Four American Airlines Group employees have received the company’s 2014 Earl G. Graves Award for Leadership in Diversity for “influencing positive change, setting an example and leaving a lasting impact on those around them.” Boeing 737 Fleet Capt. Kathi Durst is American’s first female pilot in a management leadership role. She is active with Women in Aviation International, leads career improvement presentations and mentors young pilots.
Inaki Lopez Gandasegui (see photo), president of Aernnova, has been elected president of Hegan, the Basque Aerospace Cluster based in Bilbao, Spain. He succeeds Ignacio Mataix, CEO of the ITP Group, who is now vice president of Hegan. Elected secretary was Jorge Unda, managing director of Sener Engineering.
USAF Brig. Gen. John T. Rauch, Jr., has become director of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) for strategy, plans, doctrine and force development/deputy chief of staff for ISR at USAF Headquarters at the Pentagon. He was chief of concepts, strategy and wargaming/deputy chief of staff for operations, plans and requirements at USAF Headquarters. Brig. Gen James C. Vechery has been named director of logistics at U.S. Africa Command Headquarters, Stuttgart, Germany. He has been director of the U.S.
Ashley Nicholls has been named vice president-operations and engineering for Fibreform Precision Machining Inc., Huntington Beach, California. He was aerospace product manager at Hoffman Engineering in Australia.
July 28-30 — 50th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference. Cleveland. www.aiaa.org/EventsLanding.aspx?id=79 July 28-Aug. 3 — EAA AirVenture. Wittman Field. Oshkosh, Wisconsin. www.eaa.org Aug. 21-22 — Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Worldwide UAS Workshop. Dayton Beach, Florida. For more information, visit proed.erau.edu or email [email protected].
Nancy Elder has been appointed vice president-communications for JetBlue Airways. She was was a founding partner and chief strategy officer of Matter Unlimited of New York.
Bobby Lentz (see photos) has become vice president-strategy for the McLean, Virginia-based Information Systems sector of the Northrop Grumman Corp. He was director of strategy for the sector’s Defense Systems Div. Other recent appointments are: Tom Afferton, vice president-operations, and Michael King, vice president-business development, both for the Civil Div.; and Jay Grove, vice president-business development for the Communications Div.
In response to a letter to the editor from reader Jeremiah Farmer concerning a flight to Alpha Centauri (a star) ( AW&ST June 30, p. 8), I believe his estimate of the roundtrip travel time is much too short. Consider the following simple mathematical calculation. Travel time (T)—the time required to go from one place to another—can be calculated using the following formula. (Note the numbers are approximate and thus the calculated answers may be in error by about 10%.)
Bernard Bot has been named chief financial officer and Federico Balzola chief people and change officer for Aer Lingus Group. Bot was group CFO for Netherlands-based TNT Express. Balzola was human resources director for Southern Europe for Reckitt Benckiser and a senior HR officer for the Gillette Co.
Dave Davis has been appointed CEO of Los Angeles-based Global Eagle Entertainment. He was chief financial officer/chief operating officer and succeeds John LaValle, who will continue as a consultant.
Shai Lustgarten has become CEO of Micronet Ltd., Montvale, New Jersey. He was executive vice president-business development for Micronet Enertec Technologies.
In “Extensible Exploration” ( AW&ST June 23, p. 44), NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems Director Jason Crusan is quoted as saying low Earth Orbit (LEO) is not an efficient place to assemble deep-space vehicles. While I understand his premise, I don’t see the logic. Any deep-space probe is no more than the sum of its parts. The velocity change required to lift a vehicle out of Earth’s gravity well is the same whether it is an assembled vehicle or a flock of components.
Shaunta Hyde has been named managing director of community relations, Veresh Sita vice president/chief information officer, and Lavanya Sareen managing director of investor relations, all for Alaska Airlines. Hyde was director of global aviation policy for Boeing. Sita was CIO for Seattle-based Colliers International, and Sareen was director of corporate strategy and business development for United Airlines.
The unmanned aerial system (UAS) air traffic management work sponsored by NASA discussed in “Managing Unmanned” ( AW&ST June 16, p. 26) is essential to creating safe access to low-altitude airspace by UAS, but if it is conceived in the paradigm of conventional air traffic control, it will snuff out those operations before they even begin.
Giorgio Moreni (see photo) has been appointed chief financial officer of Toulouse-based ATR. He succeeds Eric Baravian, whose four-year term expired in June 2014. Moreni was chief of staff to the CFO and had been vice president-strategic collaborations for Alenia North America.
Abracadabra, about a flight-control system for carrier landings that goes by the tortured acronym “Magic Carpet,” describes the system as new technology “developed by the U.S. Navy and British researchers.” The essence is that “the flaps are not fully deflected, and the flight-control system uses them to add or reduce lift.” Thus, the aircraft can maintain a constant pitch angle on the glidepath.
“Arbracadabra” was fascinating to read ( AW&ST June 30, p. 62). The U.S. Navy has a goal to reduce the cost of shore training for carrier qualifications and the at-sea time spent keeping pilots “current”—all of which involve overhead costs not productive to combat readiness. The flight-control and guidance technology Bill Sweetman writes about supports the goal. He may have taken literary license with his reversal of how Navy pilots fly the ball: Power controls glideslope; nose attitude controls airspeed.
I was shocked to read in “Bolivar Blues” ( AW&ST June 23, p. 36) that the Venezuelan government owes American Airlines $750 million related to earned revenue in that country. If I owned stock or was a high-ranking executive of American, I would urge the board of directors to cancel flights to Venezuela for at least 30 days and try to enlist the rest of the airlines who are owed money to participate in the boycott.
“Change Agent” was informative ( AW&ST June 30, p. 41), but the NTSB’s conclusion that pilot error was the primary cause of the crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 214—and that Boeing and the airline also bore some responsibility due to the autothrottle design and to inadequate training, respectively—does not fully explain away the incident.
In-space testing of a U.S.-developed “green” hydrazine replacement as a propellant for spacecraft thrusters is a step closer, with the completion of hot-fire testing at Aerojet Rocketdyne’s Redmond, Washington, facility. Designated AF-M315E, the propellant is destined for the Green Propellant Infusion Mission, which will carry four 1N thrusters like the one tested in Redmond, and one 22N thruster. A flightlike version of that unit is scheduled for testing later this year.
Coming on the heels of previous financial struggles and the disappearance of MH370 in March, the loss of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine late last week was adding to doubts about the airline’s grim prospects of survival (see page 42). For the latest on the crash, go to AviationWeek.com/MH17.
The winners of the 2014 Top-Performing Companies (TPC) rankings were honored at the Farnborough air show last week during a ceremony at Aviation Week’s chalet. The annual study, whose results were published in May, evaluated and ranked the operational performance of 59 publicly traded aerospace and defense companies worldwide.
