Emirates is claiming to be the first airline in the world to enable passengers to use their own mobile phones during ongoing revenue service flights (rather than during a trial), and the airline aims to equip its entire fleet of 105 widebodies and all its A380s on order with the technology.
Alan Cullop has been named executive vice president/chief information officer of NetJets at its Woodbridge, N.J., headquarters. He was senior vice president. Matt Harris has added employee services to his role as Columbus, Ohio-based executive vice president-owner services.
Hopes of accelerating the introduction of next-generation air transportation system technologies are growing, with the FAA evaluating proposals for the start of a regional U.S. demonstration as early as 2009.
Ira P. Berman, who is senior vice president-administration and general counsel of the Gulfstream Aerospace Corp., is among the new corporate officers of General Dynamics , Falls Church, Va. The others are: Daniel G. Clare, senior vice president-finance and planning for Gulfstream Aerospace; Marion T. (Tom) Davis, senior vice president-strategic planning for General Dynamics; and S. Daniel Johnson, president of General Dynamics Information Technology.
A Wall Street analyst is turning to plane spotters to help him get a better handle on how Boeing’s troubled 787 jet production program is faring. UBS Investment Research analyst David E. Strauss has begun monitoring flights of Boeing’s Dreamlifters, the modified 747 freighters that haul major 787 structures into Everett, Wash., for final assembly. The aircraft transport the 787’s wings from Japan, center fuselages from Italy, aft fuselages from Charleston, S.C., and forward fuselages from Wichita, Kan.
Dominique Fourguette has been promoted to chief technology officer of the Ann Arbor-based Michigan Aerospace Corp. from senior scientist/business manager of its Los Angeles office.
MBDA has completed a series of test firings of the Milan ADT-ER anti-tank weapon system. The first firing validated the missile’s arming distance, with the warhead not detonating when a target was hit at 40 meters (131 ft.), the second test assured missile accuracy at the minimum range of 150 meters, with the last assessing moving target-engagement capability at the maximum range of 3,000 meters.
By mid-year, Kuwait Airways is looking for a quick boost in capacity, hoping to lease one wide-body and one narrowbody airplane under an aircraft, crew, maintenance and insurance deal. The aircraft would be operated on flights from Kuwait City International (KIA), with crew provided by the lessor and augmented by airline staff, mainly to assure onboard Arabic language capability. The airline says it’s open to either Boeing or Airbus types for both aircraft, and wants a mix of business-class and economy seating. The lease is planned to run through year-end.
Work in earnest on the first Chinese-assembled Airbus will start soon, with shipments of A320 sections to China for assembly just weeks away. It will then become clear whether the extensive preparations Airbus has undertaken to smoothly transition to assembly in Tianjin have been sufficient.
Diedra Fontaine has been appointed director of diversity and sales development for Continental Airlines . She was South Central U.S. director of sales.
Eurocontrol plans to develop a road map by the end of 2009 that outlines how unmanned aircraft will be integrated into the European air traffic management (ATM) system. The aim is to set the stage for military and civil unmanned aircraft to fly in civil airspace in Europe, something that rarely occurs now.
Douglas E. Abbey has been named senior vice president and Alan Sbarra vice president of the Seabury Group of New York. Abbey was managing partner of the Velocity Group and president of AvStat Associates Inc. Sbarra was a founder and principal of Roach and Sbarra Consulting.
The Martian moon Phobos, imaged in color for the first time by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), reveals distinctive red material like that on the Martian surface. This could mean that Mars material, blasted into space by meteorites, has collected on Phobos. It would be much easier for a sample return spacecraft to obtain specimens there, rather than descending through, and back out of, the Martian atmosphere. A Russian spacecraft is set for launch to Phobos in 2009 on a collection expedition.
Overall U.S. airline industry performance in 2007 hit rock-bottom—earning the worst-ever overall rating among airline consumers, according to the 2008 Airline Quality Rating Report released last week. The 18th annual ratings report was prepared by the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Aviation Institute and Wichita State University’s W. Frank Barton School of Business. Based on U.S. Transportation Dept.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has launched a new regional jet that will overcome the challenges of soaring oil prices and jet CO2 and NOx emissions. Too bad, they did not design an airframe with comfort of the passenger in mind.
Airbus is revamping its single-aisle program, even beyond the challenge of setting up a final assembly line in China. At the same time, production rates are increasing, lean initiatives are being implemented to reduce cycle times, and assembly of A320s is being added in Hamburg.
The tightening launcher market has satellite makers wondering when they will be able to launch their spacecraft. Astrium says it currently has four finished telecom spacecraft on the shop floor waiting for a shipment authorization. Inmarsat 4 F3 and Telesat’s Nimiq 4 have been sidelined by the idle Proton. Arabsat’s Badr 6 and the U.K.’s Skynet 5c are waiting for a spot on the Ariane 5, which is feeling the pressure from the Proton shutdown. Eutelsat’s Hot Bird 9 will join the line when it finishes final tests at the end of June.
European transport ministers have decided to limit a new airport charges directive to facilities with more than 5 million passengers a year or the largest airport in a country. The European Commission initially wanted the charges rules to apply to airports with more than 1 million passengers, but the European Parliament intervened in its first reading of the legislation that is now getting backing from the ministers. The directive will not go to parliament for a second reading. Lobby groups for regional airports were battling the broader application.
In regard to Steven Udvar-Hazy’s comments to Boeing (AW&ST Mar. 24, p. 36) that any new 787-10 “will require a new center section, a wing redesign, higher thrust engines and a new set of landing gear,” I sense a business opportunity for Boeing. If Udvar-Hazy’s comments are valid, why not set a new baseline for growth and size a new derivative line with the -10 as the lower-capacity aircraft for a new 10/20/30 line? This way, Boeing can outflank Airbus in the A350XWB size, while incurring perhaps a third of the R&D expense for a new aircraft.
The Royal Air Force recently took delivery of its fifth Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, the first it actually owns outright. The initial four airlifters are operational under a lease arrangement that will end this year; the aircraft will be transitioned to fully owned status. The RAF is due to receive its sixth C-17—the last currently on order—by mid-year.
When an airline applies for certification as a U.S. carrier, one of the Transportation Dept.’s tests is whether the applicant demonstrates a disposition to comply with government regulations. Compliance disposition is often taken for granted once a carrier has its certificate, but it has been much in the news recently, with good reason. It is at the core of some recent and deeply disturbing testimony taken by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee: The FAA looked the other way as Southwest Airlines operated aircraft that didn’t comply with regulations.
It will be another year before the first flight of even a partial version of NASA’s Ares I crew launch vehicle, but the companies working on the next-generation human-rated rocket are pondering other uses for it. ATK, which is building the Ares I first stage by upgrading the solid-fuel booster it produces for the space shuttle fleet, sees the reliability that goes with human rating as a selling point for customers with “high-value” payloads, including the Defense Dept. and National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).
Improvements to Indian air safety are basically on hold, despite an audit report 18 months ago from the International Civil Aviation Organization that called for urgent action.
The U.S. Air Force’s Arnold Engineering Development Center has granted Zolo Technologies $1 million for the development of inflight combustion measurement of scramjets. This technology will provide tracking of engine efficiency and enable the reduction of harmful emissions during flight. Zolo Technologies will build and support the two series of wavelength-multiplexed tunable diode laser sensors designed to measure inside the scramjet engine in action. Temperature, density and velocity as well as O2, CO, CO2, and H2O will be measured simultaneously.
