Hideo Egawa has become CEO/chairman of Tokyo-based Mitsubishi Aircraft, succeeding Nobuo Toda, who has retired. Egawa was president and chief operating officer and will be succeeded by Teruaki Kawai, executive VP.
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), incoming chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, is looking for programs that inspire the public. During a hearing on the future of NASA last week, a key space-policy adviser to GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney may have provided clues to the new chairman's priorities when the 113th Congress convenes next month. “People have an interest in life,” says Scott Pace, the head of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. “They have an interest in people.
As House and Senate negotiations on the fiscal 2013 defense authorization bill near an end, the war over retiring aircraft has kicked into high gear. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta made a final appeal to the leaders of the armed services committees to make changes to a long list of issues, aircraft retirements among them, or else he would recommend that the president veto the bill. Panetta estimates terminating acquisition of the C-27J medium airlifter and Global Hawk surveillance UAV, as well as retiring the C-5A Globemaster would save up to $8.3 billion through 2018.
The tie-up of Delta Air Lines and Virgin Atlantic is very much about better access to the London Heathrow Airport market, connections and serving business travelers well. Delta's decision is only the latest factor that is likely to spur change and rearrangement at Europe's most important airport for long-haul services.
John Croft's cover feature “Simulators: Breaking with Tradition” was excellent (AW&ST Dec. 3, pp. 46-51). As a customer of full-motion simulator training, I have long been disappointed by providers who cannot say with certainty at what point the simulation fidelity diverges from real aircraft behavior. As professional aircraft operators, we should be thoroughly familiar with our aircraft behavior near and at stall. What better way to accomplish this objective than in a full-motion simulator? Given present simulator programming, this may or may not possible.
Israel's new advanced missile defense systems—such as Iron Dome and David's Sling—are so sophisticated that they may mark the end of an era as the last large, kinetic interceptors to be developed to block threats lobbed from neighboring countries, according to Israeli designers.
Senior NASA managers and their White House overseers are pondering whether it might be politically possible to mount a near-term mission to capture a small asteroid and reposition it in orbit around the Moon, where it could serve as a proving ground for hardware and crews en route to larger objects deeper into space.
John Provenzano of Delta Air Lines has been elected president of the Greater Washington Aviation Open, succeeding Paul Bollinger of Boeing Energy, who will remain on the board. Darby Becker of GE Aviation is VP; Mary Miller of Signature Flight Support is treasurer; and Dick TeiTos of MWAC is secretary.
Russia has begun delivering upgraded MiG-29 fighters to the Indian air force (IAF), with the first three traveling aboard an Antonov An-124 transport aircraft. The IAF has awarded MiG a $900 million contract to upgrade all of its 69 operational MiG-29s. The first six aircraft are being upgraded in Russia, while the remaining 63 will be refitted at Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. in India.
The National Aeronautic Association has named outgoing Lockheed Martin CEO Robert J. Stevens as recipient of the 2012 Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy “for public service of enduring value to aviation in the United States.” Stevens has led Lockheed Martin since 2004. He is due to step down as CEO at year-end but will continue as chairman.
With the prospect of lawmakers staying in session past the Christmas holiday to continue debating the deficit, business executives and interest groups are increasing their calls to avoid the expiration of tax cuts and nearly $1 trillion in across-the-board budget cuts due to take place in early January. That is typical activity during high-stakes negotiations, lawmakers say.
“Managing Uncertainty” (AW&ST Nov. 26, p. 26) states that “improving program management” may be the reform needed to help budgets in an era of fiscal austerity. Another viewpoint may be as simple as this: The U.S. military budget is just too high, regardless of reform measures.
Cheryle R. Jackson, AAR VP-government affairs and corporate development, has been elected to the Arlington-Va.-based Aerospace Industries Association board of governors.
In 2008, when slot values at London Heathrow Airport were at their peak, Continental Airlines paid more than $200 million to acquire four landing slot-pairs. Four years later, Delta Air Lines has struck a deal to acquire 49% of Virgin Atlantic—which controls 44 long-haul landing slot pairs at Heathrow—from Singapore Airlines for the bargain-basement price of $360 million.
A U.K. project to use air traffic radar data to improve the environmental performance of aircraft operating into airports has led to reduced CO2 and fuel-burn levels.
You have run several articles on the Emdrive—the controversial propellentless thruster—recently, and I would like to comment in general on the topic. By providing thrust without using propellent, Emdrive appears to be violating the law of conservation of momentum. This conservation law is a deeply rooted and well-established law of physics, and is a direct theoretical result from Emmy Noether's Theorem. Conservation of Momentum is not likely to be wrong.
In Senior Defense Editor Amy Butler's recent post on the Ares blog about Canada's possible F-35 defection, she notes: “While this is big news in Canada, and in the international realm, I do question what it means in the big picture for the F-35 program.” This thought-provoking piece elicited much give-and-take among our readers, including: Atomic Walrus saying:
That airlines' financial performance globally appears to be slowly improving is being interpreted by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) as due to restructuring and cost-cutting, and not as a result of world economic growth.
Test flights of Rolls-Royce's upgraded Trent 1000 Package C configuration for Boeing's stretched 787-9 are underway on the engine maker's 747-200 flying testbed in Tucson, Ariz.
The U.K. coalition government sees the manufacturing sector—and the aerospace industry in particular—as a means of lifting the country out of the economic doldrums and onto a path to growth. But industry leaders are concerned that a lack of skills and perhaps more critically, interest in engineering from the up-and-coming generation of workers could starve the U.K. of aerospace growth at a time when industry is finally getting government support it needs.
In 2004, the Joint Strike Fighter's program manager, Lockheed Martin Vice President Tom Burbage, observed that if any one big defense program falters, the rippling effects impact all programs.
The airline industry could be poised to regain the upward momentum that faltered badly in 2011, with new analysis signaling that the decline has leveled off and even started to reverse.
Sikorsky, teamed with Lockheed Martin, is the only bidder left for the U.S. Air Force's 112-aircraft, $6.85 billion Combat Rescue Helicopter (CRH) program. Boeing, Bell Boeing, EADS North America, and a Northrop Grumman/AgustaWestland team all say they will not bid to replace the Air Force's Sikorsky HH-60G Pave Hawks. Sikorsky says it will offer a “proven, affordable” helicopter, suggesting it will propose the UH-60M already purchased by the USAF to top up its HH-60 fleet.
