Golden Valley Aviation, a Clinton, Mo.-based maintenance shop, received FAA approval to repair and overhaul P.L. Porter Hydrolok seat recline actuators .
Teledyne Controls is marketing a device that adds ground cellular phone capability to the MagnaStar VHF inflight phone system. The company's new Cellular Phone Interface (CPI) incorporates a weight-on-wheels feature that automatically disables cellular phone operation once the aircraft becomes airborne (federal regulations prohibit use of cellular phones in flight). The CPI weighs 2.8 pounds, and requires 28 VDC input.
Fred George Universal Introduces System 1 The firm's latest offerings include flat-panel displays
Universal Avionics Systems Corp.'s System 1, announced at the NBAA convention in October, begins to fulfill the vision that Hubert Naimer, the firm's chairman, had almost 25 years ago. Naimer was one of the pioneers who wanted to develop an integrated avionics system. System 1 is the embodiment of that dream. The UNS-1 FMS was the first shot out of the gun. Launched in 1982, the UNS-1 was the first three-dimensional navigation system available for business aircraft. Most other early products were upgrades, sensors or optional peripherals for the FMS.
Bombardier Aerospace (Montreal, Quebec, Canada)--The business aircraft manufacturer made staff changes as follows: In its Flexjet program, Michael Riegel was appointed to vice president of sales and marketing, and George Ferito to director of flight operations. In the Business Aircraft unit, Matt Hartnett is now vice president of used aircraft for all wide- and narrow-body jets, while the job responsibilities of Jess Munro, vice president of contracts, have been expanded to include narrow-body aircraft.
Daytona Beach, Fla.--Yelvington Jet Aviation is the latest FBO to hang its shingle at Daytona Beach International Airport, just three minutes from Daytona Speedway. The facility is a family operation, and although Yelvington is new to the FBO business, it has been in the aircraft fueling business locally since 1990. In addition to the standard FBO amenities, Yelvington offers 24-hour limo service, crew lounge and showers, customs clearances and a conference room with audio-visual equipment. Phone: (904) 257-7791.
Backed by the financial muscle of its new owner, GE Capital Services, SimuFlite Training International plans to build a new wing at its Dallas training center and add up to 10 new FAA Level D simulators. The facility currently has 17 Level C or higher business aircraft simulators and trains about 10,500 pilots annually, Ground-breaking on the l30,OOO-square-foot wing is scheduled for the middle of 1999, according to Jeffrey Roberts, new SimuFlite president. Construction is to be completed in about a year.
Operators, flightcrews and air traffic controllers started calling Cessna's CitationJet the ``CJ'' shortly after the entry level business jet entered service in 1993. The folks at Cessna never objected, because the name seemed to fit the personality of the airplane. Besides, the CJ was the most successful introduction in Cessna history, with 50 orders signed on the day the program was announced. Owners could call it anything they wanted. Demand for the CJ continues to better Cessna's expectations, and by spring 2000 there will be 359 of them in the field.
London City Airport, the downtown Docklands facility with a steep approach and a single runway, recently passed its 10th birthday. Not surprisingly, the airport has been dominated by the British Aerospace BAe 146/Avro RJ series of quadjets. But other, smaller aircraft also have made their impact at LCY.
The issue of small jets and who will operate them ``will become the biggest transportation labor issue in the next 36 months,'' says The Boyd Group, an Evergreen, Colo. consulting firm. ``We really mean big. Shut-the-place-down big. It will not be wages, nor benefits. Nope! It is gong to be the issue of job security as it relates to mega-carriers operating 33- to 70-seat jets. Depending on how this unfolds, the issue could get real nasty,'' the group said.
Charter and management company Aircraft Services Group moved its operation from Newburgh, N.Y. to Teterboro, citing ``lack of space and operational difficulties'' with the previous location. The firm named Peter Wendt as chief pilot and Edward Schmidt as training officer.
Ideally, aviation regulations should concern themselves solely with safety-of-flight issues, and only then when a legitimate need can be demonstrated. However, sometimes proponents of new rules act as much in the interest of preserving a market as in preserving safety. Such is the case with the ongoing debate over fractional ownership. Many of the proponents of requiring those operations to fly under FAR Part 135 are themselves 135 operators who feel threatened by the incredible growth of fractional ownership over the last several years.
To preserve night vision while reading charts, LED-Lite suggests its unfiltered light-emitting diode flashlights in ultra red or aqua green. The company claims the flashlights' diodes last at least 10 times longer than standard incandescent bulbs, and that a set of AA batteries yields 16 times more life (100,000 hours). Price: ultra red, $29.95; aqua green or ultra blue, $45.95 and cool white (``illuminates like daylight''), $49.95. LED-Lite, 1387 Los Coches Ct., Chula Vista, Calif. 91910. Phone: (887) 309-0530; fax: (619) 421-1748.
CoreMax, a new refurbishment company based in Denton, Texas, is specializing in installations of showers, steam baths and other interior designs. Flyte Comm of Florida has released Version 2.0 of its Flyte Trax real-time flight tracking system for Windows. The new version includes an updated user interface, built-in playback capability and full flight information display .
If pilot officer John Gillespie Magee, Jr. is said to have captured, in words, the essence of flying in his poem ``High Flight'' (``Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings''), then photographer Paul Bowen--in his new aviation photography book Air to Air--has certainly caught the magnificence of today's high-tech and lower-tech flying machines with his camera.
Continental Airlines and Honeywell marked an important milestone on the route toward availability of public use, augmented GPS precision approaches in late September when the airline conducted its first commercial operations using a GPS Landing System at Newark, N.J. and Minneapolis, Minn.
Garrett Aviation Services (Phoenix)--Dennis Walden has been appointed vice president and general manager for the company's Western Region operations. He is based at The Jet Center in Van Nuys, Calif.
FAA (Washington, D.C.)--Thomas E. McSweeny was named associate administrator for regulation and certification, succeeding Guy Gardner who left the agency.
BFGoodrich of Grand Rapids, Mich. received its first STC for the interface of its Stormscope WX-500 weather avoidance system sensor with a moving map display manufacturer. The STC applies to the availability of the sensor's interface with the Eventide Argus moving-map display.
Pilots of the CJ1 and CJ2 will work behind an array of Rockwell Collins Pro Line 21 EFIS displays. The Cedar Rapids, Iowa company also provides the CJs' dual attitude heading reference systems (AHRS); digital, dual-channel, automatic flight control system (AFCS); a single, solid-state, digital air-data computer; and the RTA-800 solid-state, stabilized, x-band color weather radar. Allied- Signal (Bendix/King) manufactures the CJs' panel-mount CNI-5000 VHF navigation and communication radios--comms have 8.33 kHz spacing--transponder, marker and ADF.
The IntelliJet Touchscreen Cabin Management System from Pacific Systems lets passengers become their own entertainment programmer. They can choose music by artist, category or genre, make video selections, or they can opt for the sights that the externally mounted Puritan Bennett cameras are seeing below. ``VIP'' touchscreen locations can control cabin environment functions such as lighting, temperature and window shades. Pentium-processor-based PCs run the cabin-control software. First application: Gulfstream V. Price: About $8,000 per seat location.
