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.
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.
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.
Helistream Inc. is a helicopter operator and sales organization located at John Wayne Airport (formerly Orange County) in Costa Mesa, Calif. The company was established almost 30 years ago and is owned by partners Rod Anderson and Barb Perrin, both former military helicopter pilots. Helistream is also one of Robinson’s oldest dealers.
Paragon Aviation Group announced that four new FBO members have joined its network. Effective Jan. 1, Maguire Aviation (VNY) joined Paragon and on. Feb. 1, Aero Air (HIO), Galvin Flying Service (BFI) and First Aviation Services (TEB) joined the network.
Eurocopter officially inaugurated its new North Sea Service Center in Aberdeen, Scotland, providing a training, technical support and logistics facility in close proximity to helicopter operators that support the region’s oil and gas industry — as well as the emerging wind farm sector. Eurocopter rotary-wing aircraft constitute the largest helicopter fleet in the United Kingdom. The center has a new EC225 helicopter full-flight simulator.
General Electric’s H80 engine will power the LET L410 regional turboprop aircraft under a five-year agreement signed with Czech manufacturer Aircraft Industries. GE will deliver 20+ engines per year to support new and retrofit installations on the L410-UVP-E20 twin-engine commuter aircraft. Certification on the L410 will be significant, marking GE’s entry into the air transport market with the H80 engine, developed as a competitor to Pratt & Whitney Canada’s PT6. Aircraft Industries plans to complete H80-powered L410 aircraft certification by mid-2012.
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.
Rockwell Collins is expecting business jet avionics orders to ramp up in mid-year. Airframe manufacturers have told the company to prepare for build-rate increases. “The used business jet market is getting cleared out, and manufacturers are getting ready to increase production . . . by 2012, is our current projection,” said Rockwell Collins Chairman and CEO Clay Jones in an interview with MarketWatch’s Christopher Hinton.
The FAA dedicated the new air traffic control tower at LaGuardia Airport (LGA) that will replace the distinctive tower that has symbolized the airport since 1964. The new 233-ft.-high tower is 82-ft. higher than the older tower and has an 850-sq.-ft. tower cab. The total cost to design, equip and construct the new tower was approximately $100 million.
Macquarie Infrastructure Co.’s Atlantic Aviation subsidiary has sold its fixed-base operations at Fresno Yosemite International Airport and Cleveland Cuyahoga County Airport. The Fresno facility was sold to a subsidiary of Ross Aviation. The Cleveland FBO was sold to a subsidiary of The Cleveland Jet Center.
The availability of the second-generation EASy II avionics package for the Falcon 7X now has slid to the end of 2012. The basic package includes more-powerful graphics modules, among several other hardware and software upgrades needed to support its increased functionality.
Thank you for the excellent article, “Curbing the FAA’s Enforcement Overreach” (Washington Watch, February 2011, page 59). Having survived the nightmare I appreciate that reasonable minds are trying to correct the process.
Brazil’s ANAC has certified the Bell Helicopter Model 429. This follows certification by the U.S. FAA, Transport Canada and EASA. Deliveries in Brazil will begin early this year. The helicopter was first certified as a single-pilot IFR, Category A helicopter under Part 27 airworthiness rules in mid-2009.
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.
JetMadam.com — a multiple jet-listing service based at John Wayne Airport (SNA) in Newport Beach, Calif. — bills itself as “a new website for buyers, brokers and industry professionals looking for a fresh approach to marketing private jets.” The main attraction of the website is the “Photo of the Month” tab, where visitors can view several pictures of attractive women standing in front of a business jet for sale and vote for their favorite image.
Abu Dhabi’s Al Bateen Executive Airport reported a 36% increase in civil operations in 2010, compared with 2009. Officials credit the increase to their success in attracting corporate and VIP clients to the only business aviation airport in the region. “The year-end performance report for Al Bateen Executive Airport indicated that the airport registered 7,970 commercial aircraft movements in 2010,” says General Manager Steve Jones.
Rockwell Collins has opened its China System Support Center in Shanghai for fundamental and advanced engineering, program management training, systems integration and avionics system consulting. A major Comac C919 supplier, Rockwell Collins expects to expand its reach in China with the support center. The company is providing the 150-seat jet’s communication, navigation, surveillance, cabin management, inflight entertainment and simulator components.
BAE Systems is increasingly optimistic about selling its aircraft as corporate shuttles, reports BCA sister publication Aviation Daily. “We had a pretty upbeat year [in 2010], and we are pretty upbeat going into 2011,” said Steve Doughty, senior vice president of sales and marketing asset management at BAE Systems Regional Aircraft.
China began authorizing some private helicopter flights without prior approval on an experimental basis in January on the southern island of Hainan, state media reported. Four helicopters, flown by eight pilots, will take part in the initial two-month experiment, the official Xinhua news agency said. Private aircraft currently need to have flight plans approved by the authorities, a process that can take from a day to a week, according to Xinhua.
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.”
Another encroachment on FAA authority over air commerce. The National Park Service (NPS) has drafted a plan to restrain aircraft activity over Grand Canyon National Park (GCNP). The plan calls for new limits on the number of air tour operations, hours of their flights and minimum altitudes. The NPS draft environmental impact statement (DEIS), which covers air tour flights and calls for the “substantial restoration of natural quiet” over GCNP, is open for public review. Comments are due June 6.
Gulfstream Aerospace has purchased a building to house its growing research and development program. The 253,000-sq.-ft. facility is located adjacent to the company’s R&D campus in Crossroads Business Park, near its headquarters at Savannah-Hilton Head International Airport. The acquisition is part of an expansion plan Gulfstream announced last November that includes building new facilities at the northwest quadrant of the airport, renovating several existing facilities on the main headquarters campus and expanding office and lab facilities at the R&D center.
