Aerospace industry magazine Aviation Week says Boeing may bow out of the third competition to win an Air Force contract for 179 airborne tankers.

The company contends that new specifications for the tanker are biased toward the tanker built in part by European rival Airbus and that the time frame the Air Force has given to submit a new bid is tight.

Boeing won the first competition for that contract, but the deal was rescinded because Boeing admitted it cheated on the deal.

Boeing's chief financial officer admitted then he had discussed a post-retirement executive job for the Pentagon procurement officer while she was considering the deal.

The second competition named a consortium of Northrop Grumman and European Aerospace Defense and Space, parent company of Boeing rival Airbus, the winner of the $35 billion deal.

But Boeing protested that award, and in June the Government Accountability Office said the second bidding process was flawed. The Air Force agreed to hold a third competition.

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Boeing doesn't raid workers' pension funds to pay extraordinary executive pension benefits, the company said today.

That statement came in reply to a request from a union representing its engineering and technical workers about whether Boeing was moving some of its executive pension liabilities to the workers' pension fund in a way some companies did in a recent Wall Street Journal article.

"We don't make the kinds of transfers described in the Wall Street Journal article," said Boeing spokesman Tim Healy.

The Journal article, referred to in the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace's request, dealt with companies that transferred extraordinary pension obligations for executives to the the companyies' pension funds for lower-paid workers in some cases without providing additional funding.

The effect of those transfers were to provide tax benefits to the companies but weakening the pension funds for other workers.

The union, which represents some 21,400 technical workers at the aerospace company, asked Boeing for more information on its pension funds.

Healy said the union already has all of that information, though it may not know who to interpret it.

Boeing wants to shift new employees to a new kind of pension plan under which the company would contribute a defined amount of money to their retirement funds, but wouldn't be responsible for delivering a specific benefit to workers at retirement.

The union opposes such a plan. The union contract with Boeing expires on Dec.1 for Washington workers. It expires on Dec. 5 for workers in Kansas.

The New York Times reports that major retail chains are increasingly putting their flat roofs to use by installing solar panels. Among the retailers experimenting with the alternative energy source: Kohl's, Wal-Mart, Safeway and Whole Foods Market.

Here's an excerpt from the story:

The trend, while not entirely new, is accelerating as the chains seize a chance to bolster their environmental credentials by cutting back on their use of electricity from coal.

“It’s very clear that green energy is now front and center in the minds of the business sector,” said Daniel M. Kammen, an energy expert at the University of California, Berkeley. “Not only will you see panels on the roofs of your local stores, but I suspect very soon retailers will have stickers in their windows saying, ‘This is a green energy store.’ ”

In the coming months, 85 Kohl’s stores will get solar panels; 43 already have them. “We want to keep pushing as many as we possibly can,” said Ken Bonning, executive vice president for logistics at Kohl’s.

Macy’s, which has solar panels atop 18 stores, plans to install them on another 40 by the end of this year. Safeway is aiming to put panels atop 23 stores. And other chains, including Whole Foods Market, BJ’s Wholesale Club and REI, the purveyor of outdoor goods, are planning projects of their own.

Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, has 17 stores and distribution centers with solar panels in operation or in the testing phase. It plans to add them soon to five more stores. People at the chain are considering a far larger program that would put panels and other renewable technologies at hundreds of stores.

“It’s going to be the Wal-Marts of the world that will buy these things over acres and make a difference,” said Roger G. Little, chairman and chief executive of the Spire Corporation, a Boston company that provides solar equipment.

Analysts are not sure how much power the rooftop projects could ultimately produce, but they say it could be enough to help shave total electricity demand. In many communities, stores are among the biggest energy users. Depending on location and weather, the solar panels generate 10 to 40 percent of the power a store needs.

If Wal-Mart eventually covered the roofs of all its Sam’s Club and Wal-Mart locations with solar panels, figures from the company show that the resulting solar acreage would roughly equal the size of Manhattan, an island of 23 square miles.

Alaska Airlines has resumed flying to Alaska cities after suspending operations there late Sunday and early today because of volcanic ash from an eruption in the Aleutian Islands.

Volcanic ash ingested into jet engines can damage the engines and lead to shutdown of those engines if the damage is extensive.

The airline canceled 44 flights to Juneau, Sitka, Ketchikan, Adak, Anchorage and Fairbanks due to the ash from the Kasatochi volcano.

Those flights were to and from Seattle, Portland, Denver, San Francisco, Chicago and Vancouver, B.C.

Alaska is adding extra flights today to help some 5,200 passengers stranded by the earlier cancellations. August is peak tourist season in Alaska.

"We recognize these cancellations have significantly impacted our customers with travel plans to and from Alaska," said Glenn Johnson, Alaska's executive vice president of airports, maintenance and engineering. "These decision are guided by out commitment to safety, and we are making every effort to reaccommodate passengers whose flight schedules have been disrupted."