Aviation Week & Space Technology - 30 March-12 April 2015

AviationWeek.com/awst AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/MARCH 30-APRIL 12, 2015 69

W

hen John Leahy joined the U.S. arm of Airbus in 1985,

the commercial airplane business was dominated by

Boeing and McDonnell Douglas. The young European com-

pany’s global market share was just 13%. Today Airbus is at

parity with the U.S. company in sales of airline aircraft, and

by some measures it is ahead.

Since 1994 Leahy has headed global sales for the European

manufacturer. Airbus’s chief salesman, Leahy—whose of-

cial title is chief operating ofcer-customers—has traveled

millions of miles and chased hundreds of deals. He is one

of the most prolific sellers of aircraft the industry has ever

seen. Under his guidance, the Toulouse airframer amassed

a backlog of aircraft orders worth more than $800 billion

at list price.

But to call Leahy a mere salesman would miss the larger

impact he has had on the airplane and airline industries. He

has been a fulcrum, bringing together the hopes of airline

customers and airplane developers. Most recently, as well as

leading commercial activity for the Airbus A380, A330 and

A350 programs, Leahy played a key role in the launch of the

A320neo family, the fastest-selling program in aviation history.

In his three decades at Airbus, he has worked with five CEOs

and outlasted seven commercial sales chiefs at Boeing. The

Airbus story is inextricably linked with John Leahy’s career.

For his role in the Airbus success story, Leahy received Avia-

tion Week’s Philip J. Klass Award for Lifetime Achievement. c

Philip J. Klass Lifetime Achievement Awards

Pitch-Perfect Salesman

Space Trailblazer

Aviation Week Executive Editor James R. Asker (left)

presents the Philip J. Klass Lifetime Achievement Award

to Airbus executive extraordinaire John Leahy.

Orbital-ATK President/CEO

David W. Thompson was a

recipient of Aviation Week’s

Philip J. Klass Lifetime

Achievement Award.

L

ong before there was a SpaceX or a Virgin Galactic, David

W. Thompson was breaking ground with commercial space

launch and other private space ventures. His trail-blazing role

in what has belatedly come to be known as “new space” earned

him a Philip J. Klass Lifetime Achievement Award.

In a pioneering startup that has become a legend in com-

mercial space circles, Thompson and a pair of classmates

from Harvard Business School launched Orbital Sciences

Corp. in 1982 to, as they

put it, “bring the benefits

of space down to Earth.”

The company’s first

product, the solid-fuel

Transfer Orbit Stage, flew

twice for NASA, once on a

Titan III and once from the

space shuttle Discovery.

In the early days, Orbital

probably was best known

for its Pegasus air-launched

rocket, which paved the

way for privately developed

space launch vehicles. In

operation since 1990, it set

a pattern for Orbital Sci-

ences of recombining available hardware—in this case solid-

fuel rocket motors—in innovative ways.

The company has demonstrated that willingness to inno-

vate and take risks throughout its 35-year history. It was a

pathfinder in commercial smallsats with Orbcomm, and with

commercial remote sensing in Orbimage. Neither was a busi-

ness success, but Orbital took its lumps and moved on.

It built new rockets—the Taurus and Minotaur—and

acquired new businesses, such as Fairchild Space and De-

fense. The company carved a niche in small geostationary

communications satellites and used its expertise to head

for deep space with the solar-electric Dawn spacecraft now

orbiting the dwarf planet Ceres, its second target in the

asteroid belt.

The company has also applied its skills to national defense,

including the Orbital Boost Vehicle for the U.S. Missile De-

fense Agency’s operational Ground-based Midcourse Defense

System. It moved into human spaceflight with the Launch

Abort System for NASA’s new Orion deep-space crew vehicle

and the Cygnus cargo carrier for the International Space

Station.

When the Cygnus’s Antares launcher suffered a cata-

strophic failure last year, the company moved quickly to fix

the problem. It scrapped the old Russian-built engine impli-

cated in the mishap and eventually chose the new RD-181 en-

gine after an international search for a suitable replacement.

After 35 years, Thompson is still going strong, pressing

the envelope with the business he created and continues to

craft. Just last month Orbital Sciences merged with ATK to

form Orbital ATK, creating a $4.5 billion space and defense

company with 12,000 employees. c

NASA/BILL INGALLS

Video Aviation Week takes a look back at Thompson’s accomplish-

ments with Orbital Sciences Corp. at AviationWeek.com/Thompson

Video Industry leaders share their insights into John Leahy’s

career at AviationWeek.com/Leahy