Stevens Aviation, the aircraft sales and support company that announced its Lear 4 Ever upgrade program in late 206, has received an STC for the comprehensive refurbishment of a Learjet 25 at its Nashville base. The company's Denver location is presently working on a similar upgrade program for Learjet 35s and 36s and hopes to exhibit an example of one of those refreshed aircraft at the NBAA convention in Atlanta in September.
DayJet has begun limited on-demand, per-seat Eclipse 500 service in Florida, and at least one existing operator is concerned. Fort Lauderdale-based Gulfstream International, which is about to go public, is worried that the upstart VLJ air taxi operator could, if successful, poach some passengers from its scheduled service.
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Grupo Omnilife de Mexico signed a contract to buy a Lineage 1000 business jet from Brazilian manufacturer Embraer, the first sale of the Embraer 190 airliner variant to a Mexican customer. The Lineage is expected to enter service in 2008. Grupo Omnilife de Mexico, a major distributor of health and entertainment products and services, is scheduled to get its Lineage in December 2009.
Operators of late model Falcons need not be jealous of operators who have signed up for the new Dassault Falcon 2000LX, which features winglets designed in collaboration with Aviation Partners Inc. The Seattle-based maker of performance-enhancing airfoils is working with the airframe manufacturer to offer at least a couple of winglet retrofit programs for earlier models of the French-made business jet.
Summer is bringing in softer economic data than hoped for in the United States, as the weakness in car sales is joined with continued weakness in housing. Higher oil prices, and even higher gasoline prices, are sapping purchasing power at the same time that wealth is declining because of falling home prices. We continue to expect the economy to avoid a recession, but the cushion is getting smaller.
Where's Vern?" were likely to be the two most frequently heard words as Eclipse Aviation's early Monday, July 23 press conference was to get under way at this year's Experimental Aircraft Association AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wis. As scripted, Peg Bilson, the firm's chief operating officer, was to preside over most of the event, whose centerpiece was to be a concept mockup of a single-engine personal jet being evaluated by Eclipse. Company founder, president and CEO Raburn, she was to explain, would arrive sometime later.
The FAA plans to assemble an industry-based rulemaking group to develop recommendations for addressing safe runway landing distance margins, James Ballough, director of the FAA's Flight Standards Service, said at the National Air Transportation Association's recent Air Charter Summit. The runway landing distance issue got a lot of attention after the Southwest Airlines runway overrun at Midway Airport in December 2005 in which a Boeing 737 slid off a snowy runway and struck two vehicles on a nearby road, killing a six-year-old child.
Cirrus Design Corp. co-founders Alan and Dale Klapmeier have joined the likes of Igor Sikorsky, Chuck Yeager, Jimmy Doolittle and other aviation luminaries as recipients of the Dr. Godfrey L. Cabot Award, the highest aviation honor given by the Aero Club of New England (ACONE). Celebrated annually for 55 years by the nation's oldest aviation organization, the Cabot Award recognizes individuals or teams who have made unique, significant and unparalleled contributions to advance and foster aviation or space flight.
The NBAA recently alerted pilots to a potentially dangerous situation at Dulles International Airport (IAD). The association said the Dulles control tower reported at least two incidents in one week in June when the pilots of two different general aviation aircraft "lined up for what will be the new Runway 1R after being cleared for the visual approach to the existing Runway 1R." A substance used to seal the surface soil under the new runway has been applied and from the air "this substance highly resembles poured concrete," NBAA said.
Embraer and CAE are hard at work drafting an expanded training agreement to cover their training relationship to cover all the Americas and to include the Embraer 170/190 E-Jet family. The agreement for the 170/190 family and the Lineage 1000 is in addition to the deal announced in October 2006, for initial and recurrent training for pilots and ground personnel of the Phenom 100 and Phenom 300 jets. A full joint venture agreement is expected to be finalized within the next few months. Embraer 170/190 pilot training is now offered at CAE's training center in Montreal.
Take a close look at Encore+ and you would be hard-pressed to guess that it's a third-generation derivative of the nearly two-decade-old Citation V. Cessna Aircraft, the undisputed master of iteration, has modified the wing, narrowed the track of the main landing gear and incorporated trailing link suspension, along with increasing range/payload flexibility, improving the cabin environment, reducing the airport noise footprint and cutting operating costs during that time period. Some of the block-point production changes almost make the iterations look like new models.
WE WERE EN ROUTE FROM one place to another -- the locations didn't matter; the going did -- in a BBJ, conversing with Richard Santulli, the founder and CEO of NetJets. At one point I mentioned what high praise Don Imus had heaped upon Santulli and his company during a recent radio broadcast and asked if he intended to capitalize on that nationwide free promotion it in any way. He shook his head and smiled ruefully. "Wait until something goes wrong," he said, "then he'll be telling those same listeners all about that, too."
In April, the FAA announced the initiation of advanced Technologies and Oceanic Procedures at the Alaska ARTCC, which enables more direct routing and eliminates the time-honored paper strips for controllers. Atlantic and Pacific traffic already benefits from the new ATOP systems, which provide conflict alerts and allow controllers to ensure aircraft separation beyond radar and radio coverage. The work station environment for controllers is modern, automated, and efficient, and the system is capable of digital satellite data link communication and surveillance.
Boeing has raised its prediction for the size of the airline aircraft market over the next 20 years, but the majority of the jump comes from including Russia and the rest of the Commonwealth of Independent States for the first time. The manufacturer's Current Market Outlook estimates 28,600 aircraft will be delivered through 2026, compared with last year's forecast of 27,200 to be delivered through 2025. The latest total includes 1,060 aircraft for the CIS. Last year's forecast saw a similar jump -- 1,500 -- compared to the 2005 forecast.
A frequent question posed by flight crews wanting more information on ice particle-caused rollbacks is, "What type of atmospheric condition creates this problem?"
To further its nationwide reach, JetDirect Aviation Holdings of Berwyn, Pa., has acquired Novato, Calif.-based air charter operator Sunset Aviation for an undisclosed sum. Sunset operates a fleet of 25 aircraft, giving JetDirect a total of 130. Sunset's fleet includes Cessna Citation IIs; Hawker 800XPs, Beech Baron 58s and King Air 200s; and Pilatus PC-12s. Sunset also operates full-service maintenance facilities at three bases in California.
Embraer revised its Legacy 600 executive jet maintenance planning guide that is expected to reduce an operator's scheduled maintenance labor costs up to 18 percent over the previous iteration. Since the guide was first published in 2001, the maintenance man-hours-per-flight-hour ratio for the super midsize jet has dropped by 50 percent to 0.65 mmh/fh.
Geneva Aviation, a DART subsidiary, has developed the P-132 avionics console and the P-123 supplemental avionics console for Eurocopter AS 350 series helicopters to meet the growing demand for more space. The P-132 allows installation of a 10-inch stack of radios and other avionics controls typically required for law and ENG work. The P-123 supplemental console also mounts between the pilot and copilot seats.
Not surprisingly, outspoken Pogo Air Chairman and CEO Robert Crandall has a perspective on the FAA reauthorization debate. Crandall, retired CEO of American Airlines, offered his thoughts to B&CA via e-mail. Air taxi operator Pogo hopes to begin operations this year with a fleet of Eclipse VLJs.
Your April feature article "EADS Socata TBM 850," (page 62) poses an interesting challenge to emerging VLJ aircraft. In this article, Socata continues to categorize all VLJs into one group, yet all VLJs are not created equally. This is especially true when comparing the Eclipse 500 VLJ to the TBM 850. The assumptions presented create an excellent opportunity to highlight the real capabilities of the Eclipse 500 very light jet. A simple analysis reveals the true comparison of the Eclipse 500 vs. the TBM 850.
