At NBAA, Embraer unveiled its new Legacy 650, an improved version of the popular super mid-sized Legacy 600 that can fly 3,900 nm, some 500 nm farther than the Legacy 600 with the same payload and better performance, or that can carry another 2,500 pounds of payload over the same 3,400-nm range of the 600.
If you need help with planning and defending your technician-training budget, both the NBAA and International Business Aviation Council (IBAC) have material to assist. The NBAA Management Guide (www.nbaa.org/admin/management-guide/ ) contains recommended best practices for maintenance technician training as well as helpful information on a number of maintenance-related topics. Meanwhile, the International Standard for Business Aircraft Operations (IS-BAO) developed by IBAC is recognized worldwide as a source for industry best practices (www.ibac.org/isbao.php).
To most people flying boats mean majestic Pan Am Clippers. But to me they’re cramped, hard-used machines, tepid coffee from a thermos and bologna sandwiches.
On Sept. 18, the FAA granted TSO authorization for Aspen Avionics’ EFD500 MFD, its EFD1000 MFD and the EWR50 Evolution Weather Receiver. With certification and production authority in hand, Aspen immediately began shipping the products to its dealers.
Forty-four percent of available fractional business jet fleet shares remained unsold at the beginning of September. Excluding card programs, the 66-percent level of purchased shares is significantly lower compared to 71 percent a year ago and to the historical average of 73 percent, according to a UBS Business Jet Report issued in September. New share sales, including renewals, are off 50 percent from the recent peak in 2007, it said.
There is no doubt that business aviation operations are facing challenging economic times, and tough decisions are being made at every level of management. Some flight departments have been closed or greatly scaled back, and others face uncertain futures. Aviation has always been a cyclical industry and many of us old-timers have weathered the roller coaster of highs and lows many times. The certainty of change is the only constant.
Carl Janssens, editor of the Aircraft Bluebook Price Digest, stated in the autumn edition of his publication, “Aircraft values reported in the previous quarter were in a spiral dive, but the economy’s pilot now appears to have neutralized the rapid descent.”
The NBAA presented the USAF auxiliary, Civil Air Patrol, with its Al Ueltschi Humanitarian Award in recognition of the organization’s efforts to provide disaster relief for people and communities in times of crisis at the NBAA’s 62nd Annual Meeting and Convention in Orlando. “The Civil Air Patrol provides an essential service to this country, by supplying not just aircrews, but also ground teams, doctors, nurses, paramedics and others to support rescue efforts following a disaster,” said NBAA President and CEO Ed Bolen.
Frasca International received FAA Level 7 qualification on its AS350 B2 helicopter flight training device (FTD) installed at FlightSafety International’s helicopter learning center in Tucson, Ariz. Frasca also is designing and building a Sikorsky S-76C++ helicopter simulator training device for Era Training Center in Lake Charles, La. That device, the third ordered by Era, will be Level 6 qualified. Era also uses Frasca trainers for the EC135 helicopter.
Russian Helicopters, JSC, the managing body of the consolidated Russian helicopter industry, is getting ready to start taking orders for its modernized Mi-8 helicopter, the Mi-8M, with first deliveries planned for 2013. Russian Helicopters is still receiving orders for M-8/17s equipped with the Transas IBK-17 integrated glass cockpit. With the planned major modifications, the company expects the Mi-8 series will remain viable in the global market until at least 2020.
We have all seen it: Just days after the city repaves the street, a utility company tears through the pavement to repair a failed line. Road work on the FARs works the same way. On Aug. 21, the FAA published a major revision to Part 61, many years in the making. On Aug. 31, the FAA published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking proposing another 16 revisions to Part 61.
Most people in the aviation community know Rick Longlott as the president of Steamboat Jets, a charter brokerage and management company in Colorado. What they don’t know is that he’s one of an elite corps of skiing instructors in the United States certified to instruct disabled people in the unique techniques of adaptive skiing. For someone who didn’t even start skiing until he enrolled in a class in college, he’s come a long way.
A turbine-powered DC-3 had just undergone major maintenance on its propellers, night was falling and the pilots were in a hurry to get home. So, rather than conduct a maintenance test flight to a nearby airport, they decided the flight from Boise, Idaho, to their home base in Missoula, Mont., would serve the same purpose. They did an engine run-up and everything looked good, and minutes later they were winging their way home.
After a Maryland State Police medevac helicopter crashed while on approach to Andrews Air Force Base in November 2008 killing four people (only the patient survived), Tom Judge, CEO of LifeFlight of Maine was asked to participate in a state panel to review and make recommendations regarding the emergency medical protocols for the use of medevac transport of trauma patients from the scene of an incident. “That was a brave thing for Maryland to do,” he says. “They took a lot of heat and this was no whitewash. They took a good hard look at the industry.”
CRS Jet Spares, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., welcomes Stephanie Wilson to its team in the role of marketing coordinator. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, Fla., announced that Dr. Frank Ayers has been selected as executive vice president for its Prescott, Ariz., campus replacing Dan Carrell, who is retiring after 23 years in campus leadership at Embry-Riddle Prescott.
On a cold, rainy IMC night in November 1993, a 13-year-old Bell 206L was en route from the rural coastal community of Ellsworth, Maine, with a 70-year-old burn victim, two medical specialists and a pilot aboard. The helicopter ran out of fuel and crashed into Casco Bay, a few miles from Portland General Hospital, its destination. The pilot survived, but the three others aboard died. Search efforts located two of the passengers four days later in the submerged, inverted helicopter.
A move by China to loosen airspace restrictions on business jets could help fuel a demand recovery in that market, a Wall Street analyst says. Morgan Stanley’s Heidi Wood says the government’s decision last month to reduce the requirement to file civil flight plans to hours — instead of days or weeks — could be the spark that finally opens China’s lucrative but long-elusive bizjet market. The change was “made so quietly its true consequences have yet to be realized,” she wrote in a research note issued Oct.
Senior FAA officials emphatically say they are committed to take account of the recent RTCA report on ATC modernization efforts and will use its findings to reshape NextGen priorities and make better use of existing technologies. The findings of an RTCA industry/government task force give the FAA “an excellent head start on the acceleration” of the modernization program, said FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt at the annual Air Traffic Control Association conference.
The FAA’s Customer Service Initiative is dead. Long live the Consistency and Standardization Initiative. FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt announced a new focus on improving the agency’s response to public safety complaints and internal whistle-blowers, as well as remedying its notoriously inconsistent interpretation of agency regulations and policies. The FAA’s new Consistency and Standardization Initiative (CSI) began life as the Customer Service Initiative in 2004.
By definition, low-level wind shear is a localized meteorological event occurring below 2,000 feet of altitude when an aircraft encounters rapidly changing wind speed or direction over a particular distance or time. When the encounter occurs at very low altitude — say, at takeoff or landing — there’s a very real possibility of the pilot losing control.
The U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy conduct “functional check flights” to determine whether an aircraft, engine, accessories or equipment works according to established standards. Some of the situations requiring a check flight include: After completion of aircraft rework; After the installation or reinstallation of an engine, propeller, propeller governor, major fuel system component, helicopter drive train, transmission or gearbox; When a fixed flight surface has been installed or reinstalled;
EADS and Eurocopter have signed a cooperation agreement with the sovereign wealth fund SAMRUK-KAZYNA to create a public-private joint venture in Kazakhstan to develop helicopter services. The project includes both European and Kazakh partners. The signing took place during the recent official visit of French President Nicolas Sarkozy to Kazakhstan. The joint venture will transfer skills to local partners to develop an indigenous helicopter service industry in Kazakhstan.
Project Phoenix has delivered its first Phoenix CRJ to a Macau-based businessman. The delivery took place on Aug. 24 at the Flying Colours Corp. completion facility in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada.
