You quote an unnamed manufacturing “executive” in Wichita, Kan., as saying: “Why take on all that trouble? You'd be nuts.” And you helpfully explained that view, because in Wichita, workers want better wages and medical coverage (AW&ST Oct. 29, p. 46). They are right to demand it. Unions made the middle class. They made it possible for an average Joe to make enough money to purchase a house, take a vacation, buy televisions, refrigerators and cars, and now PCs and iPods, that feed our economy. And they made for loyal, productive employees.
Bill Irby has been promoted to senior VP and general manager of Wilmington, Mass.-based Textron Systems' AAI Unmanned Aircraft Systems, from VP of Ground Control Technologies.
Howard Povey (see photo) has been appointed sales director of the business aviation arm of Marshall Aerospace Group, which is based at the Cambridge (England) Airport.
Marvin Young, VP-engineering of Sacramento, Calif.-based Aerojet, has been named the recipient of Purdue University's Outstanding Mechanical Engineer Award. Young was honored for accomplishments in the mechanical engineering industry, particularly for the development of rocket propulsion systems for defense and aerospace.
The European Space Agency (ESA) will spend €588 million ($752 million) over the next two years to upgrade the Ariane 5 rocket, conduct detailed design studies of a successor and identify synergies between the two launch vehicles, including development of a common upper stage.
Three decades ago, carbon-fiber reinforced plastic, commonly known as composite, was beginning to appear in commercial aircraft. It was not cheap and could not, at that time, be applied to anything like an entire airframe. With the Boeing 787, an almost completely composite aircraft is now in service. The problem of cost remains, but a second phase of the composite revolution is now underway, with manufacturers looking for ways of eliminating autoclaves—the costly, energy- hungry pressure cookers that are traditionally used to cure the material.
Having forged an international partnership unprecedented in the annals of high-speed research, the U.S. and Australian Hypersonic International Flight Research Experiment (HIFiRE) is past the halfway stage and planning an extension as it accelerates toward a fast firing finale.
Philip Tilston (see photo) has become CFO of Madison Heights, Mich.-based Wall Colmonoy's European team. He has been deputy managing director and CFO for Turtle Wax Europe.
Peter Turner has been named VP-business development of Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines' TechOps division. He was VP-customer business at Rolls-Royce North America.
The lure of hypersonic speed for military and commercial use, as well as space access, continues to drive research around the world. Due to the tough challenges, and the cost of overcoming them, more international partnerships are forming to follow the hypersonic dream. One of the latest projects is Australia's scramjet-powered Scramspace experiment, which is being readied for flight-test. The Scramjet team includes the University of Queensland, which prepared a computational fluid dynamics simulation of the flow field around the recently redesigned fins.
Now that voters have had their say, new and returning lawmakers are running their own popularity contest to determine who sits where and controls which appropriations or policymaking in the next, 113th session of Congress. Consequently, leading candidates are making their positions clearer on certain issues, leading to interesting insights normally glossed over. For instance, Rep.
SAS Group has narrowly escaped insolvency, after reaching agreements with eight of its unions over deep cost cuts. The deals vary by employee group, but Norwegian pilots are accepting a 10% wage cut plus 8% more flying hours and flight attendants are surrendering two weeks of vacation per annum while their pay is frozen. The cuts were a prerequisite for SAS to receive another loan by a consortium of shareholders and banks. A Swedish minister says efforts to sell the Swedish government's stake in SAS will now also resume (see related story on page 16).
Jeff Filkins has become West Coast sales manager for aircraft maintenance and management for JFI Jets, Long Beach, Calif. He was West Coast sales manager for Honeywell Flight Support Services and operations leader at Honeywell International's Global Data Center.
In the cutthroat world of defense spending and lobbying, even the most academic of mistakes can cause a major headache. Take the recent case of a wording error buried in a lengthy National Research Council report on boost-phase missile defense systems. In September, the report mistakenly estimated that the operation and sustainment costs for the Patriot system would be as high as $809 million annually per battalion, when in fact it was for the entire 15-battalion force. Moreover, an Army document says the actual fiscal 2011 cost was about $545 million.
The history of civil versions of military jet airlifters is not encouraging. The idea of building rear-loading freighters for commercial operators seems to occur to every company that develops such aircraft for an air force. What does not occur is great success.
Mark Dankberg, chairman and CEO of ViaSat, has been named Visionary Executive of the Year by Carlsbad, Calif.-based Satellite Markets and Research news service. The award is given to a senior executive of a satellite company.
Spirit and Southwest airlines and Allegiant Air are petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their challenge to new U.S. Transportation Department rules on price advertising and ticket refunds. The carriers call the rules an “assault” on the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, a precedent-setting evisceration of the act's intent to rely on market forces and a violation of First Amendment free-speech protections.
Robert H. Schmucker, Markus Schiller (Munich, Germany )
Congratulations! After having preached the same for years, and hardly seeing any impact besides murmured off-the-record agreements, it is good to finally see a renowned journal stating it is “not so easy” (AW&ST Oct. 22, p. 52) to build a credible nuclear force that has to be based on reliable missiles and warheads. As long as a country lacks even one of those, its threat potential is low. And if a country lacks both, there is no real threat.
Beth Wagner has been named associate publisher of Aviation Week's Business & Commercial Aviation magazine. She has more than 15 years of sales experience within the business aviation community.
Back when engineering departments dominated engine manufacturing companies, a powerplant was not certified for flight until it had run well more than 10,000 hr. in development test cells and in flight.
