Russia’s Avia Group is about to start construction on a new business aviation terminal at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport (SVO). The 2,700 square-meter facility, dubbed Terminal A, is expected to open within the next 12 months.
Bombardier Aerospace confirmed April 20 that the government of Manitoba, Canada, is the previously undisclosed customer that had purchased four Bombardier 415 amphibious aircraft in February 2010. Deliveries of the aircraft will begin during the fourth quarter of this year and will continue until 2012. The government of Manitoba currently operates seven CL-215 aircraft. The acquisition of the Bombardier 415 aircraft will allow the Manitoba to continue its successful aerial firefighting mandate.
FAA SAFO 10004 warns aircraft operators of possibly contaminated halon gas in fire extinguishers and provides testing information. With pure halon supplies dwindling, civil aviation will increasingly rely on recycled gas. But contaminated halon has been discovered in some aircraft fire extinguishers, which may harm personnel and be less effective against fires than pure halon.
Over the years, business aviation has seen many advances and technological leaps forward. For those of us who have been around for a while, we have seen some remarkable changes. We fly some of the most advanced aircraft in the world, and many of them are more complex than front line fighters. For maintenance technicians and maintenance managers, the laptop computer is as important as the wrench for keeping aircraft flying safely. Just about anything you need — from schematics to Airworthiness Directives — can be retrieved with a few mouse clicks.
This is the Caravan’s 25th anniversary, and Cessna will deliver the 2,000th CE208, a Grand Caravan, later this year through Africair, Inc., in Miami, Fla. The Caravan is certified in 100 countries and has amassed more than 12.5 million fleet hours
BLR Aerospace has received approval from Brazilian aviation authorities for the Everett, Wash., company’s winglet systems for King Air C90A, C90GT and C90GTi airplanes. FAA certification of the airfoils on those models was received earlier. BLR expects to eventually certify the system on King Air C90 and C90E models. BLR has delivered about 200 of its winglet systems, which originally were developed for use on King Air 200s and 300s. The systems improve the twin-engine airplane’s stability, cruise speed and rate of climb.
The NBAA has developed an online registry for companies willing to donate their aircraft and flight crews to disaster relief efforts like the Haitian airlift and for individuals who wish to volunteer their services. The business aviation advocacy group is partnered with Corporate Aviation Responding to Emergencies (C.A.R.E.), which coordinates airborne relief missions, connecting operators with representatives in disaster areas or non-government organizations (NGOs) active there.
When ARFF teams respond to an aircraft mishap, the incident commander has a lot of quick decisions to make. Priorities will include concern for life, exposure, confinement and extinguishment. Proper “size-up” also will affect the application of the fire-extinguishing agent, the approach of equipment to the scene, lighting the scene, positioning of equipment relative to wind and escape slides, running hoses, isolating and cooling the fuselage, and securing the scene against re-ignition.
Executive AirShare became the first operator of an Embraer Phenom 300 under FAR Part 135. The Kansas City, Mo.-based fractional aircraft ownership and management company received the charter certification March 31. The Phenom 300 is is managed by Executive AirShare’s wholly owned subsidiary, Executive Flight Services. The aircraft is based in Fort Worth.
Embraer delivered the 1,100th Ipanema agricultural aircraft, April 7, in a ceremony at its Botucatu plant, 230 km from São Paulo, Brazil. The airplane was accepted by Foliar Aviação Agrícola Ltda., which already operates four Ipanemas in Brazil’s Tocantins state. The Ipanema is the world’s first production aircraft that leaves the factory certified to fly with hydrated ethanol automotive fuel.
Hawker Beechcraft is transferring its laboratories for electromagnetic compatibility, mechanical and environmental testing to the National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR) at Wichita State University (WSU), the Institute said April 5. The labs will be housed in two Hawker Beechcraft buildings in Wichita, and occupy about 49,000 square feet. An undetermined number of company employees currently working in the facility will be offered employment with WSU.
OK, pop quiz: What is the name of the person who heads the federal Transportation Security Administration? What? You don’t know who’s in charge of all those TSA people digging through your luggage at the airport? Well, that’s all right, it was a trick question. There is no TSA administrator, a vacancy that has persisted since Edmund (Kip) Hawley resigned at the end of the Bush administration in January 2009.
The first H80 turboprop engine is in certification testing since March in a test cell at the GE Aviation Czech facility in Prague. The first H80 test engine met or exceeded all power ratings targets in multiple runs, said Paul Theofan, president and managing executive of GE Aviation Czech s.r.o., a wholly owned subsidiary of GE Aviation. “Certification testing will continue this spring with endurance testing [scheduled to start in April] and EASA type certification anticipated this summer,” he said. Five development engines will take part in certification testing.
Jet Aviation is establishing a line maintenance and AOG service operation at the Le Bourget Business Aviation Airport near Paris in conjunction with Universal Aviation France SARL. Jet Aviation will provide line maintenance and AOG support for various aircraft types, including Airbus, Boeing Business Jets, Bombardier and Gulfstream at Universal’s Facility.
I agree with your UAV comments. I recently attended a UAS conference in San Diego. There were mostly military speakers, but even the FAA speaker acknowledged that there will be an increasing number of UAVs in the national airspace. Another speaker said that the first large aircraft UAVs will probably be transpacific freighters with a standby pilot for takeoffs and landings in populated areas. This is probably the right direction. We all need to spend our available time tending to our iPhones, our Facebook pages and our blogs.
Air Partner reported April 15 that it arranged nearly 3,000 flights of all types during the first half of its current fiscal year. If that trend continues, this could equal fiscal year 2008, the company’s best ever. In fiscal 2008, the company, a London-based charter broker with offices worldwide, logged 6,071 combined flights; in fiscal 2009, the total flights declined to 4,701, a drop of more than 20 percent.
A 50 percent-plus decline in Learjet’s backlog during the past year is unsettling but not dire, Bombardier Aerospace President and Chief Operating Officer Guy Hachey said. Bombardier reported that a wave of cancellations in 2009 shrank Learjet’s order book to six months’ worth of production on Jan. 31, the end of the company’s fiscal year, down from 17 months a year earlier. Hachey says that Learjet’s backlog had been inflated to unsustainable levels during the business jet order frenzy of 2007-08.
FlightSafety International will offer training to customers on the full range of Pratt & Whitney Canada (P&WC) engine products, under an agreement signed with the engine manufacturer this month. FSI will manage daily operations, develop and produce courseware material and provide Learning Management System capabilities. Flight Safety’s Learning Center in Montreal will lead the training support of Pratt customers and employees.
Cessna CEO Jack Pelton also issued a call to action to the general aviation community to take a leadership role in defining solutions to environmental issues so that responsible stewardship works in conjunction with economic considerations required for industry growth, a call similar to that issued by aviation associations at AERO Friedrichshafen (see above).
Fokker Services delivered the first Auxiliary Fuel Tank System (AFTS), installed in a VIP-configured Fokker 100, to an undisclosed customer. AFTS consists of four additional fuel tanks installed in the forward belly cargo compartment, increasing the range of the Fokker 100 to approximately 2,700 nm. Fokker Services developed the AFTS, while Fokker Aircraft Services did the installation at its Woensdrecht facility. Both companies are part of the Fokker Aerospace Group.
TSA’s revised Large Aircraft Security Program (LASP) has been passed from TSA to the Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS), beginning the vetting process prior to being published as an NPRM, possibly this fall, says Brian Delauter, TSA’s general manager for general aviation. Delauter told a well-attended meeting of the Westchester Aviation Association Mar. 26 that the agency was seeking a less adversarial relationship with the industry.
A new stand-alone Attitude Heading Reference System (AHRS) was announced by Tucson, Ariz.-based Universal Avionics Corp. on April 15. The AHS-525 is solid-state system provides aircraft analog and digital pitch, roll and heading data and can directly replace increasingly difficult-to-maintain mechanical gyros. The system integrates with flight deck displays, flight control systems, flight management systems, weather radar, terrain awareness and warning system, flight data recorders and multiple other avionics systems and subsystems.
Airbus forecasts a market for around five large corporate jets a year in the Asia-Pacific region, the majority of them in greater China, to replace existing aircraft and grow the regional fleet. Large corporate jets, which Airbus defines as seating 15 or more passengers, currently number about 150. Airbus hopes to win at least half of this market.
To mark the centenary of Lyon-Bron airport near Lyon, France, the airport authority is inaugurating a new business aviation facility. Authorities stated, “Lyon-Bron airport has become the third largest business aviation airport in France.
“Avionics Simulation” (April 2010, page 37) was apparently intended to bring your readers current on the status of avionics training. While you did a good job of covering what the traditional old-line establishment companies like Boeing-owned Jeppesen and Berkshire Hathaway-owned FlightSafety are doing, you completely missed out on where the true innovation is taking place. For instance, you failed to cover both King Schools and Redbird Simulators.
