James Raisbeck has received the Lifetime Aviation Entrepreneur award in honor of his 50 years of contributions to the field of aviation and aeronautics. The honor was bestowed at the Living Legends of Aviation's annual dinner and awards banquet in Los Angeles on Jan. 24.
*NetJets Aviation, Columbus, Ohio, announced that Mark Bianchi has been named executive vice president of aircraft maintenance. Eric Lampert has been named vice president and director of operations for the Flight Operations Department at NetJets Aviation.
*JetCorp Technical Services, St. Louis, named Anthony Sanchez to the newly created position of national vice president of customer service and business development. He will be supported by Burton Schriber and Sam Mansolino, who were named regional sales managers.
*Embraer, Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil, named Herve Tilloy as press officer for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Fernando Lacerda, Gustavo Teixeira and Rafael Mugnaini have been hired as sales managers to handle the recent growing demand in Latin America.
Virgin Charter (www.VirginCharter.com) has named Travelocity Business as the digital marketplace's exclusive launch business travel agency in the Travel Management Company space. Virgin Charter will provide charter solutions for Travelocity Business clients who want to fly private charter.
Eclipse Aviation and European Technology and Investment Research Center (ETIRC) Aviation have announced progress toward establishing an Eclipse 500 manufacturing facility outside of the United States. Eclipse Aviation President and CEO Vern Raburn and ETIRC Aviation Chairman Roel Pieper traveled to Russia to meet in Ulyanovsk with federal officials and local administrators to discuss the steps necessary to establish a factory in that area.
The second most common cause of pilot incapacitation in the Australian Transport Safety Bureau study was exposure to toxic smoke and fumes on board the aircraft (12 percent). One-quarter of these incidents were due to carbon monoxide exposure, which highlights the obvious importance of detection devices that can warn a pilot of this insidious, colorless and tasteless threat.
The NTSB issued a Safety Recommendation on Jan. 7 advising aircraft operators to "establish a process to ensure wider, highly visible and continuous dissemination of guidance and information to the air-traveling public, including flight crews" about the safe carriage of rechargeable lithium batteries. The compact, lightweight and powerful energy cells can, and have, set fire to themselves and adjacent combustible materials.
*Bell 206 helicopters - Ensure that the tailboom attachment bolt is installed correctly. *Bell 222, 230 and 430 helicopters - Rewire and test the fuel valve switch on each engine and test the ignitor system. *Dassault Falcon 50 airplanes - Inspect the electrical feeder bundle, repair any damaged wires found and change the routing of the wires under the circuit breaker panel.
*Extex, Gilbert, Ariz., promoted Larry Batchelor to vice president of sales and marketing with responsibility for general aviation products; Vincent Maloney was named sales representative specializing in the Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6 program; Valentio Medved, Sahri Turan and Charlene King are new sales representatives for the company's Rolls-Royce 250 series program.
Atlas Business Solutions is offering VSS Pro 8.0 for personnel scheduling; the name Visual Staff Scheduler makes clear that this is not an aircraft management or flight department scheduling product that integrates all flight department and aircraft information. But at prices from $495 for a single seat to $1,495 for 10 users, some operations may find it a more economical and simpler way to manage personnel schedules.
*CRS Jet Spares, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has added Emmanuel d'Hoop as the international sales representative focusing on expanding the CRS customer base in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Avidyne Corporation's Envision integrated flight deck was STC'd for installation on Cessna 400 piston twin-engine airplanes. Southern Star Avionics, LLC in Mobile, Ala. worked with Avidyne on the retrofit, which initially was installed on a Cessna Model 414A. The STC also covers the Cessna 401(A, B), 402 (A, B, C), 414(A) and 421(A, B, C) twin-piston airplanes. Avidyne and Southern Star originally teamed on an STC for the installation of the Envision EXP5000 PFD on Cirrus SR20 and SR22 airplanes.
ARG/US auditors and data analysts have noted that "the same problems keep coming up again" in operator audits conducted by the consultancy. Here is a selection: *Lack of standalone safety management system (SMS) aligned with AC120-92. *Safety officer not formally trained. *No internal-evaluation program referenced to AC120-59A. *Emergency-response program manual not a controlled document. *No training and practice for emergency-response program.
By the end of 2007, the Vref Turboprop Index reached a new all-time high (1209.17), which indicates that the benchmark twin-engine airplanes included in the index continue to grow in value, even though they were built more than 20 years ago. The Vref Turboprop Index is a compilation of the average retail prices for 1985 models of the Beech King Air C90A, King Air B200, Cessna Conquest I and II, as well as the 1980 Piper Cheyenne II and 1978 Twin Commander 690B.
Back in August 1962, my F-100D Super Sabre squadron was tasked with conducting a "Spoofing Mission" against the Russian, Chinese, North Korean and Japanese militaries in a single flight. It was during a time of high Cold War tension and bluffing games were played by all to test the alertness and response times to a threatened incursion by enemy aircraft.
The first of New York Airways' five new Vertol 44s was to be delivered in April, and the rest by June. Additionally, Sabena planned to lease two 44s for use at the upcoming Brussels World Fair.
You might say they were auditing the auditing process as commercial operators and safety auditors convened in Cincinnati in January to review rating standards for jet charter providers.
