Fred C. Kiga has become head of Boeing ’s Office of State and Local Government Relations for the Northwest U.S. and Hawaii. He has been director of corporate and government relations for the Russell Investment Group and was chief of staff for then-Washington Gov. Gary Locke.
Like other suppliers, General Electric and Rolls-Royce, the engine makers for the 787, are making the most of the program delay. For GE, the welcome breathing space gives it a chance to get more weight out of the GEnx-1B engine, improve preparations for full-scale production and perfect design tweaks that otherwise would have been introduced closer to the original in-service target.
Shanghai Airlines is a likely focus for further consolidation of Chinese commercial aviation as larger carriers, especially Air China, look for greater access to the country’s biggest city. An Air China takeover of the second-level carrier would be a big step toward creating the balanced nationwide operator that China still lacks in any of its big-three airlines—China Southern, Air China and China Eastern.
Though the U.S. Air Force says it plans to proceed with designing a new bomber using technologies ready in 2009, little progress seems to have been made as to the requirements. A variety of matters appear unsettled, including the sensor suite and weapons payload, both of which will drive the number of engines and crew needed as well as the degree of stealth possible.
William Cotton, Joseph Luca, Wes Cummins, James Schwartz and Neal Fine comprise the new board of directors of Flight Safety Technologies Inc. , Mystic, Conn. They succeed company founders Samuel A. Kovnat and Frank Rees, along with Jackson Kemper, former U.S. Sen. Larry Pressler and Kenneth Wood, all of whom have retired. Luca is now chairman, while Cotton is vice chairman/CEO and Fine chief technology officer. Schwartz is a principal of Harvey Partners in New York and Cummins is president of B. Riley and Co. in Los Angeles. C.
French air force commander Gen. Stephane Abrial says it may be time to begin developing a high-power offensive jammer to give the new Rafale fighter a suppression of enemy air defense capability.
Mauro Kern, the executive vice president who runs Embraer’s commercial airplanes business, hears a familiar refrain when fielding queries about his company’s growth plans. “The big question is, ‘Are you going to build bigger airplanes to compete with Boeing and Airbus?’” Kern says. “We’re saying, ‘No, not for now.’ But the company still has to grow.”
French space agency CNES has begun working on a program to develop light launch vehicles and other technologies in cooperation with university students, associations and small business. The program, Perseus, has already test-fired a student-designed hybrid engine that could be used for an airborne launcher to orbit nanosatellites or high-altitude, long-endurance UAVs, and has identified 25 other projects. Coordination will be centered at the University of Evry, near CNES facilities and launch operator Arianespace south of Paris.
For airborne receivers, tanker requirements equate to boom/drogue availability and offload capacity. Rather than a single type tanker, a mix of three different-size aircraft—all with the same flight decks, procedures and crews—would better serve U.S. Air Force requirements.
The French army has taken delivery of the first three Tiger attack helicopters to be earmarked for operational duty. The rotorcraft were handed over last week to the 5th Combat Helicopter Regiment in Pau. The machines are the first of 20 Tigers to be supplied to the regiment by 2010. The regiment has invested €40 million ($59 million) in new facilities to support the Tiger fleet, and plans to add a tactical flight simulator at the end of 2009.
Italian space agency ASI and German aerospace center DLR have signed a bilateral agreement to facilitate cooperation between the agencies. ASI President Giovanni Bignami said the inter-agency pact will facilitate collaboration on national, European and other space programs and allow a balanced three-way dialogue with the other major European space power, France, with which the two agencies already have bilateral agreements.
The French air force is urging the government to quickly initiate replacement of its aging tanker fleet, with concerns mounting that a near-term capability gap is inevitable without it. Moreover, the service’s senior leadership warns that stretching out or curtailing Rafale fighter purchases could seriously impair mission capabilities.
Travel may be a hardship for many these days, so to ease the pain a bit, Lambert-St. Louis International Airport has installed 70 rocking chairs in passenger waiting areas. Rockers are not unknown at U.S. airports, but Lambert authorities are taking the special seating to a higher level, an official says. The chairs are built to specification, painted blue and bear the Lambert logo. Rockers were a top choice in informal passenger surveys.
Raytheon also won two contracts worth $241.8 million to overhaul and upgrade 34 Phalanx Close-In Weapon Systems for the U.S. Navy and one for the Royal Australian Navy. The company will build 12 land-based Phalanx systems for the U.S. Army, too.
Europe’s leading low-fare carriers, Ryanair and EasyJet, are betting on significant traffic growth, but there are signs that the next 12 months or longer could be turbulent.
The first U.S. Air Force squadron dedicated solely to the mission of “defensive counterspace” is refining its tactics for monitoring satellite communications links in the Middle East, and it’s getting more equipment to expand the number of signals it observes around the globe.
The Middle East is beginning to assume a key role in the business aviation sector analogous in importance, if not yet in scale, to the region’s prominence in the commercial aircraft market. Traditionally, the region’s primary impact has been felt in so-called VVIP wide-body private jets. True to form, Airbus said here last week that the chairman of Kingdom Holding Co.—Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Alsaud—had signed up for the first VVIP version of the A380. It will be delivered in 2010, after which a year or two of cabin fitting still looms.
European industry is grappling with niggling problems and last-minute technical challenges as it works to keep to the latest launch schedule for the International Space Station’s Automated Transfer Vehicle. The ATV had at one point been due for launch this month, but the date has been pushed back into early 2008. The first ATV, the Jules Verne, had originally—and overly optimistically—been intended for launch in 2004.
Lockheed Martin is reviving work on fitting its F-16 strike fighter with a probe-and-drogue refueling system. Earlier designs included carrying a special pod for the mission. But now the aircraft maker is looking at a more integrated system. Why? It’s part of the company’s campaign to try and win the Indian Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) fighter competition. Lockheed Martin hopes to build its F-16 backlog to run into 2012. Even without India, the company believes there’s still a market for around another 100 aircraft.
The U.S. Air Force has returned 146 of its 224 F-15Es to flight after a fleetwide grounding—including all USAF F-15s—halted support worldwide for the aircraft this month. USAF’s 666 F-15s were grounded after an F-15C crash; a structural failure is the suspected root.
The U.S. Air Force by next summer hopes to field a target pod on its B-1B bombers, one of the few weapons delivery platforms not yet fitted with such a system. Integration efforts are already underway, says Lt. Gen. Gary North, commander of Central Command air forces. The Air Force likes the idea of the long-endurance aircraft being on-station, ready to deliver up to 48,000 lb. of precision ordnance, he says.
Airbus has been selected to supply an A350XWB VVIP aircraft and Airbus Corporate Jet for C Jet Ltd. of Hong Kong. The A350 VVIP order, which is preliminary, was the first for the wide-body twin.
A Qantas order for 99 Airbus and Boeing narrow-body airliners signals that the Australian carrier’s expansion will rely heavily on profitable budget unit Jetstar and its Asian franchisees. The scale looks huge, since the venerable 87-year-old airline is ordering aircraft as if it has the growth plans of a baby-faced startup. “They now have more planes on order than they are flying,” JP Morgan analyst Matt Crowe says.
The U.K. is revising its policy of limiting passengers to taking one piece of hand luggage onto aircraft. The intent is to progressively remove the restriction as airport operators show they can meet carry-on screening requirements while dealing with more than one bag per passenger.
The British Royal Air Force (RAF) has begun live laser-guided weapon drop trials from the Eurofighter Typhoon using the Raytheon Enhanced Paveway II laser-guided bomb and Rafael Litening III laser-designator pod. The RAF is looking to begin a deployment with the Typhoon to support combat operations no later than mid-2008.
