A Fast and 'Furias' day

Each year, the third week of September, Reno, Nev., hosts air races over a four-day period. This year, the 39th annual Reno Air Races, which features a range of aircraft from home-built to modified World War II fighters, included a team based in Everett, Wash.

The Everett team, racing a British-built Hawker Sea Fury called Furias, included the owner, Bill Rogers, manager of aircraft field services for Southwest Airlines; Dave Palmer, senior manager, customer support for Boeing's Aircraft on Ground single-aisle program, Boeing Field; and the crew chief, Robert Manelski, program manager of Airplane Health Management for Maintenance Services.

During the setup of the race, as the aircraft were lining up in formation, flying toward the first pylon, Furias was involved in a midair accident that fortunately did not prove disastrous. Another aircraft's propeller hit Furias from behind and tore off a piece of the elevator. Both planes continued racing and landed safely. The damage caused the crew to work feverishly to make repairs in order to race in the finals on the following day. With the aircraft repaired and ready for the finals, Furias turned in a fast lap of 430 mph. Stock speed for this aircraft is around 375 mph. In the end, Furias finished a respectable third in the unlimited silver race.

The overall winner this year was a highly modified North American P-51 Mustang that set a new qualifying record of 497 mph.

Former employee aboard Atlantis mission

NASA astronaut Sandra Magnus — a former engineer at McDonnell Douglas — was one of six Mission STS-112 crewmembers who completed a successful trip to the International Space Station last month aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis. Magnus worked for McDonnell Douglas from 1986 to 1991 as a stealth engineer, where she worked on internal research and development studying the effectiveness of radar signature reduction techniques. McDonnell also assigned her to the U.S. Navy's A-12 Attack Aircraft program, working primarily on the propulsion system.

NASA selected Magnus in April 1996. After completing two years of training and evaluation, she qualified for flight assignment as a mission specialist. Mission STS-112 — which lasted nearly 11 days — was her first space flight. Magnus, 38, received a bachelor's degree in physics and a master's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Missouri-Rolla, and a doctorate from the School of Materials Science & Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology.

But she wasn't the only member of the STS-112 crew with a Boeing connection. Mission pilot Pam Melroy was a U.S. Air Force test pilot on the C-17 Combined Test Force during the early 1990s for all of the certification testing of the C-17 at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

'Forbes' picks MyBoeingFleet.com as a top Web site

Forbes selected MyBoeingFleet.com — a web portal available to airplane owners, operators, and Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul operators — as one of its fall 2002 "Best of the Web" picks. The third annual business-to-business guide chose the site as one of four in its "Aerospace and Defense" category. Boeing Commercial Aviation Services developed MyBoeingFleet.com. It gives customers direct and personalized access to information essential to the operation of Boeing-delivered airplanes.

"One of the most valuable features enables airlines to keep their engineering drawings online," Forbes noted in its description of the site. "Before the Web, airlines needed huge libraries of engineering drawings and service manuals updated daily and sent to every maintenance shop."

More than 600 companies access the MyBoeingFleet.com site, with airlines making up the majority of its visitors. In September, the site registered almost five million hits.

'Deadline!' features 777 program

A new book is recognizing employees in the Boeing 777 program for their deadline-management skills. Deadline!: How Premier Organizations Win the Race Against Time, a book that looks at how well-known organizations met the challenge of seemingly unachievable deadlines, features six companies, including Boeing. Dan Carrison — a former U.S. Marine turned business-leadership consultant — wrote the book. It profiles how the 777 program pioneered the concept of "Working Together" and designed, built and delivered the new technically advanced 777. Within the chapter, Carrison shows how the program not only built a new airplane but also developed a management philosophy for the 21st century.

Publishers Weekly calls the book "a sort of adventure/business hybrid." Among other deadline-related examples, the book cites how the FBI manages a kidnapping situation, and how one company delivered the new Denver Broncos football stadium ahead of schedule and under budget.