As if Indian airlines did not have enough problems already, now they seem to have organized themselves into a circular firing squad. Bleeding red ink, India's private carriers are engaged with debt-ridden Air India in a fierce price war.
Tom Burbage, the single, consistent public face of Lockheed Martin's F-35 program since its inception, is retiring, according to program sources. He retires as the executive vice president and general manager of program integration for the F-35. Burbage was integral to capturing the F-35 business for the company in 2001 and keeping the international coalition behind the the aircraft despite cost and schedule problems. Burbage is the last of Lockheed's original F-35 leadership team to retire.
Jim Blasingame has been appointed senior sales director at Dallas Airmotive in a restructuring of the U.S. sales organization. New territorial directors are Jeff Turner, Western U.S.; Jeff Dunn, Central U.S.; Randy Sasser, Southeast U.S.; and Mike Frazier, Northeast U.S. Mark Russo will become program director-APU products. He was sales director for the Honeywell program.
NASA is casting a wide net as it offers research opportunities aboard the U.S. segment of the International Space Station to small businesses, industry, academia and other governmental agencies for projects with the potential to advance technologies critical to space exploration. Those technologies include in-space propulsion, space power and energy storage, closed-loop life support, thermal control, robotics and telerobotics and automated systems. The deadline is Sept.
A technology that turns computer-aided design (CAD) drawings into tangible hardware has advanced far beyond producing toy rockets and airplanes from plastic as a Science Technology Engineering and Mathmatics hook for schoolchildren. Today advanced versions of what once was called 3-D printing, and now is more commonly termed additive manufacturing (AM), is well on its way to producing large flightworthy components for real rockets and aircraft.
Rebounding quickly from the 2008-09 recession, passenger travel fed a big appetite for new aircraft. By 2010 suppliers were seeing good times ahead as Boeing planned four years of steadily increasing production rates.
With the Aero India show this week at Air Force Station Yelahanka in Bengaluru, all eyes are on the largest defense importer in the world and a commercial market of vast potential. Among a slew of aerospace and defense purchases that India is making is the Boeing P-8I maritime patrol aircraft—a variant of the U.S. Navy's P-8A. Boeing photo by Leo Dejillas.
Mary Hefty (see photo) has been appointed managing director of station operations for Horizon Air. She was director of customer service-airports in the Western U.S.
Elbit Systems is launching a maritime configuration of its Hermes 900 medium-altitude, long-endurance UAV, aiming at the growing demand for unmanned aircraft in maritime missions worldwide, particularly in Asia. The company plans to unveil the configuration at the Aero India 2013 show in Bengaluru this week. Israel's recent discovery of offshore natural gas made maritime surveillance one of its top-priority missions.
Doreen “Dola” Lawrence (see photo) has been appointed VP-inflight services at Hawaiian Airlines, succeeding Louis Saint-Cyr, who became VP-customer services last year. Lawrence was director of inflight and catering for Virgin America.
Mark Blanks has been appointed manager of the unmanned aircraft systems program at Kansas State Universityin Salina. He was interim director and flight operations manager for the unmanned aircraft systems program and an assistant professor of aerospace maintenance management at Middle Tennessee State University.
Ruth Bishop (see photo) has been named sector VP of quality, safety and mission assurance in the Herndon, Va.-based Technical Services sector of Northrop Grumman Corp. She was director of mission assurance for the Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance and Targeting Systems division in the Electronic Systems sector.
Thank you for the article about the Kodiak—an amazing aircraft (AW&ST Dec. 31, 2012/Jan. 7, p. 20). I was the lead engineer on this project for the first few years, and spent eight years with the company (in two stints) working through the initial type certification, and then up till the gross weight was increased to 7,255 lb. in 2010.
In winter-spring 1970, Boeing encountered “ovalization” problems with the engines on its 747. Several of the type were sidelined on the tarmac in Seattle with blocks of concrete where the engines were supposed to hang. Boeing will resolve the battery problem on its 787 as it did with its 747 wrinkles. Like the Marines, “The difficult will be done immediately, and the impossible will take a little longer.” New York, N.Y.
The freighter conversion business begins 2013 with a clear division: The market for narrowbody conversions is dynamic and growing, while the market for widebody aircraft has stagnated. The market's current status is belied by the statistics for 2012, when conversions were almost evenly split between the aircraft types. The 64 conversions included 28 widebody and 33 narrowbody aircraft, with the other three on turboprops, the Aviation Week Fleets database shows.
Australian regulators are playing a huge role in shaping the future of the country's airline industry. But with crucial rulings looming, the carriers' destinies will soon be back in their own hands.
