Continued health of the money supply and relatively stable interest rates during 1996 fueled a vigorous aircraft lending climate for the third year in a row. According to officials of the National Aircraft Finance Association, all indications are the trend will continue through this year and into 1998.

It probably was a coincidence that the NBAA's 24th annual International Operator's Conference (IOC) just happened to coincide with implementation of ICAO's revised vertical separation minimums (RVSM) on North Atlantic nav tracks on March 27, but the conjunction of the two events couldn't have been more timely. RVSM and Required Navigation Performance 10 standards (RNP-10), slated to go into effect in 1998 in the North Pacific, were hot topics among the 500 attendees at the four-day seminar and information exchange.

For more than a decade Piper Aircraft's pressurized, single-engine Malibu airframe has intrigued modifiers and pilots as a potential candidate for gas turbine power. In fact, Piper itself even experimented with the concept briefly in the late 1980s, evaluating a Malibu equipped with an Allison 250 turboprop, but the company abandoned the project when it became preoccupied with internal financial problems.