Parking on a distant ramp assessed at $4,000 a day. To tow an aircraft to the general aviation terminal: $1,000. Landing permits billed at $15,000 for one trip, plus $7,500 for ground handling “coordination.” More than $2,000 each for weather briefings and flight planning. And that was just the beginning. Maybe we should have stayed home.
Colorado Springs-based Trine Aerospace & Defense has developed a Stage 3-compliant hushkit to help save Learjet 20 series aircraft from extinction. At the direction of Congress, the FAA is mandating the phaseout of all Stage II business jets by the end of 2015.
London City Airport (EGLC) is the closest airport to the London financial district (“the City”), but it has a reputation for being frightfully expensive. But does that constitute gouging?
Questions for Shawn Vick This management team really understands aircraft, their values, the companies that built them and the individuals and corporations that require them.
Airbus Defense & Space has agreed to a technology collaboration that Aerion says will give it access to engineering skills in the disciplines required to move the program ahead toward certification and production. Both companies say they are committing significant resources to the partnership. For Airbus Group, supporting Aerion in design of its AS2 business jet will provide valuable work for senior engineers from its military aircraft division, which has been negatively affected by declining defense spending.
The wait is over. On October 14, Gulfstream rolled out the G500, the first of two models from its secretive P42 development program. In the works since 2008, the project actually spawned two new models, the 5,000-nm G500 and the 6,200-nm G600. Both look a lot like the firm’s 7,000-nm G650 flagship, but they have less range, smaller cabin cross-sections and lower price tags. The G500 is priced at $43.5 million and the longer G600 will go for $54.5 million.
The International Registry of Mobile Assets (IRMA), an online business that was founded in 2006 under the Cape Town Convention and Protocol of 2001, has surpassed 500,000 registrations covering 110,000 aircraft “objects” valued at more than $500 billion (U.S.). The registry is averaging 7,000 registrations a month, 68% of which are en
The FAA has released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for Safety Management Systems. This new rule would be applicable to operating certificate holders and not FAR Part 91. While safety is always on everyone’s mind, making SMS mandatory can be problematic, especially for small operations. Fortunately, if the new NPRM becomes a rule, there will be a phase-in period to give operators time to come up to speed. The FAA has a website dedicated to SMS at: https:// www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/sms/
On April 2, 2011, a Gulfstream 650 test crew perished while completing steps along that airplane’s road to certification under Title 14 of the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, Part 25 (14 CFR 25). They had been hard at work, proving the aircraft could fly the very low takeoff safety speeds predicted by its designers.
The Challenger 300 is a tough act to follow. When it made its debut in late 2003, it instantly became a modern day and more affordable successor to the Gulfstream II, with plenty of thrust, a generously sized wing and sporty performance. Similar to the GII, it had transcontinental U.S. range, a flat floor, room for eight in a double club cabin, inflight baggage access and rock-solid reliability. If it had wide oval cabin windows and a heavy-iron price tag, people might have thought it was built in Savannah, Ga., rather than Montreal.
Two FADEC-equipped, 7,323-lb. thrust AS907-2-1A engines, marketed as HTF7350 turbofans, power the aircraft. Normal takeoff thrust is available to ISA+15C. APR increases the takeoff thrust flat-rating to ISA+20C.
These graphs are designed to illustrate the performance of Challenger 350 under a variety of range, payload, speed and density altitude conditions. Do not use these data for flight planning purposes because they are gross approximations of actual aircraft performance.
Designers attempt to give exceptional capabilities in all areas, including price, but the laws of physics, thermodynamics and aerodynamics do not allow one aircraft to do all missions with equal efficiency. Tradeoffs are a reality of aircraft design.
