EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg-based FBO and VIP handling provider Air Service Basel (Booth 1212) has partnered with Avfuel Corporation (Booth 4634) to offer its branded aviation fuels and pilot programs, and to take advantage of Avfuel's operational and training systems.

A futuristic interior for a VIP helicopter is being unveiled here this week by AgustaWestland. A mockup of the design for the AW169, by fashion studio Lanzavecchia+Wai, can be seen on Booth 6629. After working with the most famous and prestigious fashion houses, such as Versace and Lagerfeld, on the GrandNew and AW139 helicopters, AgustaWestland decided to do something different and avant garde for the AW169, which is to be certified this year.

Comlux the Aviation Group (Booth 5152) comes to EBACE with a maintenance and refurbishment contract for a BBJ based in Asia. The airplane is expected to arrive at the company’s Comlux America facility in Indianapolis, Indiana in the second quarter 2014 and will spent four months at the center. The unidentified owner is being represented by the aircraft management company Sino Jet, led by CEO Jenny Lau.

The exterior paint shop at L-3 Platform Integration has had considerable experience applying unique and beautiful finishes on large VIP jets, but the new 747-8 is a challenge that would have taxed the talents of Michelangelo. As an artist’s canvas goes, it is big. Really, really big; with a wing span of 59.6 meters (195 ft, 8 in) and 70.6 meters in length (231 ft, 10 in).

George Washington readily owned up to a small-scale exercise in deforestation, but how likely is it that he would have confessed to an experiment in ‘cherry tree cancelation’? Believe no longer that debates about the number of angels able to dance on a pinhead represent the world’s most excruciatingly obtuse argument. Would even Albert Einstein be smart enough to fathom when a business jet order is not a business jet order?

* Illegal flights. The EBAA has led two studies into so called illegal flights in Europe. Work is ongoing but the figure of about 7% of illegal flights is roughly correct. “The very important thing to keep in mind, is that very few are deliberately illegal,” says association president Brian Humphries.

Popularly supposed to be impossible because of data overload issues, a lifesaving and money-saving “black box” telemetry device is here, right now, and available to business aircraft operators. MH370 and, before that, AF447: flight numbers that have entered public consciousness. If only there were technology that could track every flight everywhere in the world, collecting and downloading to the ground in real time everything that went into its black box recorder. Impossible; forget about it.

Greenpoint Technologies is introducing its new Azure interior design for the 787 BBJ here at EBACE, a creation the company says reflects “the freedom of artistry, engineering and innovation. It is, according to lead designer Julie Myers, a collection of materials and forms within a naturalist’s passion for discover and exploration, and inspiration from both land and sea with an essence of organic forms.