1st Source Bank, South Bend, Ind., has promoted Eduardo Ferreira to vice president of the Aircraft Division. He is responsible for new and used aircraft financing for international customers. Air BP, Salem, Ore., named John Nelson as it newest sales team member serving the Southeast.
Boot up your laptop computer in the cabin of some late model business aircraft and you may find you can connect with company headquarters and the outside world as easily as in your own office on the ground. That’s because there now are available a number of ground-to-airplane and satellite-to-airplane high-speed data communications links for business aircraft.
My first flight in the T-37, and I’d never seen things go by so fast. By the time we came back to the pattern, did a touch and go to an aggressive closed pull up, downwind and landing, I felt like I’d been through the spin cycle on a washing machine looking out through the window on the door. Primary got rid of all the unknowns. With the T-37 you did acro, spins, instruments, formation. And once done, you were ready. It wasn’t a honing machine. It cut the rough edges off.
Remember the built-for-comfort, not-for-speed C90 King Air? The King Air C90GT offers the same cabin, but cruises 35 to 60 knots faster, making it competitive in a race with the Pilatus PC-12. Consumers liked the difference and rewarded its manufacturer with a nearly three-fold increase in sales volume when the GT debuted in late 2005. One hundred-plus units were built between late 2005 and 2007 before the C90GT was succeeded by the C90GTi, a model with identical performance but having upgraded avionics.
Thrush Aircraft and GE Aviation announced in early December that they have signed the launch customer for the H80-powered Thrush 510. It’s a joint venture between Boschung Global AG and Inter Sinex AG of Switzerland, which plans to operate the aerial application in Kazakhstan.
Dassault Falcon has received type certification for the Falcon 7X from the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in India. The certification allows the Falcon 7X to be registered in India.
The Air Charter Safety Foundation has released its first safety review of the Part 135 on-demand air charter industry, the Part 135 Incident/Accident Review. Among its many findings, charter flights to and from oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska accounted for a disproportionate number of accidents involving Part 135 passenger operations from 2004 to 2008. Designed to track safety trends for Part 135 operators, the review revealed that passenger and cargo flights accounted for the majority of the accidents involving Part 135 revenue flights.
The recent completion of an extensive upgrade of the first of six Hawker 125-700 aircraft flown by a government agency demonstrates Hawker Beechcraft Services’ (HBS) commitment to keep this vintage jet flying, company officials say.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told the Senate Commerce Committee in December that the TSA will issue a revised Large Aircraft Security Program (LASP) rule that addresses some of the general aviation community’s concerns before the end of 2010.
Metropolitan Aviation has expanded its charter aircraft fleet to include an additional Falcon 50, Hawker 400XP and Cheyenne II turboprop, and announced plans to add a managed Gulfstream GIII. Metropolitan Aviation’s new Web site, www.metropolitanjets.com, includes an online quoting tool, details on its charter aircraft and information on aircraft acquisition, sales, maintenance, and hangar services. The company is headquartered at Manassas Regional Airport, Va. (KHEF).
Rockwell Collins received FAA certification of its HGS-6605 Head-Up Guidance System as a head-up display for Bombardier’s Challenger 605 business jet. The HGS-6605 can display the 605s Enhanced Vision System images along with flight symbology using active-matrix liquid crystal display technology.
Dennis Andersen, the president of Florida Jet Sales, is just one of a growing number of aircraft sales experts who believe that China will be the next big market for previously owned, turbine-powered airplanes. As BCA sister publication Aviation Daily recently reported, the dam holding back Chinese business aviation is breaking, raising hopes of selling large volumes of aircraft in a market that has always had great potential but little immediate value.
Your publication is hands down top flight best on the market and all business, which I like! One question regarding the November issue: How credible is this guy Richard Van Gemert? His story about falling out of the sky into the middle of the Pacific right in the lights of a surfacing sub are a little much for me to swallow. I also searched, but nothing about ditching like the story he recounts.
Bombardier Aerospace announced that because of the current economic and airline industry environments, it will be adjusting the CRJ aircraft production rate, resulting in approximately 715 layoffs in facilities in the Montreal area, starting this month. The layoffs also include a small number of layoffs due to a decrease in the Bombardier 415 amphibious aircraft production rate. The adjustment is in addition to the 4,360 layoffs previously announced this fiscal year for Bombardier Aerospace worldwide.
Hawker Beechcraft Corp. announced it received Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) type certification for the Hawker 4000 composite construction, super-midsize business jet Nov. 30. Deliveries of the aircraft into China are scheduled to begin during the first quarter of 2010.
Edward W. Stimpson, a founder and long-time president of the General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA), who went on to become the U.S. representative to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), and finally chairman of the Flight Safety Foundation, died Nov. 25 at his home in Boise, Idaho, after an extended illness.
Pilatus Business Aircraft, Ltd. announced in November that the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has taken delivery of its first Pilatus PC-12. The aircraft will perform cargo, passenger, smokejumper, air tactical, aerial supervision and lead plane firefighting missions. BLM said it estimates that owning the PC-12 will cost the government $1.5 million per year less than contracting for a similar aircraft. The BLM’s PC-12s features a utility door option.
The increase in aircraft utilization is helping bolster the aviation services business, said Jay Johnson, president and chief executive of General Dynamics. GD’s services business, including Jet Aviation and General Dynamics Aviation Services, saw business erode as flight hours plunged 17 percent through the first three quarters, Johnson said. While customers continued with “must-do” maintenance, discretionary maintenance tended to get deferred. Some of this maintenance is the more high-margin work, Johnson noted.
The FAA may have trouble attracting and keeping workers due to low morale and ineffective diversity efforts, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office. With 38 percent of “critical” employees eligible for retirement by 2013, the agency must do more to fix morale problems, the report suggested. In a 2009 survey of the best places to work in the federal government, the FAA ranked 214th out of 216 agencies.
CitationAir announced Thanksgiving week it planned to recall 16 pilots from furlough. This leaves CitationAir with 48 captains who are still downgraded to first officer and 69 pilots on furlough. “We are gratified to be able to bring back so many of our pilots at a time when the industry needs to hear some good news,” CEO Steve O’Neill said. “The significant uptick we have seen in our jet management business during this challenging year fuels our optimism for a sustained recovery of our Jet Card and Jet Shares businesses in 2010,” he said.
Wayfarer Aviation has joined the Corporate Angel Network, which arranges about 2,500 free flights per year aboard business aircraft for cancer patients in need of medical treatment. The Rye Brook, N.Y.-headquartered charter and aircraft management company joins more than 530 other corporate flight departments that support White Plains, N.Y.-based network. “Wayfarer views its Corporate Angel Network alliance as part of a long-term commitment to corporate social responsibility,” said Bill Koch, Wayfarer Aviation CEO.
Dennis Andersen, president of Florida Jet Sales, Inc. of West Palm Beach, Fla., feels confident enough in the market for previously owned turbine-powered airplanes that he has begun to inventory aircraft again. “I am sticking my toe back in the water,” he said in late November 2009.
Forecast International of Newtown, Conn. predicts that a total of 11,277 business jets, worth an estimated $197 billion, will be produced in the 10-year period from 2009 through 2018. According to the survey, announced in November, “The Market for Business Jet Aircraft,” production is expected to total approximately 825 units in 2009, followed by 738 units in 2010 and 716 in 2011.
Dassault Falcon announced it was laying off 150 employees and another 55 contract workers at its completion center in Little Rock, Ark., to align work force levels with lower sales and production rates. In April the French manufacturer cut 44 positions in its Teterboro, N.J., organization and in Little Rock. The Little Rock center already had cut 140 contract positions since the beginning of 2009. Dassault also laid off 35 employees at the Wilmington, Del., service center last November.
Pilots climbing into the CJ4 may not recognize it as a member of the CitationJet family because the flight deck redesign has been so thorough. Four, eight-by-ten inch portrait-configuration AM-LCD screens dominate the instrument panel. The stand-alone radio tuning units have been eliminated, along with the glareshield-mounted annunciator light panel and flight guidance system controls buried in the center console.
