The FAA ordered Platinum Jet Management to ``immediately cease and desist operating as an air carrier.'' The Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based company was operating a Challenger 600 that ran off the runway Feb. 2 at Teterboro Airport, collided with a passing car and smashed into a brick building. The agency took action after determining that Platinum was operating charters without an air carrier certificate or approved operations specification. The government claims Platinum entered into a ``charter management agreement'' with AlphaJet International, Inc.
FAA officials are recommending that an industry-based Joint Steering Committee examine accidents involving turbine-powered business aircraft to determine whether there are common themes in those crashes that could be addressed through application of best industry practices. Senior agency officials met on Feb. 19 with several industry leaders to discuss steps the industry could take to increase safety. The FAA officials stressed that they were not initiating rulemaking but were interested in identifying practices that could be promoted throughout the industry.
Kohlman Systems Research recently completed its 200th RVSM test flight -- on a Sabre 40 aircraft for Sabreliner Corp. The flight-testing specialist said that although it flew its first RVSM approval flight in 1997, the company performed over half of them in the last two years, averaging one per week since the beginning of 2002.
Rolls-Royce delivered the 500th AE 3007C-series engine to Cessna for the Wichita airplane maker's Citation X jet. Cessna launched the Citation X program in 1990, and the aircraft entered service in 1996. Originally powered by two 6,442-pound-thrust AE 3007C engines, the Citation X was certified to operate at 0.92 Mach. In 2002, Cessna upgraded the Citation X with AE 3007C1 engines, rated at 6,764 pounds of thrust, improving takeoff performance by 5 percent and enhancing climb performance at altitudes of 5,000 feet through 25,000 feet.
Even though one of the first tasks taught to maintenance trainees is how to correctly tighten fasteners using a torque wrench, it doesn't hurt to review helpful tips passed down by generations of technicians. Apply torque to the nut, not the bolt. On rare occasions you will have to torque a bolt head; the torque value is usually higher than an equivalent nut. Apply smooth and steady torque; don't crank on the wrench.
The NTSB is investigating whether freezing precipitation near Pueblo, Colo., was responsible for the fatal crash of a Cessna Citation 560 that claimed the lives of all eight people aboard. The accident aircraft was one of two Citations carrying Circuit City employees and vendor representatives from Richmond, Va., to Santa Ana, Calif. The airplanes had made one fuel stop in Columbia, Mo., and were planning to refuel in Pueblo.
Edward W. Stimpson, former GAMA president and U.S. ambassador to ICAO, accepted the post of chairman of the Flight Safety Foundation board of governors, succeeding former NTSB Chairman Carl Vogt. Stimpson noted that he had worked with the foundation while at ICAO, most recently on the issue of criminal prosecution after aircraft accidents. ``One of my main motivations for coming to the Foundation was the possibility to continue the types of safety-related work I was doing at ICAO, which focuses on governments, but in a nonprofit environment.
The U.S. Air Force ended Boeing's 20-month suspension from space launch competitions on March 4, opening the way for the company to compete with Lockheed Martin Corp. for the next Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) contract, which likely will cover 18 to 24 launches and be awarded in 2006.
PrivatAir added seven aircraft to its fleet of managed airplanes since the beginning of the year. The new additions include: a Learjet 55, a Falcon 2000, a Hawker 400XP and a King Air 350 based at the company's West Palm Beach, Fla., facility, a Falcon 900EX in Denver, and a Falcon 900EX and a Learjet 60 based in Teterboro, N.J. The company now manages more than 50 aircraft ranging from turboprops to a Boeing 757, operating out of bases in Europe and the United States. The company also operates three Boeing Business Jets and four Airbus A319s.
The copilot of a Citation X (CS-DCT) corporate jet operated by Air Luxor is still under house arrest in Caracas, Venezuela, after 400 kilograms of cocaine was discovered aboard the aircraft on Oct. 24, 2004. However, Air Luxor's public relations manager Carlos Pacheco is convinced copilot Luis Santos, who is facing a charge of drug dealing, is innocent and being used as a scapegoat. He points out that the accumulated weight of the drugs and luggage would have been above the aircraft's MTOW and the c.g. far enough aft to have caused a tail strike.
Robert E. Breiling Associates released its 2004 Business Turbine Aircraft Accident Review. The analysis is an invaluable aid for identifying operational and maintenance-related problems with each aircraft, alerting your pilots where the accidents have occurred and their causal factors. It also identifies accident rates of each aircraft; compares accident rates of corporate aviation with that of business, air taxi and scheduled carrier; and proves to your management that corporate aviation continues to maintain the highest levels of safety.
The AOPA noted in a member bulletin that U.S. aerobatic team members have been told that military transportation will be unavailable and they will have to get themselves and their airplanes to Spain any way they can for a world competition beginning June 22. About 80 pilots will compete in an Olympics-style competition that, in the past, has been dominated by Russian and French pilots. Without the military airlift, the cost of transporting the team's aircraft is estimated at $20,000 to $30,000 each. For more information on the team, visit www.usaerobaticteam.com.
Britain's Bookajet.com is to manage sales for Sweden's European Flight Service's business jet fleet, taking responsibility for charter sales, marketing and pricing. Meanwhile, European Flight Service will supply the flight and cabin crews. Bookajet Managing Director Chris Rooney said that by year-end he could be managing between 10 and 12 aircraft ranging from Citation Excels to a Gulfstream 550.
The U.S. Office of Management and Budget began a 90-day review of new rules that would adopt Stage 4 noise standards for aircraft. Released in late 2003, the FAA's proposed Stage 4 standards were generally well received by industry groups, but some communities and airport authorities urged the FAA to use the Stage 4 rulemaking to revisit its rules regarding the Stage 2 exemption for aircraft weighing less than 75,000 pounds.
Honeywell added some 5,000 oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and 4,000 European land-based structures to its terrain databases for its helicopter EGPWS. The unit uses GPS transmissions to compare aircraft position with the built-in terrain database to generate a moving map display.
A crucial federal court decision has gone in the FAA's favor in a long-running legal dispute over the agency's contract tower program. In a partial summary judgment, an Ohio district court agreed with the FAA's position that control towers can be contracted out to private companies. The legality of the program was challenged by the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA). A ruling on another aspect of the challenge must be made before a final judgment is delivered.
Helicopter Association International Operator Safety Award Applications are now available to recognize HAI regular members' safe helicopter operation. To qualify, an operator's safety statistics for the just-concluded year must be less than half the total of the median accident rate of HAI operator members added to the median accident rate for U.S. civil helicopters.
The Global Express, launched in 1993, was Bombardier's bid to build a clean-sheet, heavy-iron business jet intended to set new standards for technology, systems redundancy, cruise speed and cabin comfort. A highly swept, highly loaded super-critical wing would ensure record cruising speeds. A full array of high-lift devices would enable the aircraft to use short runways. The latest airliner-inspired systems would save weight and offer more redundancy than those fitted to conventional business jets.
The VanAllen Group, Atlanta, a business aviation consulting firm, added two new members: Donald White and Mert Pellegrin Jr. White joins the company as vice president of technical services, and Pellegrin joins as a senior consultant. In addition, Phil Rickert, a senior member of the VanAllen Group, was named vice president of operational services.
CJ Systems Aviation Group, Pittsburgh: Industry veteran Herb Schutt, vice president of operations, retired from the company effective March 1. Schutt was with CJ Systems for 20 years and has been a pilot since 1968. J. Heffernan was promoted to the position of vice president of operations from his previous position of director of safety.
Gulfstream Aerospace, which in recent years has lost money disposing of used aircraft taken in trade from customers who have ordered new Gulfstreams, posted a $6 million operating profit on sales of previously owned aircraft in 2004. By the end of last year, Gulfstream only had eight used aircraft in its inventory, and four of those were scheduled to be sold during the first quarter of this year.
The AOPA labeled ``shortsighted'' an FAA proposal to decommission two VORTACs in southern New England. The Providence (PVD) VORTAC at T.F. Green Airport in Rhode Island and Bradley (BDL) VORTAC at Bradley Airport in Windsor Locks, Conn., are both being shut down because of airport construction. The FAA is considering neither relocating nor reactivating the navaids, but the AOPA says they are heavily used and should be retained. The AOPA has asked the FAA to extend the comment period on the plan.
Yingling Aviation is offering Cessna 400-series twin operators affected by the emergency AD 2005-05-52 full visual and eddy-current inspections as well as modifications designed to correct existing conditions and prevent future propagation. Yingling, located on Wichita Mid-Continent Airport, has, ``more existing engineering, established maintenance procedures, tooling and expertise working on Cessna twin-engine aircraft than any other facility in the world,'' noted Lynn Nichols, president of Yingling.
John Bool, general manager of engineering, Harrods Aviation: ``While we have only had the aircraft for a short period and our experience on this type is growing daily, we have found the management systems to be reasonably easy to use and have had positive feedback from the staff.
Jet Aviation Singapore recently completed its largest structural repair, the removal of both wings on a Gulfstream IV so its technicians could replace both left and right wing attachment fittings. Before the repair could be performed, custom-built shoring equipment needed to be produced to ensure that no movement of the aircraft structure occurred as the wing attachments were removed. Total time for the attachment re-fitting was 500 man-hours. Jet Aviation is storing the custom equipment and can ship it to any of its other facilities, if needed.
