worked for 7 hr. to remove the residue.
Lyles also promises an initial wish list for a national cruise missile defense system by September, in time to influence Fiscal 1999 budget considerations. However, BMDO has yet to completely define the threat or analyze the solutions. First, it must decide how to integrate theater cruise missile and ballistic missile defenses. Then, analysts must determine what can be applied to a national defense against threats such as stealthy cruise missiles that could be launched from aircraft, submarines or even innocuous cargo ships just off the U.S. coast.
DOM DEVITO, A 35-YEAR veteran pilot with 10 years at UPS Airlines, has filed a report saying his Boeing 747 freighter heading west to the U.S. came too close to Air Force One off Ireland. The two aircraft were separated by 2-4 mi. horizontally. Irish officials confirmed that the aircraft were supposed to have been at least 10 mi. apart, but noted there was no danger to either aircraft.
The 1997 Aviation Week/Spectrum Index, like last year's rankings, is designed to take the concept of ``competitiveness'' out of the realm of abstraction and make it concrete, based on objective criteria. As such, the study offers readers an opportunity to deepen their understanding of how a host of trends in financial measurement systems, operating philosophies and changing management structures are converging to create a new model for how technology-intensive companies should be run to improve their competitiveness long-term.
The solar arrays on the newest U.S. geosynchronous weather satellite have quit tracking the Sun, prompting controllers to put the $200-million spacecraft into a powered-down safe mode. Late last week, engineers at NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and satellite builder Space Systems/Loral were working to develop a detailed trouble-shooting plan.
French regional carrier Brit air next October will become Air France's franchised partner and serve as a feeder airline for the French flag carrier's Paris-CDG international hub. Brit air is scheduled to operate 150 flights per day for Air France under a partnership agreement that includes code-sharing, single-ticketing and frequent-flier program benefits. In addition to linking French regional airports with CDG, Brit air will operate thin point-to-point routes on behalf of Air France.
Lockheed Martin's new joint venture with Intersputnik (see p. 33), the old Soviet Bloc's version of Intelsat, raises an interesting question. Will the London-based venture, which is majority owned by the biggest U.S. defense contractor, have any problem selling services to Intersputnik members--such as Cuba and North Korea--with which Washington heavily restricts trade?
A comprehensive study on fire suppression substitutes for environmentally damaging Halon has found that retrofit with similar HFC-125 compressed gas systems is technically feasible for most of the U.S. Navy aircraft fleet. Navair estimates such a conversion, including design, hardware, installation and testing, would cost about $620 million. However, up to three times the weight of HFC-125 agent and appropriate storage volume is needed to provide required extinguishing performance.
Mary L. Good and Keith Calhoun-Senghor are, respectively, under secretary for technology and director of the Office of Air&Space Commercialization at the U.S. Commerce Dept. They wrote this piece for Aviation Week&Space Technology. Outer space has changed. Forever. While no one was looking, space turned a significant corner and became just another place to do business.
Valentine O'Donovan, chairman/chief executive officer of COM DEV International, Cambridge, Ontario, has become chancellor of the University of Waterloo, Ontario.
Aerospace forging supplier Ladish Co. embodies in its $200-million business the best practices that define competitiveness globally, although that wasn't always the case.
Major participants in NASA's Hyper-X program are scheduled to gather at Edwards AFB, Calif., this week for a preliminary design review (PDR) of the small air-breathing vehicle that within two years is scheduled to fly at seven times the speed of sound.
Korean Air is implementing an aggressive, $10-billion plan to double its passenger and freight fleets by 2005 and capitalize on the potentially unparalleled capacity of Seoul's new Inchon International Airport.
