Sky Talk

Bell Helicopter to cut commercial product models

Bell Helicopter will cease production of four different commercial helicopter models, the company announced, to concentrate on meeting strong demand for several high selling key products as well as spare parts and customer serve.

Bell said it would terminate production of the 206 -B3 Jet Ranger, the 427 and 430 models, as well as the 210 an upgraded version of the classic Bell Huey that was intended for the U.S. and foreign military customers. Existing orders will be filled through 2010.

Bell officials said they have tremendous global demand for the 407 and 412 models now in production, as well as a tremendous order backlog for the new 429 commercial helicopter that it plans to certify and begin delivering by the end of 2008 or early 2009,

"We are fully booked on these models until 2010," Bell CEO Dick Millman said in a prepared release. "Consequently, we are both significantly increasing our overall capacity - and eliminating production of some lower volume products. ... We know that this is the best path forward to meet our customer's needs."

Bell has struggle din recent years to keep with resurgent commercial helicopter demand and to meet its commitments to the U.S. armed forces for new helicopters and V-22 Ospreys.

- Bob

No airport strike in London - for now

Workers at London's Heathrow Airport and six other airports in the U.K. have called off the first of their three strikes planned for this month, the wires are reporting.

The workers' union Unite is negotiating with BAA, a private company based in Spain that owns seven U.K. airports, over a new pension plan.

The 5,000 security, maintenance and administrative workers were planning to walk out on Jan. 7, Jan. 14 and Jan. 17. But the first strike was called off because BAA agreed to negotiate, Unite told the Associated Press and Bloomberg News.

The union told Bloomberg that the strikes would have shut the airports down, but BAA never confirmed that would happen, the wire service said.

Heathrow is the world's busiest airport, and a shut down would have major implications on all of the world's busiest airports, including Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, the third-busiest on the globe. D/FW Airport won't begin feeding nonstop flights to Heathrow until this spring, but it sends a bunch of connecting traffic there.

-David