Business & Commercial Aviation

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.

Flying Colours Corp. has completed its first two installations of the Satcom Direct Router. The first was part of a Global 5000 cabin refurbishment package. The second was part of a new Global 5000 completion project for a private Middle Eastern owner. The aircraft is expected to return to Flying Colours in early 2017 for installation of a supplemental SD Wi-Fi hub to augment the performance of the existing SDR. It is the first time Flying Colours will have fitted the complete suite of SD router options into an aircraft.

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.

Once again, BCA editors and our business aviation colleagues from the Aviation Week Network have recommended BCA content from this year that readers might want to revisit.

From line boy to flight instructor, charter pilot and CEO, Charlie Priester helped steer Priester Aviation to prominence.

The ability to quickly diagnose a problem and come up with a solution is a valuable skill, even when you earn your living working on multimillion-dollar aircraft.

Teterboro Airport ranked No. 1 again, and the rest of the top five business aviation airports measured by acukwik.com user traffic during October 2016 were mostly stable, according to site metrics.

Jet-A And Avgas Per-Gallon Fuel Prices November 2016

After a protracted process involving local government and private interests, Hawthorne Global Aviation Services has completed the acquisition of Bama Air, an FBO at Tuscaloosa Regional Airport (TCL), close by the University of Alabama. That addition increases the chain’s base count to five; the others are located at Long Island’s MacArthur Airport (ISP), Atlanta’s Cobb County (RYY), Chicago Executive (PWK) and Eau Claire, Wisconsin (EAU).

Bombardier's third-quarter financial results show the Canadian company's turnaround plan is gaining momentum. “We are executing on our growth program with certification of the CS300 and first flight of the Global 7000,” CEO Alain Bellemare told analysts on Nov. 10. “And we are executing on our turnaround plan.” The Montreal-based company said it expected full-year earnings of US $350-400 million, and free cash flow to be $1.15-1.45 billion, an improvement from previous projections.

The business jet market continues to be stubbornly soft, Textron Chairman and CEO Scott Donnelly said on an Oct. 20 conference call about the company's third-quarter earnings. Still, the market is “more or less in line with what we expected this year,” Donnelly said. “Most of the growth is driven by new products coming into the market.” That is why the company is concentrating on bringing to market the Citation Latitude, Citation Longitude, Cessna Denali and eventually, the Citation Hemisphere.

The FAA officially awarded Cirrus Aircraft its type certificate for the $1.96 million, 300-kt. single-engine turbofan SF50 Vision Jet at the National Business Aviation Association annual convention. The approval comes after an intensive four-year development program. The Vision Jet is powered by a 1,840-lb.-thrust Williams International FJ33-5A, and features a Perspective Touch flight deck powered by Garmin G3000 avionics.

Satcom Direct, the airborne connectivity services provider headquartered in Melbourne, Florida, plans to acquire TrueNorth, a 10-year-old avionics manufacturer based in Ottawa. Jim Jensen, the founder and CEO of Satcom Direct, says the transaction should close before year-end. Just two months earlier, the company bought AircraftLogs, which makes flight scheduling and tax reporting software. (See “Special Report: 2016 IFEC: the Internet of Aviation Things” on page 26 of this issue.)

Jeppesen has launched Operator, a cloud-based business aviation platform that integrates flight planning, runway performance and weight and balance calculations, crew scheduling, accounting, pricing, regulatory compliance and trip checklists, among other things. BoldIQ, the fleet optimization and management program that evolved from the failed DayJet operation is intrinsic to the new Jepp service.

Rolls-Royce reports that it now has 2,000 business jets enrolled in its CorporateCare engine maintenance program—double the number covered in 2010, or better than two-thirds of the eligible fleet. The program brings guaranteed maintenance costs to new and in-service Rolls-Royce BR725, BR710, Tay and AE 3007 engines. Operators pay a fixed cost-per-flying-hour fee for a comprehensive range of scheduled and unscheduled engine maintenance events and benefits. The reason for the program’s popularity, according to Stephen M.

The Citation 560XL family is one of the best examples of Cessna Aircraft's time-proven incremental engineering and development philosophy that has produced so many derivative models on time, on weight and on budget. Created in the mid-1990s as a rush response to the clean-sheet, leading edge Learjet 45, Citation 560XL combines a shortened Citation 650 fuselage, a scaled up and modified Citation V wing and newly introduced PW545 turbofan engines.

The business-jet resale market turned in slightly slower transaction activity during the first nine months of 2016, according to a report by Amstat.

BCA shares news of the latest products and services for the business aviation industry.

The annual gala dinner, or soiree, and auction sponsored by NBAA at its convention to benefit the Corporate Angel Network (CAN) raised $450,000 to help fund that organization’s decades-long mission to transport cancer patients to treatment centers, mainly aboard business jets, free of charge. CAN Executive Director Gina Russo said, “We very much appreciate the industry’s involvement in CAN’s work, as illustrated by the hundreds of companies flying CAN missions for cancer patients year-round, as well as through participation in this event.

BCA readers share their opinions on articles we published.

Heli-One will upgrade a fleet of Sikorsky S-61A-4 Nuri helicopters for an Asian operator with Universal's EFI-890H Advanced Flight Displays and Multi-Missions Management System. Heli-One will design and install the initial aircraft with an Asian maintenance, repair and overhaul business performing the upgrades on the remainder of the fleet. The upgrade includes four EFI-890H Advanced Flight Displays and one UNS-1L2 MMMS, Universal’s flight management system for mission support.

Russian investigators concluded that alcohol use by a shift supervisor and a snowplow driver at Moscow's Vnukovo International Airport played role in the October 2014 nighttime collision that destroyed a departing Unijet Airlines Dassault Falcon 50EX and killed all four on board. The snowplow driver was crossing Runway 6, but stopped as the jet began its takeoff roll. The Falcon hit the plow with its right wing and right main gear at a speed of 133 kt., rolled inverted, crashed and burned.

Blackhawk Modifications has launched another engine upgrade program, this time targeting the King Air 350. The switch involves replacing that aircraft’s 1,050 shp PT6A-60A engines with a pair of -67As, each rated at 1,200 shp. The Waco, Texas company expects to receive approval for the upgrade in the second quarter of 2017. The change-out will benefit those operators — including military units — needing improved hot-and-high performance.

VistaJet has taken delivery of three new Bombardier aircraft worth $115 million, bringing its global fleet to 70 aircraft, the company said. The company has added one new Bombardier Global 6000 and two new Challenger 350 business jets to its fleet. With the additions, VistaJet has the largest owned, super-midsize to large-cabin business-jet fleet in the industry, it said. In the past two years, the company has doubled its fleet from 35 aircraft in 2014 to the current 70, with an average age of less than two years.

Bombardier's Global 7000 test aircraft completed its first flight Nov. 4, marking the start of a rigorous flight-testing program. Entry-into-service of the large jet is scheduled in the second half of 2018. The Global 7000 took off from Bombardier’s facility in Toronto under the command of Ed Grabman, the flight’s captain, aided by copilot Jeff Karnes and flight test engineer Jason Nickel at 10:25 a.m. EDT. During the 2-hr., 27-min.