Donald A. Nunemaker has been promoted to president from executive VP and general manager of leasing of Willis Lease Finance Corp., Novato, Calif. He succeeds Charles F. Willis, who will continue as chairman and CEO.
Robert Lummus (see photo) has been appointed VP and general manager of Tempe, Ariz.-based StandardAero Business Aviation's Los Angeles International Airport facility. He was director of operations.
William L. Ballhaus has joined SRA International Inc., Fairfax, Va., as CEO and a member of the board of directors. He was CEO, president and a director at DynCorp International.
James R. Schatz (see photo) has been named head of the Milton S. Eisenhower Research Center and Science and Technology Business Area at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. He was acting managing executive of the Applied Information Sciences Department.
Andrew J. Schmidt has been named senior VP-supply chain at AAR Allen Asset Management, Wood Dale, Ill. He has held senior management positions at Taurus Aerospace Group, Macquarie Capital and Oliver Wyman.
Doug Dillon (see photo) is the new director of Lean Six Sigma at Kansas City, Mo.-based PAS Technologies. He comes from the ATK Salt Lake City Army Ammunition Plant, where he was senior manager of Six Sigma.
Burkhard Andrich has been promoted to senior VP-aircraft component services from VP-engine services at Frankfurt-based Lufthansa Technik, succeeding Johannes Bussman. Stephan Drewes has been promoted to CEO of Lufthansa Technik Malta, following Aloysius Giordimaina, who plans to retire. Drewes was VP-engine overhaul at Hamburg, where he will be succeeded by Bernhard Krueger-Sprengel, who was CEO of Lufthansa Technik Philippines. Gerald Frielinghaus is the new president and CEO of Lufthansa Technik Philippines and was VP-aircraft overhaul and modification services.
USAF Brig. Gen. Thomas J. Trask has been selected for promotion to major general and appointment as director for force structure, requirements, resources and strategic assessments at Headquarters U.S. Special Operations Command, MacDill AFB, Fla. He has been the command's deputy director of the theater plans and synchronization element. Brig. Gen. John D. Stauffer has been appointed vice director for intelligence within the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon.
Anita Currie, president of Edge Consulting, was reelected to a second term on the board of New York-based World Teleport Association. Koby Zontag, senior director-sales and business development for RRsat Global Communications, was elected to a first term.
Hans-Peter Ring, EADS's CFO, arrived in New York last week for meetings with institutional investors and analysts in the middle of a stock market meltdown. “Obviously the markets feel that there is [the threat of] a double-dip recession,” he says. But if that does happen, Ring is confident the company's Airbus unit is prepared.
While Airbus continues to make big news in single-aisles orders (see p. 42)—its A320NEO (new engine option) sales rate has pushed the company's gross orders to more than 1,200—Boeing has only recorded about a fourth as many. But it is doing very well in widebody sales thanks to the ongoing strength of the 777 as both a passenger jet and freighter. Boeing added another 19 orders in the Aug. 10 online listing, including eight 777 freighters and four 777-300ERs for Cathay Pacific Airways. The Hong Kong carrier is a long-time 777 customer and had ordered 28 -300ERs.
The FAA type certification review board is expected to convene this week to discuss the Boeing 787, which was due to complete its test certification activity last weekend. The next issue for Boeing is increasing production rates. After a production hiatus, Boeing is about to increase output to two aircraft per month, then 2.5. Two or three months later, another increase is planned as Boeing works to build 10 aircraft per month in 2013.
A campaign has formed in Washington state to persuade Boeing to build the proposed reengined 737 at Renton. The campaign formation follows Boeing's announcement that it will consider options before deciding where to build the new aircraft variant in “six to eight months.” The Washington Aerospace Partnership has been created from a group of around 70 business, government and labor leaders to raise money for an aerospace assessment, and to mount a lobbying campaign to keep the work at the current site near Seattle.
American Airlines parent AMR Corp. has taken the next step in splitting its regional operation American Eagle into a separate company. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Aug. 11, AMR discloses details of a plan to spin off Eagle as a new publicly traded company 100% owned by AMR stockholders. Eagle would benefit from a nine-year contract with AMR to provide passenger feed to American, initially with a fleet of 281 aircraft.
A production fault with some Thales Avionics angle-of-attack (AOA) probes has caused the European Aviation Safety Agency to issue an airworthiness directive for operators of Airbus A320 family aircraft. EASA says the problem is linked to “oil residue between the stator and the rotor parts of the AOA vane position resolvers” left behind as a result of a faulty manufacturing process. EASA warns that “at low temperatures, this oil residue becomes viscous (typically in cruise), causing delayed and/or reduced AOA vane movement.
The U.S. Air Force and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are setting up an engineering review board to investigate the loss of the second, and final, Hypersonic Test Vehicle (HTV-2) shortly after launch from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. on Aug 11. The Lockheed Martin-built hypersonic glide vehicle was placed into its correct trajectory by an Orbital Sciences Minotaur IV, and initial telemetry indicated the Mach 20 glide phase had begun. Around 9 min. into the flight, contact with the vehicle was lost.
More than a year of in-space testing has demonstrated a nontoxic “green” thruster technology developed in Sweden is spaceworthy, with better head-to-head performance than hydrazine. The system, developed by Swedish Space Corp.
Spacebel, a software engineering company based in Liege, Belgium, will negotiate with the government of Vietnam to build the Southeast Asian nation's second, small Earth-observation satellite. The Vietnam Natural Resources Environment and Disaster monitoring small Satellite (VNREDSAT) program selected Spacebel for the task after the government gave the go-ahead for a second satellite, designated VNREDSAT-1B. It will be built by a Belgian consortium that includes Qinetiq Space, AMOS and CSL.
NASA's Juno probe is more than eight times as far from Earth as the Moon, following its Aug. 5 launch aboard an Atlas V 551 rocket from Cape Canaveral. During its five-year trek to Jupiter, the spacecraft will travel out as far as the orbit of Mars before cycling back around the Sun for a flyby of Earth in October 2013 and a gravitational boost to Jupiter. Upon arrival in 2016, the solar-powered Juno will be hurtling along at 160,000 mph, the fastest man-made object in history.
The National Press Club in Washington has given its Michael A. Dornheim Award to Christopher J. Castelli of the newsletter Inside the Pentagon. The award, named for Aviation Week's late engineering editor, was presented to Castelli for reporting on the U.S. military's failure to put cockpit voice recorders on the V-22 tiltrotor years after being directed to do so by Congress.
In a bid to increase the workshare for Australian companies on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Australian government is making A$8.2 million ($8.47 million) available as a financing crutch for local companies and research establishments. The money is being provided through the so-called New Air Combat Capability Industry Support Program until the end of 2014, the Australian defense department says.
Kawasaki Heavy Industries P-1 maritime patrol aircraft will need reinforcement after the discovery of 15-20 cm (6-8 in.) cracks and tears in their structure. Delays to the delivery of the first four aircraft are possible. The faults were found in several places on two P-1s after ground tests. Some were in the integral fuel tanks and others in the fuselage near the wing root. The structural failures do not seem to be serious enough to require redesign of the aircraft, says the Japanese defense ministry.
The first free flight of the datalink-equipped C-1 variant of Raytheon's AGM-154 Joint Stand-Off Weapon (JSOW) resulted in the inert development-test weapon hitting its moving ship target. Launched from a U.S. Navy F/A-18 late last month, the unpowered JSOW C-1 received inflight target updates via Link 16, then acquired the mobile ship target with its infrared seeker and guided itself to the aimpoint. JSOW C-1 is scheduled to enter service in 2013.
Israel Aerospace Industries' (IAI) Ghost electrically powered vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) mini-UAV is making its debut at this week's Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International show in Washington. Weighing 9 lb., the tandem-rotor autonomous aircraft can fly for up to 30 min. on battery power and is designed for low noise and ease of use in urban warfare and special operations. IAI has also developed the Panther family of tilt-prop small VTOL unmanned aerial systems.
