FltPlan.com, an online flight-planning specialist, has teamed with Corporate Angel Network (CAN) to make it simpler for corporate flight departments to notify CAN of the availability of empty seats in the aircraft they fly. CAN arranges free transportation for cancer patients to treatment using donated space on corporate aircraft. Since its founding in 1981, the organization has arranged nearly 40,000 patient flights. FltPlan modified its software to enable CAN participants to automatically send flight schedules into CAN's database.
Cessna's third-generation CitationJet, the CJ1+, is a considerably improved version of the original aircraft, thanks to its more powerful engines, a 100-lb. MTOW increase and slightly better fuel efficiency. Compared to the original CitationJet and second-generation CJ1, this aircraft can climb directly to FL 410 in 27 min., less than half the time, cruise up to 20 to 30-kt. faster and fly 75-nm farther. It also has vastly improved hot-and-high airport takeoff performance.
Blackhawk has added Silverhawk Aviation of Lincoln, Neb., to its roster of marketing and installation facilities. Blackhawk provides performance improvement systems that expand the operational capabilities and safety of single- and twin-engine turboprop aircraft. Founded in 1991, Silverhawk Aviation began as a single-aircraft charter service. In its first decade, Silverhawk's fleet grew to 13 aircraft including business jets.
I really enjoy reading Cause & Circumstance every month. The analysis and point of view are very good and interesting. It's sad for the people who lost their lives in the accidents, but your articles help others to avoid the same or similar fate. RPG Group Kolkata, India
According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the U.S. government's main audit agency, the FAA has to do a much better job of managing the big modernization programs that are essential to the success of the NextGen air traffic management system. A new GAO report the finds that although the FAA is improving in this area, there are still many cases where it is not following cost estimate and scheduling best practices. Specifically, the FAA should pay better attention to obtaining independent cost estimates, says the GAO.
Just a quick note to thank you for the “Spectrum Wars” (March 2012, page 52) article. You've managed to make a complex issue very understandable and this should be required reading for anyone in the Federal government who has any role to play in determining the future of this ill-advised (but well-meaning. . . aren't they all?) proposal to provide wireless broadband service. Let's hope that it is dead, and stays that way!
Area navigation (RNAV) Required Navigation Procedure with Authorization Required (RNP AR) instrument approach and departure procedures are key components of the FAA's Next Generation air traffic management system and the European Aviation Safety Agency's Single European Sky (SESAR). Certificated U.S. air carriers, such as Southwest Airlines, along with NetJets pioneered RNP approaches as a means of gaining lower weather minimums at some of the airports they frequently use or to save fuel by flying tighter approach and departure paths.
Priester Aviation has added three new aircraft to its private jet charter fleet. The new aircraft include a Gulfstream G550, Citation CJ4 and Pilatus PC-12 NG, which will be supported by Priester's aircraft management and charter program. The 16-passenger Gulfstream G550 will be Priester's 16th large-cabin aircraft.
I manage a fleet of five G200s for Clay Lacy Aviation, and I couldn't help but notice some glaring errors in “Galaxy/Gulfstream G200” (Twenty/20, November 2011).
The experience was at once frustrating and deflating. One of those any-fool-can-do-this-but-me kind of moments. I'd studied the instructions and illustrations, watched the video, and yet still could not make it work. It was just a piece of cloth, for cripes sake, and yet it elicited terrible statements from me — words so frothing and foul, Boomer took shelter in the closet beneath the stairs.
Government and industry officials need to collaborate on ways to mitigate runway incursions before another disaster happens, says NTSB Commissioner Christopher Hart. “If we don't get our hands around this problem — and we don't have our hands around this — sooner or later it's going to happen again,” Hart told the Air Charter Safety Foundation's 2012 Air Charter Safety Symposium in February.
The FAA is predicting that the piston aircraft market will continue a long slide over the next 10 years and will average a decline in numbers and hours flown of 0.1% per year over the next 20 years. At the same time, turbine business aircraft are expected to increase at an average rate of 2.9% per year, the FAA says in its 20-year forecast that runs through 2032. Correspondingly, turbine aircraft hours are expected to pick up 4% per year, eclipsing the total number of piston hours by the end of the forecast period.
“Normalized access,” allowing unmanned aircraft systems (UASes) to “file and fly” anywhere in the national airspace system (NAS), will require airborne sense-and-avoid (ABSAA) in addition to GBSAA, and will take longer to achieve, says Steven Pennington, U.S. Air Force director of bases, ranges and airspace (see above item). The FAA has yet to develop a plan for full integration of UASes into the airspace system by the 2015 target date set by Congress, but “the Defense Department, with GBSAA, will get there by 2015 because we routinely fly to the same place,” he says.
Abu Dhabi Airports Co. estimates the value of deals signed at the region's first general aviation exhibition, Abu Dhabi Air Expo at Al Bateen Executive Airport, totaled in excess of $365 million. The show saw more than 10,700 visitors and 105 exhibitors from local, regional and international companies. The exhibition was opened by His Highness Sheikh Hazza bin Zayed Al Nahyan, National Security Advisor and Vice-Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, alongside honorary attendees from Royal families and senior dignitaries.
I am deeply disturbed by your comments about the FAA administrator's premature departure due to a DUI incident in December last year (Washington Watch, January 2012, page 63). As an FAA certificate holder (ATP and CFI) for over 22 years, it does matter to me who is at the top of the world's largest and probably most-influential civil aviation administration.
The AOPA Air Safety Institute (ASI) finds little evidence of any difference in the safety records of general aviation aircraft with glass cockpits compared with those equipped with analog instruments. The ASI released a study, “The Accident Record of Technologically Advanced Aircraft,” that concludes that direct comparisons of aircraft with glass cockpits and those with analog cockpits are difficult.
If a collaborative European effort succeeds, pilots are likely to become intimately familiar with Desdemona — no, not Shakespeare's Venetian beauty who eloped with Othello, but rather a new flight simulation concept for teaching aviators to recover from flight upset.
Early in the second grade curriculum in Virginia, children are introduced to the basics of inequalities: 1< 2, 4>3 and so forth. I asked my second-grader the other day if these were difficult concepts to grasp. He laughed and said, “No Mom, it's easy,” at least at that elementary level. Not so for some lawmakers it seems.
AC Aviation, Inc., Janesville, Wisc., has hired Dan Morrison as director of Charter Sales and Andy Schweickert as director of Marketing. Margaret Clark has been promoted to Charter manager. Aerion, Reno, Nev., named Doug Nichols chief operating officer responsible for all operating, financial, business development and marketing activities related to the development of the supersonic business jet (SBJ). He succeeds Michael Henderson, who following his tenure as COO remains Aerion's principal scientist and a director of the company.
A shortage of a resin used to produce composite materials in the Hawker Beechcraft Premier 1A and Hawker 4000 has forced a pro–duction hiatus and rolling furloughs of employees who work on the aircrafts' final assembly line. According to a company spokeswoman, the fur–loughs take effect over a 30-60 day period and last from 30 to 45 days.
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The Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam (CAAV) has issued business licenses to three would-be general aviation (GA) operators, none of which have commence operations. The license holders are Blue Sky and Vietstar, both based in Ho Chi Minh City, and Seagull, based in the seaside town of Nha Trang, the director of the air transport department at the CAAV, Vo Huy Cuong, told Aviation Week in Hanoi. The aspirants have yet to receive air operator certificates (AOCs), and so far none has aircraft in Vietnam ready for the CAAV to inspect, he says.
One of the important questions that resulted is whether upset recovery training can and should be conducted in simulators and, if so, would it be effective?
