Raytheon Aircraft Co., Wichita, has announced two new leadership positions: Randy Groom has been appointed president, Global Customer Service and Support, and Brad Hatt assumes the role of president, Global Commercial Sales for Beechcraft and Hawker. Chris Charnley was appointed regional vice president of sales for Canada and Latin America.
More than a half-century before the 1989 movie "Field of Dreams" brought to the silver screen the wholesome goodness and potential for renewal that the fertile farmlands of Iowa can offer, the Elliott family was sowing the seeds of general aviation in the state's Quad Cities area. With the same fervor that the film's lead character, farmer Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner), pursued his dream of building a baseball diamond in the heartland, Herb Elliott nurtured grassroots aviation in the Midwest.
Corporate operators received a reprieve from two tax measures in a bill that would have dramatically increased the tax burden for use of aircraft for personal or recreational purposes. House and Senate negotiators agreed to strip out the two measures in the Tax Relief Act of 2005 that would have increased the tax liability of business executives who use company aircraft for personal reasons and limit the tax benefits companies receive when the aircraft are used for recreation. The House passed the Tax Relief Act on May 10, followed by the Senate the next day.
Honeywell has announced software upgrades for the GNS-XLS Enhanced FMS. New European and U.S. standards include Precision Area Navigation (P-RNAV) compliance, AC 90-100 compliance and memory expansion to allow for a worldwide navigation database. The new software enables access to a 20 megabyte PCMCIA memory card containing the 28-day Worldwide Navigational Database, which succeeds the multiple regional databases currently used by the GNS-XLS, allowing operators to load a single database, regardless of where the aircraft travels in the world.
Seemingly contradicting the conclusions of the Eurocontrol air traffic report (see above), Bo Redeborn, director of ATM Strategies at Eurocontrol, said, "Growth on these levels presents a number of challenges for air traffic management. Business aviation generates peaks of demand at airports, and while it uses different flight levels from the major carriers, getting the different types of traffic to their preferred levels creates additional traffic complexity for controllers, particularly given the concentration of business aviation in an already busy airspace.
ExxonMobil Aviation International, Ltd., Fairfax, Va., appointed Kenny Warren as director, Global Aviation Fuels. If you would like to submit news of hires, promotions, appointments or awards for possible publication in On Duty, send e-mail to [email protected] or call (914) 933-7614.
Frasca International has delivered the first of six TruFlite H helicopter simulators to Silver State Helicopters of North Las Vegas, Nev. The units are installed in mobile trailers and will be assigned to training facilities in the United States. Silver State has ordered 22 simulators, which are reconfigurable as the piston-powered Robinson R22 and R44 and the Schweizer 300.
Robert J. "Bob" Pond (aka "the Pond Racer") has ordered a new Piaggio Avanti II to replace his original, the first production Piaggio P.180 Avanti. Pond said that the early Piaggio will be added to his public collection of more than 25 aircraft at the Palm Springs Air Museum. Pond, a World War II Navy veteran and military aircraft collector, opened the museum in 1996 after retiring as CEO of Advance Machine Co., a manufacturer of industrial floor cleaning machines.
Believing that point-to-point business jet services will be in greater demand in Europe, Geneva-based start-up JetBird announced at EBACE that it has placed a firm order with Embraer for 50 Phenom 100 jets with an option for an additional 50 aircraft. The contract allows JetBird to convert its positions into either the Phenom 100 or the Phenom 300. Embraer said the value of the contract is in the order of $140 million at list price in January 2005 U.S. dollars, with a potential value of approximately $280 million if all options are converted into Phenom 100s.
Banyan Air Service, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has hired John Di Mattei as avionics engineer responsible for design and engineering for avionics installations and upgrades on turbine aircraft. If you would like to submit news of hires, promotions, appointments or awards for possible publication in On Duty, send e-mail to [email protected] or call (914) 933-7614.
Embraer has announced the launch of Embraer Executive Care, a comprehensive customer support program designed to provide the highest level of aircraft availability and utilization, and maintenance cost predictability. The new program, derived from the current Total Legacy Care program, offers broader coverage and covers all of Embraer's executive jets. The new Embraer Executive Care program offers the flexibility to suit a variety of customer operation profiles. It covers scheduled and unscheduled maintenance, OEM parts replacement and maintenance tracking and control.
Hillsboro Aviation was awarded a contract by the Chicago Police Department to retrofit a Bell 206L-4 Helicopter. The LongRanger, acquired from the Chicago Fire Department, began law enforcement operations in January of this year. As operations evolve it is anticipated that the Chicago Police Department and the Cook County Sheriff's Department will operate the aircraft as part of a joint helicopter task force.
Embraer, Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil, has completed the implementation of its Europe, Middle East and Africa sales team as follows: Simon Burrows, Northern Europe; Robert Posselt, Phenom 100 and 300 for Central Europe; Neil Patton for Central and Eastern Europe; Lynton Van Aswegen for Africa; Tony Fitzpatrick for the Middle East; and Nikolay Goloviznin for Russia. If you would like to submit news of hires, promotions, appointments or awards for possible publication in On Duty, send e-mail to [email protected] or call (914) 933-7614.
Three industry veterans -- Michael Sowa, Kenneth Murray and Robert Liddell -- have joined together to form Atlanta-based Waypoint Partners, LLC, a new firm devoted to facilitating and managing the completion, modification and refurbishment of high-end business aircraft. In addition, the company, which also has offices in Houston and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., will provide aircraft pre-purchase monitoring assistance, aircraft-acquisition consulting, operational startup assistance and vendor mediation.
M7 Aerospace, San Antonio, appointed Harold J.M. (Mac) Williams vice chairman with continued service as a member of the board. He will focus on strategic development for the company with special emphasis on government programs. Ronald W. Frederick has been named president and CEO.
From its headquarters in Tempe, Ariz., MedAire provides remote assistance to business fliers worldwide 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The company says it averages roughly 75 incidents every day, which would make it the world's busiest virtual ER. Even a trained flight crew can't cope with every medical emergency, and it helps to call in expert advice anytime you deploy an AED for cardiac distress.
Vern Raburn, CEO of Eclipse Aviation, and Roel Pieper, founder of Luxembourg-based ETIRC Aviation, announced at EBACE that they've signed an agreement for ETIRC Aviation's distribution of Eclipse 500 aircraft in the Russian Federation, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Ukraine and Turkey. Pieper said he can generate sales of 50 aircraft per year in Russia, 25 aircraft annually in Ukraine, another 25 to 50 in Turkey, and possibly 25 aircraft per year in Kazakhstan.
Safe Flight Instrument Corp. reports the first two installations of its AutoPower Automatic Throttle System for the new wide-cabin Challenger 850 aircraft are proceeding on schedule. Bombardier offers AutoPower as a production option on the Challenger 850 business jet and the CRJ 200 airliner, a retrofit option on the Challenger 604 and as standard equipment on the new Challenger 605 widebody jet, launched in November 2005.
Executive Jet Management has placed a new aircraft on its FAR Part 135 Certificate as it was delivered directly from the factory for a charter management client, Sho-Deen Aircraft of Geneva, Ill. -- for the second time in five years. Just because an aircraft is new, it does not automatically conforms to the specific requirements of a Part 135 certificate. Paperwork especially must conform to format as well as content. There are tons of minutiae that typically involve substantial downtime for the process.
I guarantee you that I like the term "throttle" to control engine output because there's little ambiguity as to its function. The problem is that "throttle," "thrust lever" and "power control lever" are used by different airplane manufacturers to denote the control that modulates engine thrust output.
