The NTSB has listed “Reduce Accidents and Incidents Caused by Human Fatigue” on its “Most Wanted” list for nearly 20 years now and wants the FAA to “set working hour limits for flight crews, aviation mechanics and air traffic controllers based on fatigue research, circadian rhythms, and sleep and rest requirements and to develop a fatigue awareness and countermeasures program for air traffic controllers.” Recent accidents have once again brought attention to the matter of human fatigue as a factor, along with a call for action.
July 18 — At approximately 1905 CDT, a 1944 twin-engine Beech TC-45J (N6688), was destroyed during a forced landing after a loss of engine power near Verdel, Neb. The pilot sustained serious injuries and the passenger was fatally injured. The airplane was registered to and operated by the pilot. It was VFR and there was no flight plan filed for the local pleasure flight that originated from the pilot’s private airstrip in Lynch, Neb., at an undetermined time. The airplane came to rest in a clearing and a post-impact fire consumed the fuselage.
American Eurocopter cut the ribbon for a new, state-of-the-art Customer Service and Fleet Operations Center (CSFC) during the company’s 40th anniversary celebration at its Grand Prairie, Texas, headquarters in July. The CFSC will be linked to facilities in Europe and Asia, providing customers with the global-scale logistics and technical support capabilities of Eurocopter. The company also has ongoing investments in local repair and overhaul capabilities, a growing local supply chain, and an extensive investment in training and simulation services.
Patrick Veillette completely missed my “tongue-in-cheek” comment about the Citation’s safety (Letters, August, page 11). My point was that you quoted one set of statistics that completely contradicted the assumption made in the next paragraph. In your reply to my letter, you say that the statement “five of 59 fatal LOC accidents involved single-pilot operations” is a flawed inference. It was in fact your statement.
The U.K. Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) believes a Eurocopter Super Puma AS332L2 might have been pulled from service before it crashed into the North Sea April 1 if the relevance of a metal chip found in the gearbox module days before the accident had been diagnosed differently. On July 16, the AAIB made that finding as a result of its continuing investigation of the failure of the epicyclic reduction gearbox module on the Super Puma involved in the accident.
King Aerospace, Addison, Texas, has reorganized its commercial aircraft operations and appointed Jim Thompson as general manager and Buddy Tobin as senior project manager.
Carl Dietrich CEO and CTO, Terrafugia, Inc., Woburn, Mass. A private pilot at 17, Dietrich pursued his aviation passion in a rigorous intellectual way by winning entry to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. There he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees and then went on to gain a Ph.D. He was awarded the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for Innovation, and worked at the university, spending a total of a dozen years there before cofounding Terrafugia with four other MIT grads who are also pilots.
Embraer began deliveries of its entry level Phenom 100 executive jet in Brazil at the end of June. The first customers to receive the aircraft were Algar Aviation, from Uberlândia; Minas Gerais, for its charter operations; Wellborn Participações, from Londrina, Paraná; and Locar Guindastes e Transportes Intermodais, from São Paulo. The latter two will be using their Phenoms as corporate aircraft. Of the 800-plus firm orders for the Phenom 100 and Phenom 300, more than 100 are for Latin America, with 70 percent of them for Brazilian customers.
Moscow Vnukovo Airport and Lufthansa Flight Training agreed to form a joint venture to provide flight crew training. Flight Training Vnukovo will start operations by mid-2010 and will be equipped with four full-flight simulators. The facility is planned to be expanded to accommodate up to 20 simulators for various aircraft types. The $200 million facility would be the first independent simulator center in the Russian territory.
Metis Systems, a division of DHK Holdings, LLC, has just released version 1.2 of the eAPIS Tool. This program safely and securely saves all of your aircraft, pilot and passenger data on your computer and makes submitting a Customs eAPIS manifiest a snap, according to the company. It validates your data against the Business Rules published by Customs, then prepares a fullly compliant and sufficient “.xml” file that can be uploaded to the eAPIS Web site. The tool keeps information in several tables that interact with the part of the program that produces the file.
The vastness of the United States can be best appreciated from a vantage point eight miles above it. My flight deck vista has widened my perspective of the country, which is a colorful collage of cultures spread across nearly four million square miles, encompassing mountain ranges, expansive plains, arid deserts, grand cities, small towns and seemingly endless coastlines. And few occasions underscore the country’s size and splendor better than a transcontinental flight.
Gulfstream Aerospace recently received FAA certification for the second-generation Gulfstream Enhanced Vision System (EVS II) on the wide-cabin, high-speed Gulfstream G150. The system is available for both new and in-service G150 aircraft.
That night the two rock performers — one a drummer, the other a DJ — had wowed a crowd of 10,000 people at a free concert near the University of South Carolina. Now, even though it was approaching midnight, they wanted to get home to California. They, along with two support staffers, boarded the chartered Learjet Model 60 that had landed at Columbia Metropolitan Airport 40 minutes earlier. The passengers took their seats, the cabin door was closed and locked, and the two pilots began to taxi to the active runway. It was Sept. 19, 2008.
The AOPA has expressed concern over the FAA’s push to extinguish all existing “through-the-fence” access at public-use airports involving homes and businesses on private property that have access to airport taxiways or runways. The AOPA says the problem is of particular concern in the Northwest where the FAA is conducting an inventory of airports that have existing through-the-fence operations and is pressuring airport sponsors to eventually eliminate that access.
The University of Dayton Research Institute’s Patrick Haines and James Luers have been vocal advocates for exploring the effects of heavy rain on aircraft performance and have applied forensic engineering methods to several accidents. Their methodology, which was published in the Journal of Aircraft, suggests that the previously calculated effects of wind shear were in error, and that heavy rain likely contributed to the loss of performance in many mishaps.
Jet-A and AvgasPer Gallon Fuel PricesJuly 2009 Jet-A and AvgasPer Gallon Fuel PricesJuly 2009 Jet-A Region High Low Average Eastern $7.06 $3.10 $4.98 New England $5.25 $3.44
The National Air Transportation Association has named Wyvern Consulting the exclusive sales and support organization for its recently launched IC Check, a comprehensive compliance-driven flight release system for professionally flown general aviation aircraft operations. IC Check is an online application that assesses “whether individual flights for which an operator exercises operational control are flown with a legal crew, legal passengers, legal aircraft and legal flight parameters,” NATA said.
New Zealand-based aircraft tracking company spidertracks has launched spiderwatch, a flight following component that actively watches over every flight. The company is positioning the system as an alternative to ELTs. Spiderwatch is automatically turned on when the aircraft accelerates through 40 knots. This tells the system to “actively monitor the flight. If the spider tracking device loses power, the system loses contact with the spider, triggering text and e-mail alerts to be automatically sent to recipients designated by the user.
Especially in today’s volatile market, Rick Engles believes it is critical that aircraft brokers clearly communicate to prospective airplane sellers what the true value of their aircraft is.
There’s not another current production business aircraft that can beat the Learjet 60 in a time-to-climb contest. With a weight-to-thrust ratio of 2.55:1, you can soar from sea level to FL 410 in less than 18 minutes. It’s also fuel efficient. After level off, its Pratt & Whitney Canada PW305A engines enable the Learjet 60 to cruise at 440 KTAS with an average fuel burn of 1,300 pph.
The following abbreviations are used throughout the tables: “NA” means not available; “—”indicates the performance is not applicable; “NP” signifies that the specific performance is not possible.
There has been a great deal of talk about the damage that has been done to business aviation by politicians, the news media and ignorant senior executives. I don’t see it that way. Much of the “damage” was the predictable result of companies that leaned too strongly into unsustainable economic winds. When those economic winds stopped, they fell on their faces. Their companies, and their travel resources, have gone through the normal Darwinian process of the survival of the fittest.
Rockwell Collins’ Corporate Aircraft Service Program (CASP) offers corporate aircraft operators maintenance for their avionics and cabin entertainment equipment. Rentals, exchanges, component repairs, comprehensive reliability upgrades, equipment removal and refit coverage are included. CASP also offers one consolidated annual invoice based on a forecast of annual operating hours received at the start of the annual program and covers each aircraft for an entire year.
The AOPA’s Aviation eBrief says both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate are backing an FAA reauthorization bill introduced in mid-July that would accelerate NextGen implementation. The bill would require satellite-based ATC at the 35 busiest U.S. airports by 2014, with the rest of the country coming online by 2018 with $40 billion in funding through 2011 but with out-year system funding unspecified, postponing the tough decisions until 2011, AOPA states as we go to press.
