Aviation News, Boeing, Airbus

AIRLINE INDUSTRY INFORMATION-(C)1997-2007 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

Boeing (NYSE: BA) and DHL have signed an agreement for six Boeing 767-300ER (Extended Range) Freighters.

The order is valued at USD894m at list prices. Boeing said that the order has previously been accounted for on its Orders & Deliveries website.

DHL, wholly owned by German-based Deutsche Post World Net, is an international express delivery and logistics company.

Longview Solutions, a leading provider of performance management software, announced today that it has been selected as one of the Top Business Performance Management (BPM) vendors for 2007 by BPM Partners, a widely-respected analyst and consulting firm specializing in BPM.

(PRWEB) January 31, 2007 — Longview Solutions, a leading provider of performance management software, announced today that it has been selected as one of the Top Business Performance Management (BPM) vendors for 2007 by BPM Partners, a widely-respected analyst and consulting firm specializing in BPM. In addition, Longview received a 4.4 out of 5 ranking in early results from the annual BPM Pulse Survey. Longview received top marks for customer support and the price/value ROI of Longviews performance management platform.

The results are part of BPM Partners annual BPM Pulse Survey which is completed by end users and documents their level of satisfaction with their current BPM provider. In addition, in its annual Beyond the Hype webcast BPM Partners announced their “Core 9″ top BPM vendors for 2007 which included Longview. For a replay of the Beyond the Hype” Webcast, go to http://www.bpmpartners.com/events_webinars.shtml.

style='text-decoration:none;color:#748DA7; font-size: 16px; font-family: Arial,
Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold'>To be part of the Core 9 BPM vendors for 2007, BPM Partners examined four key aspects of vendor capability: completeness of BPM solution, level of functional capabilities, success in real-world implementations, and BPM focus of the vendor organization

“To be part of the Core 9 BPM vendors for 2007, BPM Partners examined four key aspects of vendor capability: completeness of BPM solution, level of functional capabilities, success in real-world implementations, and BPM focus of the vendor organization,” said Craig Schiff, President and CEO of BPM Partners. “Through the 2007 BPM Pulse Survey, Longview demonstrated its focus on high customer satisfaction and its ability to deliver a cost-competitive performance management solution.”

“What makes the BPM Pulse Survey unique is that it is completed by end user customers,” said Mark E. Burton, President and CEO of Longview Solutions. “It is very encouraging to see our customers validate two key Longview differentiators - very high levels of customer satisfaction and the best price to value ratio in the industry. In addition, to be recognized as one of the “Core 9″ vendors for 2007 reinforces Longviews ability to deliver the industrys most technically advanced, scalable and robust software application for performance management.”

About BPM Partners

BPM Partners is a privately held professional services firm with an exclusive focus on business performance management (BPM) solutions. The firms BPM experts help companies understand the value of business performance management, provide insight on how to collect and analyze the right information to address specific business goals and lead clients through the evaluation and implementation of departmental or enterprise-wide BPM systems. For more information, go to www.bpmpartners.com.

About Longview Solutions

Longview Solutions helps companies manage the business of finance with speed, visibility and financial integrity. Since 1995, hundreds of the worlds most respected companies including Boeing, Cisco, GE Healthcare, Home Depot, Ingersoll Rand, JC Penney and many other industry leaders have used our software to create a single repository of financial truth from which Consolidation, Management Reporting, Corporate Planning, Modeling, Analysis, Budgeting, Forecasting, and Tax processes can be performed simultaneously, enterprise-wide.

Longview Solutions has a focus on finance, and expertise that covers all industry sectors including energy, natural resources, media and entertainment, financial services, healthcare, higher education, manufacturing, pharmaceutical and retail. For more information go to www.longview.com.

For more information please contact:

North America:

Jennifer Bentley

905-513-5210

UK/International:

Clive Jefferies

Many chief executives pursue the four Ps - pay, power, perks and prestige rather
than profits for the company.

Recently, there are more and more CEOs falling from grace. In the United States, forced
exits accounted for 39% of CEO departures in 2002 up from 25 % in 2001, according to
Booz Allen Hamilton. In 2002, Enron Chairman Ken Lay, Tyco chief Dennis
Kozlowski, Qwest’s Joe Nacchio, Worldcom’s Bernie Ebbers. Year 2003 saw the
departure of CEOs from Raytheon, Kmart, Spiegel, Scherling Plough, Motorola, Freddie
Mac, Boeing, American, etc.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) in 13 April 2004 reported that Professor David Yermack of
New York University Stern School of Business found that the average shareholder gains
underperformed market benchmarks at companies where the chief flies by luxurious
corporate jets. In the study, “Flights of Fancy: Corporate Jets, CEO Perquisites and
Inferior Shareholder Returns”, Professor Yermack said: “The central result of this study
is that CEO’s personal use of company aircraft is associated with severe and significant
under-performance of their employers’ stock….Firms’ stock prices drop an average of 2
percent around the date of initial disclosure of corporate plane use.”

Some of the CEOs may not be justifiably fired as the economy turns bad through no
faults of theirs’ but they were held accountable. However, the days of fat cats running
corporations are over.

Uncontrolled and unnecessary costs destroy businesses. If your competitor has a limo and
you do not, you are already winning. He has a leaky bucket. There are six self-made
multi-billionaires. And all of them were paragons of simplicity and prudence in self-aggrandisement.

In 1991, Sam Walton founder of Wal-Mart drove an eight-year-old red Ford pickup. He
always fetched his own coffee. As President of EDS, Ross Perot paid himself $70,000 a
year. However, when Perot sold EDS to General Motors, the President of General
Motors, Perot’s new boss, made $2.4 million salary plus a bonus. Finally, he paid Perot
$2.5 billion to go away because GM executives were embarrassed by the folksy Perot,
who did not demand a fat salary or swanky office or specially tuned cars. David Packard
never had an enclosed office before he left Hewlett-Packard for government service. Bill
Gates of Microsoft often rode coach on planes, until they finally got so big they ran their
own fleet of aircraft. Warren Buffet manages Berkshire Hathaway’s billions and billions
with a staff of 24. When they lunch together, it is McDonald’s. Warren still stayed in the
same house that he bought thirty years ago and drew on a salary of US 100,000 per
annum. Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of Ikea takes the company bus to his stores.

Indeed examples of executive abuses dominated the news during 2002. Many Enron
employees were fired whilst Senior Executives used $200,000 to fund its luxury box at
the formerly named Enron Field. Though founded on the innovative idea of instant
photography, Polaroid’s management failed to save the company from the shift to digital
cameras. Polaroid reportedly cancelled health-care benefits for the company’s retirees in
the wake of its Chapter 11 filing. However, management reportedly petitioned the
bankruptcy court for permission to dole out roughly $19 million in bonuses to keep key
executives from leaving. Webvan is another example. It failed to compete against the
traditional supermarkets with its online shopping services and home delivery. Before it
ceased operations, the company reportedly agreed to pay its resigning CEO, George
Shaheen, $375,000 per year for life although the Webvan’s stock price plunged 99
percent during his tenure.

Flying into the future is Boeing’s new Dreamliner, renamed as the 787. Lightweight, fast and efficient this 50% build composite aircraft looks to break all records, including sales records. The Boeing company, the premier airline manufacturer in the Solar System in the present period has already secured orders for over 250 of these state-of-the-art, leading edge, envelope busting birds.

A private jet overran a runway at Bob Hope Airport on Friday and was stopped by an arresting system. The aircraft was carrying New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez and six others.

Fortunately none of the seven passengers were injured. This incident took place only two days after Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle’s plane failed to execute a U-turn and slammed into the side of a high-rise in Manhattan, killing Lidle and his flight instructor.

The jet, a Gulfstream G-II, carried five passengers and two crew members. The aircraft, registered to a Wilmington, Del., corporation, departed from Las Vegas earlier the same day, on Friday. At 11:35 the twin-engine jet approached the airport to land from the west but could not stop and landed on one of the airport’s two runways. Eventually it was brought to halt by the Engineered Materials Arresting System. The system is a 200-foot-long stretch of pavement injected with air bubbles designed to collapse under the weight of an aircraft as large as a Boeing 737 jet travelling as fast as 50 knots. The jet managed to be stopped and very little damage to the aircraft could be seen.

An investigator from NTSB has been sent at the airport the incident. The investigation will include retrieving the cockpit voice recorder, gathering radar data and evaluating how well the arresting system worked. Apparently the crew onboard did not report any problems or wet runway before landing or that the runway was wet. Investigators will now have to determine if the jet had already arrived and was taxing at the time of the accident or if it overran the runway upon landing.