Great Lakes Aviation Ltd. volunteered to suspend operations of Great Lakes Airlines at midnight on May 17 after deficiencies were found in FAA inspections, according to the agency.
Michael E. Korens has been counsel on international aviation to the U.S. Senate aviation subcommittee and is managing director of GKMG Consulting Services in Washington. He spoke in Phoenix recently at a forum on open skies. Asian carriers are coming to terms with the fact that the days of protected markets are numbered. Some have reached to the future, while others have stubbornly clung to the past like a security blanket.
Former astronaut Neil Armstrong has won the 1997 Lindbergh Award for achievements in aeronautcal and space research. Lt. Gen. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., (USAF, Ret.) received a special Lindbergh Spirit Award for pioneering achievements in an aviation career.
James E. Turner, Jr., has been named president/chief operating officer of General Dynamics, Falls Church, Va., effective June 1. He has been head of the company's Marine Group. Nicholas D. Chabraja, who has been vice chairman, will become chairman/chief executive officer. He will succeed James R. Mellor, who is retiring.
Alden V. Munson, Jr., (see photo) has been named senior vice president/group executive for information systems at Litton Industries, Woodland Hills, Calif. He was vice president-operations for credit and commercial information systems for TRW. Munson succeeds Michael R. Brown, who was acting group executive and remains president/chief operating officer.
Chris Carver has been appointed marketing manager for aviation products for Magellan Systems, San Dimas, Calif. He held the same position with Magellan's CNS-12 unit.
LOCKHEED MARTIN FEDERAL SYSTEMS is working on a GPS enhancement which would improve military navigation accuracy from 8 meters to less than 4.5 meters by the turn of the century, without using differential techniques. The accuracy improvement initiative will add 14 ground satellite monitoring stations to the four unmanned and five manned stations currently in use. The monitoring stations track the 24 satellites' navigation signals and relay information to the Air Force's GPS Operational Control Segment at Colorado Springs.
El Al Israel Airlines is struggling to return to profitability after rosy projections for traffic growth evaporated in the face of renewed political unrest in the region. Plans, revitalized by the Israeli government, to privatize the state-owned carrier are threatened by massive losses last year. Despite revenues of $1.2 billion, roughly the same as in 1995, El Al posted an $80-million loss in 1996. The precipitous drop broke a string of several years of steady profits--$15 million in 1995, $14 million in 1994 and $7.7 million in 1993.
Trimming the proposed purchase of E-8 Joint-STARS doesn't mean the Pentagon is putting less value on airborne intelligence gathering. No, it's because E-8 technology may be outdated before the last of the fleet is fielded, says Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles Link. The Pentagon would like to cut the expense and difficulty of deploying big, complicated aircraft--and reduce the danger to their large crews--by sending only the necessary antennas aloft. That bodes well for unmanned aerial vehicles such as Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical's Global Hawk.
BEEFING UP ITS EXPLOSIVE DETECTION capability, the FAA is expected to deploy 150 ``sniffer'' detection devices to U.S. airports by next March. Three companies will each supply 50 systems: Thermedics Detection Inc., Barringer Instruments Inc. and Ion Track Instruments. Thermedics uses high-speed gas chromatography, while Barringer and Ion Track use ion mobility spectroscopy (AW&ST Oct. 7, 1996, p. 50). By July, Ion Track expects to have an 8-lb. portable explosives detector available.
THE EUROFIGHTER 2000 PASSED an ``official preview'' by the air forces of the four nations involved--the U.K., Germany, Italy and Spain. The Apr. 14-May 9 evaluation trials indicated the aircraft would meet performance guarantees from the four contractors. The results will form part of the decision process for moving into production, which has been delayed because of budgetary problems in Germany. U.K. industry executives expected British Prime Minister Tony Blair to press German Chancellor Helmut Kohl last week for a funding commitment for the program.
THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION has issued a statement of objections to the planned Boeing/McDonnell Douglas merger, but Boeing seems undeterred (see p. 25). The EC views Boeing's exclusive contracts with American and Delta airlines as a problem since they appear to lock up 30% of the future U.S. market, according to a European Union source. And while McDonnell Douglas' order backlog only accounted for 6% of the world market at the end of 1996, the company's aircraft account for 24% of the transports in operation worldwide.
Allison Advanced Development Co. (AADC) is testing a functional quarter-scale model of its thrust vectoring lift fan nozzle for the STOVL version of the Lockheed Martin Joint Strike Fighter. The tests began in late April at the NASA-Lewis Research Center's powered lift facility and are expected to run through mid-July. Test goals are to assess the aerodynamic performance of the nozzle for correlation with computational fluid dynamics design codes.
THE U.S. AIR FORCE IS DEVELOPING a certification system for vendors and other outsiders who want access to its computer network, according to Lt. Gen. William J. Donahue, who heads USAF information technology. The intent is to assure that those with keys to the system know the rules for its usage. ``We do not trust anybody or anything to connect to our network'' without proper credentials, he says. But he plays down media reports that hackers have ``broken into'' essential military systems.
THE U.S. TRADE AND DEVELOPMENT AGENCY will soon sign a grant for a $350,000 feasibility study of the transition from ground-based to satellite-based aviation navigation systems for Chile. The grant is intended to pave the way for $61 million in U.S. exports for a CNS/ATM system, based on a Wide Area Augmentation System. The installation of a WAAS would make Chile the first Latin American country to undergo that transition.
Little progress has been made during the past seven years toward increasing competition at 10 of the busiest airports in the Eastern U.S. and Upper Midwest. As a result, travelers in those areas have not received the benefits of deregulation--lower air fares and improved service--a General Accounting Office official recently told a U.S. Senate aviation subcommittee.
GEN. IGOR SERGEEV, head of Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces, was named last week on an interim basis to succeed Russian Defense Minister Igor N. Rodionov. President Boris N. Yeltsin fired Rodionov for failing to carry out major military reforms, including fast and sweeping personnel reductions (see p. 64). Rodionov had sought budget increases instead. One candidate to succeed him is Defense Council chief Yuri Baturin, who has previously advocated manpower cutbacks rather than spending hikes.
Delta Air Lines is expecting a substantial increase in connecting passengers from its Atlantic Excellence Alliance with Sabena, Swissair and Austrian Airlines. The alliance is building a transatlantic network between Brussels, Zurich and Vienna and New York, Cincinnati and Atlanta. Delta and Sabena share computer reservations codes, and each is selling tickets on Sabena's new five-times-a-week, nonstop Airbus A340 service between Cincinnati and Brussels. Seats are sold on a first-come, first-served basis through either carrier. Before U.S.
Gen. Ronald Fogleman, the U.S. Air Force chief of staff, has received the first Military Respect for Law Medal from the New York-based Respect for Law Alliance Inc. Awarding the medal is part of the alliance's mission to promote and reward respect for law among members of the military and other groups.
Even as it spools up production to record levels of 43 transports a month, Boeing is studying a wide range of derivatives aimed at expanding its product line and capturing niche markets.
The issue of how to assure that software written for this century can function in the next, a.k.a. the Year 2000 or Y2K problem, is creeping up on government and U.S. industry alike. Conservative estimates to fix the problem start at $200 billion. Whether overblown or not, few analysts dispute the fact that Y2K is the kind of issue that could trip up even the best-run organization. There are no blanket cures: programmers must debug systems one by one.
Saying it wouldn't hurt national security to disclose the total amount the U.S. spends on intelligence, President Clinton ``authorized'' Congress in April, 1996, to do just that. The Hill balked, saying Clinton had the authority to declassify all by himself. And so, more than a year later, the bottom line remains a state secret. Seeking to break the impasse, the Federation of American Scientists filed suit last week against the CIA, which had denied a Freedom of Information Act request for the intel budget total.
Congress will likely go along with President Clinton's decision to continue China's normal tariff status, but only after a noisy debate. Disgust with Most Favored Nation (MFN) standing is intense because lawmakers perceive China as intransigent and the White House as mollycoddling a vicious dictatorship. Aerospace and other business lobbies began mobilizing months ago to save MFN and their hand is strengthened by Hong Kong's support. But opposition has spread to the grass roots. Conservative religious groups have joined the ranks of the opposed.
US Airways intends to buy an unspecified number of medium-range jets from one of two airframe manufacturers, thus taking the first tentative step toward transforming the company into a regional carrier from its current status as the U.S.' sixth largest airline. The aircraft are expected to replace turboprops now used on some US Airways routes.
