Chris Harano has been promoted to CEO from president of Leading Edge Aviation Services, Costa Mesa, Calif. He succeeds Mike Manclark, who will become non-executive chairman. Harano previously was president of InsulTech. Daniel Zeddy has been named CFO.
“Data Driven” (AW&ST Sept. 2, p. 36) notes that The Active Pilot Monitoring Workshop (APM) was challenged to find a method that can help pilots become better monitors.
Daniel Gelston has become vice president of Cobham Tactical Communications and Surveillance, Herndon, Va. He was vice president and business unit lead for Sotera Defense Solutions and had been counterterrorism director at BAE Systems.
Scientists will spend 100 days studying the Moon's tenuous atmosphere after this spectacular launch from Wallops Island, Va., on a solid-fuel Minotaur V rocket—photographed from the top of New York's Rockefeller Center, 200 mi. away. Built by NASA's Ames Research Center, the 884-lb. Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (Ladee) gave its handlers a few tense hours right after its Sept. 6 liftoff when fault-protection limits shut down its reaction wheels. Controllers disabled them to restart the wheels, and later fixed a star-tracker misalignment.
Michael D. New has been named vice president-safety, security and compliance for Erickson Air-Crane Inc., Portland, Ore. He was senior vice president, corporate safety, security and compliance for Korean Air. HONORS AND ELECTIONS
Robert Cohen (see photos) has been promoted to president/CEO of the TECT Corp., Fort Mitchell, Ky. He was president of TECT Power and has been succeeded by Anthony Ratica, who was an executive at Standard Aero.
USAF Lt. Gen. James M. Kowalski has been named deputy commander of U.S. Strategic Command, Offutt AFB, Neb. He has been commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, Barksdale AFB, La. Maj. Gen. Stephen W. Wilson has been nominated for promotion to lieutenant general and to succeed Kowalski. Wilson has been commander of the command's Eighth Air Force at Barksdale. Brig. Gen. Scott A. Vander Hamm has been selected for promotion to major general and appointment as commander of the Eighth Air Force (Air Forces Strategic) of Air Force Global Strike Command, Barksdale AFB, La.
A lot of Pentagon programs are about to take a major hit to their bottom lines, and some smaller projects seem destined to be delayed or canceled, the Defense Department's acquisition chief warned loudly here last week. But a few futuristic aviation efforts might be shielded as Washington passes through the coming nadir of budgets, according to Frank Kendall, and they include future rotorcraft and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's multiyear air-dominance study toward a post-Joint Strike Fighter aircraft (AW&ST May 20, p. 52).
Phil Anderson has been appointed senior vice president-defense and contracts of Wichita-based Spirit AeroSystems Inc. He was senior vice president/CFO and has been succeeded by Sanjay Kapoor, who was vice president of the Integrated Air and Missile Defense Div. of Raytheon and had been CFO of divisions of Raytheon and United Technologies Corp.
Reviewing the Asia-Pacific civil aerospace industry this week, we see the great range of challenges facing managers outside of the world's main aircraft building centers in the Americas and Europe. India's private aerospace industry, only 12 years old, is grappling with the usual problems of a startup in finding skilled people and volume contracts—although local company Dynamatic is succeeding in high-rate production for Airbus while other Indian companies are carving niches in engineering services.
USAF Lt. Col. (ret.) John A. Crocker (Tavernier, Fla. )
Unlike readers Mike Canty and Bob Walker (AW&ST Aug. 26, p. 8), I salute USAF Lt. Gen. (ret.) Thomas McInerney's out-of-the-box thinking on using business jets to fix readiness (AW&ST July 29, p. 54). Having flown military, commercial and corporate aircraft for more than 40 years, I can attest that flying different types of aircraft does not hinder mission effectiveness. Some days I would fly a Boeing 737 in the morning and that afternoon I would strap in my ANG C-130 and fly either a tactical or proficiency training mission.
Avicopter's next step in filling out a product range will be a 3-metric-ton helicopter, provisionally named AC3X2. This follows the indigenously developed 1-ton AC310 piston-engine type and the AC311, a 2.2-ton turbine-engine aircraft apparently derived from the Eurocopter Squirrel, with considerable local changes. Avicopter officials are giving no details of the AC3X2 except for its gross weight, but displayed a model of the aircraft at the China Helicopter Exposition on Sept. 5.
Tony Tyler, the International Air Transport Association's chief executive, said recently that “too often governments see aviation as a luxury and milk it as a cash cow.” Giovanni Bisignani, Tyler's provocative predecessor, has also in the past several years repeatedly accused governments of implementing a narrow-minded cash-cow policy toward airlines.
USMC Gen. (ret.) James N. Mattis has become a member of the board of directors of General Dynamics, Falls Church, Va. He was commander of U.S. Central Command and had been commander of the U.S. Joint Forces Command.
CFM International started up the first version of its new-generation Leap engine at General Electric's test site in Peebles, Ohio, on Sept 4. The test came two days ahead of schedule, says CFM, a GE-Snecma joint-venture company. The Leap-1A is in development for the Airbus A320neo, and is the first all-new CFM engine to enter testing since the original CFM56 of the 1970s. The Leap-1A is set to begin flight tests on GE's Boeing 747 testbed in September 2014, with FAR33 engine certification expected the following summer.
YouTube videos make it look easy, and for pilots, it is easier than in a Harrier. But landing vertically at night, in crosswind, on the moving deck of a ship relies on the highly integrated and automated flight and propulsion controls of the Lockheed Martin F-35B.
Aiming to continue the city's spaceflight legacy, officials in Houston are poised to seek a commercial spaceport license from the FAA to establish a runway-based complex supporting reusable launch vehicles, spacecraft assembly and flight training, as well as aerospace research and education. The proposed spaceport would occupy 439 acres of Ellington Airport property close to NASA's Johnson Space Center.
Supporters of federal financing for the commercial space industry, as well as backers of the U.S. Export-Import Bank, are gearing up for a public relations campaign to renew the U.S. export credit agency (ECA) before its current congressional mandate runs out in a year. The bank has been bombarded with unrelenting criticism in Washington from some politically conservative and free-market critics who believe any ECA distorts free enterprise and should be eliminated—and next year's charter debate will happen weeks ahead of congressional elections.
In direct response to Colgan Air's 2009 accident near Buffalo, N.Y., Congress passed the Airline Safety and FAA Extension Act of 2010, requiring all crewmembers to have an Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) license as of July 15, 2013. The rationale: The lack of flight time among pilots at smaller air carriers, also known as regional airlines, was leading to an unacceptable decrease in airline safety. While the FAA has proposed alternative minimums for ATPs, its stance is to keep the new mandate for such a license in place.
