A NEW AERO-C E-MAIL TO THE COCKPIT satcom system, developed by the Systems and Processes Engineering Corp. of Indianapolis, will offer airline operations centers a reasonably low-cost way to send digital messages to aircraft worldwide. Intended for air cargo carriers, the system is a commercial version of Falcon Gateway, which the U.S. Air Force is using on more than 300 cargo and tanker aircraft. It will use Inmarsat-C services and a store and forward technique.
Many U.S. aerospace companies are making a bundle--partly at the expense of doing a better job of responding to the growing demand for new commercial aircraft. Both of these trends--companies' financial prosperity and their response to market demands--are clearly reflected in the 1997 Aviation Week/Spectrum Index of Competitiveness. But it's the data pointing to inadequate levels of companies' throughput--the conversion of inventory to finished goods shipped to customers--that should sound an alarm in execu-
THE AIRCRAFT OWNERS and Pilots Assn. is urging the FAA to reconsider possible plans by the agency to eliminate cost-benefit analyses of airworthiness directives. In a recent directive proposing the installation of ice detectors on EMB-120 aircraft, the FAA said it had not conducted a cost-benefit analysis because it was unnecessary and redundant. In a letter to acting FAA Administrator Barry Valentine, AOPA said the cost of complying with directives ``can add substantially to the cost of owning and operating a general aviation aircraft.''
TRW HAS DEVELOPED a low-noise amplifier chip that produces 12.5 dB. of gain at 155 GHz., the highest operating frequency for a solid-state amplifier, according to the company, which expects to have 220-GHz. amplifiers in the near future. The three-stage amplifier uses TRW's indium phosphide high-electron mobility transistor (HEMT) MMIC technology. Benefits of indium phosphide are higher speeds, lower noise and about half the operating voltage of gallium arsenide, which should reduce size, weight and cost of power supplies.
Brig. Gen. (sel.) Ted M. McFarland has been named vice commander of the U.S. Air Force Electronic Systems Center, Hanscom AFB, Mass., effective in July. He will succeed Brig. Gen. Wilbert D. Pearson, Jr., who will become director of operations for the Air Force Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. McFarland was deputy director for air warfare in the Office of the Deputy for Strategic and Tactical Systems in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology at the Pentagon.
Bell Boeing will have a full-size mockup of its Model 609 civil tilt-rotor at next week's Paris air show. The display will come 20 years after the first flight of the NASA/Army/Bell XV-15 tilt-rotor research aircraft, on which the V-22 Osprey and 609 are based. The 609 is designed for 6-9 passengers versus the 40 seats a civil version of the V-22 could carry. Bell and Boeing see a variety of markets for the 609, including long-distance service of offshore oil rigs and longer, more economical point-to-point operations than executive helicopters now provide.
Japan will decide this summer whether to build a system to defend against ballistic missiles, particularly North Korea's Nodong, says Air Force Lt. Gen. Lester Lyles, the head of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. For what it's worth, BMDO is providing the Japanese with threat information; U.S. intelligence agencies differ about how soon the long-range missiles will be operational. One key, he said, is ``whether or not Nodong exists today.'' Some U.S.
Donald K. Reed has become vice president/general manager of Pratt&Whitney Space Propulsion's USBI Co., Huntsville, Ala. He was vice president of USBI's solid rocket booster program. Reed succeeds Joseph P. Zimonis, who is retiring.
Patrick J. Harris has been appointed senior vice president-marketing and sales of Barfield Inc. of Miami. He was vice president-international sales and marketing of the Cleveland Pneumatic Co.
Skywatch, a traffic advisory system produced by BFGoodrich Avionics Systems Inc., was developed to give general aviation reasonably low-cost traffic alerts. It interrogates other transponders, receiving aircraft altitudes from Mode C transponders and calculating range, bearing and closure rate from all responses. A Mode S transponder is not required.
RAYTHEON AIRCRAFT CO. last week introduced its Travel Air fractional aircraft ownership plan that allows participants to acquire shares in King Air B200, Beechjet 400A and Hawker 800XP business aircraft. Nine new aircraft will be placed into the program this year, according to Gary Hart, Raytheon Travel Air president. A one-fifth share in a B200 Super King Air costs $788,000, or customers can pay $1.513 million for a 25% share in a Beechjet or $2.79 million for a 25% share in an 800XP. The program will be officially launched in August.
TESTIMONY AT A HOUSE hearing examining the May 16 shutdown of Great Lakes Airlines pointed to a disconnect between FAA and carrier officials even as agency inspectors escalated surveillance. Acting FAA Administrator Barry Valentine said the FAA put the airline under a special emphasis inspection after unsatisfactory checks began to mount, from 72 in 1995 to 159 in 1996.
The U.S. Naval Air Training Command is gradually resuming operations of T-2C aircraft following a series of flight control anomalies and possible contamination of the aircraft's hydraulic system's components.
U.S. Sen. John Glenn (D.-Ohio) is scheduled to receive the Williams Trophy from the Washington Airports Task Force. The award recognizes those whose ``leadership, vision and dedication in the application of aviation or space enriched the quality of life on Earth.''
Warren Tanner (see photos) has been promoted to director of special projects from vice president-operations. He will be succeeded by Alan Nitchman, who is being promoted from Minneapolis-based vice president/general manager, both for Elliott Aviation, Moline, Ill.
Pressure on companies to continuously improve their performance is becoming part of the culture of doing business in the aerospace/defense industry, as strongly suggested by a recent survey of prime contractors and many of their suppliers.
THE U.S. NATIONAL OCEANIC and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has begun operating a Gulfstream 4SP built specifically for use as a high-altitude, atmospheric data collection platform, to improve hurricane forecasting. Its chief mission is to help the National Hurricane Center in Miami predict the paths of storms during the active season, which runs from June 1- Nov. 30. NOAA officials said data from the aircraft will be used to supplement both low- and high-altitude information collected by Lockheed P-3s.
THE FATAL MIDAIR COLLISION last November of a Kazakh Il-76 and Saudi Boeing 747 near Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi occurred in cumulus clouds,``capable of causing severe turbulence,'' according to an affidavit submitted by an eyewitness and entered into an Indian court of inquiry.
NASA ADMINISTRATOR Daniel S. Goldin and his counterparts in Japan, Canada, Russia and the European Space Agency met in Japan and formally endorsed a new assembly schedule for the international space station. The schedule, prompted by Russia's failure to build its hardware on time, delays the first assembly launch by eight months, to June 1998.
Christopher St. John has become Munich-basedvice president-European operations of the MacNeal-Schwendler Corp. of Los Angeles. He was director of European engineering services.
Scott M. Weber has been promoted to general sales manager from Western sales manager and Eric S. Gefvert to distributor sales manager from application specialist, for Hamlin Inc., Lake Mills, Wis.
The three sweetest words in the English language are not ``I love you.'' They are ``You were right.'' That's what some scientists are saying --to a degree--to a colleague who has been a voice crying in the wilderness for the last decade about the ``holes'' he says are being punched in Earth's extreme upper atmosphere thousands of times per day by small comet-like objects. At a scientific meeting here May 28, he announced he now has evidence of water in these objects.
Moritz Suter, chief executive officer of Crossair, has been awarded the Max Schmidheiny Foundation Freedom Prize for 1997 for vision and entrepeneurship in entering a new market and overcoming obstacles to pioneer air connections between peripheral regions and business centers.
The June 4 edition of the ABC television program ``PrimeTime Live,'' which was dedicated to the ``mystery'' of TWA Flight 800, revealed more about internal disagreements at the National Transportation Safety Board than the crash. The show featured NTSB aviation safety director Bernard Loeb. He reiterated his argument that the 747 might not have been destroyed if explosive fuel vapors had not been present in the aircraft's center tank. Loeb also blasted the FAA for failing to act to reduce the risk of fuel tank explosions, particularly in light of the board's Dec.
