Former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has received the first WTS Navigator Award from Washington-based WTS International, the association for the advancement of women in transportation. He was cited for standing “behind our mission and creating new opportunities for a diverse and inclusive workforce.” He was noted for having set the gender diversity issue in the transportation industry on an accelerated path.
When the NextGen Advisory Committee came out with a prioritized list of NextGen capabilities Sept. 19 to help the FAA decide how best to spend under shrinking budgets, “wake recategorization” made the Tier 1A cut, along with performance-based navigation and multiple-runway operations. Tier 1A is the gold standard of rankings, reserved for capabilities that are “shovel-ready” and provide maximum benefit for minimum money.
Once gain, Alitalia, the perennially ailing Italian carrier, finds itself in the unenviable position of needing to restructure. It must come to terms with the fact that it needs new investors and a strong partner. Being a SkyTeam member has not brought about the salvation the carrier hoped for, and the survival plan put in place in the late 1990s, although welcome, certainly does not ensure a workable future. In the short term, Alitalia, which posted a €294 million ($397 million) loss in the first half of 2013, reportedly needs €400-500 million to avoid bankruptcy.
Brent Monroe (see photo) has been named Dallas-based vice president for Western North American sales for the Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. He was head of aircraft sales in Texas for Bombardier Aerospace. Honors And Elections
With its first Airbus A400M Atlas handed over, attention is now being focused on how the French air force will put the new European airlifter through its paces.
The price of European Union carbon dioxide allowances (EUA) under the EU Emissions Trading System made strong gains in September in the run-up to and following German elections Sept. 22. The national vote handed Chancellor Angela Merkel a resounding victory, with her conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) attracting 41.5% of the vote, the party's best result in 23 years but still a few seats short of an overall majority.
The U.K. Royal Air Force has retired the last of its vintage Vickers VC10 aerial refueling tankers, which opens an unlikely capability gap. For almost 50 years, the VC10 provided strategic transport, airlift and an aeromedical capacity. In the 1980s, with the arrival of several secondhand ex-airline VC10s, the role was extended to provide air-to-air refueling, a capability for which the type became best-known. Of the 54 VC10s produced by Vickers, the RAF operated 28, in four different versions.
Nigerian authorities are investigating the crash of an Associated Aviation Embraer EMB-120 Pratt & Whitney Canada PW100-powered twin-turboprop on departure from Lagos, Nigeria, on Oct. 3, killing 16 of the 20 people onboard. Witnesses to the crash told local media the aircraft “was making a lot of noise” when it descended, and pilots appeared to maneuver to avoid a residential area.
NBC will broadcast a reality TV competition called “Space Race” that will offer a trip for its winner to the edge of space on the suborbital Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo, which is now in flight test. The U.S. broadcast network signed a deal with Virgin Galactic and One Three Media. The production team will have “unprecedented access” to Virgin's operations at Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences, N.M., and will begin distribution activities at an upcoming marketing conference in Cannes, France.
By modernizing a component as rudimentary as a mechanical circuit breaker, Albuquerque, N.M.,-based Vertical Power has opened the door to a wealth of new applications and safety features for the experimental market, including an automatic landing system that flies to the threshold. The offering is similar to new systems being developed for high-end business jets, but at a much lower cost.
A light bulb went off in Dan Miller's head several years ago as he struggled to complete the avionics behind the panel of his company's newest light sport aircraft, the Spirit Grand Edition. Miller, sales manager for World Aircraft Co., based in Paris, Texas, had an idea that was so obvious it seemed silly that no one had thought of it before.
Low-cost operator Norwegian Air Shuttle is expected to return its grounded Boeing 787-8s to service early this month after the manufacturer implemented an aggressive “get-well” campaign to beef up spare-parts provision, maintenance and engineering support. The situation at Norwegian appeared to have come to a head by the end of September, following several weeks of reliability problems in the power distribution system, hydraulics, oxygen system and brakes.
Now that the Air Force has placed the A-10 Thunderbolt II under consideration for cuts in a worst-case budget scenario, a grassroots movement is building to keep the aircraft, flying since 1977, around longer. The A-10 is not one of those programs, like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter or the KC-46A tanker, that the service wants to protect. In fact, a chart from Air Combat Command shows the entire fleet of close-air support aircraft may be divested by 2015.
There always has been a clear objective for potential human space explorers who are alive today—Mars. After the lunar landings, the red planet was the next natural goal. If the papers presented in Beijing at the 64th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) are an indication—and they are—nothing has changed in the subsequent 40 years.
Roger Launius of the Space History Div. has become associate director for collections and curatorial affairs at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington. He succeeds Peter Jakab of the Aeronautics Div., who is now chief curator.
