Canadian operator CHC Helicopter Corp.’s Heli-One support division has ordered 12 S-92 medium-lift helicopters from Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. Deliveries are slated to begin June 2009 and continue until 2012. CHC will use the twin-engine aircraft for transportation to offshore oil and gas platforms and other installations worldwide, as well as for commercial search-and-rescue operations for the U.K.’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA). CHC has an interim contract from this year until 2012 to provide the MCA with aircraft, Sikorsky says.
Clive Seal has been promoted to vice president/general manager from vice president-flight operations of Pinnacle Airlines . George A. (Buddy) Casey has become president/general manager of Pinnacle subsidiary Colgan Air Inc . He was director of Pinnacle’s Corporate Education Center. Michael J. Colgan, who is president/CEO of Colgan Air Inc., will also be Pinnacle’s group vice president-sales and product.
Israel and Iran, each in its way, are fanning the flames of the U.S. debate about Iran’s nuclear potential. Israel’s military intelligence research division chief, Brig. Gen. Yossi Baidatz, posed this worst-case analysis to the country’s parliament: Iran’s conservatives are gaining power and the country could obtain nuclear weapons by 2009.
NASA officials say they need more money to find potentially deadly asteroids in order to meet deadlines set out in NASA’s 2005 authorizing legislation. The space agency is required to find and catalog 90% of near-Earth objects (NEOs) 140 meters (460 ft.) or larger in diameter by 2020. While not an extinction-level event, a 140-meter object strikes Earth every 5,000 years with an explosive force equal to 100 megatons of TNT.
Hong Kong Express Airways expects to maintain its current growth rate throughout 2008, adding Southeast Asian connections to draw more traffic to its main business serving secondary Chinese cities.
Jet Aviation Group has sold its airline and cargo-handling business to Dubai-based Dnata Airport Services. The sale, which did not include Jet Aviation’s fixed base operations in Geneva and Zurich, will let the company focus on general and business aviation customers. And the acquisition will permit Dnata to expand outside its existing Asia-Pacific base. In addition to Dubai, the company serves Singapore, Manila, Australia, Pakistan and China.
USN Vice Adm. (ret.) Wally Massenburg (see photo) has been appointed vice president-readiness and sustainment for BAE Systems Electronics & Integrated Solutions , Nashua, N.H. He was commander of the Naval Air Systems Command at Patuxent River, Md., and chief operating officer of the Naval Aviation Enterprise.
Three complex yet successful defense acquisition programs that exude fundamental discipline, rigorous staff orientation and reliable adaptability to the unknown have won Aviation Week’s A&D Program Excellence Awards this year. Lockheed Martin’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (Thaad) program took home the award for programs in research, design and development, while Northrop Grumman’s Defense Support Program (DSP) and Lockheed Martin’s MH-60 Multi-Year Common Cockpit (MCC) garnered top honors for programs in production and sustainment.
Astronaut Scott Parazynski rides a makeshift crane cobbled together from the International Space Station robot arm and an inspection boom from the space shuttle Discovery, to begin repairs on a torn station solar array. The fix may allow NASA to launch Europe’s Columbus laboratory module before the end of the year. But the station crew has a lot more to do before that can happen, and the repair ate into their tight work schedule.
U.S. intelligence officials are assessing the capabilities of mobile vans that China claims can jam signals from the GPS constellation. They fear that if China deploys the vans in quantity, it would be able to jam the GPS signal over large swaths of its territory. The U.S. has photos of the systems, but doesn’t know their potential to degrade the accuracy of GPS-guided weapons against targets in China if a strike were mounted. Iraqi forces used GPS jamming in 2003 during the U.S. march toward Baghdad, but their systems were rudimentary. U.S.
Italy hopes to boost defense spending slightly next year and launch key surveillance and intelligence projects, but there’s already political pressure to divert funds to other endeavors.
Sensis of Syracuse, N.Y., has won a contract that will lead to the first test of Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) ground equipment in China using 1090 MHz. (the frequency used by airlines). The Air Traffic Management Bureau is testing ADS-B with an aim to build a nationwide system like that already constructed in Australia and ones planned for the U.S. and Canada. The American company was selected over Thales, which has a leading role in ATC projects in China.
USAF Maj. Gen. Glenn F. Spears, who is deputy commander of Miami-based U.S. Southern Command , has been nominated for promotion to lieutenant general. Brig. Gen. Marvin T. Smoot, Jr., has been named director of manpower, personnel and services at Headquarters Air Force Materiel Command, Wright Patterson AFB, Ohio. He has been director of manpower, organization and resources/deputy chief of staff for manpower and personnel at Headquarters U.S. Air Force at the Pentagon. Smoot will be succeeded by Col. Sharon K.G.
The Lockheed Martin Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (Jassm) underwent a successful live-fire test Oct. 31 after a series of mishaps earlier this year brought flights to a halt. The missile’s reliability dipped to 58% after four tests revealed a GPS dropout problem, sending missiles more than 100 ft. from their targets. During this test, Jassm used a new anti-jam GPS receiver. Follow-on demonstrations will test its capabilities in the presence of GPS jammers.
Scott Kunkler (see photo) has been appointed director of design engineering for Circor Aerospace Landing Gear Systems and Fluidic Controls, Corona, Calif. He held the same position at the company’s Loud Engineering and Manufacturing unit.
Michael J. Bloomfield (see photo) has been named vice president-constellation systems in the Houston-based Launch Systems Group of Alliant Techsystems . Bloomfield is a former NASA astronaut and deputy director of NASA flight crew operations. Brian Cullin has become Minneapolis-based senior vice president-corporate communications. He was director of communications for foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institute in Washington.
AirTran crystallized its executive succession plan by naming President and Chief Operating Officer Bob Fornaro as CEO. He takes over that role from Joe Leonard, who will remain as chairman. The two executives have worked closely together crafting AirTran’s strategy since arriving at the airline within two months of each other in 1999. Fornaro says he has had more day-to-day responsibility in managing the airline during the last 2.5 years. No immediate plans exist to fill the COO position.
Stork Aerospace is opening a large manufacturing plant in Turkey for the production of military aircraft wiring systems. The company’s subsidiary Fokker Elmo signed the lease agreement for the new factory in Ankara Nov. 1, and initial production is to start by mid-2008.
It started out as a program to identify emerging aviation safety problems. But six years and $11.3 million later, it has mushroomed into a public relations headache for NASA Administrator Michael Griffin that’s hurting his credibility with Congress. Now Griffin is working to mollify incensed lawmakers and calm a media frenzy without violating the confidentiality of the 24,000 commercial airline and 5,000 general aviation pilots that participated in the study.
In the U.S. there has been a remarkable aviation safety record during the past five years and an impressive record since the Gore Commission findings and goals of 1997, continuing the long-term trend in safety improvement during the past several decades. While we can bask in the results, ever more challenges remain if we are to continue to drive down accident rates and meet the goals and expectations that are constantly before us.
Congratulations on the recent improvements in the format and layout of Aviation Week & Space Technology. I see real progress toward a more readable magazine. Almost all of the text is printed black on white, most illustrations are located so as not to break up the text and photographic backgrounds to text are essentially eliminated. This is all for the better. Your magazine again looks like the technical journal it is and not like TV Guide.
As it struggles to regain a competitive footing, Airbus is finding that the use of radio-frequency identification tags might allow the company to unlock much-needed savings in its manufacturing processes.
Michael A. Taverna (Hyderabad, India), Douglas Barrie (London)
India is pushing ahead with the development of ground and flight test hardware as part of an ambitious plan for a hypersonic cruise missile. The Defense Research and Development Laboratory’s Hypersonic Technology Demonstrator Vehicle (HSTDV) is intended to attain autonomous scramjet flight for 20 sec., using a solid rocket launch booster. The research will also inform India’s interest in reusable launch vehicles. The eventual target is to reach Mach 6.5 at an altitude of 32.5 km. (20 mi.).
NATO is under growing pressure to show it’s making progress toward buying C-17 airlifters, particularly with the U.K. looking to expand its fleet and taking up production slots eyed by the military alliance. At this point, 17 countries have committed to become part of a consortium that will buy and operate three C-17s. Although Germany and France—which aren’t among the customers because of their involvement in the A400M airlifter program—have dropped their opposition to a NATO deal, ironing out contract details has still been a slow process.
