The CEO and the chief financial officer of Honeywell Aerospace have left the company for greener pastures. Honeywell Aerospace CEO Rob Gillette left to head First Solar, an Arizona-based manufacturer of solar and photovoltaic modules, Honeywell said in a statement. CFO Bob Hau is leaving to be CFO of Lennox International, a Texas-based heating and cooling equipment manufacturer, that company announced. Honeywell has appointed Tim Mahoney to lead its aerospace division. Mahoney was formerly chief technology officer of Honeywell Aerospace.
ExecuJet Aviation Group, Zurich, Switzerland, appointed Mark Abbott as ExecuJet Group FBO director based at the Cape Town facility. Graham Stephenson, the company’s head of FBOs, has retired after an aviation career spanning almost 50 years — 21 years in commercial aviation and 23 years in business aviation.
Lee County Port Authority, Fort Myers, Fla., announced that Katherine (Kitty) Green has been appointed to the Lee County Port Authority Airport Special Management Committee.
Pilots, by nature, tend to skew toward the paranoid parameter of the bell curve when tested by psychologists, and that’s actually a good trait. It means they double-check things like the weather and fuel load with their own eyes. Pilots keep an ace up their sleeve, a Plan B, because experience has taught them that instruments fail, engines quit, wings stall and weather goes down the tubes. An overly doe-eyed trusting disposition could easily slide toward the edge of liability — if not oblivion — when the daily job demands overcoming gravity.
Jet Aviation, Zurich, Switzerland, named Frank Kusserow as the new director and head of FBO services for EMEA and Asia. He will continue in his role as director of the Jet Aviation FBO in Dusseldorf, Germany.
Three primary documents will need to be arranged before heading to the PRC: a permit for the trip, visas for passengers and crew, and if headed to any of the aforementioned remote locations, permits to access restricted airports or military bases.
There has been some confusion among international operators lately concerning slot restrictions at Beijing Capital International Airport (ZBAA). Matt Pahl, assistant manager of operations for Air Routing International at Houston, cleared it up. “Earlier this year, [the CAAC] told the business aviation community that they could not support continuous operations through the day. Consequently, they have no general aviation slots available between 1100 and 1700 local, and you can obtain only one slot between 0800 and 1100, and 1700 and 2200.
That photograph on your driver’s license is probably your least favorite likeness, but the chances are it never affected you the way Joshua Doyle’s did. His driver’s license portrait changed his life.
A new mobile Advance Passenger Information System (APIS) from 3M provides charter companies, general aviation operators and FBOs — including trip support and corporate flight handling operators — an accurate, fast, portable and flexible way to collect, store, validate and transmit APIS data for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) passenger screening with forwarding to TSA for vetting. The DHS require submission of electronic notices of arrival and departure of international flights for private and general aviation and electronic passenger and crew manifests.
Aviation veterans John and Martha King are encouraging entrepreneurs who rely on a light airplane for business to join the NBAA and get involved. In a recent blog post, the Kings urged operators to join the NBAA’s advocacy efforts on behalf of the industry and attend the Light Business Airplane (LBA) Conference at the NBAA Convention in Orlando, Oct. 20 to 22. The Kings will be recognized there with the NBAA’s American Spirit Award for representing business aviation before Congress and the TSA.
“After almost nine months of no pre-owned market activity, the Legacy market showed its first signs of life,” according to the second-quarter edition of Business Air International’s Embraer Market Newsletter. The Texas-based aircraft acquisition, sales and brokerage company, which specializes in handling Embraer Legacy and Lineage aircraft, noted in August that three sales, valued at between $16.5 million and $18.5 million, have been concluded recently.
Aerospace Filtration Systems, Inc. and Metro Aviation have partnered on the development of a Eurocopter EC135 Inlet Barrier Filter system. The IBF system features multiple long-life filter assemblies that are internally mounted to the existing EC135 cowlings, resulting in no drag penalties and no potential for environmental harm associated with mounted designs. The STCed product is scheduled for certification in time for Heli-Expo 2010.
The FAA has awarded Piper Aircraft Type Certificate Organization Designation Authorization (TC-ODA), authorizing Piper to act on behalf of the FAA in approving airplane designs and certifying that they conform to FAA airworthiness standards. TC-ODA is similar to the previous FAA standard, Delegation Option Authorization (DOA) that Piper held.
Atlanta’s Peachtree City Falcon Field got a name change to Atlanta Regional Airport as of Oct. 1.The Peachtree City Airport Authority voted to make the change in an effort to rebrand the airport, Aviation Director John Crosby said.
Eight airlines have struck a multiyear agreement with Rentech, Inc. and Aircraft Service International Group to receive up to 1.5 million gallons of synthetic diesel (RenDiesel) for ground service equipment operations at Los Angeles International Airport. The agreement followed shortly after ASTM International approved the use of a synthetic fuel that Rentech develops for commercial airline use. The fuel will be delivered beginning in late 2012. Rentech will supply its fuel produced from green waste at a planned Renewable Energy Center in Rialto, Calif.
New fibers for structural composites that are more than twice as strong as carbon fiber are the goal of a new U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program. Proposals are being sought for the Advanced Structural Fiber program, which aims to demonstrate small-scale manufacturing of fibers with a tensile (breaking) strength of 1,800 ksi and tensile modulus (the point beyond which a stretched fiber will not return to its original length) of 60 msi. By comparison, carbon fiber used in the Boeing 787 has a strength of 710 ksi and modulus of 34 msi.
Amid a round of layoffs at Cirrus Aircraft, the company confirmed that co-founder Alan Klapmeier was no longer involved with the company. Klapmeier had not come to terms with Cirrus on a plan to acquire the Cirrus Vision Jet program, and he left when his contract as board chairman expired in August.
The architect Frank Lloyd Wright once observed, “The truth is more important than the facts.” He clearly would have appreciated business aviation because truth is business aircraft are extremely valuable tools, but the economic facts behind them and their alternatives are often misunderstood, misstated or unknown. With that in mind, let me offer some truths that relate to business aviation economics:
The Aircraft Electronics Association believes that the FAA potential rulemaking requiring repair stations, air carriers and manufacturers to develop and implement safety management systems (SMS) is imposing a significant additional burden without any financial, administration or administrative benefit to AEA members. The association is encouraging its members and the aviation industry to respond in that tenor to the FAA call for public comments. Read the AEA regulatory update and commentary at the association’s Web site. The comment deadline is Oct. 21, 2009.
Bombardier CL-600, -601 and -601-3A airplanes — Inspect the air-driven generator power feeder harness to determine if the wires are made of aromatic polyimide. If the wires are aromatic polyimide, replace the harness before further flight.
The helicopter EMS industry has questions about several of the NTSB’s 19 proposed safety recommendations aimed at minimizing the risks of HEMS operations issued at a Sept. 1 Safety Board meeting in Washington, D.C. While helicopter industry leaders found few surprises in the recommendations regarding civil medevac operations, they questioned the time frames of many of them. Some were taken aback by one directed to federal Medicare and Medicaid services’ payment practices.
