Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Co. increased its second-quarter profit 13.4% from HK$425 million ($54.8 million) in the first half of 2011 to HK$482 million in the first half of 2012.
These are good times for civil aviation, but not so promising for defense. Acquisitions—many of them small-scale—are often aimed at strengthening an ancillary line of business. General Electric's purchase of Austin Digital Inc. (ADI), a Texas-based specialist in flight operations data analysis—for an undisclosed sum—is a case in point.
Materials testing service provider West Penn Testing Group has finished installing a phased-array ultrasonic testing cell. After four years, the FAA has accepted the technology into the ASM 2628 standard and is preparing the updated standard for publication.
Today's top-of-the-line business jets represent the culmination of a century's worth of aeronautical, computational, propulsive and radio advancement. Their capabilities—New York to Beijing at near-Mach speed all the while gentled in the stratosphere—are undeniably extraordinary. But the experience they deliver is closer to teleportation than air transportation. Passengers are removed from the world whizzing by below, while the pilots monitor omnipotent digital systems that essentially control every aspect of their craft and its progress.
Tim Brady, dean of the College of Aviation at Embry-Riddle's Daytona Beach, Fla., campus, has been named to the board of the National Association of Flight Instructors.
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is continuing its investigation into the July 28 failure of a General Electric GEnx-1B engine on a taxiing Boeing 787 after finding the problem stemmed from the failure of a fan mid-shaft. The shaft forms the core of the low-pressure (LP) spool of the GEnx-1B. and connects the fan stage with the low-pressure turbine. The shaft is made up of two main sections, and the failure is close to the torque retaining nut connecting the two.
Astronaut Stephen Robinson has been appointed a professor at the University of California at Davis. He ended his 36-year career at NASA as a veteran of three spacewalks with more than 49 days of spaceflight experience.
L-3 Communications has bought Thales's civil fixed-wing flight simulation business. Thales will hold onto the military and government sectors of its simulation and training business, along with simulation for rotary-wing aircraft in both the civil and military markets. L-3 Communications is expected to keep the business's base at its current location in Crawley, U.K.
U.S. Navy Capt. Bret C. Batchelder, who has been selected to become rear admiral (lower half), has been assigned as director, operations division, Office of Budget, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Financial Management and Comptroller/Director, operations division, Fiscal Management Div., N821, Office of Chief of Naval Operations, Washington. He is currently director, Aviation Officer Career Management and Distribution, PERS-43, Navy Personnel Command, Millington, Tenn. Capt. Bruce H.
Europe's aerospace industry is making progress in unraveling the complexities of time-based flight profiles, which will be essential components of the next-generation air traffic management network. Long-range ATM plans call for aircraft to fly precise four-dimensional (4D) trajectories, with time being the fourth dimension. While it will be at least six years before 4D procedures could be deployed in the European aviation system, work is underway to advance the concept and address the range of issues that must be solved before its operational debut.
General aviation leaders are pushing the FAA to more than double its budget for research into an unleaded “drop-in” replacement for aviation gasoline (avgas), saying a wide-scale testing program is necessary to achieve a goal of developing UL100 avgas by 2018. The heads of five general aviation associations recently wrote acting FAA Administrator Michael Huerta in an attempt to buttress the FAA's continued cooperation with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on potential avgas emissions standards.
China has begun ordering updated narrowbodies, with an unannounced contract for 30 Boeing 737 MAXs from Xiamen Airlines. Although not yet definitive, the agreement confirms that Chinese carriers, with the presumed blessing of the government, will not wait for the finalization of the next five-year plan in late 2014 before ordering reengined narrowbodies. If they had, they would probably have been locked out of that market until the five-year plan after that—2021-25.
Karen A. Williams (see photo) has been selected to become VP-contracts, pricing and supply chain at Falls Church, Va.-based Northrop Grumman, succeeding Susan L. Cote, who plans to retire.
USAF Maj. Gen. Christopher C. Bogdan, who has been selected to become lieutenant general, has been nominated to be director of the Joint Strike Fighter Program, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Arlington, Va. He is deputy director of the program. Brig. Gen. Andrew M. Mueller has been nominated for appointment to major general. He is component commander of E3A, NATO's Airborne Early Warning and Control Force Command, Geilenkirchen, Germany.
Bureaucratic turf wars between the Defense and State departments are the stuff of legend in Washington circles, let alone in remote corners of the world that feel the effects. Beyond age-old liberal cries of militarizing foreign policy, and conservative denunciations of do-good-and-get-nothing diplomacy, there lies an inherent struggle for the soul of securing American interests abroad. “These two organizations, they love each other like brothers,” quips revered wonk John Hamre, “like Cain and Abel.”
Reader Laurence Scott's suggestion of a three-axis spirit level in airline cockpits seems valid (AW&ST Aug. 6, p. 10). I recall that the needle-and-ball in a couple of U.S. Air Force aircraft, a T-33 and an F-86, saved them and me in somewhat related situations. In two instances I lost all my instruments—including the artificial horizon—immediately after entering overcasts on rainy winter takeoffs and had to yo-yo my way to VFR-On-Top with that normally ignored instrument.
Ed Kangas, non-executive chairman of Tenet Healthcare Corp., has been named to the board of directors of Intelsat, Luxembourg. He was chairman and CEO of Deloitte, Touche, Tohmatsu from 1989 tp 2000.
Cathay Pacific Aircraft Services (CPAS), Cathay Pacific's acquisition facilitator, has converted an existing order for 16 Airbus A350-900s into 16 A350-1000s, and ordered an additional 10 A350-1000s. The new order comes under a supplemental agreement to a 2010 purchase pact between CPAS and Airbus SAS. CPAS expects to take delivery of the aircraft beginning in 2018-20.
Landmark Aviation and Canadian airline AirSprint have signed with Scotland-based Q-Pulse, a risk, safety and quality management software and services company. Q-Pulse will modernize Landmark Aviation's paper-based safety and quality processes, and it will manage AirSprint's safety and quality processes as the airline expands into the U.S.
Trina Huston has joined Greenpoint Technologies, Kirkland, Wash., as director of procurement. She has held executive roles in supply chain management at B.E. Meyers, NIC Global and Olin Defense Systems Group.
Kevin Warsh, a distinguished visiting fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, has been named to the board of directors of UPS, Atlanta. He has been a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve and before that served as President George W. Bush's special assistant for economic policy and executive secretary of the National Economic Council.
