Congress is rushing two more unmanned aircraft into the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) fleet. Under the roughly $600 million bill passed in mid-August, Congress appropriated $32 million for UAVs through September 2012. The agency counts six General Atomics Predator Bs now, including one that was re-engineered specifically for maritime sensing in a joint program with the U.S. Coast Guard, which like CBP is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
“There should be some optimism in our industry,” declared Carl Janssens, editor of the Aircraft Bluebook Price Digest, in the third-quarter edition of his Marketline newsletter. “Buyers and sellers are finally coming to terms with what the market will bear for a given aircraft,” explained Janssens. “And with that, the pre-owned aircraft market is seeing more completed deals. The gridlock of available inventory is starting to show some movement,” he said.
Vector Aerospace Corporation has opened a new service center in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The facility will specialize in field service and engine repairs on the Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A and PW100 engine series. The facility will also distribute parts for PT6A and JT15D engines in Western Canada.
An EADS’s all-electric aircraft flew for the first time from Le Bourget Airport in Paris on Sept. 2. The composite-structure, four-motor, aerobatic Cri-Cri — jointly developed by EADS Innovation Works, Aero Composites Saintonge and the Green Cri-Cri Association — reportedly performed well during the 7-min. initial flight. The airframe design is directly descended from a tiny homebuilt beloved for decades in France.
Embraer delivered a Lineage 1000 executive jet in early September to the Al Habtoor Group of Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). The aircraft is to be managed and operated by Royal Jet, based in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The deal was originally announced in July 2008.
It was bad enough that nobody could pronounce the name of the late spring volcano that erupted in Iceland and disrupted air travel throughout Europe. What was worse is that nobody really knew what to do about it. For European operators of airlines and charter aircraft, the meter kept running on their cost of overhead while their passenger and freight revenues dropped to zero. In response to a threat of which they had little, if any, knowledge, government agencies simply closed airports and airspace because shutting everything down seemed like the safe course.
Sorry to say, but if your aircraft is equipped with a multifunction display (MFD), it may be impossible to use the CAL control effectively. That's because MFD designers are ignorant of the many things a radar will do in the hands of a savvy pilot. They seem to assume radar gets used only when storms are about. They don't understand it can be used to back up VORs, GPS, GPWS, TAWS, aircraft attitude and even aircraft altitude agl.
The midday Underground ride out to Heathrow International Airport from central London takes slightly less than an hour. One day last July, as I sat sweating with other commuters packed into an un-air-conditioned train, I contemplated the meeting I was traveling to attend.
AgustaWestland’s AW139 won Russian civil certification. The medium twin helicopter successfully met MAK requirements, the company announced Sept. 17. Russian civil certification has already been received for the single engine AW119Ke as well as the AW109 Power and Grand light twin models. The first order for the AW139 in Russia was placed by HeliClub in May of this year. and the helicopter will be used to perform corporate and passenger transport missions.
The Challenger 604 has 3,700-plus nm range, a cabin with a commodious cross section, good payload and good fuel efficiency. This also is an aircraft that has jetliner-like features that are well suited to transoceanic missions, including a split-bus AC electrical system, triple-redundant hydraulic system, fully powered flight controls and dual ACM packs. From 1996 to 2006, Bombardier delivered 366 of these versatile large-cabin aircraft.
Sikorsky’s X2 Technology demonstrator achieved 250 KTAS in level flight on Sept. 15, at Sikorsky’s Development Flight Center in Florida. The speed, reached during a 1.1-hr. flight, is an unofficial speed record for a helicopter since there was no National Aeronautic Association observer on hand to make the record official. The X2 Technology features counter-rotating coaxial rotors and a rear pusher prop.
Textron’s Bell Helicopter announced its Bell 429 won certification of a Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) permitting a 9-deg. glidepath on LPV approaches at a minimum velocity for instrument procedures (Vmini) of 45 kt. , which allows point-in-space approaches to as low as 250 ft. the company says.
Air traffic controller trainees at the FAA academy in Oklahoma City are already learning to use NextGen satellite-based technology. “It’s our future,” Lindy Ritz, administrator of the FAA Academy told the Oklahoman newspaper. Initial ADS-B operational capability has been achieved over the Gulf of Mexico under the control of Houston ARTCC.
Sandel’s HeliTAWS has won TSO approval from the FAA. The helicopter terrain safety system incorporates Sandel Avionics’ proprietary TrueAlert technology, which is designed to eliminate nuisance alerts, a significant problem with existing terrain-warning products that limits their usefulness in helicopter operations. With TrueAlert, Sandel claims that pilots can safely take off, cruise, hover and land at off-airport locations without triggering nuisance alerts, while still receiving the benefits of Class-A terrain warnings during the entire flight.
Pan Am International Flight Academy acquired the training and simulator assets of Miami-based Aeroservice Aviation Center, the company announced Sept. 15. Aeroservice’s simulators will be integrated into Pan Am’s system and positioned where they most effectively serve customers. Aeroservice’s Miami training center will become Pan Am’s seventh training facility and will operate under Pan Am’s FAR Part 142 certificate. Pan Am, with the exception of a Cessna Caravan simulator in Memphis, focuses on heavy-iron training.
A Sensis Corp. team has advice for airport officials who want more capacity. Matthew Blake, director of strategic initiatives for advanced development at Sensis said, “New vehicles are the mechanism to do that.” Five aircraft types: cruise-efficient STOL transports, large commercial tiltrotors, UASs, VLJs and SSTs have potential for a strong impact at airports in urban areas, including major hubs and surrounding regional airports,
She seemed frail and delicate, but was alert throughout the proceedings, which her bright eyes followed with keen interest. At the tables filling the ballroom sat a mixture of young, less young and middle-aged, with an ample portion of white-haired or bald-domed seniors, some stooped, some hard of hearing, but all smiling, clearly glad to be there. This was the Wichita Aero Club’s second annual dinner dance and the evening’s highlight was the inaugural presentation of the club’s trophy to Mrs. Velma Wallace, the diminutive nonagenarian sitting opposite me.
There are people way behind the eight ball . . . in panic mode. There is a whole list of issues, and operators are fed up. They say, ‘Here’s another regulation. It takes time. It takes money. Why do I need it? I haven’t had an accident.’” The speaker is one of the many who deal with the safety management system (SMS) issue on a daily basis. And no operator wants to go on record expressing anything negative on the subject. “It sounds as if we’re against safety,” as one put it.
Private aviation company and Embraer Phenom jet operator, Executive AirShare of Kansas City, Mo., launched an enhanced website, “www.execairshare.com” that includes news and information about its regional fractional aircraft ownership programs and a trip cost estimator, enabling aviators to estimate round-trip costs from Executive’s regional bases to any city in North America.
As the northern hemisphere slips into the cold seasons, cautious pilots will review the ice protection information located in their airplane’s documentation (AFM, POH, etc.) and their company’s winter operating procedures. Ice destroys lift and chokes off power. Ice takes down large aircraft and small. Ice is insidious. Small amounts of barely visible ice on a modern high-performance wing can glue your airplane to the ground and send you rolling off the end of the departure runway at takeoff velocity with no options and lousy prospects.
DART Helicopter Services (DHS), a distributor of certified helicopter accessories, and Hawker Pacific Aerospace have signed an agreement that will give DHS the capability to offer its complete inventory to operators in Hawker Pacific’s markets (Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Dubai), supplementing its operations in North and South America, Europe, Japan, China and Singapore. DART Helicopter Services www.darths.com Hawker Pacific Aerospace www.hawker.com
Nextant Aerospace expected to fly its remanufactured Beechjet 400 for the first time in early September, and the Cleveland-area company anticipates certification of the upgraded light jet during first quarter 2011.
Jeppesen and the Russian Ministry of Transportation have contracted for Jeppesen to access Russian domestic airport data. Jeppesen previously had access to Russian airway system data. With access to both airway and airport data, Jeppesen will be able to provide customers with a complete Russian flight information package, which includes domestic and international NavData services, JetPlan flight planning, OpsData aircraft performance analysis, and paper and digital charting.
AgustaWestland has delivered the first of four AW119Ke single-engine helicopters to the Finnish Border Guard to perform various missions, including border patrol, special operations and firefighting.
