Business & Commercial Aviation

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

Gulfstream Aerospace has won FAA approval to install mandated avionics upgrades, called Future Air Navigation System (FANS) 1/A+, on Gulfstream GIV-SP aircraft. FANS 1/A+ uses automation and satellite-based technology to improve aviation communication, surveillance and traffic management. The active fleet of GIV-SP aircraft totals 325. “Like our solution for GV aircraft, this system was developed by Gulfstream and Honeywell to fully integrate the GIV-SP flight deck,” says Derek Zimmerman, Gulfstream Product Support president.

Pan Am orders 25 Boeing 747s for $525 million. The company plans to introduce the 490-passenger Boeing 747 in late 1969. Modified Aero Commanders: Extensive restyling and modifying of Aero commander aircraft are offered now by BACC. Modifications include stylized nacelle fairing, and landing gears doors. Soon to be available will be exhaust system for reduced cabin noise and pilot front entrance door. Kits are available.

The new business aircraft market continued to fly into troubled skies in 2015, with piston engine aircraft deliveries dropping 6.5%, turboprops down 7.6%, and turbofan aircraft shipments flat at 1.6% growth, compared to 2014, according to the General Aviation Manufacturers Association

There are two maintenance questions that are posed to me again and again: First, “Are Mandatory Service Bulletins really mandatory?” and its counterpart: “When the manufacturer updates the maintenance program, do I have to comply with the changes?”

For an aircraft to be listed in the Purchase Planning Handbook, a production conforming article must have flown by May 1 of this year. The dimensions, weights and performance characteristics of each model listed are representative of the current production aircraft being built or for which a type certificate application has been filed. The basic operating weights we publish should be representative of actual production turboprop and turbofan aircraft because we ask manufacturers to supply us with the average weights of the last 10 commercial aircraft that have been delivered.

More data have been generated, collected and processed by the human race in the last 36 months than during the previous 3,000 years. Further, every day of every month the worldwide flood of information on every conceivable subject increases exponentially.

The Air Charter Safety Foundation is a partisan of using data to make aviation safer. ACSF was spawned by the National Air Transportation Association (NATA) in 2007 to enhance safety in business and general aviation charter operations. One of its first accomplishments was to develop a common safety audit standard for the air charter industry.

From legendary STOL aircraft linking remote communities to a round-the-world quest in a flying machine powered on nothing but the sun’s rays, the innovations of Swiss engineers, pilots and explorers have done much to improve our collective quality of life on this planet.

Since 1968, Air Zermatt has been rescuing stranded mountaineers from alpine peaks and out of crevasses near the Matterhorn. The extreme conditions of these rescues required innovative solutions that Air Zermatt rescue service has developed and refined.

Selected accidents and incidents in March 2016. The following NTSB information is preliminary.

The FAA’s Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing (ASIAS) program, operated under contract by the Mitre Corp. and launched in 2007 to aggregate and disseminate data from FOQA, ASAP, ATSAP programs and other sources, has so far yielded 19 safety enhancements (SEs) from data contributed by airlines.

This month we’ll take a quick look at the loss of a Learjet 35A (XA-USD) fatal to all four occupants on Nov. 19, 2013, when it crashed into the sea off the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, coast just 3 min. or so after takeoff.

In a flat market for new aircraft, the best place for avionics makers is to focus their resources on the aftermarket, and indeed that’s what we’re seeing — witness the panel upgrade competition between Sandel, Garmin, Universal, Avidyne and others. Prices for some avionics, such as transponders and thunderstorm detectors, have tumbled or risen only marginally, while cockpit voice recorders (CVRs) and flight data recorders (FDRs) are up dramatically.

The Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympic Games — dubbed “Rio 2016” — are scheduled to begin Aug. 5 and extend through Aug. 21. The 2016 Paralympics will run from Sept. 7 to Sept. 18 in the same locale.

Cessna Aircraft announced that it is now making Safe Flight’s angle-of-attack system standard equipment on all Cessna Skyhawk 172 aircraft and optional on its Skylane 182 and Turbo Stationair 206.

Susan Sheets Brogan, who served for 20 years as president of the National Aircraft Resale Association and as a business aviation advocate in Washington, died April 7 after a short battle with cancer. She was 63. Brogan worked in collaboration with the National Business Aviation Association and other Washington trade groups to advance the interests of aircraft owners and pilots. A proud private pilot and a former French and Latin teacher, she began her aviation career in 1980 with French aircraft manufacturer Aerospatiale, now Airbus Helicopters.

​ Dassault Aviation’s Falcon 8X ultra-long-range business jet is entering the final stages of its flight test and certification program as the company prepares for initial delivery. FAA and European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) certification of the trijet is expected by midyear, with entry-into-service by late summer, Dassault said. Three aircraft are in the flight test program, have flown more than 650 hr. in 325 flights and have nearly completed all certification test requirements. In the meantime, production and support activities are ramping up.

Clay Lacy Aviation has partnered with SmartSky Networks to offer hardware sales, certification and installation of the SmartSky 4G network on Gulfstream G200, GIV-SP and GV aircraft. SmartSky’s technology delivers a secure signal that locks onto each aircraft in the network, the company said. Passengers will be able to stream, chat, call, game and video conference. Visit: http://smartskynetworks.com/earlybird2016/

There’s no mistaking a 2016 Pilatus PC-12 NG from earlier versions of the aircraft. The third iteration of this 22-year-old model sports a five-blade Hartzell prop with scimitar shaped blades made of black carbon fiber. It is more efficient at converting torque into thrust in all phases of flight than the aluminum Hartzell four-blade prop it replaces.

Duncan Aviation has launched an electric logbook feature to myDuncan, a web-based project management system. The feature allows customers to view logbook entries in real-time and categorized by airframe or engine and communicate with inspectors through the system. Duncan, introduced in 2006, allows customers to monitor the progress of maintenance or upgrades through email alerts, job status reports and updates with hour and cost estimates.

Safran’s nearly three-year delay in development and certification of the Silvercrest engine has slowed Dassault’s Falcon 5X considerably, but Cessna says it’s had no impact on its Hemispheres program. The new engine has been in the running to power Textron Aviation’s newest Citation. But in a statement, a spokeswoman says while it has not yet announced an engine provider, the Hemisphere program is on schedule, with first flight expected in 2019.

Five questions for Rhett Ross, president and CEO of Continental Motors Group Ltd., Mobile, Alabama, and his answers.

The potential mainland Chinese business aircraft market is perhaps six times as large as the current fleet, research based on the buying and chartering capacity of the country’s rich people suggests. Already, 1,420 people in mainland China have the potential to own business aircraft, according to estimates gathered by luxury publisher and rich-list compiler Hurun Report and Minsheng Financial Leasing. The purchasing potential of those people is 1,750 aircraft, the companies say. In addition, 9,000 Chinese mainlanders could charter business aircraft.

A new forecast by the FAA predicts that the number of turboprops, business jets and rotorcraft in the active general aviation fleet will increase over the next two decades, although the largest segment of the fleet, fixed-wing piston aircraft, is expected to shrink. The agency said the long-term outlook for general aviation is favorable, though the active fleet should increase by just 0.2% per year from 2015 to 2036.