Three weeks after Cessna announced two major single-engine sales for 30 Caravans and 46 Turbo Skylanes, Cessna’s parent company, Textron, in an 8K filing, revealed that Cessna’s Citation Columbus program, already suspended, has been canceled due to current market conditions. Further, Pratt & Whitney Canada has confirmed it has halted work on the PW810C engine designed to power the Columbus.
ADS-B will trigger changes in global air traffic management on a scale that may surpass even that which was seen during the introduction of radar, more than 50 years ago, improving situational awareness for both pilots and air traffic controllers as well as the capacity and safety of our Air Traffic System. A new symposium from SAE International will provide up-to-date developments and engineering information related to ASD-B and its companion technologies. The “SAE 2009 Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast Symposium” will be held Sept.
StandardAero has received an STC to replace the standard Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-41 or -42 engines used on the Beechcraft King Air 200, 200C, B200 and B200C with PT6A-52 engines and four-blade Hartzell propellers. This is the same engine and propeller combination that is certificated on new King Air B200GT aircraft. With this FAA approval, StandardAero says it has become the only PT6A-designated overhaul facility that can offer customers maintenance, repair and overhaul of PT6As, as well as PT6A engine upgrade options.
In Hawaii, when your alarm clock rings, you hop out of bed, and before you get ready for work, you grab your board and head to the beach. Thousands of Hawaiians surf, in part because they are surrounded by an ocean that provides them with some of the best conditions for the sport to be found anywhere in the world. Pete Hughes is a clinical manager for AirMed’s Hawaiian service, which operates air transportation for the state’s health system, transporting sick patients to clinics and between hospitals in a fleet of King Airs.
What drew Nancy Kemmer to belly dancing was that it’s “interesting and different . . . exotic, more thoughtful and joyful than most other dancing.” Kemmer has worked in accounts receivable at Pentastar Aviation in Michigan for about a year and on one evening a week she joins three other students in a class run by Cynthia Shainkin, a dancing teacher in Lake Orion, Mich.
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.
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.
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.
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.
PAMA, the Professional Aviation Maintenance Association, severed its affiliation with the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and will focus exclusively on programs and support for aviation maintenance managers, aviation mechanics and the aviation maintenance industry. According to PAMA president John Casker, the association plans to hire an association management firm to handle day-to-day operations and its recent initiatives to enhance member services, increase corporate and individual membership, and expand its technical leadership.
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.
Hawker Beechcraft has begun offering a Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) Localizer Performance with Vertical Guidance (LPV) option for Hawker 800XP aircraft. The upgrade enables operators to fly more precision approaches, reduce decision altitudes to as low as 200 feet agl and visibility minimums to as low as one-half mile, and use GPS as a primary means of navigation from takeoff through approach.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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 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.
Rolls-Royce has received European certification for the BR700-725A1-12 turbofan that will power the Gulfstream G650 business jet. The European Aviation Safety Agency granted approval on June 23. First flight of the G650 is planned for later this year. The 16,100-pound-thrust engine features a 50-inch fan and 24 titanium blades.
You awake in the hotel room, turn on The Weather Channel and see red- and orange-colored warning areas promising thunderstorms on your return flight. A last check of the WSI weather screen when leaving the FBO shows the line of CBs growing in size and intensity, directly on your route home. Throughout the flight you keep adjusting the weather radar to pick your way around the cells.
