Wheelon to Succeed Puckett at Helm of Hughes Aircraft

Albert D. Wheelon, executive vice president of Hughes Aircraft, Monday was named the company’s chairman and chief executive, effective next April, when Chairman Allen E. Puckett retires at the age of 67.

Wheelon, who has an extensive background in science and technology, was elevated over Hughes President Donald White and Vice Chairman Richard Alden. Wheelon was selected by the Hughes board during the weekend, and the appointment was affirmed Monday morning by the board of General Motors, which owns Hughes.

Hughes officials said the timing of Puckett’s retirement announcement, coming on the same day that Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot resigned from GM’s board, was “purely coincidental.” Although Hughes’ earnings have been disappointing since General Motors acquired the firm last year, there have been no overt indications that GM has grown impatient with Hughes or with Puckett’s leadership.

“Thank heavens Puckett elected to go on beyond the normal (retirement) time, because it has carried us through a terrific transition in terms of the sale of the company,” Wheelon said in an interview. “He had a perfectly good reason to quit two years ago, which would have been an unqualified disaster.”

Wheelon said his selection should dispel persistent rumors circulating within Hughes that GM plans to assert its control over the unit.

“GM sent a strong signal, by this choice of an insider, that they want Hughes to remain Hughes,” Wheelon said. “The one act says more than all the hypothesis and speculation floating around, and that should be reassuring to all Hughes employees and the community.”

But one group executive at Hughes maintained his concern, saying, “The more GM is under pressure from Perot and the financial community, the more likely they are to want immediate profits. The real question is whether there is extra meaning to this. . . . If this is something that was rammed down our throats, what else is going to happen?”

Wheelon headed Hughes Space and Communications Group for 15 years, during which Hughes emerged as the world leader of communications satellites. It built more than half of the commercial communications satellites now in operation.

Wheelon also gained national prominence when he was named earlier this year to the presidential commission investigating the Challenger space shuttle disaster.