Amy Butler (Arlington, Amarillo and Fort Worth, Texas)
Officials at Bell Helicopter hope that work on a small Kiowa cabin conversion contract and a cockpit upgrade are strategic footholds that will position the company to win back the U.S. Army’s future scout helicopter work after its Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter (ARH) was terminated in 2008.
Raymond J. Quinlan has been named executive vice president-banking at the New York-based CIT Group . Before joining CIT, Quinlan spent more than 30 years at Citigroup.
Maile Topliff has been elevated to chief administration officer for Seabury Group . She has held management positions with UnitedHealth Group and Comcast Cable/AT&T Broad Band/MediaOne.
Cynthia Marcondes Ferreira Benedetto has been appointed Embraer ’s new chief financial officer, succeeding Luiz Carlos Aguiar, who will become president and CEO of the recently created Embraer Defense and Security unit. Benedetto has been with the company since 1986, most recently at the helm of Embraer’s Finance Department.
India’s commercial capital, Mumbai, is set to see a second international airport with a $2-billion price tag, as the city’s international hub is so overcrowded that carriers are shifting flights elsewhere, especially to New Delhi. In the past year alone, infrastructure and space constraints forced the civil aviation ministry to refuse permission to airlines from Bahrain, Dubai, Qatar, Oman, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand to start operations in Mumbai, home to 18 million residents.
I have a slightly different take on your editorial “Is Safety a Victim of Justice Awry?” (AW&ST Dec. 13, 2010, p. 58). In March, I attended the final sessions of the Concorde crash trial because the subject interests me for many reasons: I’m a retired Boeing 747 pilot, a California attorney and a French-born (but U.S.) citizen Concorde afficionado.
European planners hope the process to approve the use of the European GPS augmentation System (Egnos) can be put back on track, following the apparent correction of a problem with one of its monitoring stations. Egnos was certified for air navigation in July and was expected to transition to operational use for en-route and non-precision lateral guidance approaches (LNAV) starting on Aug. 2. A formal declaration by the European Commission, which owns the system, approving the Egnos safety-of-life service was due by October or November.
Movie audiences may identify him with characters he has played—Han Solo, Indiana Jones, Jack Ryan—but Harrison Ford’s most recent award has nothing to do with Hollywood. The actor last month received the 2010 Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy for his advocacy of aviation, particularly among young people. The award, established by the National Aeronautic Association in 1948 to honor the memory of Orville and Wilbur Wright, was presented on Dec. 17 in Washington.
LAN Airlines has finalized discussions with Airbus over the purchase of 50 A320-family aircraft. The deal puts Airbus within reach of breaking the 500 gross-order threshold for 2010, almost matching the number of aircraft delivered in 2009.
Peter Lynas has been appointed group finance director at BAE Systems, succeeding George Rose, who plans to retire on March 31 but continue as an executive director. Lynas is group director-financial control, reporting and treasury. He was group finance director of GEC’s Marconi Electronic Systems when BAE Systems was formed.
China Eastern Airlines’ planned takeover of Great Wall Airlines and Shanghai Airlines Cargo marks a major consolidation within China’s air cargo market that may adversely affect a host of airlines of various sizes. The Shanghai-based airline group told the Hong Kong stock exchange that its dedicated cargo carrier China Cargo Airlines plans to acquire the air cargo transport businesses and related assets of Great Wall and Shanghai Airlines Cargo. The assets include all aircraft, personnel, routes and contracts.
A wave of new carriers will be entering the Asian market this year to fill the void created by players that exited earlier. Economic growth in Asia is fueling demand for domestic air travel, and greater political stability is helping to attract foreign tourists.
Peter Muylaert has been named commercial director of The Brussels Airport Co. , effective Feb. 16. Muylaert, who will replace interim Director Doug Benham, is vice president-business development and real estate at Delhaize Belgium.
Legislators are notoriously opposed to the airline industry’s current wave of consolidation, and that was clearly evident during a few weeks in June when Washington, suffering another of its blazing summers, was abuzz with fiery rhetoric and thundering diatribes against the proposed merger of two industry heavyweights. But as Continental Airlines’ Chief Executive Jeffery A.
The major global and U.S. airline groups face a transition in 2011, with the exit of high-profile leaders who have played a key role in shaping aviation policy debates in recent years.
Researchers who need microgravity to test new technologies may be matched with potential commercial suborbital-flight providers through a new solicitation by NASA’s Office of the Chief Technologist. Under the arrangement, bidders will be able to propose technology payloads for parabolic atmospheric flight and suborbital spaceflight to help the U.S. space agency reduce risk as it expands its commercial spaceflight program.
Feb. 1-2—MRO Middle East Conference & Exhibition. Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Feb. 16-17—A&D Technology & Requirements Conference. Washington. March 8—Laureates Awards. Washington. April 12-13—MRO Military Conference & Exhibition. Miami. April 12-13—MRO Latin America Conference & Exhibition. Miami. April 12-14—MRO Americas Conference & Exhibition. Miami. May 10-12—NextGen Ahead. Washington. May 24-25—A&D Cybersecurity Forum. Washington.
Three companies will receive $500,000 data-delivery orders from NASA for work on a commercial risk-reduction initiative for the development of robotic lander technologies suitable for missions to the Moon, near-Earth objects and other Solar System destinations. Astrobotic Technology Inc. of Pittsburgh; Dynetics Inc. of Huntsville, Ala.; and Moon Express Inc.
French air force officials expect the first squadron of new Rafale F3 multirole fighters to be ready for reconnaissance missions by spring, allowing pilots to take advantage of the aircraft’s advanced Reco NG reconnaissance pod.
BAE Systems has agreed to pay 1.2 billion Danish kronor ($216 million) to acquire ETI, a Danish cyber and intelligence company. It is the latest in a series of deals by BAE to bolster its security services activities. BAE expects the deal to close before April.
The plant building the CALT Long March 5 has proved its technology for precise assembly of large-diameter sections with friction-stir welding, a key achievement as the program moves toward a 2014 first flight. The 211th Factory at the Tianjin industrial base used that and other advanced manufacturing technologies in building an engineering sample of a short section of the Long March 5’s second stage, a liquid-hydrogen tank, says national space contractor CASC.
Andrew Jazwick has been named senior vice president-aviation security for Science Applications International Corp.’s (SAIC) Security and Transportation Technology Business unit. Since joining SAIC in 1999, he been liaison to the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government.
Former astronaut Michael J. Bloomfield (see photo) has joined Oceaneering International as vice president/general manager of Oceaneering Space Systems. While at NASA, he was chief of safety and chief instructor of astronauts, as well as director of shuttle operations and chief of the Shuttle Branch. He also served as deputy director of the Flight Crew Operations Directorate before leaving NASA in 2007 to join ATK as vice president-Houston operations.
Although two years behind its original development and delivery schedule, HondaJet certification testing is underway and the manufacturer hopes to begin deliveries of the light jet—Honda’s first commercial aircraft—in late 2012. “We’ll try to keep this momentum to keep to the schedule,” says Michimasa Fujino, president/CEO of Honda Aircraft Co.
