Remember "Roselawn?" American Eagle Flight 4184, an ATR-72 that became slathered in ice during flight in a prolonged holding pattern, crashed near that northern Indiana town in 1994, killing all 68 people aboard. Similar to virtually all other FAR Part 25 transport category aircraft, the ATR-72 was fully approved for Flight Into Known Icing (FIKI) conditions and all ice protection equipment on board appeared to be functioning properly.
At Luton, London's busiest business jet airport, Signature Flight Support and Harrods Aviation have had to reject some incoming aircraft due to ramp congestion. Both companies divert aircraft to their other London airport facilities. Luton's two FBOs handled 27,058 movements in 2006. Harrods' Kerry Besgrove says that parking has been a real problem but when his company's new passenger terminal and its additional 2,000 square meters of ramp space (making a total of around 13,000 square meters) comes on line in December, the situation will improve.
Bucharest-Baneasa Airport (LRBS/BBU), also known as Aurel Laicu Airport, reopened in August after a four-month closure to upgrade its terminal and runways. The $24.5 million project is expected to generate record traffic for the commercial and business aviation airport about seven miles from the center of the Romanian capital. Full services, including expedited passport and customs, are provided by FERAS, a Universal affiliate FBO.
Jet Aviation Basel has become the first company to sign a letter of intent for a Boeing B787-9 Dreamliner completion. Work on the interior completion project is due to start in 2011 after the aircraft delivery. Jet expects the completion work to take 15 to 18 months and is tight-lipped about the cost. The unnamed VIP client is from the Gulf region and is the first to book a completions slot for this aircraft type.
Landmark Aviation, Winston-Salem, N.C., appointed Jim Hopkins vice president, FBO operations, overseeing the company's network of 33 FBOs. Tom Mekis was appointed vice president, aircraft sales, service and charter and Mark Linville was appointed vice president and chief financial officer.
Flight Explorer Professional Edition Version 8.0 adds features such as route alerting, enhanced ETA/ETE analysis, data-link messaging tools and a suite of weather products. The new version makes use of proprietary "4-D"-- or time-based -- modeling to combine predictions of arrival times at points along a route with three-dimensional depictions of position and altitude. Route deviation alerts provide automatic alerting for lateral deviations based on user-set thresholds.
Era Corp. has received a patent on ADS-B and multilateration techniques in which redundant transponder signals are filtered and time-stamped before aircraft tracking information is forwarded to air traffic control centers and other users. This will allow users to manage massive amounts of real-time aircraft transponder data using a variety of data links and networks with a variety of bandwidths. The technology has both military and civil applications.
One area of the revised FAR Part 135, paragraph A008, OpSpec that continues to confuse both operators and, reports suggest, the FAA's own field inspectors, is the relationship between Part 135 certificate holders and crewmembers not directly employed by them. When an operator employs its pilots directly, it should have no trouble showing it has direct operational control over them.
Honeywell says it is installing a new phone system -- Intelligent Contact Routing, they call it. The idea is to get you connected to a customer service rep without the usual, "For accounting, press 4; for service and support, press 5 . . . ." No more "phone tree," in other words. Once it's up and running, there will be two numbers for U.S./Canada (800)601-3099 and International (602) 365-3099. Who knows? Maybe the idea will catch on.
Flight delays and airplane "parking lots" on the ramps were, at 16 percent each, the top airline passenger complaints in a new survey by Opinion Research Corp. (ORC). Causes of airline angst varied by age, said ORC. "Nearly one quarter of those respondents between the ages of 35 and 44 were aggravated by delayed or canceled flights, compared with only 13 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 24," the survey found.
Arizona State University, Mesa, Ariz., appointed Richard Charles as chair of the Department of Aeronautical Management Technology in the College of Technology and Innovation.
Blackhawk Modifications - the Waco, Texas-based powerplant upgrade company that specializes in reengining Beech King Air 90s and 200s, as well as Cessna Conquest Is and Cheyennes - has designated Hawker Beechcraft Services as an authorized dealer of Blackhawk's King Air XP engine upgrades.
Camarillo Airport (CMA) sits just off the 101 in California's Ventura County, midway between downtown Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. The former military installation, now wholly converted to a civil airport with 6,000-plus feet of runway, has a new full-service FBO operated by Avantair Elite Services, a unit of Avantair, Inc., providing all fuel, support and maintenance services for executive aircraft. Avantair markets fractional shares in the Piaggio P.180 Avanti twin turboprop.
Although the woes of the real estate and mortgage industries began to take their toll on the economy and financial markets during the summer, the negative ripple effects have not yet been reflected in sales of previously owned aircraft.
Put yourself in the place of an emergency medical service (EMS) pilot when the "red phone" in the crew room rings, with word of a serious accident requiring immediate response. It is well known that a trauma patient's chances of survival increase significantly if the person is delivered to a critical care unit within an hour of receiving the injuries.
ITT will be the systems integrator of the FAA's ADS-B system, but the team members that ITT selected had a lot to do with the company winning the contract on Aug. 30. Particularly noteworthy is ITT's partner AT&T, the U.S.-based telecommunications giant. The role of AT&T was key to ITT's win of the $1.8 billion contract to provide ADS-B on a fee-for-service basis. AT&T already owns a network of telecommunications sites and facilities across the United States that will be used to host the ADS-B equipment at a minimal cost. Then there is the French connection.
Fractional operator PlaneSense has placed an order for 25 Grob SPn light jets. The first of the $7.5 million German-made jet aircraft is due to arrive in late 2008, and all will feature a Porsche Design six-seat executive cabin. The aircraft will be managed by parent company Alpha Flying Inc. PlaneSense President and CEO George Antoniadis told B&CA that he hopes to double this order once the SPn has been FAA certificated and gained FAR Part 91 Subpart K. "We are looking forward to being the world's largest SPn operator," he said.
Jet Aviation, Teterboro, N.J., named Dorothy White as regional sales director for charter support service and aircraft management at the new aircraft management and charter support service sales office at its FBO at St. Louis Downtown Airport, Cahokia, Ill.
Busy aviation professionals of all stripes can now get an M.B.A. while they continue to pursue their day jobs by taking advantage of Daniel Webster College's online course, which is tailored to aviation careers. The three-semester program includes such coursework as "Economics of Air Transportation" and "Global Aviation Management." The full course is comprised of 13 classes of six to eight weeks in length and uses Blackboard; total tuition is $21,879 payable, in part, at the start of each semester and is subject to change. Payment plans are available.
In late August, Honeywell and Sensis demonstrated to the FAA and the aviation press the fruits of a joint effort to exploit the capabilities of their products to take runway safety to a new level. Operating a Gulfstream and a King Air fitted with Honeywell TCAS and Mode S avionics at Hancock Field in Syracuse, N.Y., a facility equipped with Sensis' advanced ASDE-X ground surveillance system, the companies showed their systems' ability to detect conflicts and transmit warnings directly to the aircraft pilots - as well as controllers.
A second pre-production Bell Helicopter Model 429 has joined the company's flight test program in Mirabel, Quebec. Bill Stromberg, executive director of the program, says the second twin-engine aircraft will help Bell increase the test pace, and that expansion of the 429's flight envelope was about one month ahead of schedule. The two helicopters were to travel to Colorado and Arizona for high-altitude/hot-temperature testing. Plans call for achieving concurrent Canadian and FAA certification in 2008. Bell reports having more than 200 orders for the 429.
