Michelin Aircraft Tire Corp. won a five-year, $70 million contract to supply 23 types of naval aviation tires to the U.S. Navy. Lockheed Martin Naval Electronics&Surveillance Systems-Surface Systems will provide supply chain management services. The contract includes options for two five-year extensions.
Bio-Safe Technologies Inc. acquired JustPLANEParts.com, Inc. in a stock-for-stock reverse acquisition, with Bio-Safe acquiring 100% of JustPLANEParts' capital stock in exchange for issuing 6 million shares of Bio-Safe stock to the principals of JustPLANEParts. Concurrent with the acquisition, Mark Kaligian and Ralph Johnson, founders of JustPLANEParts, were added to Bio-Safe's board, with Johnson being named chairman and assuming the responsibilities of president.
Dassault Falcon Jet purchased Atlantic Aviation's Wilmington, Del.-based maintenance facility. The company will retain most of the 220 employees there and use the center as an East Coast maintenance base for Falcon business jets.
Lockheed Martin Aeronautics received a $137.7 million contract for integrated logistics support for 50 F-16 aircraft in support of Foreign Military Sales to Israel. Contract runs through mid-2006, and was awarded by the Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright-Patterson AFB.
Wood Group Turbines, Inc., named Michael Lilley vice president and general manager of its Wood Group Turbopower subsidiary. He previously was vice president of finance.
Flight development recently started at Adelaide in a Royal Australian Air Force General Dynamics F-111 long-range strike-fighter of BAE Systems' new ALR-2002 radar warning receiver (RWR). Developed by BAe Australia, with government support, from funding of more than $A50 million ($29.5 million), ALR-2002 was to have been a key component in Project Air 5416 ``Echidna,'' aimed at producing an integrated defensive electronic warfare suite for a wide range of RAAF combat aircraft and helicopters.
Interactive Entertainment Ltd. will provide its Sky Play interactive games to Emirates Airlines for passengers on long-haul flights. A total of seven amusement games will be installed on 12 aircraft. The number of aircraft will increase to 24 through the initial term of the agreement. Agreement has a three-year term, with renewable options of one year each.
Photograph: Canada's IMP Group won a major technical support and fleet management contract for the Canadian Armed Forces CH-149 Cormorant search-and-rescue helicopter fleet. GKN Westland A $C58 million ($40 million) contract received by BAE Systems Canada in September was the first in a nine-year Aurora Incremental Modernization Project (AIMP), which could eventually involve 19 mission and flight systems upgrade programs costing up to about $C1 billion ($676.5 million).
HANK ENG learned to fly as a teenager in a Civil Air Patrol program. ``I got my pilot's license before I got my driver's license,'' he said. But a love for flight goes back to early childhood, when Eng lived under the flight path of what is now JFK Airport, ``watching airplanes in holding patterns come in, including the first 747.''
EADS subsidiary Sogerma and Northrop Grumman are establishing a joint venture to establish EADS Aeroframe Services, which will seek commercial-transport heavy maintenance at a facility in Lake Charles, La., that will specialize in Airbus products.
FlightSafety Boeing Training International named Pat Gaines executive vice president; Todd Nelp vice president, sales&business development; and Capt. Paul Hinton, vice president, flight training and international operations. Gaines previously was vice president, corporate operations at FSB; Nelp was director, customer support for Boeing Spare Parts and Logistic Services. Hinton was managing director, flight operations.
Severe funding problems, which reportedly have reduced average flight times for all except transport and helicopter pilots to less than 10 hrs. per year and almost eliminated new aircraft procurement, have forced the Russian air force (VVS) to rely on major systems upgrades to maintain its combat aircraft viability. Already greatly reduced from its Cold War peak from retirement of its single-engine MiG-21s, MiG-23/27s and Sukhoi Su-22s, its fighters now also have to acquire multi-role capabilities to fulfill both defensive and tactical ground-attack commitments.
Draeger Safety, Inc. launched the PointGuard II, a microprocessor-based standalone gas detector designed to monitor toxic gases and oxygen in ambient air continuously. The instrument detects toxic levels of CO, H2S, SO2, Cl2, NH3, NO2, H2O2 or EtO, as well as excess or deficient levels of oxygen. Bright LEDs display the target gas concentration, while an adjustable-volume horn and two strobes provide alarm at the point of hazard. At core of the product is an electrochemical sensor the company said was designed for accuracy, stability and long life.
Eagle Research Laboratories, Inc., won a contract from the U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center at Whidbey Island Naval Air Station to install its Computer Assisted Performance Analysis System (CAPAS) on two EA-6B operational flight trainers.
Photograph: Upgraded U.K. Royal Air Force Tornado GR.4 fighters boast enhanced BAE Sky Shadow electronic jamming pods such as that fitted on the outer pylon of the Tornado GR.1 shown here. John Fricker Current mid-life upgrades (MLUs) of RAF Panavia Tornado F.3s air defense fighters and GR.4 strike aircraft are being supplemented by a multi-million pound MoD contract placed with BAE Systems Avionics Systems Division in Edinburgh, Scotland, for 400 new active matrix liquid-crystal displays (AMLCDs).
United Services considers itself an innovator when it comes to maintenance training. It has co-developed a number of commercially available computer-based training (CBT) programs and was one of the first operators to implement Airbus Industrie's cockpit mockup operating system. According to its marketing materials, United Services' innovations ``have set new standards for the industry.''
The European Commission (EC) last month presented a proposal to the European Council of Transport Ministers that would replace Europe's Joint Aviation Authority (JAA) with a powerful new aviation safety agency. The EC's goal is to create a pan-European regulator with real teeth, legally empowered to legislate and enforce safety standards across the EU. But as with most things that require the agreement of the EU's 15 countries, the proposal submitted Oct. 2 was a watered-down version of the original concept.
Boeing concluded its purchase of Jeppesen Sanderson Inc., which becomes a wholly owned subsidiary reporting to the Commercial Aviation Services business unit of Boeing Commercial Airplanes Group.
Work is now well-advanced by the former Racal Avionics, now Thomson Racal Defense, on two contracts worth nearly $90 million, with five-year options for almost another $60 million, placed earlier this year to upgrade the communications and navigation systems of Royal Navy GKN Westland Lynx HMA Mk 8 and RAF Boeing Chinook HC.2/2A helicopters. Rockwell Collins AN/ARC-210 radio, as the basis of the U.S. company's new TALON advanced UHF/VHF communication system, was selected by Racal to meet the U.K.
Chelton Electrostatics, Ltd. purchased BAE Systems' radomes business based at Stevenage, U.K., and renamed it Chelton Radomes, Ltd. New company will continue an agreement with Nordam Texas to repair and overhaul radomes for Nordam customers in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Aviation Management Systems, Phoenix, named John A. Martin, a long-time executive at BFGoodrich, its president and CEO. Martin most recently was president of BFGoodrich Aerospace's Aviation Services Division in Everett, Wash.
Triumph Group reached an agreement with Honeywell International to purchase ``certain assets'' used in the design, manufacture and overhaul of hydraulic pumps, motors and power transfer units. The product lines will be moved from Honeywell's Rocky Mount, N.C., manufacturing facility to Triumph subsidiary Frisby Aerospace, Inc., based in Clemmons, N.C.
