Business & Commercial Aviation

Satcom Direct last month completed the acquisition of TrueNorth Avionics, a manufacturer of cabin communications systems, thereby expanding its service offering to VIP aircraft operators. Ottawa-based TrueNorth, which designs, develops and manufactures satcom systems, TrueNorth becomes a business unit within the Satcom Direct family of companies focused on avionics development.

AeroBrigham, based in Decatur, Texas, has taken delivery of a Bell 407 configured for medical mission flights. It is the fourth aircraft on which the company has completed paint, interior, avionics and airframe improvements and performed maintenance and component overhauls. The work was done for Survival Flight, a Part 135 air medical transport provider. AeroBrigham will begin work on another 407 for Survival Flight before year-end.

New York's Westchester County has applied to the FAA to privatize its county-owned airport, marking the third time since 2000 that the Empire State or one of its counties has attempted such a spinoff under the federal agency’s troubled Airport Privatization Pilot Program (APPP). A preliminary application filed in November names Empire State Airport Holdings as the private company that would operate the Westchester County Airport under a 40-year lease, with the transfer taking place as early as March 2017.

Increased business jet deliveries in North America and Western Europe during the third quarter helped offset declining shipments to emerging market regions, along with China and Latin America, according to a recent UBS market research report. Global business jet deliveries fell 5% during the third quarter compared to a year ago. Deliveries to North American customers rose 9%, while deliveries increased 13% in Western Europe during the quarter.

The FAA is seeking bids to build a remote air traffic control tower at Northern Colorado Regional Airport (FNL), a business and general aviation facility about 50 sm north of Denver. The airport was formerly known as the Fort Collins-Loveland Municipal Airport. In a request for information issued Nov.

The Air Charter Safety Foundation's annual safety symposium for charter and business aircraft operators is set for March 7-8 at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Training Center in Ashburn, Virginia. Speakers will include BCA Contributor James Albright, NTSB Member Robert Sumwalt, and Tom Huff, Gulfstream’s Aviation Safety Officer, among others. Subjects to be covered include intentional non-compliance, runway incursions and excursions and a review of the GIV rejected takeoff accident in Bedford, Massachusetts, in May 2014.

Questions for David Sneed, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Delta Private Jets.

As a maintenance manager, you need to ensure your troops receive the training and education to address the demands of high technology aircraft.

Flirtey, a start-up drone operation, has begun trials of autonomous pizza delivery, flying to customers' homes from a store north of Auckland, New Zealand. The commercial trials follow a demonstration delivery in August. Currently available to select customers, the two companies plan to launch pizza-by-drone deliveries at increasing scale in the near future. “We are moving closer and closer to widespread store-to-door drone delivery,” Flirtey CEO Matthew Sweeny says.” “To conduct these deliveries in an urban environment ...

Quest Aircraft has signed a major fleet order with a sister subsidiary in Japan for up to 20 Kodiak aircraft. The 10-seat aircraft single-engine turboprop will be used for a new membership-based private travel service that was launched in November. The order is Quest’s largest commercial fleet order to date. “We are very excited to have completed such a large order for the Kodiak,” said Nick Newby, Quest senior vice president of sales, marketing and customer service.

Wheels Up, the membership-based aviation company, is now offering flights to and from Havana on its fleet of King Air 350i turboprops and Citation Excel/XLS turbofans. It has also launched an on-the-ground booking assistance program in Cuba for its 3,500+ members, and provides trips through any of the 18 U.S. airports approved by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

According to business office chair-maker Herman-Miller, a chair should breathe, which is to say its surface materials should provide comfort and allow conduction of heat and dispersion of moisture away from the surface of the sitter's skin. Also, a seat should have a neutral effect on body-surface temperatures, so that thermal comfort is not posture dependent. It does this by allowing the flow of air to the body and water vapor away.

Cessna Citation crash in Germany: Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation determines that the cause was the pilot-in-command’s decision to conduct the VFR approach “even though he was aware of the prevailing instrument weather condition at the airport."

News of promotions, appointments and honors involving professionals within the business aviation community.

BCA readers share their opinions on articles we published.

Bombardier's second Global 7000 flight test vehicle is now under Canadian registry. MSN 70002 was registered Nov. 22 with tail number C-GBLB. The registry comes less than three weeks after the first flight of the first Global 7000 test aircraft. The aircraft flew for the first time Nov. 4 in Toronto. The aircraft is now in Wichita for flight testing, which is progressing, the company said. Bombardier is not projecting first flight or other milestones for the second aircraft or for its other Global 7000 flight-test vehicles, a spokeswoman said.

In the little more than two months since releasing its Part 107 Small Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) rule on Aug. 29, the FAA had received more than 30,000 new aircraft registrations from commercial operators and more than 22,500 remote pilot applications. Jay Merkle, the FAA’s Director of Systems Integration and Requirements Analysis, said more than 10,000 of the applicants for the remote pilot license had passed the test. The Part 107 rule takes the place of what was previously an onerous Certificate of Authorization process for each operation.

Embraer Legacy 500 is the company's first aircraft to have the certified version of the Embraer Enhanced Vision System.

Rolls-Royce delivered the 7,000th engine made at its plant outside Berlin. The engine, a BR710, was being shipped to Gulfstream Aerospace in Savannah, Georgia. The site, which began production in 1995, employs more than 2,300 worker who produce the Tay 611-8C and V2500 engines in addition to the BR700 series, which power the G550 and 650 as well as the Bombardier Global 5000 and 6000. The engine maker reports more than 4,000 BR700s have been delivered to date. Later this year the German facility will begin assembly of the Trent XWB turbofan, which powers the Airbus A350.

Most pilots have probably heard the story from Greek mythology about Icarus, the ancient aviator who flew too close to the sun and came crashing down into the sea. Since it was Daedalus, his father, who designed and constructed those wings of bird feathers tied with string and wax, it can be said that not only was he the original aeronautical engineer, but he included a maximum cruise altitude in his design specifications. Fly too high, he warned his son, and the wax used to fasten the feathers would melt.

BCA: We are too shortsighted to realize that the fewer accidents we have, the more people will fly and the more airplanes we will sell in the long run.

The Federalist Papers No. 62, published in 1788, James Madison warned, "It will be of little avail to the people, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood." I suspect this founding father would be flummoxed by today's federals, especially if he decided to go flying.

The NTSB report on the Learjet 60 rejected takeoff (RTO) accident in Columbia, South Carolina, noted the following: “In 1990, the NTSB issued a special investigation report (SIR), “Runway Overruns Following High-Speed Rejected Takeoffs,” that examined high-speed RTOs involving commercial jet aircraft. The SIR reviewed three studies, which included data from the NTSB, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and Boeing, related to the causes and outcomes of RTOs. The SIR found that tire failures led to more high-speed RTOs than engine-related anomalies.”

The General Aviation Manufacturers Association says new aircraft deliveries for the first three quarters of 2016 were down 3.5% from the same period in the previous year, with 1,504 units shipped compared to 1,558 units in 2015. Helicopter shipments were even worse—down 16% to 615 units compared to 732 units in the same period in 2015. Combined airplane and rotorcraft billings were $15.9 billion year-to-date in 2016 compared to last year's $19.1 billion, a contraction of 16.5%.

News of promotions, appointments and honors involving professionals within the business aviation community.