Jet Works Air Center of Denton, Texas, has been awarded a multi-million-dollar contract to convert a Boeing MD-87 airliner into a 24-seat luxury VIP aircraft for a Middle Eastern client. The revamped twinjet will feature a luxurious cabin with a leading-edge entertainment system and Wi-Fi Internet access, said Jet Works President Trey Bryson. The MD-87, the first of this type converted by Jet Works, arrived at the completion center in mid-January.
Dennis Rousseau, president of AircraftPost.com — the Albany, N.Y.-based company that provides real-time valuations for more than 5,000 medium and large business jets — believes that aircraft prices have stabilized at roughly 25% under “a normalized market,” but that it may be up to three years before the excess inventory of used aircraft shrinks enough for airplane prices to reflect their true value. However, he cautions, “We need to be careful and not look at 2007/2008 as the ‘normal market’ to return to because prices weren’t normal; they were exaggerated.”
The Finnish Aviation Academy has received FTD 2 FNPT II MCC dual qualification for its Embraer Phenom 100 devices manufactured by Frasca International Inc. The two devices to be installed feature TruVision Global 220-deg. visual systems. A Frasca-built avionics trainer for the Phenom 100s Prodigy Flight Deck is also in use there.
Dassault has delivered more than 100 Falcon 7X trijets to operators and the fleet has logged more than 60,000 flight hours since beginning service in mid-2007, according to the firm’s records. Based on accumulated fleet experience, operators say the aircraft provides an impressive step up in range, speed and cabin comfort compared to Falcon 900 series aircraft, the models most respondents in our survey said they previously operated.
Lindbergh Foundation 34th Annual Awards: Dean Kamen, noted inventor, educator and pilot, has been selected to receive the Lindbergh Award for 2011. GE Aviation is the recipient of the Foundation’s Corporate Award for Balance, and Milbry Polk, founder and director emeritus of WINGs WorldQuest will receive the Anne Morrow Lindbergh Award.
Carter Aviation Technologies completed initial flight tests of its proof-of-concept Personal Air Vehicle (PAV), an aircraft that combines a rotor for vertical takeoff and landing with a propeller and wing for efficient high-speed flight. The four-place PAV uses Carter’s slowed rotor/compound (SR/C) technology. The rotor is unpowered, as in an autogyro, but when spun up by the engine it allows a “jump” takeoff. On landing, the energy stored in the high-inertia rotor allows the aircraft to autorotate to a “zero-roll” landing.
The FCC waived its spectrum allocation rules Jan. 26 to conditionally authorize Reston, Va.-based LightSquared to operate 40,000 high-power, ground-based 4G cell phone transmitters in a segment of the L-band previously allocated to Mobile Satellite Service (MSS), i.e. low-power satellite-to-earth service, immediately adjacent to the 1559-1610 MHz band used by GPS and other satellite navigation services.
A new VIP version of the Dornier 328 has been launched by Germany’s 328 Support Services, the type certificate holder for the twinjet regional airliner. The so-called 328DBJ, which made its debut at December’s Middle East Business Aviation show, replaces the Envoy version of the 328 and will be the standard for all future VIP conversions, says 328 Support Services.
I chose my career field on a sunny summer day outside of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, near Gatlinburg, Tenn. I was seven. We had been tooling along on a family vacation when up ahead we spotted an old, bubble front Bell 47. Beside it was a sign that read, "Helicopter Rides, $5." "Dad! Only $5! A helicopter ride! Can we? That would be sooo cool! Please."
The flight was to be a simple aerial photography mission over a large expansion construction project at Baltimore-Washington International Airport (BWI). The Bell 206B maneuvered over the work area at about 400 ft. AGL. However, soon after slowing to a hover, the helicopter did a rapid 180-deg. right turn around the mast, stopped momentarily, then continued its clockwise spin. According to one witness, the helicopter continued in a descending turn until striking the ground violently, killing both the pilot and photographer.
Jan. 16 — At approximately 2000 CST, a Cessna 172A (N7262T) was substantially damaged when it impacted terrain 1 mi. east of Smiley Johnson Municipal/Bass Field (E34), Clarendon, Texas. The pilot, the sole occupant, was seriously injured. The cross-country flight originated at Abilene Regional Airport (ABI), Abilene, Texas, at approximately 1820, and was en route to E34. It was VFR at the time of the accident. When the pilot did not return as scheduled, family members became concerned. The FAA issued an ALNOT (Alert Notice) on Jan. 16 at 2345.
Sikorsky Aircraft closed in February on an equity investment that gives the helicopter maker a minority stake in Eclipse Aerospace. The companies announced the agreement during the NBAA annual meeting and convention in October 2010, but neither party will disclose the deal’s value or the structure of Sikorsky’s holding. Sikorsky and Eclipse also entered into a “service level agreement” under which Sikorsky would provide global supply chain support and certain production restart services.
Garmin’s new Electronic Stability and Protection (ESP) system has been STCed on a Beech King Air 200. The system is designed to help pilots maintain stable flight and ward off situations that could cause stalls and spins, steep spirals or other loss-of-control conditions. The ESP acts independently of the autopilot and operates in the background when a pilot is hand-flying the aircraft. It gently nudges the controls toward stable flight whenever pitch, roll or high-speed deviations exceed recommended limits.
The FAA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System, which turns 36 this year, has firmly established itself as an integral resource for coming to terms with our own failings or alerting the authorities to potential threats to aviation safety. How many of us, having committed an unintentional mistake, say, busting an assigned altitude, or having witnessed a series of events that could ultimately snowball into an accident, reflexively thought, “I’ve got to file an ASRS report on that?”
Airbus delivered 15 corporate jets in 2010, worth more than $1.5 billion at list prices, setting a new record for this sector of its business. The company delivered 13 A318 Elites, ACJs and A320 Prestige aircraft, plus two VIP widebody A330/A340s. Airbus also won eight ACJ orders in 2010, bringing total orders to date for Airbus VIP models to more than 170 aircraft. The new orders are for seven aircraft from the A318 Elite/Airbus ACJ/A320 Prestige family, plus one widebody A330/A340.
Notably, the pilots involved in our 30-accident study were executing maneuvers quite common in everyday operations when LTE brought them down. The following accident summaries are presented to help pilots better understand this phenomenon and the common scenarios in which it can occur. Hover Out of Ground Effect (HOGE) Dec. 30, 2008, Panama City, Fla. Aircraft: Schweizer 309C Injuries: None
Duncan Aviation recently earned additional STCs for the installation of Aircell’s cabin telecommunication router, which provides Wi-Fi access in the cabin for the Gogo Biz Inflight Internet service. The new STCs apply to Hawker Beechcraft 800XP, 850XP and 900XP aircraft, as well as Dassault Falcon 2000 and Falcon 2000EX EASy airplanes.
When the young man got off the airplane, his mother hugged him lovingly, his brother gave him a familial shove, and then both stepped away alarmed, and a bit nauseous. The kid stank. More than that, he reeked in a special, terrible way, the noxious animal odor oozing from his pores seeming to have stewed within for weeks. And it had.
The Helicopter Academy to Train by Simulation of Flying (HATSOFF), a Bangalore, India-based joint venture of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and CAE, has received a CAE-built cockpit simulator for HAL Dhruv helicopter training. The system is for the civil/conventional variant of the Dhruv, but additional cockpits for the Army/Air Force variant and the Eurocopter Dauphin are expected to be added over the next year. The simulator is slated to go operational in May following Level D certification by India’s civil aviation agency.
FlightSafety International will offer Bombardier Challenger 605 training to customers in Europe at the company’s London Farnborough facility in the U.K. Training is slated to begin early next year using a new FlightSafety-built full-flight simulator. The Farnborough center can accommodate 15 simulators and train 3,800 professionals annually. The site houses training programs for Bombardier, Cessna, Gulfstream, Hawker Beechcraft and Sikorsky models.
Sikorsky Aircraft delivered two S-92 helicopters to AAR Corp. for passenger and cargo missions in Afghanistan. AAR is supporting the U.S. Transportation Command.
Dassault Falcon has promoted Mark Verdesco to director of pre-owned aircraft sales, replacing Skip Flint, who retired in December. In his new position, Verdesco is responsible for all pre-owned aircraft activity in the Western Hemisphere, including working closely with Dassault’s direct-sales teams on trade-ins and leases.
Talk about timing: Robinson Helicopter, the company that leads the world in unit production of helicopters, gets the certificate for its new Rolls-Royce RR300-powered R66 — its first turbine model — just as the global economy is showing signs of a turnaround, a competitor exits and key operators are looking for inexpensive lift. Company President and CEO Kurt L. Robinson says that his father — the company’s founder, Frank Robinson — has always made it a habit to think five years ahead. It looks like he called this one almost perfectly.
The FAA reported that incidents of lasers pointed at airplanes almost doubled nationwide in 2010, over the previous year to more than 2,800, the highest number recorded since the FAA began keeping track in 2005. Los Angeles International Airport recorded the highest number of laser events in the country for an individual airport in 2010, with 102 reports, and the greater Los Angeles area tallied nearly twice that number, with 201 reports. Chicago O’Hare International Airport was a close second, with 98 reports, and Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and Norman Y.
