Westchester County Airport (HPN), 30 mi. due north of Times Square, is one of business aviation's global hubs. Fittingly, it has always been home to five fixed-base operators (FBO) that fuel and pamper the based and visiting business jets, and those who fly and ride in them. But no more.
The NTSB will hold a hearing Feb. 20 on the crash of UPS Flight 1354 into a hillside ahead of Runway 18 at the Birmingham, Ala., airport on Aug. 14. The two pilots were killed when the Airbus A300-600 freighter impacted the ground after a non-precision approach in pre-dawn darkness. There have been no initial indications of systems or equipment failures. On the agenda are UPS's training and operational procedures for non-precision approaches, crew coordination and monitoring, fatigue and fitness for duty, and dispatch procedures.
“There is an awful lot of software on this program. It scares the heck out of me.” That was U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan's candid reaction to the F-35's dependence on yet-to-be-delivered software before he assumed the top spot overseeing the $390 billion program in December 2012. At that time, he was serving as the program's deputy and was just getting his head around the massive software effort behind various capability releases that would underpin the operational readiness of the three F-35 variants.
David Campbell has become vice president-technical operations for JetBlue Airways. He was vice president-safety and operations performance for American Airlines. Campbell succeeds Dave Ramage, who will be retiring.
The high cost of training aircrews for the U.K.'s battlefield support helicopters is prompting senior officers to look at cheaper options to maintain crew currency. With types such as the CH-47 Chinook costing what commanders describe as in the “high teens” of thousands of pounds per hour to operate, officials from the U.K.'s tri-service Joint Helicopter Command (JHC) are drawing up ideas to potentially introduce a less expensive rotorcraft fitted with a comparable modern avionics suite to keep crews current.
The Comac ARJ21 regional jet project has been delayed again, with the aircraft now due to go into service in April or May 2015, eight years later than scheduled early in the program and 13 years after development began. The first operator, Comac subsidiary Chengdu Airlines, will receive its first aircraft late this year or early next year, says the carrier's deputy general manager, Luo Ning. Further preparations will be made before operations begin in April or May, Luo tells local media.
Although Bill Sweetman continues to fight the good fight—this time in “Fudge Factors” (AW&ST Jan. 20, p. 16)—against the unaffordable and unneeded F-35, I am afraid his efforts will be in vain.
This month, the FAA will begin a series of “contaminated” runway tests with a retired Boeing 727 at its William J. Hughes technical center in Atlantic City, N.J. Taxiing on 230-300-ft.-long “test strips” of 2-in.-deep “manufactured snow,” created by feeding ice blocks into a gasoline-powered chipping machine, the 727 will test a variety of new technologies aimed at providing pilots more information and training to deal with compromised surfaces.
NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden, Jr., has been named to receive the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement Foundation's National Space Trophy for career contributions to human spaceflight, in Houston on April 11. Bolden, a retired U.S. Marine Corps major general and former astronaut, will be cited for “exceptional leadership through an extremely challenging transition in America's space program, establishing NASA's exploration architecture for the future and enabling successful commercial operations to low Earth orbit.”
Water, the stuff of life, can also be deadly if there is too much of it, or not enough, or if it is too cold or hot. A new $1.2 billion international spacecraft mission will give scientists, forecasters and first-responders a map of where the water is on Earth, with unprecedented detail, every 3 hr.
At a turning point in the development of Airbus, its leaders determined that the organization had become more than a loose consortium known as “groupement d'interet economique” (GIE), and Airbus was transformed into a proper company (“societe anonyme,” or S.A.) in the immediate aftermath of the formal A380 launch decision in 2001.
Obituary: Gilbert W. Speed, the founder of SpeedNews publications and conferences, a sister business of Aviation Week & Space Technology, died Jan. 27 after a long illness. He was 81. Speed's career in the aviation and aerospace industries stretched more than 60 years. He started as a student apprentice at the Bristol Aeroplane Co.—now part of BAE Systems—in 1952. Five years later, he moved to New York to work for Eastern Airlines as a development engineer for the DC-8 and Lockheed Electra.
Airbus Helicopters has completed the certification process for its EC175 medium twin-engine rotorcraft. CEO Guillaume Faury said he expected the delayed aircraft would win certification within days. Deliveries to the three main launch customers—NHV, UTAir and Heli-Union—are not due until the second or third quarter of the year, however. Certification of AgustaWestland's rival AW189 is also expected shortly, with deliveries due to launch customer Bristow within a week of certification.
Colin Jowers has become global director of business technology for London-based Air Partner. He was global chief operating officer of Royal Bank of Scotland's Global Banking and Markets Research and Strategy Div.
I was reading “Game Changer,” Frank Morring, Jr.'s profile of Lori Garver (AW&ST Jan. 13, p. 40), and was delighted to see a reference to my late husband: “space-colonization activist” Gerard O'Neill. All his papers and work are now housed in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center archives. It is wonderful to realize his dream lives on. Princeton, N.J.
An article on NASA commercial-crew vehicle development in the Jan. 27 issue (page 26) incorrectly stated the type of Commercial Crew Transportation Capability Contract agreement that will be awarded. “One or more” firm fixed-price contracts will be awarded, according to NASA. web hed: Multiple Contracts On The Way
Scott Fitzgerald (see photo) has become director of business development for advanced sensor systems of the Physical Optics Corp., Torrance, Calif. He was electronic warfare chief engineer and systems engineering manager for Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems, Goleta, Calif.
