Andrew Best has been appointed head of line maintenance at Zurich-based SR Technics, part of the Mubadala Aerospace maintenance repair and overhaul network. He succeeds Antoine Gervais, who has become head of operations development. Best was head of commercial operations at SR Technics and will remain a member of its leadership team.
Jim McNerney smiled broadly as he bounded onto a podium in a historic hangar at Reagan Washington National Airport this month, a gleaming Boeing 787 serving as a dramatic backdrop just beyond the open hangar door. The chairman and CEO of Boeing was accepting the 2011 Robert J. Collier Trophy on behalf of the team that developed the 787, a jet that is finally in service following more than three years of delays.
Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) is a key technology in the Federal Aviation Administration's move to a satellite-based Next Generation (NextGen) air traffic management system for operations throughout the U.S. However, one of the first and most welcome applications of the advanced system required some specialized adaptation and a strong stomach since tight quarters and boat rides were involved.
Michael Bruno (Washington), Mark Carreau (Houston)
One thing has been made certain by the mission launched last week to the International Space Station (ISS) by Space Exploration Technologies Inc.: governments now have someone else they can call to send their cargo into space. The demonstration of Dragon's capabilities since its May 22 launch make clear that cargo transport to the ISS can be viably outsourced to at least one commercial player.
Robert L. Del Boca will succeed Giles Kyser as president and CEO of Selex Galileo, Arlington, Va. Del Boca has been a senior adviser to the Selex Galileo board and the CEO since 2010. He had been sector VP and general manager of Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Defensive Systems Div.
When it comes to campaign air travel, incumbents have a clear advantage. Each hour, the cost to fly Air Force One is $179,750, according to a new Congressional Research Service report. But when traveling to a campaign stop, the president and his assistants reimburse the government for a mere fraction—the price of a commercial air ticket. The government picks up the tab for the president's security staff, who are always considered on official duty. The cost per flight hour is so high because when the president flies, there's an advance team to consider.
If there is an upside to the A380's wing-component cracking saga, it may be that it should enable Airbus to avoid an embarrassing misstep on its next big development program, the A350.
Since the dawn of military aviation in 1914, 100 of the 869 winners of the Medal of Honor have been aviators. Why such a relatively small number? On Memorial Day (May 28 in the U.S.), the question is worth pondering as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down and the U.S. honors the men and women who have died while serving in its armed forces. Photos courtesy of the Medal of Honor Society.
Here is one simple lesson to be gleaned from Aviation Week's Top-Performing Companies (TPC Study): avoid overconfidence. History shows that a first-place finish is no guarantee of long-term success. Conversely, even consistently strong performers have a bad year every now and then.
Given the complex, long-term nature of the supply chain, there is a risk of raw material and parts shortages that could cause disruptions that result in delays and drive up costs.
Boeing is on track to meet its milestones in the second phase of NASA's Commercial Crew Development (CCDev-2) competition, after completing preliminary design review May 18 for software needed to operate its CST-100 crew capsule. Still to come are CCDev-2 milestones that include an orbital maneuvering/attitude control engine hot-fire test, NASA says.
Jeffrey Bernier (see photo) will become Asia-Pacific managing director for all countries outside of Japan for Delta Air Lines. He will remain managing director-Pacific sales and affairs.
Plagued with massive losses, Finnair is becoming the first European airline to outsource a significant part of its short-haul network. But SAS Scandinavian Airlines, its main rival in the Nordic region, is learning the hard way what can happen when regional partner airlines become unreliable as it too seeks its own financial turnaround.
The order backlog for Airbus and Boeing is now more than 8,000 units and worth about a half-trillion dollars. Their factories will be busy to the end of the decade, smoothing the impact of any order retrenchments that some industry trackers expect in the middle of the decade.
Air France's Transavia low-cost venture will take on a larger role under the airline's restructuring effort, but the overall fleets for the struggling short-haul and freight networks will be trimmed. In a bid to stem losses, Air France will focus its own short-haul operation on Marseille, Toulouse and Nice, as well as other locations where business travel dominates and needs to be connected to the carrier's long-haul network. Transavia will largely take over responsibility for leisure traffic, and see its fleet grow to 20-22 aircraft by 2015-16.
The Australian government will buy 10 Alenia Aermacchi/L-3 Communications C-27Js to meet its tactical transport needs. An item in The World (May 14, p. 15) incorrectly identified one of the contractors.
To see more details about the Medal of Honor aviators, plus photographs of them and video footage from the conflicts in which they served, go to AviationWeek.com/medalofhonor or your digital edition of AW&ST on an iPad. By the time Joe Jackson volunteered for duty in Vietnam at the age of 45, he already was a combat veteran. He had flown 107 sorties during the Korean War as a Republic F-84 pilot, and later was chosen to fly Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance missions.
The Air Force suffered a back-to-back pummeling by two House committees over its proposal for deep cuts to the Air National Guard (ANG). Now the Senate is piling on. Senators are dismissing the Air Force's plan to scale back Guard forces to help meet federally mandated budget reductions, complaining that it was hastily made without adequate supporting analysis.
“You Thought It Was Over . . .(AW&ST May 14, p. 31) shines a bright light on the many and varied weaknesses of the TP400D engine. Rolls-Royce and its associates have a strong history of great engines, but this one needs more time. Meanwhile, Airbus's frustration grows as the A400M military aircraft falls further behind in proving trails. Why doesn't Airbus opt for an engine option, allowing the A400M to finish the trials. Rolls would then have a less-pressured environment in which to iron out the problems that continue to arise.
Exploration-program experts looking for ways to restructure NASA's downsized Mars program will have 400 concepts and abstracts to review, following a call for ideas in connection with an upcoming workshop in Houston. The Mars Program Planning Group received about twice as many responses as expected on ways to explore Mars now that the agency has pulled out of its joint effort with the European Space Agency (see p. 37).
The first Tupolev Tu-214R twinjet reconnaissance aircraft is now in flight trials. This aircraft, made at the Kazan-based KAPO facility, a subsidiary of Russia's United Aircraft Corp. (UAC), is the first of two airplanes ordered by the Russian defense ministry in 2002. Under this contract, both aircraft should have been delivered in 2008, but according to KAPO's annual report for 2011, delivery of the first Tu-214R has been s postponed until 2013. The second Tu-214R is on the final assembly line, with delivery expected in 2014.
As top-tier defense contractors begin to move away from an era of big-ticket weapons procurements, they are scrutinizing their portfolios in an effort to weed out lower-performing businesses. And one problem area keeps coming to the forefront: low-margin government services businesses.
