Aviation Week Senior Air Transport Editor Adrian Schofield was honored at the 2013 Australia and New Zealand Aviation Media Awards, an event held by the National Aviation Press Club in Sydney. Schofield, who works from Auckland, New Zealand, won the Rolls-Royce Trophy for Technical Story of the Year, for an article on automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (AW&ST Feb. 11, p. 46). He was also runner-up in the News Story of the Year category and a finalist for Journalist of the Year.
Jan. 13-17—22nd AIAA/ASME/AHS Adaptive Structures Conference, 52nd AIAA Aerospace Sciences Conference and AIAA Atmospheric Flight Mechanics Conference. All at National Harbor, Md. See www.aiaa.org/EventDetail.aspx?id=18410, 18405, 18406 Jan. 22-24—Fifth Decennial AHS Aero-mechanics Specialists' Conference. Holiday Inn at Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco. Feb. 4-6—NSISC Space Infosec Technical Workshop: “Space Infosec Addressing New Challenges.” The Aerospace Corp., El Segundo, Calif. See www.cvent.com/d/j4qndz
By making its announcement on Cyber Monday, Dec. 2, the biggest online shopping day of the year in the U.S., electronic-commerce giant Amazon was certain to get exhaustive and enthusiastic news coverage of its plans to use unmanned aircraft to deliver packages directly to customers. While Amazon has conducted test fights using a small quadcopter UAV to deliver a package, the realities of the FAA's regulatory requirements make it unlikely the delivery service, called Amazon Prime Air, will become available in 2015 as the company suggests.
It's that time of year when ads for timepieces crowd newspapers, home mailboxes and every other game break on television. Since pilots are big watch wonks, I offer up two new models that could jingle any aviator's Christmas bells.
While there is plenty to debate about where U.S. defense budgets could settle in 2014-15, there is no debate about the Pentagon's desire to continue to compete with cutting-edge technology. It expects defense advantages to be sustained through investment in new weapons and support systems that provide a generational lead over those fielded by adversaries.
Reader Kevin A. Capps (AW&ST Nov. 25, p. 8) brings up an excellent point. The fact that the Air Force refused funding to continue flying the SR-71 is but one indicator for a replacement being operational. He mentions that having the SR-71 “out of the bag” prevents plausible deniability when it comes to overflights of other countries' airspace as one of the reasons why any SR-71 replacement has been kept in shrouds.
Steve Taylor, president of Boeing Business Jets, has been elected chairman of the Washington-based General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA) for 2014. He was vice chairman of the board and chairman of the Flight Operations Policy Committee and follows Brad Mottier, vice president/general manager for Business and General Aviation and Integrated Systems at GE Aviation. Succeeding Taylor will be Joe Brown, president of Hartzell Propeller. He will continue as chairman of the Policy & Legal Issues Committee.
While green shoots of economic recovery are beginning to emerge in Spain, deep cuts in public spending have had a dramatic effect on the country's armed forces. For the air arm, which was poised to undergo a major modernization, the cuts could not have arrived at a worse time. The service was preparing to introduce new helicopters and transport aircraft while continuing to integrate the Eurofighter Typhoon.
Jason W. Aiken has been appointed senior vice president/CFO of Falls Church, Va.-based General Dynamics, effective Jan. 1. He will succeed L. Hugh Redd, 2nd, who plans to retire. Aiken holds those positions at subsidiary Gulfstream Aerospace Corp.
China is on its way to the first controlled lunar landing in almost four decades—a planned touchdown in the poetically named Bay of Rainbows (Sinus Iridium) to unleash a robotic rover called Yutu (see illustration), an equally poetic reference to the jade rabbit the goddess Chang'e took with her when she flew to the Moon. China's Chang'e-3 mission made it out of low Earth orbit Dec. 1 into a translunar trajectory that sets up Yutu for a landing on Dec. 14.
AgustaWestland is accessing the Internet and the cloud to support the latest addition to its product line. Internet-based tools for flight planning and manipulation of health and usage monitoring systems (HUMS) data will be launched when the new AW189 intermediate-heavy helicopter begins operations early next year.
As expected, Boeing launched the long-range 777X family in grand style at the recent Dubai Airshow. But behind the scenes, the company says engineering work to ready the new derivative for launch has gone better than ever, proving that the Airplane Development organization created in last year's radical shake-up, is working.
Laura Fowler (see photo) has been appointed managing director of recruiting and diversity for the Alaska Air Group. She was senior manager of human resources at Moss Adams and had been vice president-human resources with Blackrock Alternative Advisors.
Northrop Grumman will be a competitor in the U.S. Air Force's Long-Range Strike-Bomber program, CEO Wes Bush said during a Credit Suisse investor call on Dec. 5. Slightly more than a month ago, after Boeing and Lockheed Martin agreed to team on the project, Northrop Grumman declined to say whether it would bid (AW&ST Nov. 4, p. 22).
A recent letter (AW&ST Nov. 25, p. 8) misstated the developer and supplier of the primary navigation system for the SR-71. It was Northrop's Nortronics Div., not Honeywell.
When the European Commission set out its first proposals to bring aviation into the existing European Union's Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) for stationary sectors in September 2005, airlines warned it would be difficult and contentious, and advised against the noble ambitions. Almost a decade later, airlines can safely say: “We told you so.”
Bombardier Aerospace has appointed Raymond Jones as senior vice president for sales, marketing and asset management for Bombardier Commercial Aircraft, effective immediately. He succeeds Chet Fuller, who will leave the company at the end of the year. Jones has been vice president for worldwide strategic accounts for Bombardier Business Aircraft.
Vadim Ligay is one of three Russian Helicopters executives who have been promoted to deputy CEO. He has been CEO of Kazan Helicopters. The others are: Vyacheslav Kozlov, who has been first deputy managing director for economics and finance at the Ulan-Ude Aviation Plant and will oversee Russian Helicopters' finance and economics department; and Vladimir Kudashkin, who was chief of staff at the parent Rostec State Corp. and will be head of legal affairs and corporate governance.
The FAA has decided NASA astronauts can be allowed to engage in operational flight functions up to and including piloting a commercial space vehicle for aborts, emergency response, and monitoring and operating environmental controls and life-support systems during FAA-licensed commercial space launches and reentries. But astronauts beware: Training to become employable by commercial providers may force a take-it-or-leave-it proposition to either commit to remaining an astronaut, or commit to pursuing a career as a commercial space pilot.
China Southern Airlines employees have again been implicated in corruption, with the airline confirming that four executives are under investigation. But industry officials say around 10 China Southern staff members have been arrested, including two executives of the airline's marketing management committee. So far, the accused have not been found guilty by any court. If they are, it will be the third time since 2006 that major corruption has been unearthed at China Southern.
Jim Mull Lockheed Martin Quality Assurance (ret.) (Marietta, Ga. )
I see from reading “Quality Questions” (AW&ST Oct. 7. p. 30), about the Lockheed Martin F-35, that little has changed in the way major manufacturers' programs are being managed. The focus on reducing scrap and rework percentages misses many real underlying problems.
Catherine Gridley (see photo) has been named vice president-business development for Herndon, Va.-based Technical Services sector of the Northrop Grumman Corp. She was vice president of DynCorp International's aviation business and had been president of customer services at General Electric Co. Aviation Systems.
NASA will seek an opportunity to participate in the European Space Agency's (ESA) next two large astrophysics missions, including the launches of a new-generation X-ray telescope and a gravitational wave observatory. “Both a large X-ray observatory and a large gravitational wave observatory are prioritized recommendations of the [2010 astrophysics] decadal survey, and so we are pursuing an opportunity to contribute and partner on ESA's observatories,” says Paul Hertz, head of NASA's Astrophysics Div.
