Ricardo de Bastos has been appointed president of the Space and Telecommunications Co. of CTA Inc., Rockville, Md. He was vice president/general manager of the commercial division of Lockheed Martin Astro Space.
THE U.S. SENATE Commerce Committee has approved $9.1 billion to fund the FAA in Fiscal 1996. More than $5 billion of that amount would come from the Airport and Airway Trust Fund, which has an uncommitted balance of $2.9 billion. Unless Congress acts swiftly to reinstate aviation excise taxes that expired last December, the trust fund will be exhausted by Dec. 31, 1996. The House Appropriations Committee has approved nearly $8.2 billion for the FAA in Fiscal 1996.
ValuJet managers are crafting plans for beefed-up quality-control, engineering and training programs that they hope will convince the FAA they can revive the grounded carrier as a smaller but safe airline. ValuJet Airlines halted operations June 17 and handed its air carrier certificate over to the FAA after agency officials determined that the airline had not been complying with safety regulations for as long as a year. FAA officials gave senior ValuJet executives the option of suspending operations or having the agency shut down the airline.
Assuming ValuJet Airlines is able to stage a comeback, it almost certainly will endure an agonizingly slow rebuild period following last week's FAA-mandated shutdown. The key, of course, will depend on how long the airline is idled. Most industry observers--analysts, consultants and airline industry executives--seem to believe the carrier's chances are slim if the shutdown lasts more than 30 days. Yet that may well be the case.
The Air Force has been officially queried by USA Today on its contingency plans if the U.S. is invaded by aliens from space. The inquiry apparently was triggered by the new movie ``Independence Day.'' An Air Force official said that the service would forego any extensive planning pending verification of the existence of aliens.
An unsolicited proposal made by Boeing to the U.S. Air Force could set a new standard for how the U.S. military buys and maintains its engines. Boeing has offered to reengine the B-52H bomber fleet with leased Rolls-Royce RB211-535E4-Bs. As part of the deal, the aircraft manufacturer--along with partners Rolls-Royce, Allison and American Airlines--proposes to maintain those powerplants, in peace and war, for a firm, fixed-dollar amount per flying hour.
Keith Butler-Wheelhouse has been appointed chief executive of Smiths Industries Aerospace, Grand Rapids, Mich., effective Nov. 19, succeeding Sir Roger Hurn, who will continue as chairman. Butler-Wheelhouse has been chief executive of Saab Automobile.
Boeing has completed flight tests of a new phased-array antenna designed to acquire and track satellites in flight. Airlines could use the antenna to show direct satellite TV broadcasts to passengers, and the military could use it to receive large amounts of data and imagery from the Global Broadcast System, according to Boeing. Currently, the antenna can receive at a rate of 23 megabits per second. An August test of a prototype is planned on the Air Force's Boeing C-135 Speckled Trout aircraft for Joint Warrior Interoperability Demonstration exercises.
The crew of an RC-135V/W Rivet Joint (system 6 complete) electronic intelligence collecting aircraft is usually made up of roughly 25 specialists divided among the flight deck crew, electronic warfare officers, inflight maintenance technicians and analysts.
The FAA team that conducted a 30-day inspection of ValuJet cited numerous regulatory and procedural violations by the airline's employees and contractors in recommending a suspension of its operations. The events cited by the inspectors in a report reviewed by FAA Administrator David R. Hinson constituted violations of 15 specific sections of the Federal Aviation Regulations. They involved discrepancies in flight-crew training records, inspections of contractor facilities, and aircraft inspections and repairs dating back more than a year.
Debonair Airways, Europe's newest startup airline, began scheduled services from its hub at London's Luton Airport last week. The low-cost, no-frills carrier began daily weekday flights to Munich, Dusseldorf and Barcelona on June 19. Madrid is to be added on July 10, as well as a domestic service to Newcastle. Services to Copenhagen are to begin Aug. 7. The airline will operate a fleet of five British Aerospace 146-200s. The aircraft, from USAir, have been refurbished by Marshall Aerospace of Cambridge.
Dennis Darcy, power electronics product development manager for the SatCon Technology Corp., Cambridge, Mass., has been appointed to U.S. Vice President Al Gore's national committee for Partnership for Next Generation Vehicles.
THE DEFENSE MAPPING AGENCY and Mentorplus Software Inc., of Aurora, Ore., plan to cooperatively develop software that will make DMA's digital charts available for a broad range of applications, using commercial off-the-shelf software products. The targeted DMA data are a suite of chart products in the vector product format--DMA's data structure for the 21st century--as well as utility software known as DMA mapping, charting and geodesy utility software environment (DMAMUSE).
Tracy Garrett, Jr. (see photo), has been promoted to vice president-industrial sales from national sales manager of Deft Inc., Irvine, Calif. He succeeds Bud Levine, who has retired.
BOEING PLANS TO DRAMATICALLY increase production of its 737 narrowbody transport to 17 aircraft a month by early 1998, up from a seven-a-month volume now. The build-up, to be phased in gradually starting in January, continues a previous plan to increase production to 10 a month in the first quarter, 1997. Under the new schedule, manufacturing of the 108- to 189-seat transport family will further increase to 12/mo. by mid-1997 and reach 15/mo. by the following December.
Expect FAA certification of Dassault Aviation's extended-range Falcon 900EX business jet by July. French certification of the 48,300-lb. maximum gross weight trijet was received May 31. The AlliedSignal TFE731-60-powered version has a fully integrated Honeywell Primus 2000 avionics suite and carries 1,660 lb. of additional fuel in two new structural tanks. Range is 4,500 naut. mi. in instrument weather conditions with eight passengers and three crew. In its U.S.
The shutdown of ValuJet and the shakeup at the FAA a day later sent shock waves through the entire airline industry last week. Carrier officials are wondering about the fallout from the government's unusually bold moves taken more than five weeks after the May 11 ValuJet crash. Some in the industry suspect election-year political motives are responsible for the airline shutdown and may have forced the unprecedented scrutiny of personnel and procedures inside the FAA.
Michael I. Sovern, president emeritus and Chancellor Kent professor of law at Columbia University in New York, has been named to the board of directors of the Sequa Corp., also in New York.
Old habits are hard to break. The Philippines' Civil Aeronautics Board is charged with promoting aviation and liberalizing the nation's air commerce regulations. Executive Director Silvestre Pascual says the CAB has been successful in promoting ``open skies'' for cargo, thanks largely to a new bilateral air services agreement with the U.S. that accompanied Federal Express' establishment of a hub at Subic Bay.
THE U.K.'S NEW EN ROUTE CENTER at Swanwick is on track toward an operational date of December, 1997. The hardware installation was recently completed by prime contractor Lockheed Martin ATM, formerly Loral ATC, which is now focusing on software test and integration. The center, designed with the capacity to handle the increasing air traffic over England and Wales, may be the largest facility of its type. The center's 2,000-sq.-meter operations room will house 200 workstations with 20 X 20-in. color displays.
The U.S. should reshape its research and development infrastructure to use resources more efficiently, according to a study by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, New York, N.Y. Total R&D spending by the U.S. government and American companies has stagnated over the past decade, increasing an average of only 1% a year since 1985. That compares with a 5.3% annual rate over the previous 10 years.
OPTICAL DISKS CAPABLE OF STORING 2.6 gigabytes of data on a 3.5-in. CD are expected to be available by the year 2000. The ability to store 2.6 GB on a 5.25-in. rewritable CD has recently been achieved by a number of companies and should be in production soon, according to the Optical Storage Technology Assn. Achieving the 2.6-GB milestone required development of shorter wavelength lasers operating at 680-nanometer wavelength.
A NEW MULTILAYER CERAMIC CHIP capacitor with copper electrodes in place of the palladium/silver alloys typically used, will provide superior performance for higher frequency RF and microwave applications--up to 5 GHz.--according to developer AVX Corp., of Myrtle Beach, S.C. Aerospace benefits include lower power losses and time constant delays. Use of copper electrodes significantly reduces the equivalent series resistance (ESR), which increases with frequency.
Bruce Bishop has been promoted to vice president-engineering from vice president-communications systems, of Tecom Industries, Chatsworth, Calif. J.B. Davey has been named to the board of directors of the AMW Cuyuna Engine Co., Beaufort, S.C. He will remain manager of information systems.
