Royal Jordanian Airlines hopes privatization can be completed by the end of this year, making it the first airline with private majority ownership in the Middle East. "We have put Royal Jordanian on the right track," says Vice Chairman and CEO Samer Majali. The Jordanian government plans to sell 74% of the company, while retaining 26%. Plans to sell the airline were shelved in 2001 following the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S. and the subsequent industry crisis. But with the financial recovery of the airline, the idea was revived.
Edward C. Stone A year after Edward C. Stone started in the master's degree program at the University of Chicago in 1956 with an interest in nuclear physics, Sputnik was launched and ushered in a completely new frontier of space research.
The Joint Strike Fighter's price is expected to increase 4% due to Pentagon funding cuts. And if Congress reinstates development of a second engine for the stealthy aircraft, the cost could rise further.
European transport ministers are seeking to build a unified position on including aviation in emissions trading prior to what's expected to be a contentious debate on the issue among International Civil Aviation Organization members this fall. German Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee notes that the European Union will have a tough fight on its hands as it proposes including in the emissions-trading plan third-country carriers (on a voluntary or involuntary basis) operating in Europe.
EADS Astrium, OHB-System, Telespazio and Israel Aerospace Industries are the final bidders to build a reconnaissance satellite capability for Turkey. The high-resolution, electro-optical system is supposed to support both military and civilian needs.
U.S. Air Force Chief Scientist Mark Lewis Mark Lewis has been the driving force behind the X-51A hypersonic demonstrator. As the U.S. Air Force's chief scientist, he fought to get it officially designated an X vehicle--a symbolic gesture, to be sure, but one that has meaning to the science and engineering community, which has seen other hypersonic ventures go by the wayside. Hypersonics is a long time in coming, and the bets seem to be on the X-51 as the one that will work.
A General Electric CF6-80E engine stayed on-wing with a Qatar Airways Airbus A330 for more than 4,300 cycles over four years of service, a record for a powerplant operating in a hot, sandy environment. The engine was still achieving good service when it was removed to serve as a leading indicator for fleet conditions. CF6 General Manager Colleen Athans says Qatar used recommended water washes, proactive maintenance and followed GE's operational procedures to achieve the milestone.
Eutelsat officials say its Hot Bird 2 satellite, which was forced to transfer all traffic to Hot Bird 8 on Mar. 14 when it was hit by solar flare fallout, has suffered no apparent damage. Despite an anomaly observed in the satellite's power subsystem, the spacecraft appears to be in a healthy configuration, officials say. As a precautionary measure, traffic will probably not be transferred back to Hot Bird 2 until the next equinox.
FAA Administrator Marion Blakey is getting annoyed about the way congressional debate on her agency's reauthorization bill is developing. Give and take on Capitol Hill was "collegial" until recently, she tells an airport lobbyists' conference, "but lately I've been seeing a change." Blakey rebuts opposition to ATC user fees from top Democrats and a mobilized general/business aviation community. "If the FAA really wanted to kill [general aviation], we'd just sit back and do nothing.
There is a simple and common explanation for the angst expressed in these pages as a result of the decline in pilot and engineer careers: free market supply and demand (AW&ST Feb. 5, p. 44). Textile jobs, steel jobs and now automobile jobs have been lost to lower cost competition from overseas. Similarly, the legacy airlines have been outbid for customers by the low-cost carriers and engineers by their foreign competition. Regional carriers are not immune as some of their work has gone to lower bidding competitors.
As a software test engineer assigned to the B-52 Offensive Avionics System development in the early 1980s, we concocted a simulator mission for the software test laboratory that flew a rectangular course around the equator-international date line intersection as well as one that flew a similar course around the equator-prime meridian intersection.
A Hellfire missile, fired as part of the Japanese Defense Agency's operational evaluation test of its Longbow Apache attack helicopter weapons system, has scored 100% hits against stationary tanks. The tanks were targeted using fire control radar, data handoff from another helicopter, and the Arrowhead Modernized Target Acquisition Designation Sight/Pilot Night-Vision Sensor. Japan is scheduled to start receiving Longbow missiles in 2008.
Italian navy Rear Adm. (upper half) Giuseppe De Giorgi De Giorgi effectively contributed to the defusing and stabilization of the volatile situation in Lebanon after the bitterly fought "summer war" between Hezbollah fighters and the Israeli Defense Forces last year. He was the point person for preparing, directing and executing Operation Leonte, the name Italy gave its deployment of forces as part of the United Nations' Unifil 2 mission to Lebanon.
Lockheed Martin has captured a $40.4-million contract add-on to complete the A-10C precision engagement program's engineering and manufacturing development phase. The company also won a $23-million contract add-on for C-5 AMP production Lot V kits and spares.
Market research company Input forecasts that U.S. government information technology spending will grow about 5% per year from $79 billion this year to $102 billion in 2012. While this rate of growth will hold true for defense and civilian sectors of the government, the intelligence community's information technology spending is expected to grow 8.3% per year from $9.8 billion this year to $14 billion in 2012.
Cristhian Godoy Cristhian Godoy, 18, a fifth-year honors program student at New York's Aviation High School, is this year's winner of the annual Donald D. Engen Scholarship. The award consists of $5,000 from FlightSafety International and a matching $5,000 grant from The McGraw-Hill Companies. The scholarship was established 11 years ago by the chairman and founder of FlightSafety, A.L. Ueltschi. Seven years ago, McGraw-Hill Chairman, President and CEO Harold McGraw, 3rd, added the matching grant.
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Raytheon has been awarded a $185-million contract for production modification of four Aegis Weapon Systems transmitter groups. AWS is the ship's primary anti-air defense. Three of the systems are for Australia's air warfare destroyer program and the fourth is for Spain. The company won a $53-million contract add-on for 2007 procurement of 111 Tomahawk launching system composite capsules and 220 nuclear submarine retrofit kits. Work is to be completed in 2009.
A plan for a Chinese micro-satellite to hitch a ride on a Russian probe to Mars in 2009 will deepen cooperation that the two countries foreshadowed last year. Chinese state media are presenting the project as a joint mission, but a micro-satellite would be no bigger than a soccer ball, and maybe as small as a softball. As a result, the Russians will play by far the larger role in providing the mother craft, the Phobos Explorer. The Chinese space administration is calling the agreement "a key step forward to working together on a large space program" with Russia.
Leading edges must still be fitted to Northrop Grumman's first Unmanned Combat Air System-Demonstrator aircraft (see p. 34). This Mar. 22 photo was taken at the company's Palmdale, Calif., facility originally for engineering purposes, but company officials decided to release it and others as they submit their UCAS-D proposal to the U.S. Navy Apr. 2.
The agreement between the U.S. and European Union on first steps toward a transatlantic open aviation area (see p. 60) is a remarkable achievement by the negotiators. For it to be more than that--for it to be the basis of the liberalization its advocates want it to be--the U.S. will have to deal squarely, once and for all, with issues of importance to Europe that America has ducked consistently.
In case someone thinks the current leaders of tactical air are doing a good job, let's set the record straight. The F-22, which has been in development for longer than any other fighter, could not make a transpacific flight without spending a week in Hawaii to fix the problem (AW&ST Feb. 19, p. 23).
