ATA said that international markets “remained especially strong” as passenger revenue grew 17%, led by a 27% increase in Pacific revenue. Domestic revenue grew 11.5% largely driven by a 10.5% rise in yield.

ATA VP and Chief Economist John Heimlich noted the revenue growth occurred “despite widespread winter storms plaguing airline operations throughout the country.” He said it reflected “a strengthening economy and pricing environment” but cautioned “As fuel prices remain at or near historically high levels, US airlines may experience a more challenging revenue environment.”

Taken from atwonline.com, By Perry Flint March 18, 2011

Work experience is usually the first item on the checklist when hiring managers read a resume. We ask: Where did this person work? What did he do? And, is his experience transferable? Most hiring managers only glance at an applicant’s education, preferring to focus on whether he or she has relevant work experience and accomplishments.
A Positive Attitude
A human resources manager is never lacking accomplished candidates to choose from. If a hiring manager has to choose between two equally qualified candidates, the person with the better disposition likely will win out. It makes sense. After all, who wants to spend 40 or more hours a week with a Debbie Downer? Everything you ask should be directed toward the job or information relevant to the company. Don’t try to nitpick, or try to find flaws in what people are saying. A cheerful, positive disposition is sometimes hard to find, but it’s instantly spotted.
Honesty
The startling number of candidates who misrepresent themselves alarms hiring managers. Prospective employees may exaggerate parts of their work history or disguise aspects of their personalities. The occasional candidate will even straight out lie. Most of the time, you can tell when something is being stretched for their benefit, and you can usually pick it up with body language. Pay close attention to the small things — you might be surprised.
The Small Things
You know exactly what you want, and usually within a couple of minutes of talking to the job seeker, it becomes clear why they will or won’t get hired. This market is very competitive. Hiring managers often have a number of people to choose from who have the technical or functional skills required for the position. The differentiators are the soft skills that sway them from one person to another. Don’t take those factors too lightly!
Examine candidates critically. What kind of attitude do they show? What kind of first impression do they make? Are they prepared? Do you articulate answers well? Do they show sincere interest in company? Are they courteous? These are significant and make an impact.
What other factors do you look for in a candidate?

Taken from http://Community.Ere.Net, posted by Ty Abernethy on March 10, 2011

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER and JENNA WORTHAM

Published: March 25, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO — Eric Firestone began a new job at a Web start-up here three weeks ago, and he’s already thinking about what he might do next. But that’s just fine with his new employer.

The company, a service to turn cellphones into credit card readers, lured Mr. Firestone from Apple partly with an unusual pitch: it promised to give him weekly lessons about starting his own business someday, including how to find venture capitalists to finance it.

Mr. Firestone, a 28-year-old software engineer, said he could try to get financing for a start-up from venture capital firms now, “but I feel like I’d be having a hard time. Here you get to learn.”

Computer whiz kids have long been prize hires in Silicon Valley. But these days tech companies are dreaming up new perks and incentives as the industry wages its fiercest war for talent in more than a decade.

Free meals, shuttle buses and stock options are de rigueur. So the game maker Zynga dangles free haircuts and iPads to recruits, who are also told that they can bring their dogs to work. Path, a photo-sharing site, moved its offices so it could offer sweeping views of the San Francisco Bay. At Instagram, another photo-sharing start-up, workers take personal food and drink orders from employees, fill them at Costco and keep the supplies on hand for lunches and snacks.

Then there are salaries. Google is paying computer science majors just out of college $90,000 to $105,000, as much as $20,000 more than it was paying a few months ago. That is so far above the industry average of $80,000 that start-ups cannot match Google salaries. Google declined to comment.

Two executives at a small start-up who spoke on the condition of anonymity said it recently lost an intern when one of the biggest start-ups offered the candidate a 40 percent bump in stock options, potentially worth hundreds of thousands of dollars — but only if the candidate accepted the job before hanging up the phone.

“The atmosphere is brutally competitive,” said Keith Rabois, a Silicon Valley veteran and chief operating officer at Square, where Mr. Firestone works. “Recruiting in Silicon Valley is more competitive and intense and furious than college football recruiting of high school athletes.”

As the rest of the country fights stubbornly high unemployment, the shortage of qualified engineers has grown acute in the last six months, tech executives and recruiters say, as the flow of personal or venture capital investing has picked up. In Silicon Valley, along the southern portion of the San Francisco Bay in California, and other tech hubs like New York, Seattle and Austin, Tex., start-ups are sprouting by the dozen, competing with well-established companies for the best engineers, programmers and designers. At the same time, all the companies are seeking ever more specialized skills.

And there has been a psychological shift; many of the most talented engineers want to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, not work for him.

Shannon Callahan, who recruits engineers for the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz’s portfolio of companies, said a third of the engineers she called ask for financing to start their own companies instead.

“They have that entrepreneurial spirit and you want to talk to them because you know they’d do great in a small environment working a million hours a week, but those folks are saying, ‘Actually, I think I want to do my own thing,’ ” she said.

In an only-in-Silicon-Valley twist, start-ups are acknowledging this phenomenon by recruiting ambitious engineers with promises to help them to leave someday to start their own, potentially competitive companies.

“It’s less about us competing against start-ups and more against the person who wants to start their own thing,” said Dave Morin, co-founder and chief executive of Path. Mr. Morin, an early Facebook employee, knows the type because he was one of them. He tells recruits that he will help them start their own companies down the road, by advising or investing in them.

Redfin, an online real estate brokerage in Seattle, sets up one-on-one meetings between recruits and venture capitalists on its board to talk about starting their own companies, and runs twice-monthly classes on entrepreneurship — a perk that Redfin says has helped attract and retain recruits.

“It helps people stay but also helps them to go,” said Glenn Kelman, Redfin’s chief executive.

At Square, the co-founder and chief executive, Jack Dorsey, who also co-founded Twitter, gives employees 20-minute lessons on topics like how to raise venture capital. Every employee can view Square’s product plans and financials to learn about building a business.

Nationwide unemployment among computer scientists and programmers is higher than in other white-collar professions — around 5 percent — in part because many jobs have vanished overseas. But even with a glut of engineers on the job market, few have the skills that tech companies look for, said Cadir Lee, chief technology officer at Zynga.

Colleges rarely teach the newer programming languages like PHP, Ruby and Python, which have become more popular at young Web companies than older ones like Java, he said. Other skills, like working with large amounts of data and analytics, can be acquired only at a few companies.

“There are few programs that actually teach those things, and yet that’s the primary people we hire,” Mr. Lee said.

Tech recruiters have also expanded their searches. They still scout college campuses, particularly Stanford’s computer science department, where this year it was common for seniors to receive half a dozen offers by the end of first quarter. But since college degrees are not mandatory, recruiters are also going to computer coding competitions and parties, in search of talent that is reminiscent of the dot-com mania.

The push to impress recruits was fully evident at the dozens of parties hosted by tech companies at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Tex., this month, where start-ups tried to one-up each other with free beer, sushi, cocktails, ice sculptures, costumed acrobats and big-name bands and D.J.’s.

SimpleGeo, which makes tools for smartphones, was co-host at a dance party at the festival. Jay Adelson, chief executive of the company, explained that the festival was an ideal place to find talented engineers.

“The message being sent is that this is a cool, cool place to work,” Mr. Adelson said. “That matters when you are a young, hipster developer.”

Near-Term Growth Expected in Medium/Heavy Military Rotorcraft Market

Published on ASDNews: Mar 16, 2010

(Newtown, Conn., March 15, 2010) — In a new study, “The Market for Medium/Heavy Military Rotorcraft,” Forecast International projects that 4,319 such rotorcraft will be produced during the 10-year time period between 2010 and 2019. The value of this production is estimated at $92.3 billion in constant 2010 U.S. dollars. In general, Forecast International defines a medium/heavy rotorcraft as one with a gross weight that equals or exceeds 6,804 kilograms (15,000 lb).

The projections contained within the new Forecast International study indicate that the medium/heavy segment of the military rotorcraft market will experience strong growth in the near term. Some decline in the market, though, is anticipated in the longer term. On an annual basis, production in the medium/heavy military segment is expected to grow by more than 25 percent in the first half of the forecast period, from 391 rotorcraft in 2010 to 500 in 2014. A combination of factors is driving this growth, including an influx of new models onto the global market as well as continued robust rotorcraft procurement by the U.S. military services and others.

The steady rise in output, though, will not extend into the second half of the forecast timeframe. Beginning in 2015, annual production in the medium/heavy military sector is projected to trend downward, dropping to a level of 376 units by 2019. By this point of the forecast period, production for a number of high-volume procurement programs will be nearing an end, and many of the production ramp-ups for once-new rotorcraft models will have crested.

The Forecast International study also includes market share projections by company for the 10-year forecast timeframe. These projections indicate that Sikorsky will lead the market during this period in both unit production and production value.

According to Forecast International senior aerospace analyst Raymond Jaworowski, “Sikorsky benefits from a solid business foundation of strong U.S. military procurement, as well as export sales, of Black Hawk and Naval Hawk helicopters.” Other major players in the medium/heavy military rotorcraft market will include Boeing, the NH Industries consortium (of AgustaWestland, Eurocopter, and Fokker), and Russian Helicopters.

Statement by AIA President and CEO Marion C. Blakey

January 28, 2010

Arlington, VA -

We’re very pleased that President Obama is making it a priority this year to double exports, enforce trade agreements and reform export controls consistent with national security. Trade expansion and export control modernization are longtime priorities of AIA and recognition of their importance by the President sets a positive tone for action this year.

In particular, we’re looking forward to seeing the recommendations from the interagency working group that he established in August to undertake a comprehensive review of the U.S. export control system. Reforms of the system will grow high-skill, high-wage jobs, keep America’s defense industrial base competitive and sustain its ability to provide America’s military and our close allies with the best technology at the best price.

Among the notable omissions in the speech was any mention of aviation. In particular, the Next Generation Air Transportation System that will transform the way Americans travel as we replace the 1950s era radar-based system with a precision satellite-based system. It is infrastructure that is a major catalyst for jobs and should be included in any jobs bill.

AIA is squarely on the record with the facts: The total number of direct and indirect jobs generated by an approximate $6 billion investment in NextGen equipment is more than 150,000 through 2012, with 30,000 jobs generated the first year. According to our research, there are already 2,436 manufacturing, maintenance and installation facilities operating in every state of the union. Investment in NextGen will add more jobs to these already established and productive facilities.

Another notable omission was NASA and the future of our manned space program. While President Obama stressed the importance of technology and education to our competitiveness and economy, NASA is a key contributor to those fundamentals for our nation. A robust and well-funded space effort that includes a program of manned exploration beyond Low Earth Orbit is a wonderful source of inspiration for America’s youth to pursue high level science and technical education and careers. We must reach for the stars to provide that inspiration.

Finally, the President’s recognition of the need for small businesses to obtain credit is welcomed by all AIA members, but particularly by our smaller suppliers who have been stymied in their efforts to invest and innovate by a weak credit market. This, along with the tax proposals, will help small businesses boost our economy to health.

Who to Contact
Media Contact:
Alexis Allen
(703)358-1075
alexis.allen[at]aia-aerospace.org

AIA News 2009
Aerospace Industry: An Economic Stimulus

“The aerospace industry is being overlooked as a job generator,” said Blakey. “Our benefits are global and don’t end at the water’s edge.”  In her remarks to nearly 400 members of the news media, government and industry at the Association’s 45th annual Year-end Review and Forecast Luncheon, Blakey said that investment in aerospace is a proven job and economic multiplier.

Estimates place the total number of direct and indirect jobs generated by an approximate $6 billion investment in NextGen equipment at more than 150,000 through 2012, with 30,000 jobs generated the first year.

“Government incentives for NextGen will allow the system to come online up to six years ahead of schedule,” continued Blakey. “Americans will start to enjoy travel again as the system becomes more efficient, and huge fuel savings will make us better stewards of the environment.”  In her remarks, Blakey also commended the new defense team for recognizing the importance of a DoD-industry partnership and for its commitment to minimize the adverse impacts of policy choices on the industrial base.
Expressing concern about the future of U.S. preeminence in space, she said that unless we increase NASA’s budget, we will be relying on the Russians for a ride to the International Space Station.

“That is not an exaggeration,” said Blakey, adding, “AIA is working on a proposal for a new strategy to shore up support for NASA and our long-term leadership in space.”
AIA launched the first-ever National Aerospace Day this year and is planning a week-long event in September 2010 that will broaden and amplify the message that aerospace directly benefits our economy, national security and workforce.

“Aerospace is very much about reaching for the stars,” said Blakey. “The innovation of aerospace pioneers runs like a strand of DNA down through history to our present-day pathfinders. I’m confident that our long-term outlook is bright.”

Who to Contact
Media Contact:
Alexis Allen
(703)358-1075
alexis.allen[at]aia-aerospace.org