Cessna has again lowered its production plans for 2009 and 2010, company parent Textron announced in April. The move will result in another round of layoffs in addition to the 4,600 jobs lost since December 2008. There will also be a two-week factory shutdown in July. Textron did not specify details of the latest round.
At the end of February, Embraer had four Phenom 300s in flight testing at the company’s Flight Test Center at the Gavião Peixoto plant, in Brazil. The aircraft have flown to 45,000 feet, while maintaining a 6,600-foot cabin and demonstrated a maximum cruising speed of 450 KTAS (Mach 0.78). Ongoing tests include aerodynamics and natural ice, as well as data collection for the full-flight simulator development. Lightning strike, High Intensity Radiated Field (HIRF), external noise, crosswinds and cold soak tests are scheduled.
The current state of decline of the business aviation community specifically and the economy in general does not merit a complex degree of analysis. It is mostly the result of a national political party determined to squash all that is good about capitalism, prosperity, free market concepts, opportunity, et al.
These graphs are designed to illustrate the performance of the King Air 350ER under a variety of range, payload, speed and density altitude conditions. Do not use these data for flight planning purposes because they are gross approximations of actual aircraft performance.
As spring began, buyers of previously owned airplanes showed some signs of awakening from their winter slumber. Ever since the bottom dropped out of the used market in September 2008, everyone had wondered when the sales drought and freefall in aircraft valuations would end. At the end of March many brokers and dealers reported that aircraft sales remained slow and valuations remained substantially depressed from a year earlier. Skip Flint, Dassault Falcon Jet’s director of pre-owned aircraft sales, said, “I have never seen the pre-owned market plunge so quickly.
Time was when flying training schools in Florida, California, Arizona and other sunny climes in the southern United States were magnets for pilots seeking a professional career on the flight deck. And the World Aerospace Database (WAD) still lists far more training providers in North America than in any other region of the world. But excellent training can also be found far from these shores, as the accompanying list reveals.
Eurocopter acquired 80 percent of the shares of Euroheli, the Eurocopter distributor in Japan, from co-owner Itochu Corp. Euroheli has been renamed Eurocopter Japan (ECJ). Eurocopter’s share of the Japanese distribution business will increase from 10 percent to 90 percent with Itochu retaining 10 percent of the company’s shares and continuing as a Eurocopter partner. As of April 1, Euroheli’s staff and activities were merged with ECJ which will continue to be headed by CEO Stephane Ginoux.
— At 0950 CDT, a Cessna E162 Skycatcher experimental airplane (N162CE) was substantially damaged when it impacted terrain near El Dorado, Kan., following a loss of control during a test flight. The pilot was not injured. The flight originated at Cessna Aircraft Field Airport (CEA) in Wichita where the weather was VFR. The pilot departed CEA about 0900 to conduct spin tests. During a planned test condition the airplane entered a rapid and disorienting spin.
The business aircraft industry is in for tough times in 2009, probably rougher going than in any downturn in the last several decades. Historically, sales of business aircraft have risen and fallen on the fortunes of Wall Street and the world economy. Considering the state of the economy, the industry’s present slump is not unexpected.
Robert Holleran, Jeppesen’s chief technical pilot, recently completed the flight validation training course for Satellite-Based Performance Based Navigation (PBN) and Special Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) Instrument Flight Procedures (IFP) — making Jeppesen the first and only third-party vendor authorized to flight check PBN procedures.
House Aviation Subcommittee Chairman Jerry Costello (D-Ill.) March 13 reiterated opposition to an apparent Obama administration plan to replace “some aviation taxes with direct user charges” beginning in 2011. “These concepts are stale leftovers from the Bush administration that are not supported in Congress,” said Costello. “We should not be wasting time rehashing bad ideas. Let me be clear, user fees on general aviation are a nonstarter.”
Helicopter Emergency Medical Services continue under scrutiny on Capitol Hill. The U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee scheduled an April 22 hearing on the subject. The Association of Air-Medical Services had previously held multiple meetings on Capitol Hill to urge passage of air-medical safety legislation. The association also is trying to encourage the formation of a congressional air-medical caucus.
Honeywell expects certification of SmartPath, its ground-based augmentation (GBAS) system that would replace traditional ILS. The company said certification could possibly come by the end of May. That will likely trigger similar moves by other national regulators, said Dan Ryan, Honeywell’s director of precision landing systems. GBAS has been used extensively in Australia, and Airservices Australia has played a major role in its development. In Australia, Airservices and Qantas have used SmartPath for more than 1,600 landings at Sydney Airport, using 737s.
Fill up the tanks and a Hawker Beechcraft King Air 350ER can fly six passengers more than 2,200 nm, according to our 2009 Purchase Planning Handbook. That’s enough range to fly from San Diego to Westchester County, N.Y., Pittsburgh to Van Nuys or Seattle to Orlando. The least expensive jet offering that same range costs $14 million — nearly double the price of the long-legged King Air.
Bob Howie (Houston, TX), Assistant Chief Pilot (Houston, TX), Wing Aviation Charter Services (Houston, TX)
Well, the Super Bowl has come and gone for another year and while folks still laud the game, aviation would be remiss if it did not praise the efforts of the FAA and, in my case, Signature Flight Support in Tampa for their efforts in successfully orchestrating the post-game departures of what was likely more than 100 corporate jets. Ramp and ground control choreographed a ballet that would have made George Balanchine envious!
Cessna appointed Chimes Aviation Academy at Sagar’s Dhana Airport as its third Cessna Pilot Center (CPC) in India. “Demand for aviation in India continues to grow, even during these tough global economic times,” said Julie Filucci, Cessna’s CPC manager. Uday Punj, director of Chimes Aviation, said, “We are driving a culture of excellence in all facets of flight training, beginning with our fleet of brand-new single-engine Cessna 172 aircraft with Garmin G1000 integrated glass cockpits.
Korean Air has ordered two Citation CJ1+ aircraft to join its fleet of Citation Ultras, which have been used for advanced pilot training platforms since 1995. The new Citations will have a special center-mounted instructor/observer seat just behind the two pilot seats. The aircraft will be based at Korean Air’s pilot training center at Jeju, South Korea.
Name withheld by author’s request (Williamsburg, VA)
With respect to the January Intelligence item by James E. Swickard about the “systemic shortcomings in Brazilian air traffic control concepts” (page 11), I offer a personal anecdote.
Canada is the only country that requires noncommercial operators of turbine-powered aircraft to be certified and regularly audited for safety compliance. Even more notably, Canada’s DOT has delegated the administration of the Private Operator Certificate program to the Canadian Business Aviation Association to save government money and resources. (See Business & Commercial Aviation, April, page 42.)
A leaner, consolidated industry, more accountability, perhaps new forms of ownership and longer aircraft retention, a resurgent charter component . . . and a “pony.”
John Didier, president of Sacramento Aviation, which specializes in handling Citations and King Airs, believes the market may be turning. “The last quarter of 2008 was very slow. So was January. We went four months with just a few sales. Since the first part of February we have seen more activity — not big time — but the phones are ringing and we are getting an offer here and there. I think there is some light at the end of the tunnel.”
W.W. (Bill) Boisture took the reins of Hawker Beechcraft Corp. as chairman and CEO Mar. 23, replacing Jim Schuster, who had announced his plan to retire once a successor was in place. His second day on the job, Boisture told the Wichita Eagle that, “There’s going to be a lot of change required to adapt to the levels of demand required in the marketplace and the way our products can be deployed in the marketplace in the future. How many airplanes should we build? How large should the company be?
Garmin Synthetic Vision Technology (SVT) received FAA-certification on a range of G1000-equipped aircraft in April. Cessna announced at the Friedrichshafen, Germany, air show that the new SVT certification applies to all G1000-equipped 172 Skyhawks, 182 Skylanes, 206 Stationairs and Caravans. The day before the Cessna announcement, Daher-Socata announced SVT certification of its TBM 850. The system also received an STC on the King Air 200/B200. And Cessna expects FAA certification on the Citation Mustang, 350 Corvalis and 400 Corvalis TT in the coming weeks.
