Meanwhile, Singapore Airlines is in talks with Wipro--India's third-biggest software company--to outsource its reservation call center operations in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the U.S. Beginning in July, SIA plans to lay off 56 employees in Perth and Sydney, and 84 in Auckland, Los Angeles and Vancouver. In a related move, starting Feb. 9, Qantas and British Airways will close their joint call center in Singapore, with inquiries to be diverted to their centers in Australia and New Delhi, respectively.
The U.S. Navy will begin deliveries of a modified weapon designed to provide close air support to ground troops in urban areas in Iraq no later than March. Its arrival will coincide with the small escalation in U.S. presence planned by President Bush and as soldiers turn their focus to securing the streets of Baghdad. The BLU-126/B, also called the Low Collateral Damage Bomb (LCDB), was a response to an urgent need from U.S. Central Command.
Scientists from the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) will get to analyze two different sets of samples from space following the Jan. 22 retrieval by India's navy and coast guard of the Space-capsule Recovery Experiment (SRE-1) from the Bay of Bengal. The 550-kg. (1,213-lb.) spacecraft was launched Jan. 9 on a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) from the Satish Dhawan Space Center on Sriharikota Island in the Bay of Bengal, and returned to a nominal splashdown and recovery about 140 km. (7 mi.) east of the launch site. Following a 10-min.
Ralph G. D'Ambrosio has been promoted to chief financial officer from vice president-finance/ principal accounting officer of New York-based L-3 Communications. He succeeds Michael T. Strianese, who is now president/CEO.
Your editorial board bemoans the fact that our representatives in Congress cater to their faithful rather than write blank checks for exploration (AW&ST Jan. 8, p. 58). Good for Congress! You forget that it is our money that Congress spends and, therefore, we should have a strong say as to where it goes. A lot of the pressure to modernize our air traffic control system comes from backers of very light jets, which will be flown by/for a very elite group, not by/for the average taxpayer. Perhaps it is the aerospace industry that is dysfunctional.
Russia and India were planning late last week to sign a bilateral agreement to jointly expand and modernize Russia's Glonass satellite navigation system. The countries are expected to launch two Glonass satellites using GSLV boosters, and to share development and construction of a new-generation Glonass-K satellite system (AW&ST Sept. 15, 2006, p. 61).
USAF is fielding similar unmanned aircraft, as the 820th Security Forces Group was selected to deploy the Ground Situational Awareness Toolkit. GSAT includes Boeing's ScanEagle unmanned aircraft and the ShotSpotter gunfire acquisition system that allows identification of enemy positions by tracking the sources of firing using acoustic sensors. The ScanEagle uses its cameras to provide pictures of the identified locations. The 10-ft.-wingspan, 20-hr.-endurance aircraft is launched by a catapult.
Nalini Ranjan Mohanty has been named chairman/managing director of Textron India Pvt. Ltd. He is the retired chairman/CEO of Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd.
U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne is planning to waive the need for General Electric to comply with the Berry Amendment, which requires domestic sourcing for specialty metals, with its new CF6-80C2 engines for the C-5 strategic airlifter. Program officials say compliance with the law "would be extremely expensive and have cost and schedule impacts." The new engines are needed to dramatically improve the C-5's low dispatch reliability, which is around 50%.
Eurocopter expects sharp growth again this year as it continues to consolidate its leading position in the helicopter market. New products are also on the agenda, but the emphasis will be on cutting costs and lifting earnings. Eurocopter predicts 2007 deliveries will rise at least 20% over the record 381 units handed over to customers in 2006, says Lutz Bertling, who took over the CEO position from Fabrice Bregier late last year. Another 20% increase is likely in 2008. Order intake last year, 615 units, was also a record.
Jon Buccola (see photos) has been appointed chairman of Greenpoint Technologies Inc., Kirkland, Wash. He was president/CEO. He has been succeeded as president by Scott Goodey, who was vice president-program management. Sloan Ponomarchuk has been named executive vice president. She was vice president-sales and contracts.
Jack Harris has been appointed general manager of PDES Inc., Charleston, S.C. He will serve as an executive on loan while continuing as director of advanced manufacturing technology at Rockwell Collins.
Eurocontrol says its Central Flow Management Unit played a key role in keeping delays from growing in 2006 when traffic in European airspace increased 4.1% to a record 9.6 million flights. Delays per flight remained steady at 1.9 min. Eurocontrol also notes there have been no air traffic management-related accidents since 2002 and that a focus on environmental issues is reducing CO 2 emissions from aircraft by 400,000 metric tons per year.
Prof. Gerard Medioni, who is chairman of the Computer Science Dept. at the University of Southern California, has been appointed to the board of advisers of New York-based Agent Video Intelligence Inc.
The U.S. Army's Communications Electronics Command (Cecom) Rapid Response program (CR 2) could be recompeted with an initial announcement as early as this summer, according to Input, a market analysis company. At stake may be as much as $23 billion in mostly information technology spending in an eight-year period, according to the report released this month by the Reston, Va.-based company.
Just a routine test flight, . . . but I think I'll wear my own parachute today, I thought. I would be flying that sleek ultralight sailplane parked on our ramp at the Raspet Flight Research Laboratory, an aeronautical research unit associated with Mississippi State University, continuing a series of fairly innocuous aileron-roll tests. Yes, the airplane had a built-in ballistic recovery system (BRS)--a parachute packed into a compartment just aft of the cockpit--that could be deployed during an emergency to save the aircraft and me.
Boeing says its decision to abandon WiFi technology to distribute inflight entertainment (IFE) has turned out to be a net plus in terms of weight savings and scheduling for its 787 program.
Iran has just completed conversion of a powerful ballistic missile into a satellite launch vehicle. But the 25-30-ton rocket could be a wolf in sheep's clothing to test longer-range Iranian missile technologies. The Bush administration will likely view the vehicle as a rogue rocket developed in a cabal of Iran and North Korea. The new launcher has recently been assembled and "will lift off soon," says Alaoddin Boroujerdi, chairman of the Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission.
Finnair is going to suffer an earnings loss for 2006, although it will register an operating profit, says President/CEO Jukka Hienonen. The loss is blamed on structural arrangements--notably a €15-million ($19.3-million) second-quarter charge for the struggling technical division--and changes in fuel-derivatives market values. However, Hienonen adds, the reduction in oil prices seen in recent weeks is having a positive effect. He promises much better results for the year. Meanwhile, the carrier continues to expand its Asian routes.
Conflicting information and swift accusations continue to earmark the investigation of the Sept. 29, 2006, midair collision of a Legacy 600 and Gol Airlines 737-800 over the Amazon jungle. Brazil's lead accident investigator, Renato Sayao, according to an Associated Press report, says the country's air traffic controllers are partly responsible for the collision.
Flight testing of an upgraded Russian MiG-29K Fulcrum, destined for India, is getting underway amid discussions to further strengthen strategic aerospace relations between Moscow and New Delhi.
Finding Amelia: the True Story of the Earhart Disappearance by Ric Gillespie Naval Institute Press, 2006, 280 pp., $28.95 ISBN 1-59114-319-5 In 1932, Amelia Earhart became one of the most admired women in the U.S. after completing the first solo crossing of the Atlantic by a woman, five years after Charles Lindbergh's historic flight to Le Bourget.
The New Orleans Aviation Board is offering an incentive program designed to bring operations at New Orleans Louis Armstrong International Airport back to their pre-Hurricane Katrina levels. The effort waives landing fees and offers facility credits for a year to airlines that increase flights or start service from new cities. As of November 2006, the airport's passenger volume was at 70% of pre-Katrina levels, said airport official Michelle Duffourc.
In the fall of 2004, an aerospace analyst who no longer works on Wall Street opined that U.S. defense stocks were peaking and, citing impending pressure on Pentagon spending, suggested that his clients consider selling.
