Stevens Aviation and Jet Support Services have teamed to provide a fixed-price maintenance program for King Air 200s and 200Bs. The hourly rate of about $390 covers all scheduled inspections and overhauls, unscheduled maintenance, mandatory service bulletins, ADs, accessory items, line-replaceable units, rental engines, airframe components and propellers. The basic enrollment fee is $25,000, and airplanes also must undergo an airframe and engine inspection at a cost of approximately $4,100.
By the close of the NBAA annual meeting in late September, Raytheon Aircraft said it had received 51 purchase agreements with deposits for the new Raytheon Premier I light jet (B/CA, October, page 50). The under-$4-million aircraft, the first business jet to be designed by Raytheon, is scheduled to enter service in fall 1998. The current backlog extends to deliveries scheduled in the year 2000. First flight of the Williams-Rolls FJ44-2-powered aircraft is expected in late 1997.
Aircraft upsets have caused or contributed to several major incidents and accidents over the past 50 years. Two recent accidents focused renewed attention on this hazard, with a specific focus on how to train pilots to recover from unusual attitudes. Accord- ingly, a new idiom has entered the aviators lexicon. You may soon have the pleasure of ``advanced maneuvers training.''
Accidents involving business jets in the first six months of 1995 showed no improvement over the preceding year, according to Robert E. Breiling Associates of Boca Raton, Florida. Worldwide, 14 business jet accidents were reported, four of which were fatal, for a total of 32 deaths between January 1 and June 30. The U.S. corporate jet fleet had 10 accidents, with one of them fatal to seven people. Accidents involving turboprops, however, showed an improving trend worldwide.
NBAA has published a booklet for corporate flight department wannabes. How to Start a Corporate Flight Department provides answers to many of the frequently asked questions on the subject, and covers aircraft selection and justification, ownership options, choosing a home base, staffing and training, and support services. The booklet is available from NBAA headquarters in Washington, D.C. Phone: (202) 783-9000.
Phase III of the ``No Plane, No Gain'' program was officially introduced at the NBAA convention. The new phase, with the theme ``Business Takes Off,'' will feature advertisements in Forbes magazine and 60-second spots on cable TV profiling business-aircraft users. Since its introduction in 1992, the ``No Plane, No Gain'' program has produced a wide variety of materials that promote the use of business aircraft as a tool for helping to increase the efficiency, productivity and profitability of companies.
Bell Helicopter and its customers are about to taste the first fruits of Product Plan 2000, the company's vision to increase its share of the helicopter market by offering substantial improvements in ``reliability, responsiveness, competitiveness and value'' (B/CA, February, page 34).
Turboprop East (North Adams, MA)-Keith Patterson has been appointed CEO of this maintenance center that specializes in the servicing of King Airs and Citations.
Most pilots will tell you that you can't learn much about FMS until you fly with it, or at least spend several hours in the cockpit on the ground with power on the avionics system. Some pilots may opt to remove the Xls from the aircraft, connect it to an external power supply in their office and practice using it in the simulator mode. A word of caution applies here. When reinstalling the box in the aircraft, you must be careful to reconfigure the Xls for the specific aircraft installation.
Soloy Corporation's modified twin-engine Cessna Caravan made its first flight September 13. The P&WC engines in the Dual Pac Caravan are mounted side-by-side, driving a combining gearbox and a single, five-blade Hartzell propeller providing 1,329 shp at 1,700 rpm. The gearbox has a clutch design, permitting independent operation of either engine (B/CA, July, page 30). If an engine fails, it automatically disengages while the operative engine continues to drive the propeller. FAA certification is expected in June 1996.
Almost every person who has pocketed a pilot certificate originally learned to fly because of the challenges, joy and pleasure of flight. Many pilots who obtain a private pilot's license stop at that level of certification, while a substantial number go on to become charter pilots, flight instructors, airline transport pilots (ATPs) and, of course, corporate pilots. At each step of the increasingly professional certification, a pilot loses some touch with the simple world of general aviation sport and pleasure flying.
The GPS 90 from Garmin International is the company's latest entry into the small hand-held GPS receiver market. About the size of a TV remote control, and weighing 10 ounces, the unit is capable of displaying five main ``pages'': satellite status, aircraft position, moving-map graphics, navigation and menu (offering various setup and user-preference options). The GPS 90 will store 250 user-defined waypoints and up to 20 reversible routes.
For those interested in the KLN 90B GPS satellite navigation receiver, but lacking room for it in their panels, AlliedSignal now offers its system in a single-box, approach-certificated unit for console installations. The KLN 900 features an eight-channel receiver and a high-resolution, monochrome CRT display capable of graphics, including airport diagrams and advisory VNAV functions. The KLN 900 offers an array of analog and digital interfaces, making it suitable for retrofit applications. The system is priced at $12,000 and will be available by mid 1996.
Now offered by Magellan Systems is the enhanced, EC-10X, a 10-channel GPS receiver and cartography unit with a complete Jeppesen database. Featuring three detail-ed navigation windows on the moving-map display, the EC-10X provides an alphanu meric database search by identifier, city or facility name; alphanumeric or graphic flight planning (up to 10 plans); and nearest/emergency airport search listing (with direct-to any database waypoint). A six-inch by 4.5-inch, high-resolution backlit LCD displays the charts. One hundred user-entered waypoints can be stored.
Step into the cockpit of any workaday business aircraft, and you'll be surprised if you don't find an FMS box or a GPS navigator. There are, however, a few remaining vacancies in the consoles and panels of business aircraft. Now, a new generation of cost-effective, single-box FMSes is emerging that will give light- and medium-size business aircraft the lateral and vertical navigation precision to squeeze the utmost efficiency out of every pound of kerosene.
Gulfstream Aerospace is studying the feasibility of adding an Enhanced Vision System (EVS) to the head-up display (HUD) being developed for the G-IVSP and G-V. The objective of the study is to identify what components will be necessary in an EVS to allow Category III landings at Category I airports and to significantly lower landing minimums during non-precision approaches for HUD-equipped aircraft. In 1994, Gulfstream began a joint development of a HUD system with Honeywell and GEC Marconi for the G-IVSP and G-V.
On September 1, the tiny New York State Aviation Association (only 20 members representing flight departments, FBOs and other suppliers based in the state) accomplished in 24 months what larger, more nationally oriented trade groups couldn't. Their achievement was getting New York to significantly reduce its Petroleum Business Tax on aviation fuel purchased in the state.
One new jet sold outside the United States in September-a Gulfstream IVSP. Eight new sales were listed in September 1994. There were six resales including three Learjets, two Dassault models and one Canadair. Nineteen used jets were delivered to new owners in September last year. One more new jet sale was listed for August 1995 in addition to the single sale reported initially-a Canadair 601-3R. Preliminary reports showed no resales, however, revisions included seven such deliveries.
Howell Instruments of Fort Worth is targeting operators of AlliedSignal TFE engines and Gulfstream IIs and IIIs with its latest instrument developments. The new H384J N1 is designed to provide trend monitoring of customer-selected parameters in aircraft powered by TFE731 turbofans, and can be used in ground checks to verify instrument accuracy. Gulfstream II and III operators may be interested in Howell's H1900 series multifunction indicator.
Cessna has extended its fixed-price, hourly fee Pro Parts program to cover engine parts for the Citation Bravo, Ultra and V. The program will work exactly like it does for airframe and avionics parts: Customers call a single Cessna source for all parts. They will not receive an invoice, but simply pay monthly based on hours flown. Covered are all parts required from the time the engine is new to overhaul, including those needed for unscheduled service. Cessna says rental-engine expenses also are covered under the program.
A GPS datalink receiver was one of several avionics products introduced by Honeywell at the NBAA annual meeting. The VL-2000 VHF datalink receiver is designed to receive uplinked position-correction information and approach coordinates from a differential GPS ground station. In early 1996, Honeywell-together with Pelorus Navigation Systems of Calgary, Alberta, Canada-hopes to be one of the first manufacturers to receive FAA certification of a DGPS landing system (B/CA, April, page 24).
San Antonio-based Dee Howard Company has become the second firm to announce it is developing variable-position exhaust nozzles for engines with or without reversers. Variable nozzles permit the exhaust throat diameter to be optimized for takeoff, climb and cruise regimes. Meanwhile, Whittier, California-based competitor Calcor Aero Systems, which has been working on variable-position exhaust nozzles for over a year, says it will start testing its system on a P&WC PW306 turbofan in a test cell possibly beginning in December (B/CA, December 1994, page 30).
Air Routing Shanghai Airport (ZSSS) agent FASCO can provide a cellular phone to crews to help them maintain contact during their stay. Charges are for phone-line usage only.
Falcon 50 operators soon will be able to upgrade their cockpits to look like the one offered for the new Falcon 50EX and 2000. By mid 1996, Collins expects to be able to offer a Pro Line 4 retrofit program for the Falcon 50. The avionics system includes four, large-format EFIS displays plus Mode-S transponder and turbulence-detection weather radar. Options will include TCAS II and AVSAT comm and nav.
AMR Combs will expand its FBO at the new Denver International Airport and will establish a facility at San Francisco International Airport. The company's DEN expansion includes a $2.8-million, 23,000-square-foot hangar to be completed in January 1996 as the first initiative in a three-part expansion plan. An SFO facility will open early in 1996 in temporary facilities. When completed, the FBO will include a fully appointed terminal and two storage hangars with offices. AMR Combs also is considering additional expansion opportunities in Mexico and South America.
