New FAA guidance is providing Part 121, 135 and 91K operators an alternate means to demonstrate compliance with initial training requirements for their contract instructors and check airmen. The guidance, effective last month, was released after the agency met with industry groups, which were concerned that the training requirements were forcing some Part 142 training centers to pull authorizations of their inspectors and check airman.

Diamond Aircraft continues to struggle with the ongoing general aviation market malaise, temporarily laying off the majority of its workforce at its London, Ontario-based operation and suspending development of the D-Jet single-jet program. The company cites “continuing low piston aircraft sales, especially in the North American market, and the significant burden of its cost-intensive D-Jet development program” for the latest actions.

FAA has no plans to address Part 135 flight and duty time regulations any time soon, but when it does, the agency will draw upon recommendations of the industry/FAA Part 125/135 Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC), a senior regulator reassured charter operator executives.

While acknowledging that the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) investigation is still ongoing into the Feb. 20 crash of a Beech Premier 1A in Thomson, Ga., the Air Charter Safety Foundation (ACSF) is advising operators to review FAA guidance on stabilized approaches. ACSF issued a notice to operators, citing the accident and recommending that as a precautionary measure, flight crews review FAA’s Advisory Circular 91-79, Runway Overrun Prevention, addressing landing performance and stabilized approaches.

As budgets are cut and margins squeezed, and business becomes more competitive, industry is turning to challenges to seek diverse views on difficult problems. And the prize, for the companies, can be ideas, talent or visibility in key markets. “Diversity of thought is key to innovation,” says Ray Johnson, Lockheed Martin senior vice president and chief technology officer. “The more different views you get on a problem, the more you can facilitate a culture of innovation.”

The U.S. has long been a leader in creating new technologies and in creatively adapting existing ones to new uses. This leadership arises from the interaction of several mutually supportive sectors of innovation. But we face a serious challenge to continuing that creative interaction which is so necessary to keep the U.S. engine of innovation strong.

Europe's legacy carriers could be facing a serious threat in Turkish

Columbia Helicopters is set to begin receiving the first of 10 Vertol 107-IIs this month from the Swedish defense ministry. The purchase includes six Boeing Vertol 107-IIs and four Kawasaki Vertol 107-IIs. Three of the tandem-rotor aircraft have been disassembled and are to arrive at the end of the month at Port Tacoma, Wash., before being trucked to Columbia's headquarters at Aurora State Airport south of Portland. The other seven are to arrive by year-end. All are to begin a complete strip-to-bare-metal refurbishment “as soon as possible,” says President Stan Wilson.