When I took over this flight department, I had no experience with rotary-wing aircraft, and when I looked at the operating cost of our helicopter, the numbers almost stopped my heart!'' The speaker was Doug Schwartz, AT&T's aviation manager, and the sentiment he expressed is well known among business aviators of the fixed-wing persuasion: Helicopter operating costs, taken on their own without the qualifying factor of context, will always eclipse that of turbine-powered airplanes with the same number of seats.
In terms of ambiance, Dave Flitner's cattle ranching and resort operation on the side of the Bighorn Mountains in Northwestern Wyoming is about as far from the boardrooms and glass-and-steel canyons of Manhattan as you can get. But like the S&P 500 corporations that operate helicopters to promote executive productivity, Flitner uses a Bell 407 in much the same way to oversee and manage his family's 300,000-acre spread. He just wears a Stetson and jeans instead of a blue suit and wingtips.
Keystone Helicopter of West Chester, Pa. (see ``Sounding the Wright Key,'' page 60) now makes maintenance ``house calls'' with a truck-borne mobile maintenance team to provide 24/7 on-site service to its customers. Keystone COO David Ford says the Keystone Helicopter Instant Service team can be dispatched to provide on-site emergency services or repairs, ``such as gear box and engine change-outs, avionics and mechanical troubleshooting, structural repairs -- even aircraft recovery if necessary.''
There's a new FBO at Space Coast Regional Airport (TIX) in Titusville, Fla. TIX Jet Center, which opened its doors on Jan. 5, offers a WSI Weather Briefing System, crew cars and shuttle service, rental cars on site, a pilot's lounge, catering and Unicom. FBO personnel are on duty from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. seven days a week with on-call service available after hours.
Transport Canada suspended the operating certificate of Georgian Express Ltd., the operator of the Cessna 208B Caravan that crashed after takeoff on Jan. 17 and sank in Lake Erie, trapping its 10 occupants under the ice for days before the wreckage could be recovered. The agency said it decided on the suspension based on a review of the company's documentation as well as the circumstances of the fatal crash.
Honeywell said the AT&T Wireless flight department will be the first corporate flight operation to install the avionics maker's new Runway Awareness and Advisory System. AT&T Wireless participated with Honeywell in researching the new system, which provides a variety of warnings and alerts to keep pilots informed of their position on an airport.
While Keystone services just about every major make of rotorcraft built in the western world, it has long maintained a special relationship with Sikorsky, a relationship first evidenced in the mid-1980s when Keystone initiated its S-76 Medallion program. Put simply, Medallion was a remanufacturing program that zero-timed the engines, airframe and rotorcraft dynamics of S-76A models, essentially performing an airline-style D-check on the helicopter.
The American Helicopter Museum & Education Center, West Chester, Pa., has hired Greg Kennedy as its new executive director. Kennedy's employment experience involves a number of aviation-related museums across the nation.
At the peak of the citizens band radio craze in the 1970s, common channels quickly evolved into a hissing, crackling squeal of competing carrier transmissions. A featured novelty in music and movies, everyone got a CB radio and got on the air. The long-haul truckers and others who relied on this medium for useful communication and public safety calls were effectively left without coverage during peak times, in spite of attempts by the Federal Communications Commission and other regulators to restore order.
Meggitt Avionics will develop a new digital flight guidance system for the Eclipse 500. The new autopilot will use modern technology including ``smart'' brushless motor servos for higher reliability, increased authority and lower weight as compared to conventional servos. Meggitt says it expects to receive TSO-C9c (automatic pilots) by mid-2005.
Pilots have successfully landed a helicopter while wearing a helmet with night vision goggles on which a computer-generated path to the landing zone was superimposed. The National Research Council of Canada's Institute for Aerospace Research (NRC-IAR) has developed a helicopter augmented reality night vision system using a laserBIRD helmet position tracker made by Ascension Technology of Burlington, Vt. With the laserBIRD sensor mounted on the helmet, superimposed flight symbology can be projected wherever the pilot looks.
CEOs of 41 Aerospace Industries Association member companies recently signed a letter to operators of the Paris, Dubai, Singapore and Farnborough air shows complaining about the high costs of chalet and exhibition space. AIA estimates that attending European shows costs $10,000 to $15,000 per employee at some companies and could increase substantially if the dollar declines further against the Euro. Evidently, U.S. companies are not the only disgruntled participants.
A Florida fire fighter has developed a single-use chemical and biological agent containment kit for first responders. Jacksonville Fire/Rescue Lt. Rick Rochford began marketing the kit in late 2003 with Safety Solutions, Inc. of Boynton Beach, Fla. Rochford said he was inspired to create it after taking classes in chemical and biological warfare response at Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah. ``The class showed me that there was no proper sampling equipment available to emergency response personnel,'' he said.
After opening a 6,000-square-foot interior finishing shop in 2003, Atlantic Aero, on the Piedmont Triad International Airport (GSO) in Greensboro, N.C., has dedicated a 5,000-square-foot hangar to house a new cabinetry division, bringing the interior finishing facilities to 11,000 square feet. Atlantic Aero and its subsidiaries provide aerospace engineering services, parts fabrication, and FAA repair station services. It holds numerous PMAs and STCs, operates 25 aircraft and employs 170 people.
Aviation at its most interesting has always been an eclectic mix of the unconventional and the energetic. That's especially true when it comes to rotary aviation. Envisioning the potential of the spindly prototypes of vertical lift's pioneering days required a special way of seeing. Founding a helicopter service, support and sales company in those times required a special faith in the future of that machine.
CABOTAGE, THE TRANSPORTATION of passengers or cargo in an aircraft between two points within a foreign country, concerns commercial operations since under the Chicago Convention, U.S. air carriers cannot, without permission, transport nationals of that foreign country between two points within that country. The required permission is often achieved by obtaining air carrier licenses or certificates in the foreign country or through bilateral and other reciprocal agreements. But does cabotage apply to not for hire FAR Part 91 operation of business aircraft?
The FAA is considering an NRPM intended to help prevent fuel tank explosions by requiring fuel inerting systems that would reduce the flammability of fuel tank vapors on the ground and in flight be installed on Boeing and Airbus models whose air conditioning systems could cause heating of center-wing fuel tanks. The new fuel tank system replaces some of the oxygen in the fuel tank with inert nitrogen gas, preventing flammable vapors. The NTSB has long advocated both eliminating ignition sources and reducing fuel tank flammability.
Wire strikes involving general aviation fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft are on the rise again in various parts of the world. Onboard obstacle warning systems exist and others are under development to help pilots steer clear, but these can be expensive -- too expensive for many operators. Fortunately, an altogether new kind of help may be on the way. OCAS-AS, a small Norwegian engineering firm, has developed a ground-based Obstacle Collision Avoidance System (OCAS) that is capable of warning pilots of a close encounter with a power line or structure.
After GAMA released its 2003 General Aviation Airplane Shipment report (see related item on page 18), the Experimental Aircraft Association was quick to point out that its members built 707 single-engine aircraft from Dec. 17, 2002, to Dec. 17, 2003 (admittedly a period slightly longer than a year) which was more than any single general aviation manufacturer. The manufacturers and their respective single-engine aircraft output were as follows: Cessna, 588; Cirrus, 469; Diamond, 228; New Piper, 185.
Originally designed for techno geeks to carry their gadgets, SCOTTeVEST's TEC line of multi-pocketed coats, vests and jackets has introduced a three-button navy blue blazer in a worsted wool blend, with a silky gold lining, 14 hidden pockets and an abundance of features. The blazer and its counterpart jackets are very suitable for pilots and their passengers, according to the manufacturer, allowing them to carry all their gadgets in one garment that can be removed for security screening.
Human error, not aging aircraft, is the most significant factor in military aviation accidents, a panel of military commanders told House Armed Services Committee members on Feb. 11. The panel met to review the U.S. Department of Defense's progress in identifying the cause of an escalating number of accidents and update members on strategies to reduce or eliminate Class A mishaps, which are crashes or collisions that cause $1 million or more in damage, loss of the aircraft, death or permanent injury.
FlightSafety International, Flushing, N.Y., has named Glenn Moses director of government relations. He will be located in Washington, D.C. In addition, Tom Booth has been named manager of the company's Columbus Learning Center on Port Columbus International Airport in Ohio. Booth was previously assistant manager of the FlightSafety Raytheon Learning Center in Wichita.
The FAA wants to create a new Subpart D in FAR Part 183 that would replace the exiting Special FAR 36, the Delegation Option Authorization, Organizational Designated Airworthiness Representative and Designated Alteration Station Authorization programs. The new Subpart D would recognize designees as either an ODA Unit -- an identifiable unit of two or more individuals within an organization -- or an ODA Holder, the parent organization that receives an ODA Letter of Designation.
GAMA says piston-engine airplane shipments increased 9.5 percent in 2003, largely offsetting a decline in shipments of turboprops and business jets -- keeping total industry shipments essentially unchanged from the previous year at 2,686 units. However, the association reported total industry billings declined 15.5 percent to $9.99 billion. At an industry review in Washington, D.C., on Feb.
A large California land development company relies on a Eurocopter AStar as a management tool for overseeing holdings ranging from housing tracts to resorts, a golf course and a rice farm. ``We have numerous residential and commercial building sites and have been able to reduce overhead from 25 to 40 percent by using the helicopter to transport managers to construction sites,'' the firm's chief pilot said. With the helicopter, managers are able to oversee construction and development, landing at job sites if necessary for direct contact with workers.
