Aviation News, Boeing, Airbus

The Export-Import Bank (ExIm), a federal agency that subsidizes U.S. exports primarily through loan guarantees, dedicated a majority of its guarantee dollars again last year to subsidies for Boeing sales, according to the agency’s Annual Report.

Weighted by dollar value, Boeing directly benefited from 52.2% of Ex-Im’s long-term loan guarantees-the only transactions Ex-Im itemizes in its report this year. Over the last nine years, Boeing’s share of Ex-Im loans and long-term guarantees is 52%.

With the agency’s authorization expiring this year, Ex-Im officials have been touting their support for small businesses-an issue that lawmakers raised last time Ex-Im came before Congress for reauthorization.

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Also, the Bush Administration’s Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has been applying legal and diplomatic pressure on European governments to cease their subsidies of Airbus, Boeing’s only competitor in the business of making large passenger jets.

Ex-Im and Boeing officials defend the agency’s heavy support for one company. “Airplanes are expensive items,” Amanda Landers, Boeing spokeswoman, told HUMAN EVENTS. ( Boeing planes sell for at least $45 million and as much as $250 million.) Landers also pointed out that Boeing is America’s top exporter.

Ex-Im spokesman Phil Cogan attributed Boeing’s large share of Ex-Im financing to the fact that Boeing “sells big-ticket items,” and that “Ex-Im is a demand-driven institution.” Cogan pointed out that Boeing has 6,600 U.S suppliers, of which Ex-Im says 2,900 are small businesses. Indeed, Ex-Im has produced a poster with a headline, “When Boeing exports … small businesses all over America work.” The poster features a map of the U.S. plotting Boeing’s suppliers in almost all 50 states.

Currently, the U.S. is actively pursuing a trade case against European Union states over their subsidies for Boeing. In May 2005, then-USTR Rob Portman declared it was the administration’s goal to “negotiate to end subsidies for large civil aircraft.” Boeing’s Landers points to Europe’s subsidies as a reason that Boeing needs Ex-Im. “Airbus has three Export Credit Agencies. We only have Ex-Im. If you take away the [Ex-Im] Bank, we’d be at a severe disadvantage-and that would probably cost jobs.”

Ex-Im officials point out that in FY 2005, 2,617 of Ex-Im’s 3,128 transactions “directly benefited small businesses.” Typically, these small business subsidies were comparatively small-dollar transactions and are not itemized. Ex-Im’s annual report shows that, by dollar amount, small businesses benefit from about 19.1% of all Ex-Im transactions.

In its 2002 reauthorization, Congress required Ex-Im to set aside 20% of its financing, dollar-wise, for small business. In none of the years since then has Ex-Im reached that mark.

Further, in every year since 2002, Boeing has received more than 50% of Ex-Im’s loan and long-term guarantee dollars. In FY 2003, for example, $4.4 billion of ExIm’s $6.5 billion (68.2%) in loans and long-term guarantees subsidized Boeing sales. This last year Ex-Im guaranteed $4.2 billion to subsidize Boeing aircraft, and only $3.9 billion for all other U.S. exporters combined. (Ex-Im issued no direct loans in FY 2005.)

Boeing: Commercial Airplanes - Lifecycle Solutions and Support Home
Boeing: Commercial Airplanes - Lifecycle Solutions and Support Home Boeing and its family of companies help aviation and transportation industry customers enhance their profitability by providing lifecycle business solutions, materials and engineering…

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 02:27:05 GMT
WORLD at 1700GMT
HIGHLIGHTS Update: ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS. U.S. diplomat: Sanctions expected to be lifted next week.

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 17:54:54 GMT
Back to the Future? And Beyond
There were no flying cars at SMX Advanced, just a lot of great ideas In 1962, Seattle was the home of the future. Among the exhibits at the Century 21 Exposition was a family home-of-tomorrow sporting, among other miracles, a vast electronic library. Other futuristic wonders of the fair included Fords six-wheeled, bubble-toped Seattle-ite XX concept car which featured an onboard-computer with an automatic rolling roadmap, a rocket ship simulation ride that gave you a glimpse of your vacation among the stars, the famed monorail which would make traffic jams a thing of the past and, of course, the Space Needle itself, Mighty Symbol of Progress. Then reality intervened. The monorail failed to supplant the freeway and dreams of jet packs and rocket ships gave way to crowded airbuses with take-your-shoes-off security. In general, utopian fantasies took a back seat to dystopian ones (Soylent Green is People) and Seattle became identified more with Frasier than The Future. Still, today, nearly every household has access to a vast electronic library, though of a type that few in 1962 could have foreseen. And its in the black box of that vast electronic librarynow called the Internetthat our little story comes full circle. SMX Advanced, the new conference by Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Land fame, was held last week in Seattle. It showed just how the vast electronic library can be a golden land of opportunity and adventure, provided you know where to search. And thats what made the conference so different and special: Its laser-like focus on how to draw more users and customers. Tips literally abounded. My highlights included: SEO, meet SMM Short for Social Media Marketing, SMMs the hot new ticket in town for those wanting to get their messages across using social mediai.e., services that let people share their own content, like Flickr, Yahoo! Answers, Wikipedia and so forth. The panel of experts included Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz, Cindy Krum of Blue Moon Works, Stuntdubls Todd Malicoat and Neil Patel from ACS/Pronet Advertising. Among the many nuggets was using Yahoo! Answers to become an expert in your field and draw links at the same time. Neil Patel talked about the dos and donts of SMM (do add lots of friends; dont try to spam the home page by tagging your own content over and over). Cindy Crum finished up by giving a great talk on how to build up your brand via social media and noted that customers and potential customers today are demanding a higher level of interaction with brands. Bottom line: If youre not marketing through social media now, you need to think about starting. For more, check out Search Engine Roundtables notes and Bruce Clays blog. Better Ways Better ways to do boring stuff is how MC Danny pitched this session. It was an all around Q&A with a bevy of search marketing experts (too many to name them all here). Among the more interesting questions for both publishers and advertisers: What tricks or tactics get you a lot of backlinks (without having to do much?) There are companies who want to build Flash-heavy sites that arent easily read by spiders. Have you had any success stories on getting them to change their minds? How many targeted links would you go after per month without penalty? How relevant is page freshness to ranking? For the answers, take a peek at Search Engine Roundtable. Paid Search Roundtable It was here that our own Stewart Easterby announced the new Yahoo! Search Marketing open API program, which we talked about on the blog a few days later. This news won some pretty rave reviews at in Seattle and around the SEOsphere. Learn more from Bruce Clay. Pump Up Your Paid Search Those using paid search naturally want to get the most out of it. This panel focused on just that. Among the tips: Proper set-up is important Invest in tangential keywords carefully Consider geo-targeting In Panama, make use of the Alternate Text feature You can read more about it here, here and here. More Coverage: SMX BlogSearch Engine LandFlickr PhotostreamTechnoratiVideo coverage from WebProNews Granted, there were no pavilions promising the Wonders of Tomorrow, but in all, SMX Advanced was a great kickoff to what promises to be a worthy conference series. Oh, and if you do happen to be in Seattle and find yourself in need of a little future boost, be sure to visit the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, at the foot of the Space Needle right next to the monorail. Michael Mattis

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 22:14:13 EDT

Cockpit Recorder Found in Cameroon Crash
A search team has found the cockpit voice recorder of a Kenya Airways plane that crashed in Cameroon last month, killing 114 people, the airline’s chief executive officer said.

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 11:30:16 GMT
Complaints About Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines
There are some other festivals like crruise Rajsawala Ambavati and complaints about royal caribbean cruise lines Chitgomha are also celebrated with Rohin. Lisbon Cathedral was originally founded by Portugal’s first king Dom Afonso Henriques in…

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 02:34:07 GMT
Airbus Family
Airbus Familympampis210isback9 min 56 sec - May 19, 2007Airbus S.A.S. is the aircraft manufacturing subsidiary of EADS N.V., a pan-European aerospace concern. Based at Toulouse, France with significant operations in other European states, Airbus produces around half of the world’s jet airliners, with most of the rest built by rival Boeing Commercial Airplanes, though the precise share varies on an annual basis.
Airbus was incorporated in 2001 under French law as a simplified joint stock company or S.A.S. (Société par Actions Simplifiée). Airbus was formerly known as Airbus Industrie. The name is pronounced /È[YbŒs/ in British English, Image:ltspkr.png/[�bys/ in French, and /È[ÐPbŠs/ in German.
Airbus was jointly held by EADS (80%) and BAE Systems (20%), Europe’s two largest defence contractors. BAE Systems announced its intention to sell its 20% share of Airbus in April 2006 and exercised its put option in June 2006 to force EADS to buy the stake. The put option appointed investment bank Rothschild to establish an independent valuation. Rothschild’s valuation, reported in 2006, was £1.9 billion (€2.75 billion), well below the expectations of BAE and EADS. Unhappy with the valuation, BAE appointed independent auditors to investigate the value of its 20% share. [2] On 6 September 2006 the BAE board announced it would recommend to shareholders to sell its share for €2.75bn (£1.87bn or $3.53bn). [3]
Airbus employs around 57,000 people at sixteen sites in four European countries: Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Spain. Final assembly production occurs at Toulouse (France) and Hamburg (Germany). Airbus also has three subsidiaries in the USA, Japan and China.
Airbus Industrie began as a consortium of European aviation firms to compete with American companies such as Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, and Lockheed. In the 1960s European aircraft manufacturers competed with each other as much as the American giants. In the mid-1960s tentative negotiations commenced regarding a European collaborative approach.
In September 1967 the German, French and British governments signed a Memorandum of understanding. In the months following this agreement both the French and British governments expressed doubts about the aircraft. Another problem was the requirement for a new engine (to be developed by Rolls-Royce, the RB207). In December 1968 the French and British partner companies, Sud Aviation and Hawker Siddeley proposed a revised configuration, the 250 seat Airbus A250. Renamed the A300B the aircraft would not require new engines, reducing development costs.
In 1969 the British government shocked its partners by withdrawing from the project. Given the participation by Hawker Siddeley up to that point, France and Germany were reluctant to take over their wing design. Thus the British company was allowed to continue as a major subcontractor. In 1978 Britain rejoined the consortium when British Aerospace (the merged Hawker Siddeley and BAC) purchased again a 20% share of the company.
The Airbus product line started with the A300, the world’s first twin-aisle, twin-engined aircraft. A shorter, re-winged, re-engined variant of the A300 is known as the A310. Building on its success, Airbus launched the A320 with its innovative fly-by-wire control system. The A320 has been, and continues to be, a great commercial success. The A318 and A319 are shorter derivatives with some of the latter under construction for the corporate biz-jet market (Airbus Corporate Jet). A stretched version is known as the A321 and is proving competitive with later models of the Boeing 737.
The longer range products, the twin-jet A330 and the four-engine A340, have efficient wings, enhanced by winglets. The Airbus A340-500 has an operating range of 16 700 kilometres (9000 nautical miles), the second longest range of any commercial jet after the Boeing 777-200LR (range of 17 446 km or 9420 nautical miles). The company is particularly proud of its use of fly-by-wire technologies and the common cockpit and systems in use throughout the aircraft family, which make it much easier to train crew.
Airbus is studying a replacement for the A320 series, tentatively dubbed NSR, for “New Short-Range aircraft.”[16]
In March 2006 Airbus announced the closing of the A300/A310 production line, ending over 30 years of production. The last delivery will take place in 2nd quarter 2007. Airbus intends to relocate Toulouse A320 final assembly activity to Hamburg, and A350/A380 production in the opposite direction as part of its Power8 organization plan begun under ex-CEO Christian Streiff.[17]
Until its retirement in 2003, Airbus supplied replacement parts and service for the Concorde.

Sat, 19 May 2007 07:54:48 PDT