Ever wonder who creates the standards and specs that define aircraft avionics, electrical and software? Most of these standards come from working groups established by the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics, or RTCA, Inc. Founded in 1935, the RTCA is a private, non-profit corporation that develops consensus-based recommend- ations regarding communications, navigation, surveillance and air traffic management system issues. RTCA functions as an advisory committee for the FAA and recommendations are used as the basis for policy, program and regulatory decisions.
CRS Jet Spares, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has added Forrest Bullard to the CRS Repair Control Department to be an assistant repair coordinator. Steve Sharkey has joined the sales team as the representative for Florida.
Many of the airlines that have performed LOSA audits have contributed to a better understanding of flight crew performance by sharing lessons learned. They have willingly contributed their data to the LOSA Collaborative, which is maintained by the University of Texas Human Factors Research Project and is strictly de-identified. This has allowed noted researchers, graduate students and airline personnel to examine a greater wealth of data and develop insights, trends and strategies.
The FAA will form an Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC) to develop recommended requirements for aircraft landing distance performance assessments prior to landing. In an announcement in the Dec.
In December 2007, we surveyed a modest sample of schedulers and dispatchers to determine what new challenges they've been facing and what changes they've made based on lessons learned. Because some of the specific details of their replies might shed light on company operations that must remain confidential, we agreed to mask anything that might identify the operator or the names of participants. We're grateful to the participants in this survey, who were surprisingly candid, particularly when the challenges they faced were sometimes internal.
IT'S HARD TO IMAGINE TODAY, but the Boeing Model 314 - a slow, unpressurized, cantankerous beast - was in its day an aeronautical wonder. Combine the space shuttle, the A380, Concorde and Gulfstream V, and you get a sense of its stature.
The Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics (RTCA) is a non-profit international organization that hosts working groups whose purpose is to guide development of all systems that relate to the airspace or to air traffic management. It draws upon the expertise of thousands of people in the aerospace industry, who form Special Committees when called upon. SC-203 was formed about three years ago at the request of the AOPA to address UAS issues.
IN LATE NOVEMBER, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) decided she was going to switch subcommittee assignments within the Senate Commerce Committee, giving up the ranking Republican slot on the space, aeronautics and related sciences panel to become the senior minority member on the aviation subcommittee. Such moves are usually not a big deal other than to the senator involved, some of her staff members and a few of her colleagues.
Kellie Lewis grew up in a military family; her father, all of her uncles and her brothers have served, and her little brother did a tour as a Marine in the second Iraq war. She and friends at Universal Weather and Aviation, where she works as a client relations specialist, put together care packages and letters for him, and her mother got involved with the Texas chapter of Blue Star Mothers of America, an organization for mothers of service men and women.
Aspen Avionics, Albuquerque, has hired Stephen J. Senyszyn as a systems engineering manager. Rhonda Hinsen joined the company as supply chain manager; Dorothy Gilbert joined the company as a marketing manager; Sean Rieb was promoted to software engineering manager and David Berlin was promoted to senior staff engineer.
Industry data indicate that the overall market for previously owned, turbine-powered business aircraft, which continued to expand in 2007, is poised to enter the new year in good shape, despite the rising cost of fuel and a variety of ongoing financial problems in the United States that might lead to a recession in America in the not-too-distant future.
ON SEPT. 10, 2007, the FAA published a Legal Interpretation in response to a simple question from a contract pilot. The FAA answered more questions than the poor pilot asked, and raised new questions for the industry as a whole.
The annual spring meeting of the National Aircraft Resale Association (NARA) will be held at the Ritz Carlton Golf Resort in Naples, Fla., from the morning of Thursday, May 8 through the middle of the day on Saturday, May 10. Those interested in attending the meeting are encouraged to make hotel reservations at the discounted rate of $259 by calling (239) 593-2000 no later than April 4. NARA also has announced that it plans to hold its 2009 spring meeting at the Westin La Cantera Resort in San Antonio from April 30 to May 2.
Landmark Aviation, Winston-Salem, N.C., appointed Eric Faulkner to the post of general manager of the White Plains (HPN), N.Y. FBO. Dave Sunda has been named manager of the MRO/Avionics Division of the company's Winston-Salem, N.C., facility.
Paul W. Tibbets Jr. has died at age 92. The former chairman of Executive Jet Aviation (EJA), who was better known as the U.S. Army colonel who piloted the aircraft that dropped the world's first atomic bomb, passed away at his home in Columbus, Ohio, on Nov. 1. Tibbets was born in Quincy, Ill., in 1915, but his family soon moved to Florida, where he took his first airplane ride at the age of 12. He was attending college in 1937, preparing to pursue a career in medicine, when he decided to enlist in the Army Air Corps.
*Cessna Citation 525 airplanes -- Disable the cockpit-mounted pilot relief tube and inspect the lower wing skin structure, forward wing spar, lower fuselage skin, fairings and the external fairing frames for corrosion. Repair any damage found, and apply a corrosion inhibitive sealant to the fuselage fairings before reinstalling.
DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff says business aviation will have to comply with several new security requirements, including one that will require international business jet flights to be screened at designated overseas airports before departing for the United States. Operators of flights leaving from or flying to the U.S. must now provide advance notification to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) via the Electronic Advance Passenger Information System (eAPIS) program.
New general aviation aircraft billings topped $15 billion for the first nine months of the year, a 14- percent increase driven by strong business jet deliveries. GAMA reported in November that its member companies shipped 2,909 aircraft in the period, up slightly from the 2,859 units shipped during the first three quarters of 2006. The relatively flat growth in deliveries came despite a 20.9-percent increase in business jet deliveries in 2007.
Lee County Airport Authority, Fort Myers, Fla. Kevin D. Ostrowsky, vice president of insurance services and business development officer for Riverside Bank of the Gulf Coast, has been appointed to the Lee County Port Authority Airports Special Management Committee. The committee advises the Lee County Commission on policy matters pertaining to Southwest Florida International Airport and Page Field General Aviation Airport.
The number of fatal general aviation accidents was 5 percent below the FAA's goal in the 12 months ending Sept. 30, the agency said. GA aircraft were involved in 314 fatal accidents in fiscal 2007, or 17 fewer than the FAA target. The number of fatalities dropped from 676 in fiscal 2006 to 564 in fiscal 2007. The FAA includes both FAR Part 91 and non-scheduled Part 135 operations in its calculations. The agency attributed the better than expected results to GPS, glass panels, training and a "commitment to safety by everyone in general aviation."
Changes in the airline market led to a "steep reduction in the national noise exposure" in recent years, according to Carl Burleson, director of the FAA's Office of Environment and Energy. These changes included a 70-percent reduction of older hushkitted aircraft since 2000.
ON THE EVENING OF Dec. 1, 1974, a Northwest Airlines Boeing 727 on a positioning flight crashed into wooded terrain near Thiells, N.Y., killing the three crewmembers aboard. The aircraft had been climbing out of New York Departure Control's airspace en route to Buffalo when it simply dropped off the radar. It was later determined that the airplane had stalled during its climb to cruising altitude and had broken up during unsuccessful recovery attempts.
Crane Aerospace & Electronics, Redmond, Wash., appointed H. Alan Howell as Electronics Group vice president of marketing and business development. Martin McCarthy has been named vice president of sales and marketing in Europe.
Embraer, Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil, has announced that Satoshi Yokota will be the executive vice president, strategic planning and technology development for the newly created Environmental Strategies and Technologies Office and that Graciliano Campos has been named its director.
You produce probably the best general aviation magazine going. I wait breathlessly for each edition. And you never let me down . . . thank you. Your interview with Scott Duffy, however, left me wanting a little more substance (Fast Five, October, page 24). I found Duffy a little ingenuous. Web sites like TaxiJet.com and AirCharterGuide.com precede Virgin Charter's and they already do what Duffy envisions. Virgin Charter seem to have two inherent weaknesses built into its model.
