The Boeing Business Jet (BBJ) team has a new rallying cry: 12 in 12! The slogan refers to the plan to deliver eight 747-8s, two BBJs and two BBJ 2s, all for VIP service, in 2012. Total value: $2.7 billion, or more than double the highest figure ever attained by the unit in a single year.
U.S. Army aviation is offering industry a deal: Work with us to slow our procurement as budgets decline and we can continue to invest in the clean-sheet rotorcraft we both need; work against us to protect your individual programs and we will both get nothing. As the Army wrestles with its first budget cuts in more than 10 years, the aviation branch is trying to protect its long-term investment in advanced replacement rotorcraft under the Future Vertical Lift (FVL) initiative by slowing the near-term modernization.
Winston Leong (see photo) has been promoted to Asia-Pacific marketing manager for commercial simulation from remote assets manager at New York-based FlightSafety International. HONORS AND ELECTIONS
Matt Hafner has been named VP of Southwest Airlines' Operations Coordination Center in Dallas. He was VP-integrated operations. Nan Barry has been promoted to managing director of the executive office from senior director to the CEO. Jack Smith joins Southwest as VP-ground operations for subsidiary AirTran Airways. He was senior VP-customer service. Jim Sturgis has been named Southwest's managing director of quality programs and maintenance safety. He was president of regulatory consulting firm Cavok.
As EADS North America unveils a new concept for the U.S. Army's still-unmet Armed Aerial Scout (AAS) requirement, executives are expressing annoyance over what they say is a slow and unclear management of efforts to replace the aging Kiowa Warrior fleet.
Following extensive preparation, Oneworld is one step closer to integration through the launch of its information technology (IT) hub, with new member Air Berlin its first user. But for the next few weeks its entire focus will be on keeping the alliance itself integrated with LAN on board and adding TAM after their merger to form the Latam Group possibly in the second quarter.
Mention superconductivity in the context of aircraft propulsion and the skeptics come out in force. But NASA is convinced this technology—still exotic to aerospace—can reduce the fuel consumption and noise of future aircraft. The agency believes turboelectric distributed propulsion (TeDP)—gas turbines generating electricity to power many small fans embedded in the airframe—can meet its aggressive goals for a 2035-timeframe airliner, slashing fuel burn 60% from today's Boeing 737s and 777s.
Here is a notion that will make airlines smile and airframers cringe: oil at $40 a barrel. In a high-profile address to the International Society of Transport Aircraft Trading conference in Phoenix, economist Adam Pilarski raised eyebrows with the prediction that crude prices—a key driver of demand for new, more fuel-efficient jets—will crash to $40 by 2018.
EADS North America is unveiling a mock-up militarized version of its EC145T2 aircraft at this week's Army Aviation Association of America show in Nashville, Tenn. The aircraft would mate a UH-72A Lakota fuselage with the fenestron anti-torque tail, providing improved weight, range and high-altitude performance (see p. 37). The concept, offered as a replacement for U.S. Army's Kiowa, is one of many across the service's aviation programs as it charts a path forward with constrained resources (see p. 62). Artist's concept by EADS.
Controllers deorbited a stranded Russian-owned communications satellite March 25, after Russian officials rejected a request to keep it operating, from a start-up company created to salvage the Astrium-built spacecraft for service to scientists in Antarctica. The Express-AM4 satellite crashed into the North Pacific after Astrium engineers fired its engines to slow it for the targeted reentry.
Burt Rutan has been named to receive the 2012 Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum's Lifetime Achievement Trophy. He designed and built the first aircraft to fly nonstop around the world without refueling and developed the first privately developed reusable suborbital spacecraft.
It it the most sophisticated piece of space hardware Europe has ever launched, a massive cargo vessel capable of docking automatically at the International Space Station with a precision of better than 6 cm (2.4 in.) and boosting the station to a higher orbit. But with three of the Automated Transfer Vehicle's (ATV) five missions now behind it, the European Space Agency (ESA) is looking for an opportunity to advance its already cutting-edge platform—along with a means to pay for it.
European Union anti-trust officials are examining competition concerns arising from United Technologies' proposed acquisition of Goodrich. In announcing its more detailed review, not atypical for a deal this size, the European Commission notes that its “preliminary investigation indicated potential competition concerns regarding the markets for engine controls and [aircraft] power generators, where the parties would have very high combined market shares.
The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines' (CAAP) failure to pass an FAA review and Indonesia's spate of drug cases involving local airline pilots, suggests neither country will escape aviation safety blacklists anytime soon.
The European Defense Agency has elicited member state support for the idea of pooling air-to-air refueling resources, although a concrete action plan remains to be defined. In a meeting of the steering group of member states for the Brussels-based organization, EDA secured a “political declaration” that countries have the “willingness to support further development of these capabilities and to better coordinate them,” according to an official statement after the gathering.
European Union officials are seeing some positive movement in the international conflict on the EU emissions trading system (ETS). But if recent comments by their opponents are more than saber-rattling, their optimism may very well be short-lived.
Whether Boeing should send a thank-you note to Pyongyang remains to be seen, but the company's beleaguered Sea-based X-band (SBX) radar is headed to the southern Pacific to monitor the expected North Korean launch of a long-range rocket, a U.S. intelligence source tells Aviation Week. The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency has long used its unique radar—which is mounted on a mobile, ocean-going, semi-submersible platform—for targeting and discrimination data during U.S. missile defense tests in the Pacific.
The cost of the Pentagon's largest weapon system continues to grow, as a defense official contends that the increases are being brought under control. According to a Pentagon report delivered to Congress on March 29, the cost to deliver Lockheed Martin's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter rose 4.3% to $395.7 billion in the last year. That report was delivered the same day that the Government Accountability Office said cost growth on the JSF makes up more than half of the latest annual cost increases of the Pentagon's largest 96 programs.
India's budget for space projects will increase slightly more than 1% for the 2012-13 fiscal year, as the country's space agency prepares human spaceflight missions and readies its long-awaited Geostationary Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mk. III, designed to make India self-reliant in boosting heavier communication satellites. Development work on GSLV Mk. III is progressing at the Indian Space Research Organization for a first test launch in 2012.
