The midday Underground ride out to Heathrow International Airport from central London takes slightly less than an hour. One day last July, as I sat sweating with other commuters packed into an un-air-conditioned train, I contemplated the meeting I was traveling to attend.
AgustaWestland’s AW139 won Russian civil certification. The medium twin helicopter successfully met MAK requirements, the company announced Sept. 17. Russian civil certification has already been received for the single engine AW119Ke as well as the AW109 Power and Grand light twin models. The first order for the AW139 in Russia was placed by HeliClub in May of this year. and the helicopter will be used to perform corporate and passenger transport missions.
Embraer delivered a Lineage 1000 executive jet in early September to the Al Habtoor Group of Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). The aircraft is to be managed and operated by Royal Jet, based in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The deal was originally announced in July 2008.
Private aviation company and Embraer Phenom jet operator, Executive AirShare of Kansas City, Mo., launched an enhanced website, “www.execairshare.com” that includes news and information about its regional fractional aircraft ownership programs and a trip cost estimator, enabling aviators to estimate round-trip costs from Executive’s regional bases to any city in North America.
AgustaWestland has delivered the first of four AW119Ke single-engine helicopters to the Finnish Border Guard to perform various missions, including border patrol, special operations and firefighting.
Air traffic controller trainees at the FAA academy in Oklahoma City are already learning to use NextGen satellite-based technology. “It’s our future,” Lindy Ritz, administrator of the FAA Academy told the Oklahoman newspaper. Initial ADS-B operational capability has been achieved over the Gulf of Mexico under the control of Houston ARTCC.
Sandel’s HeliTAWS has won TSO approval from the FAA. The helicopter terrain safety system incorporates Sandel Avionics’ proprietary TrueAlert technology, which is designed to eliminate nuisance alerts, a significant problem with existing terrain-warning products that limits their usefulness in helicopter operations. With TrueAlert, Sandel claims that pilots can safely take off, cruise, hover and land at off-airport locations without triggering nuisance alerts, while still receiving the benefits of Class-A terrain warnings during the entire flight.
The Challenger 604 has 3,700-plus nm range, a cabin with a commodious cross section, good payload and good fuel efficiency. This also is an aircraft that has jetliner-like features that are well suited to transoceanic missions, including a split-bus AC electrical system, triple-redundant hydraulic system, fully powered flight controls and dual ACM packs. From 1996 to 2006, Bombardier delivered 366 of these versatile large-cabin aircraft.
It was bad enough that nobody could pronounce the name of the late spring volcano that erupted in Iceland and disrupted air travel throughout Europe. What was worse is that nobody really knew what to do about it. For European operators of airlines and charter aircraft, the meter kept running on their cost of overhead while their passenger and freight revenues dropped to zero. In response to a threat of which they had little, if any, knowledge, government agencies simply closed airports and airspace because shutting everything down seemed like the safe course.
There are people way behind the eight ball . . . in panic mode. There is a whole list of issues, and operators are fed up. They say, ‘Here’s another regulation. It takes time. It takes money. Why do I need it? I haven’t had an accident.’” The speaker is one of the many who deal with the safety management system (SMS) issue on a daily basis. And no operator wants to go on record expressing anything negative on the subject. “It sounds as if we’re against safety,” as one put it.
Pan Am International Flight Academy acquired the training and simulator assets of Miami-based Aeroservice Aviation Center, the company announced Sept. 15. Aeroservice’s simulators will be integrated into Pan Am’s system and positioned where they most effectively serve customers. Aeroservice’s Miami training center will become Pan Am’s seventh training facility and will operate under Pan Am’s FAR Part 142 certificate. Pan Am, with the exception of a Cessna Caravan simulator in Memphis, focuses on heavy-iron training.
A Sensis Corp. team has advice for airport officials who want more capacity. Matthew Blake, director of strategic initiatives for advanced development at Sensis said, “New vehicles are the mechanism to do that.” Five aircraft types: cruise-efficient STOL transports, large commercial tiltrotors, UASs, VLJs and SSTs have potential for a strong impact at airports in urban areas, including major hubs and surrounding regional airports,
DART Helicopter Services (DHS), a distributor of certified helicopter accessories, and Hawker Pacific Aerospace have signed an agreement that will give DHS the capability to offer its complete inventory to operators in Hawker Pacific’s markets (Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Dubai), supplementing its operations in North and South America, Europe, Japan, China and Singapore. DART Helicopter Services www.darths.com Hawker Pacific Aerospace www.hawker.com
As the northern hemisphere slips into the cold seasons, cautious pilots will review the ice protection information located in their airplane’s documentation (AFM, POH, etc.) and their company’s winter operating procedures. Ice destroys lift and chokes off power. Ice takes down large aircraft and small. Ice is insidious. Small amounts of barely visible ice on a modern high-performance wing can glue your airplane to the ground and send you rolling off the end of the departure runway at takeoff velocity with no options and lousy prospects.
Nextant Aerospace expected to fly its remanufactured Beechjet 400 for the first time in early September, and the Cleveland-area company anticipates certification of the upgraded light jet during first quarter 2011.
She seemed frail and delicate, but was alert throughout the proceedings, which her bright eyes followed with keen interest. At the tables filling the ballroom sat a mixture of young, less young and middle-aged, with an ample portion of white-haired or bald-domed seniors, some stooped, some hard of hearing, but all smiling, clearly glad to be there. This was the Wichita Aero Club’s second annual dinner dance and the evening’s highlight was the inaugural presentation of the club’s trophy to Mrs. Velma Wallace, the diminutive nonagenarian sitting opposite me.
Sorry to say, but if your aircraft is equipped with a multifunction display (MFD), it may be impossible to use the CAL control effectively. That's because MFD designers are ignorant of the many things a radar will do in the hands of a savvy pilot. They seem to assume radar gets used only when storms are about. They don't understand it can be used to back up VORs, GPS, GPWS, TAWS, aircraft attitude and even aircraft altitude agl.
Six Predator UAVs are sitting in their shipping crates in Grand Forks, N.D., due to a dispute between military authorities and the FAA. The military is demanding a 31-by-45-mi. restricted training area for UAV operations and the FAA won’t go beyond a waiver agreement similar to that on the Southern border, fearing loss of operator control similar to the Aug. 2 incident where operators lost contact with a unmanned helicopter for 30 min. as it wandered toward the National Capital district.
L-3 Avionics Systems’ Trilogy ESI-2000 3 ATI electronic standby instrument with battery backup won FAA TSO authorization, the company announced Aug. 13. The all-solid-state ESI-2000 provides primary flight display information for a minimum of one hour and up to four hours of backup power, depending on temperature if primary power is lost. A 3.7-in. backlit screen makes the ESI-2000 clearly visible in daylight or dark cockpit conditions.
A new program is using the 66-spacecraft Iridium constellation to provide continuous, global monitoring of space weather. The Active Magnetosphere and Planetary Electrodynamics Response Experiment (Ampere),is a collaboration between the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), Iridium and Boeing.
In a move reflecting the challenging market confronting its membership of aircraft brokers and dealers, the National Aircraft Resale Association is shuttering its headquarters office at Reagan Washington National Airport, and parting with long time president Susan Sheets. “A lot of it is driven by cost,” NARA Chairman Steve Gade told BCA Aug. 17. He said NARA headquarters was officially transferring to Grapevine, Texas, which “is logical” since it is home to the organization’s meeting planner, Devri Surpless.
Everett, Wash.-based AeroMech Inc. is helping Mid-Continent Instruments of Wichita obtain an STC for the installation of Mid-Continent’s MD835 lithium ion battery in a variety of general aviation aircraft, including the Beech King Air 200 and 300 and several Citation models. AeroMech, which provides engineering consulting services, is overseeing the initial battery installation in a King Air 200.
The FAA has granted an STC for Garmin’s G1000 integrated flight deck in the Cessna CitationJet (Model 525, serial numbers 0001-0359). The RVSM-compliant system will save approximately 100 lb. of weight, and will give pilots the advantages of flying WAAS approaches with Garmin’s GFC 700 autopilot, electronic charts, data link weather and optional Synthetic Vision Technology. (See related story on page 38.)
Montreal-based aviation services firm Zenith Jet is predicting that Cessna will reinitiate the Columbus program with an entry-into-service date of 2016. In its recently released 10-year forecast, Zenith believes Cessna will account for 35% of all business jet deliveries, giving it the largest share of business jet unit volume. Embraer will move into the “Number 2 spot” in terms of unit deliveries, capturing 18 percent of the market share, Zenith forecasts.
