Business & Commercial Aviation

The Federalist Papers No. 62, published in 1788, James Madison warned, "It will be of little avail to the people, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood." I suspect this founding father would be flummoxed by today's federals, especially if he decided to go flying.

Increased business jet deliveries in North America and Western Europe during the third quarter helped offset declining shipments to emerging market regions, along with China and Latin America, according to a recent UBS market research report. Global business jet deliveries fell 5% during the third quarter compared to a year ago. Deliveries to North American customers rose 9%, while deliveries increased 13% in Western Europe during the quarter.

Beechcraft is promoting improved performance on its King Air 350HW and 350ER models by offering a more powerful version of the Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A engines and an increased gross weight option. The improvements are FAA and EASA certified and available as factory options on new aircraft.

Once again, BCA editors and our business aviation colleagues from the Aviation Week Network have recommended BCA content from this year that readers might want to revisit.

From line boy to flight instructor, charter pilot and CEO, Charlie Priester helped steer Priester Aviation to prominence.

The ability to quickly diagnose a problem and come up with a solution is a valuable skill, even when you earn your living working on multimillion-dollar aircraft.

Teterboro Airport ranked No. 1 again, and the rest of the top five business aviation airports measured by acukwik.com user traffic during October 2016 were mostly stable, according to site metrics.

Jet-A And Avgas Per-Gallon Fuel Prices November 2016

Bombardier's Global 7000 test aircraft completed its first flight Nov. 4, marking the start of a rigorous flight-testing program. Entry-into-service of the large jet is scheduled in the second half of 2018. The Global 7000 took off from Bombardier’s facility in Toronto under the command of Ed Grabman, the flight’s captain, aided by copilot Jeff Karnes and flight test engineer Jason Nickel at 10:25 a.m. EDT. During the 2-hr., 27-min.

Rolls-Royce reports that it now has 2,000 business jets enrolled in its CorporateCare engine maintenance program—double the number covered in 2010, or better than two-thirds of the eligible fleet. The program brings guaranteed maintenance costs to new and in-service Rolls-Royce BR725, BR710, Tay and AE 3007 engines. Operators pay a fixed cost-per-flying-hour fee for a comprehensive range of scheduled and unscheduled engine maintenance events and benefits. The reason for the program’s popularity, according to Stephen M.

Despite slow sales in the current down market and a years-long delay of the Falcon 5X due to development setbacks with the Silvercrest engine, Dassault Aviation is considering what next it will offer to help reenergize its lineup of business jets. “History has taught us that times of crisis are not just a storm that must be weathered. They represent an opportunity to change and improve,” CEO Eric Trappier said during the NBAA Convention.

Bombardier's third-quarter financial results show the Canadian company's turnaround plan is gaining momentum. “We are executing on our growth program with certification of the CS300 and first flight of the Global 7000,” CEO Alain Bellemare told analysts on Nov. 10. “And we are executing on our turnaround plan.” The Montreal-based company said it expected full-year earnings of US $350-400 million, and free cash flow to be $1.15-1.45 billion, an improvement from previous projections.

The business-jet resale market turned in slightly slower transaction activity during the first nine months of 2016, according to a report by Amstat.

Satcom Direct, the airborne connectivity services provider headquartered in Melbourne, Florida, plans to acquire TrueNorth, a 10-year-old avionics manufacturer based in Ottawa. Jim Jensen, the founder and CEO of Satcom Direct, says the transaction should close before year-end. Just two months earlier, the company bought AircraftLogs, which makes flight scheduling and tax reporting software. (See “Special Report: 2016 IFEC: the Internet of Aviation Things” on page 26 of this issue.)

VistaJet has taken delivery of three new Bombardier aircraft worth $115 million, bringing its global fleet to 70 aircraft, the company said. The company has added one new Bombardier Global 6000 and two new Challenger 350 business jets to its fleet. With the additions, VistaJet has the largest owned, super-midsize to large-cabin business-jet fleet in the industry, it said. In the past two years, the company has doubled its fleet from 35 aircraft in 2014 to the current 70, with an average age of less than two years.

After a protracted process involving local government and private interests, Hawthorne Global Aviation Services has completed the acquisition of Bama Air, an FBO at Tuscaloosa Regional Airport (TCL), close by the University of Alabama. That addition increases the chain’s base count to five; the others are located at Long Island’s MacArthur Airport (ISP), Atlanta’s Cobb County (RYY), Chicago Executive (PWK) and Eau Claire, Wisconsin (EAU).

The annual gala dinner, or soiree, and auction sponsored by NBAA at its convention to benefit the Corporate Angel Network (CAN) raised $450,000 to help fund that organization’s decades-long mission to transport cancer patients to treatment centers, mainly aboard business jets, free of charge. CAN Executive Director Gina Russo said, “We very much appreciate the industry’s involvement in CAN’s work, as illustrated by the hundreds of companies flying CAN missions for cancer patients year-round, as well as through participation in this event.

Russian investigators concluded that alcohol use by a shift supervisor and a snowplow driver at Moscow's Vnukovo International Airport played role in the October 2014 nighttime collision that destroyed a departing Unijet Airlines Dassault Falcon 50EX and killed all four on board. The snowplow driver was crossing Runway 6, but stopped as the jet began its takeoff roll. The Falcon hit the plow with its right wing and right main gear at a speed of 133 kt., rolled inverted, crashed and burned.

Performance-based navigation promises to make air traffic management more efficient than ever before . . . but what does this mean for business aviation?

JetBlue Airways has taken a minority stake in fast-growing, California-based jet-charter company JetSuite. Robin Hayes, CEO of the New York-based low cost carrier, said JetSuite was “changing the game in short-haul travel in the West Coast.” Launched in 2009, JetSuite operates up to four daily flights between the California cities of Burbank, Carlsbad, Concord and San Jose, as well as Las Vegas. For this JetSuiteX service, the carrier sells tickets on its Embraer 135 jets via its website as a public-charter operation.

FlightSafety International filed a lawsuit Oct. 25 related to the 2014 crash of a King Air B200 into a FlightSafety training facility shortly after takeoff from Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport. The crash killed four, including the pilot, and injured six others. The lawsuit, filed in Sedgwick County District Court in Wichita, names more than a dozen defendants alleged to have contributed to the crash through negligence, breach of warranty or other factors.

BCA readers share their opinions on articles we published.

Jeppesen has launched Operator, a cloud-based business aviation platform that integrates flight planning, runway performance and weight and balance calculations, crew scheduling, accounting, pricing, regulatory compliance and trip checklists, among other things. BoldIQ, the fleet optimization and management program that evolved from the failed DayJet operation is intrinsic to the new Jepp service.

The space-based Global Positioning System could be said to be the keystone of the FAA's NextGen ATM modernization but just how reliable is GPS? To find out, we asked John Hansman, Ph.D., an aeronautics professor and researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

BCA shares news of the latest products and services for the business aviation industry.