Brian C. Mooney has become interim CEO and Ultan O'Brien has been named sales, marketing and product consultant at Las Vegas-based Allegiant Systems. Mooney succeeds Andrew Kemmetmueller, who has left the company. O'Brien was a sales and marketing director at Retail inMotion.
USN Rear Adm. (lower half) Paul A. Sohl has been named commander of Fleet Readiness Centers/assistant commander for logistics and industrial operations of Naval Air Systems Command, NAS Patuxent River, Md. He has been commander of the Naval Air Warfare Center, Weapons Division/assistant commander for test and evaluation of Naval Air Systems Command (AIR-5.0), China Lake, Calif. Capt. Michael T. Moran has been selected for promotion to rear admiral (lower half) and to succeed Sohl at Naval Air Systems Command. Honors And Elections
A classified U.S. National Reconnaissance Office KH-11 “Keyhole” satellite was successfully launched into low Earth orbit from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., on Aug. 28 by a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy.
Someone in the U.S. Navy intel shop might have had a nasty shock when photos showed up last October of a courtesy formation near Malaysia. Hanging off the wingtips of the Royal Malaysian Air Force's Su-30MKMs (see photo) were Knirti SAP-518 electronic warfare (EW) pods, previously seen only on Russian Su-34 bombers.
As a prospective new entrant to the aviation industry, it's hard to be better positioned than China. The country offers the second biggest national market in the world, one that is growing ever larger and more important and benefits from plenty of engineering talent. It's difficult to believe China will not eventually have some kind of large aerospace industry as long as it stays a national priority.
U.S. Navy Capt. (ret.) Michael V. Rabens (Solomons, Md. )
Bill Sweetman's commentary Commander's Intent belongs in the back pages of your magazine. I subscribe for technically oriented stories—not opinionated, vitriolic ramblings. His musings are better suited in the space usually reserved for editorials. In “Save the JSF. Really?” (AW&ST Aug. 19, p. 19) dragons, stolen gold, civilian goblins and treasure are referenced in just one paragraph.
Demand for Chinese domestic air travel is looking sickly. China Southern Airlines, reporting a surprisingly large 10% drop in passenger yield for the first half of 2013, complains that competition has become all the more fierce because of slowing demand, “rapidly increasing capacity of the airline industry” and expansion of the national high-speed rail network.
Phillip Wade has been promoted to vice president-business development from manager of the quality and R&D groups of Smiths Group company Titeflex Aerospace, Laconia, N.H.
I had little knowledge of—and not even much interest in—aviation when I picked up your magazine by chance. I perused it because of the inherent quality evident on every page. The writing, reporting and presentation all add up to a near-perfect package. Every other publication and periodical I look at these days is rife with errors as copy editors are replaced by computers.
Regarding the editorial “Airline M&A Sense and Nonsense” (AW&ST Aug. 26, p. 54), a great to-do is made about the mediocre financial history of these so-called legacy carriers but no one bothers to mention how destructively costly deregulation has been to the airline industry, airline and airline-related employees, shippers, investors, creditors, communities and the nation.
Boeing's first stretched 787-9 is undergoing initial ground tests at Everett, Wash., in readiness for first flight, which is expected to take place this month.
Turkish Aerospace Industries has completed the first flight of the Hurkus, the country's first indigenously produced turboprop trainer. The prototype became airborne from TAI's facility at Akinci air base near Ankara on Aug. 29 for a 33-min. flight, which saw it climb to 9,500 ft. Powered by a 1,600-shp Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-68T engine, Hurkus has been developed to compete with other turboprop trainers. TAI hopes to achieve EASA certification of the Hurkus at the end of 2014.
U.S. Navy Cmdr. (ret.) David Tussey (New York, N.Y. )
Bravo for Bill Sweetman. If I were still in Defense Department's cost assessment and program evaluation division, as I was in the late 1980s, his proposal for the Joint Strike Fighter (AW&ST Aug. 19, p. 19), would be exactly what I would recommend: kill the “B” and “C” models, preserving the U.S. Air Force's F-35A. This is not about parochialism or threats and capabilities. It is about balancing budget, force structure and aircraft procurement. We can't reduce force structure (much), so we need “X” new aircraft yearly bought with “Y” dollars.
In casting a net far and wide seeking solutions to the runway incursion problem, the FAA is particularly interested in the brand of unencumbered creativity that tends to spring from the minds of college students. That optimism in part is what is behind the safety agency's annual design competition, now in its eighth year. This year's winner in the runway safety category, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) students, devised an aid for the worst offenders in the runway incursion problem—general aviation pilots.
USAF Lt. Gen. Robin Rand has been nominated for promotion to general and assignment as commander of the Air Education and Training Command, Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, Texas. He has been commander of the Twelfth Air Force (Air Forces Southern) of Air Combat Command, Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz. Maj. Gen. Russell J. Handy been nominated for promotion to lieutenant general and assignment as commander of Alaskan Command, U.S.
Stephen M. Nolan (see photos) has been named senior vice president-strategy and business development and Jay Tibbets senior vice president and president of the Sporting Group of Arlington, Va.-based ATK. Nolan was interim senior vice president-business development and had been vice president/general manager of the Advanced Systems Div. Tibbets was his group's senior vice president-business development and had been vice president-strategy and business development for ATK Armament Systems.
There a very bizarre quote in William Garvey's recent Inside Business Aviation column (AW&ST Aug. 19, p. 20) in which George Antoniadis said he wanted to disprove “ . . . the belief that aviation destroyed billions of dollars of value every year.” I should like to know who holds such a view, just what they consider to be “value” and what is their evidence. Antoniadis was apparently paraphrasing someone else.
Scott Hubbard, who led NASA Ames Research Center, Calif., for four years and conceived the airbag landing system of the Mars Pathfinder mission, is scheduled to be inducted into the Kentucky Aviation Hall of Fame in Lexington on Oct. 26. Hubbard, a Kentucky native, is now at Stanford University's Aeronautics and Astronautics Department. He is a member of the International Academy of Astronautics and received the Von Karman Medal from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
