Honeywell is expanding its partnership with Inmarsat, signing a five-year agreement to serve as a “master distributor” of the GX Aviation inflight connectivity services for the business aviation market. Honeywell previously had signed an agreement to develop and provide hardware for the services using Inmarsat's planned Global Xpress satellite system. But the new agreement marks Honeywell's first entry into distribution of the actual service itself. Inmarsat has selected OnAir and Gogo to provide the service to the commercial airlines.
The first time I saw Neil Armstrong in person was in Bethpage, N.Y., not too long after he, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins plopped into the Pacific, ending their historic Apollo 11 moon mission. He and Aldrin had come to Grumman's Long Island “Iron Works” where their lunar module was conceived, designed and built. A local newspaper reporter, I was excited to witness the visit.
The embarrassing thing about international procedures is what a tiny percentage business aviation represents in terms of flights [about 6%] but what a large percentage we are in terms of operational errors,” lamented Nat Iyengar, captain and safety officer for a major corporate flight department. “Most of that comes down to bad procedures,” Iyengar continued. “We are too casual about the crossings due to the automation of our airplanes.” By “operational errors,” Iyengar was referring to:
Bombardier Aerospace announced September 28 that it has received orders for a total of eight Global business jets from an undisclosed customer. The firm orders are for four Global 6000 and four Global 8000 aircraft. The customer had asked to remain unidentified. The transaction is valued at approximately $500 million based on the 2012 list price for typically equipped aircraft.
Algae.Tec Ltd. and Lufthansa have signed a collaboration agreement to construct a large-scale algae-to-aviation biofuels production facility. The site will be in Europe, adjacent to an industrial CO2 source. Lufthansa will arrange 100% funding for the project. Algae.Tec will manage the project and receive license fees and profits from the project. Lufthansa has committed to a long-term offtake of at least 50% of the crude oil produced at an agreed price.
Cockpit Apps has launched iLOG, an app that provides flight crews an alternative to traditional pen and paper flight logs. According to the company, the easy-to-configure app follows a crew through a typical duty day, tracking critical components such as duty and flight time, VOR checks and RVSM altimeter settings. The app is also configured to record squawks as well as engine, airframe and component time. At the end of each day, crews can either electronically sign the documents using an iPad digital signature and email their flight logs to dispatch, or print them out.
Sikorsky has delivered the first two of 16 S-92 offshore-support helicopters to the U.K.'s Bond Aviation Group. Once completed at Sikorsky's Coatesville, Penn. commercial helicopter facility, the aircraft will be delivered in January to new Bond subsidiary Norsk Helikopterservice in Stavanger, Norway. The first two S-92s are being delivered four months earlier than planned when the 16-aircraft order was signed in December 2011, to help Bond compete as a third player in the Norwegian North Sea market, says Richard Mintern, CEO for the U.K., Northern Europe and Australia.
ETS Aviation has formed a carbon trading partnership with CF Partners (U.K.) LLP, a London commodities trading house that specializes in the trading of carbon emissions credits. ETS Aviation's “Carbon Exchanger” will provide airlines and aviation operators with access to the carbon market regardless of their size or the volume of credits they are looking to trade. www.etsaviation.com
Robinson Helicopter received FAA certification for the R66 Turbine Police Helicopter. The R66 Police model is specially configured for law enforcement and meets the latest FAA crashworthiness regulations. The turnkey R66 Police comes standard with FAA-approved technology including the FLIR Ultra 8000 thermal imaging camera, a 10-in. fold-down color monitor, the new Spectrolab SX-7 searchlight with 30-million candlepower and a dual audio controller.
Ascension Air, Atlanta, announced that Jamail Larkins, president and CEO, was reappointed by the FAA as honorary ambasssador for Aviation and Space Education. Banyan Air Service, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., announced that George Tucker is the director of the Banyan Pilot Shop, responsible for the shop and banyanpilotshop.com.
While a University of Calgary undergrad in the 1970s, I flew ag planes in the summer. My boss, Bob Lukens, had good relations with the Hutterite community in rural Irma, convincing them that aerial spraying of their 5,000 acres of grain was a sound investment. While the religious group was close-knit and ultraconservative in speech and dress, their farming practices were some of the most modern in Alberta.
On May 11, 1996, a ValuJet Airlines DC-9 departed Miami International Airport bound for Hartsfield International Airport, Atlanta. Shortly after takeoff, the crew was alerted by an electrical problem, rapidly followed by systems dropping offline and smoke in the cockpit. While making emergency calls to the tower, voices in the background could be heard shouting that the aircraft was on fire. The aircraft was cleared for an immediate return to Miami.
A full-scale mockup of the new Beechcraft Model 120 turboprop was shown to Beech distributors and the aviation press in Wichita recently. Powered by two Turbomeca Bastan VI engines, with Ratier-Figeac propellers, the prototype is slated to fly in 1964 with production to begin shortly thereafter.
Eclipse Aerospace announced an anti-skid braking system (ABS) as a new option for the Eclipse twin-engine very light jet. The new ABS is available as an option on new production Eclipse 550 jets and will be offered as a retrofit to the existing fleet. In-aircraft testing is complete with certification and availability expected within six months. ABS allows for maximum braking energy and skid control without the need for a conventional hydraulic system, which is unique to the Eclipse Jet.
Piper Aircraft and Aircraft Technical Publishers (ATP) announced that beginning Dec. 5, 2012, access to all Piper maintenance publications and regulatory documents will be available exclusively through the ATP Aviation Hub Online Service and ATP's NavigatorV Desktop Platform. Piper says ATP's single integrated solution offers several advantages for users including learning one simple software platform for publication access, daily revision updates to all content, and eliminating the cost of installing and managing software.
Bombardier Aerospace has opened a Regional Support Office in Moscow (Denisovskiy Pereulok, 26, Moscow), operated by Bombardier Aerospace Service Russia LLC. It will serve as a regional support hub for commercial aircraft customers in Russia and the CIS. According to the company, when the office is fully staffed it will include support resources for operators of Bombardier business aircraft and have as many as 15 customer service managers, liaison pilots, field service reps and mobile response technicians.
The Carlyle Group is set to buy the FBO chain it helped create nearly three decades ago. But its reacquisition of Landmark Aviation comes at a price believed to be $200 million more than when Carlyle sold the chain five years ago. Carlyle and Landmark owners GTCR and Platform Partners announced the sale on Sept. 14, but did not disclose terms of the agreement, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter. Carlyle sold Landmark in August 2007 to Dubai Aerospace under a $1.9 billion package deal that also included StandardAero.
Since many pilots, even some very experienced ones, admit they are not completely aware of the real nature of the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) and its ground-based counterpart Local Area Augmentation System (LAAS), we offer a brief primer. WAAS is a Space-Based Augmentation System (SBAS), as is Europe's EGNOS, India's GAGAN and Japan's MSAS. All are intended to be compatible and even interoperable.
I had a nice chuckle over the first paragraph of “Day Trippers” (Viewpoint, September 2012, page 9). I know what I would've done with my shoe if that smart-!@# said the same to me. It sounds like a great journey to the West Coast. Your story is just another reminder of why I am happy I took the corporate route for my career. Thanks for sharing and thanks for the laugh! Captain/Safety Advisor SCANA Corp. Columbia, S.C.
China's Kunming Changshui International Airport, located in the southwest China, has installed a custom built-in airport bird control manufactured by Bird-X. The first device used was the BroadBand Pro, an electronic device that combines sonic and ultrasonic broadcasts to repel birds up to six acres. The ultrasonic frequencies are nearly silent to humans. The second device was the Mega Blaster Pro, a highly powerful sonic bird control system that uses intermittent distress calls to create a “danger zone” that frightens birds away for good.
Mark A. Carolla Airlines, Rail, Maritime & International Affairs Consultant Pierce, Pugliese & Carolla Air Analytics LLC (Herndon, Va. )
The “Fast Five” interview with the Reason Foundation's Robert Poole (September 2012, page 25) prompted this letter. Back when I was a kid traveling the New York State Thruway, my late dad used to point out the billboards facing the Thruway and the New York Central Railroad's main line, which taunted, “You'd be there by now if you flew Mohawk!” That was true — and Mohawk Airlines eventually eclipsed the passenger train as a means of getting around the Empire State for day business travelers.
NASA's Langley Research Center, Mitre and several partners have completed the first in a series of inflight evaluations of cooperative automatic sense-and-avoid (SAA) algorithms for unmanned air systems (UAS), in large part to validate a new testbed that will be used for more advanced trials next year. SAA is regarded as one of the top priorities — and one of the most difficult issues to solve — in the FAA and Defense Department's effort to safely integrate manned and unmanned aircraft in civil airspace.
Rockwell Collins' new GLU-925 Multi-Mode Receiver (MMR) enables operators to take advantage of evolving RNP/RNAV and ADS-B capabilities. It fulfills the requirements for aircraft navigation position source, Category III ILS, Category I Global Positioning Landing System (GLS) and accessing RNP/RNAV airspace (down to RNP Authorization Required 0.1). It also meets the GPS position and availability requirements for ADS-B Out mandates.
