The controversial 2011 Budget Control Act may be eating into the Pentagon's ability to do many things, but backing up Israel is not one of them, according to officials in both countries who have unveiled an unprecedented arm sales package designed to maintain the country's “qualitative military edge,” above all.
Frank Ruggiero (see photo) has been named senior vice president-government relations for BAE Systems Inc., Arlington, Va. He succeeds Erin Moseley, who is now president of BAE Systems' Support Solutions sector. Ruggiero has been vice president-international government relations and was deputy assistant secretary of state for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In answering your “Call to All Readers,” count me as one of that declining group that believe that Aviation Week's best years were when it was more technically oriented. As a reader since 1964, I vividly remember the coverage of the then-emerging Lockheed A-11; those were exciting days, both for the country and the industry.
Members of Congress might have finally found something they can agree on across the aisle: making sure their flights to and from Washington are not disrupted by automatic reductions in air traffic controllers that they themselves mandated as part of the 2011 Budget Control Act (see page 32). The good news for the public is that lawmakers' enlightened self-interest may benefit them too, especially as the U.S. approaches the traditional start of the summer travel season at the end of May. “There is definitely a problem,” says Sen. Mike Enzi.
The controversial debt-and-deficit-fighting law in the U.S. is expected to lead to slow merger and acquisition (M&A) activity in the aerospace and defense sector, according to PwC. “It has now been 20 months since the last defense deal announcement greater than $1 billion,” says Scott Thompson, PwC's U.S. aerospace & defense leader. “While the commercial aerospace M&A market has been active, the defense M&A market has essentially been frozen since sequestration first became a possibility with passage of the Budget Control Act of 2011.
Dassault Aviation's Mystere 20 serial No. 1 took to the skies for the first time 50 years ago, come May 4, and the French airplane maker is holding celebrations and displays throughout the year to commemorate that signal event.
In “Not Even Close: The Better Choice for LAS” (AW&ST April 15, p. 58), Fred George makes a compelling case for the Embraer A-29B Super Tucano over the Beechcraft AT-6. But this seems to me like winning an order for muskets from the Confederate States of America on April 1, 1865.
Brazil's armed forces are learning to adjust to the country's rapidly changing economic climate. While the country has experienced a slowdown in the last three years, its mining and huge oil and gas reserves have transformed the economy. But with a significant proportion of the wealth located offshore, Brazil is having to learn quickly about how to protect it, and has decided to take lessons from those experienced in the business.
Reiner Winkler has been named to become CEO of Germany-based MTU Aero Engines, effective Jan. 1. He has been chief financial officer and will succeed Egon Behle.
Boeing's 737 twinjet, aviation's most successful commercial transport, is breaking new production records: 38 aircraft are now produced each month at the manufacturer's Renton, Wash., facilities and soon, 42. Recently, the 7,500th 737 was delivered and, in the wake of the MAX next-generation model's promising start, the show is certain to go on for decades to come.
Patrick Fitzgerald has been named senior vice president-integrated marketing and communications of FedEx, Memphis, Tenn. He succeeds Bill Margaritis, who was corporate vice president-global communications and investor relations.
Cliff Greenblatt (see photo) has been promoted to general counsel/vice president from deputy general counsel of TASC Inc., Chantilly, Va. He also has been an assistant general counsel at General Dynamics.
Chances are pretty good that the pilots who will fly the cockpits of tomorrow are today sitting in front of a computer, playing very life-like 3-D video games. Studying how those young minds learn will be crucial to developing not only the cockpit and interfaces, but also the training regime.
NASA plans a mission concept review this summer to wring out its bold proposal to capture a small near-Earth asteroid and place it in “translunar space” for study by spacewalking astronauts (AW&ST April 1/8, p. 17). But the agency is well along in connecting dots for the mission, which Human Exploration and Operations chief William Gerstenmaier describes as a marriage of the disparate capabilities that would be needed to return samples—and perhaps eventually humans—from Mars and beyond.
Bruce DeWitt has been appointed CEO of Minneapolis-based Logic PD. He was vice president/general manager of the Armament Systems Div. of Alliant Techsystems.
American Airlines may have unwittingly found a new use for the 8,500 iPads that its pilots now carry to hold aircraft documents and charts: electronic flight plans. It turns out the computer “glitch” the company experienced on April 16 had nothing to do with the Sabre reservation system, as first reported, and everything to do with flight plans. The glitch caused a shutdown of the carrier's U.S. network for several hours, resulting in the cancellation of hundreds of flights and lingering disruptions through the next day.
John Croft (Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Olathe, Kan.; Phoenix and Tucson)
A line from The Beatles' rock anthem “Back in the U.S.S.R.” nicely sums up a recent morning for Capt. Roger Moore as he piloted an “airliner” from New York to San Francisco: “On the way, the paper bag was on my knee. Man, I had a dreadful flight . . . .” Moore had just endured 5 hr. of constant turbulence, but along with getting paid, he did it for a good cause: making sure certain next-generation avionics are a good fit for the flight deck.
Indonesia's Lion Air will continue to grow its fleet, despite the April 13 incident at Bali's Ngurah Rai International Airport in which the airline's Boeing 737-800, local registration PK-LKS, landed in the sea—short of Runway 09—and broke in two. All 108 people onboard survived, but 46 were hospitalized. Lion President Rusdi Kirana said none of the injuries were critical.
