Business & Commercial Aviation

Honeywell has received the FAA's STC for enhanced features for the Gulfstream PlaneDeck cockpits on GIV and V aircraft. The latest suite of upgrades will increase crew awareness with the addition of Synthetic Vision Systems and other features. The upgrades include charts and maps, video capability and XM ground-based weather. PlaneDeck provides a 3-D color image of runways, terrain and obstacles.

World Fuel Services has added three fixed base operators to its network of FBOs. Flightways Columbus at the Columbus Airport (KCSG) in Columbus, Georgia, Emery Air at the Chicago Rockford International Airport (KRFD) in Rockford, Illinois, and Guardian Air Center at Ontario International Airport (KONT) in Canada, have joined the network, it said. World Fuel Services, based in Miami, provides training, credit card processing, marketing support, global fuel logistics and distributes fuel and related products and services.

Being free and in control of my destiny is what put me on the road to the NBAA convention this time and helps put people in private aircraft.

BCA readers share their opinions on articles we published.

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.

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.)

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

The fully paperless cockpit is becoming a reality with the advent of FAA-certifiable tablet computers that may be used as Class 1 electronic flight bags in accordance with Advisory Circular 120-76C. Garmin, among other avionics manufacturers, is developing wireless interfaces between tablet computers and avionics systems. Garmin’s link between the G5000 and tablet computers running Garmin Pilot software is the $1,500 Flight Stream 510 SD card that has both internal Bluetooth and Wi-Fi transceiver chips.

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.

Although Boeing does not market used BBJs, it has decided it is in the best interests of operators, potential buyers and the company to help facilitate the process and, further, to help establish fixed maintenance costs for those considering a pre-owned BBJ.

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.

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).

FlightSafety Academy in Vero Beach, Florida, celebrated its 50th anniversary in October. Its 21,000 graduates have flown for 62 airlines and over 100 corporate flight departments around the world. It employs 160 people and owns nearly 90 aircraft. Its campus also includes classrooms, flight training devices, an Air Traffic Control communications laboratory and on-site accommodations for 300 students.

AviationManuals is celebrating its 20th anniversary. Since its founding in 1996, it has produced more than 4,000 manuals. It recently expanded its product line to include Minimum Equipment Lists and Electronic Flight Bag application packages. The company also is expanding its workforce and seeks to employ an operations manual specialist, aviation specialist, editor/document specialist and a business development/sales coordinator.

FlightSafety International filed a lawsuit Oct. 25 related to the 2014 crash of a King Air B200 into a FlightSafety training facility shortly after takeoff from Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport. The crash killed four, including the pilot, and injured six others. The lawsuit, filed in Sedgwick County District Court in Wichita, names more than a dozen defendants alleged to have contributed to the crash through negligence, breach of warranty or other factors.

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.

The space-based Global Positioning System could be said to be the keystone of the FAA's NextGen ATM modernization but just how reliable is GPS? To find out, we asked John Hansman, Ph.D., an aeronautics professor and researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Performance-based navigation promises to make air traffic management more efficient than ever before . . . but what does this mean for business aviation?

Since its introduction nearly a half-century ago, the Boeing 737 has proven to be the most popular civilian jet ever, with more than 9,000 delivered to date. And the manufacturer is moving to increase its production rate to more than 50 per month, easily the highest in its history. New models and variants — notably including the Boeing Business Jet (BBJ) and P-8 Poseidon maritime reconnaissance aircraft — are in production and with thousands on back order, the 737 will be a significant presence for a long time to come.

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.

Rated at 3,230 lb. thrust for takeoff, the Williams International FJ44-4A-32 turbofans produce about 9% more thrust than the original Pratt & Whitney Canada JT15D-5R engines fitted to the Beechjet 400A and Hawker 400XP. At first glance, that seems like a nominal increase at best. But the FJ44-4 has a fat ISA+17C flat rating that makes a considerable difference in hot-and-high airport, climb and cruise performance.

Textron Aviation has completed certification of Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast Out (ADS-B Out) on the Citation Mustang, completing ADS-B certification efforts for Citation, King Air and Hawker products. Retrofit modifications are now available at company-owned service centers.

The Beechjet 400A/Hawker 400XP has the potential to be one of the most popular business aircraft retrofit programs in the past 30 years.

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.