Multiflight Handling Service has taken delivery of the first Boeing BBJ2 available for charter service. Boeing confirmed that the aircraft, completed by Lufthansa Technik (LHT), is the first of its type available for luxury long-range charter. Executive Jet Charter of Farnborough will operate the aircraft. On its shakedown flights, the aircraft was flown nonstop to Oakland, Calif., and on to Tahiti, returning via Calgary to Leeds, logging a total of 38 flight hours. Multiflight hopes to gain 180-minute ETOPS certification.
Jet Aviation London Biggin Hill was recently named an authorized Dassault Service Center for Falcon 900 series business jets. The company has been providing line and base maintenance support for U.K.-based Falcon 900 aircraft in addition to unscheduled technical support. The new service center status will allow the facility to perform scheduled and unscheduled maintenance on Falcon 900 series aircraft, including airframe, engine and avionics work along with aircraft modifications.
Elite Flight Solutions has a contract to manage a Learjet 25, which will be based at Elite's base in Sarasota, Fla. Elite said it is in the process of acquiring a Citation III for its charter operation.
Aeronautical Accessories, Inc., a Bell Helicopter affiliate, has a new STC for Safe Flight Instrument Corp.'s Exceedence Warning System installed on Bell 206B JetRangers. Safe Flight announced that Aeronautical Accessories and its worldwide sales network will be the sole distributor of its Exceedence Warning System for commercial applications. Safe Flight is pursuing U.S. government applications for the system.
``You're in better shape here,'' aviation lawyer Phil Crowther of Wichita said, referring to county property taxes potentially assessed against aircraft. In 10 percent of states, mostly in New England, Crowther pointed out, neither property nor registration taxes (another form of annual tax) are assessed against aircraft. ``In the Southeastern states, they all seem to assess property taxes,'' Crowther said.
The narrative that follows is from pertinent portions of the NTSB preliminary accident report identified as CHI03FA099. The full report can be viewed on the NTSB Web site: www.ntsb.gov. On April 8, 2003, at 1850 central daylight time, a Dassault Fan Jet Falcon, N179GA, operated by Grand Aire Express, Inc., was destroyed when it was ditched into the Mississippi River near St. Louis, Missouri. The airplane was approaching to land, on Runway 30R (9,003 feet by 150 feet), at the Lambert-St. Louis International Airport (STL), when it lost power to both engines.
Embraer says its alcohol-powered EMB 202 Ipanema crop-duster is expected to gain Brazilian certification in December with a modified version of the 300-hp Textron Lycoming IO-540 engine. M.V.
The FAA has proposed a policy guiding airports' weight-based limitations on runway use to ensure the limits apply ``only to the purpose of protecting an airport operator's investment in pavement, and are not a substitute for noise restrictions.'' The agency notes in a July 1 Federal Register notice that ``some airport operators have implemented restrictions on use of the airport by aircraft above a certain weight, to protect pavement not designed for aircraft of that weight.
GAMA has formally opposed a Joint Aviation Authorities Advance Notice of Proposed Amendment (A-NPA) proposal to require all European corporate aviation operators to register with their National Aviation Authority. The association stated that given the fact that corporate operators have a long history of safety excellence and do not offer air transportation to the public, formal registration of flight departments is unnecessary and places an unjustified economic burden on operators.
NetJets is eagerly putting some marketing muscle against the void left by the cancellation of transatlantic Concorde service. ``We are going after that business,'' Charles McLean of NetJets Europe told CNN at the Paris Air Show. Word has it NetJets will tell forlorn Concorde aficionados, ``You flew Concorde. Now it's time for an upgrade.''
The Eclipse prototype is flying again, but not with Pratt & Whitney Canada or Williams engines, reports the Weekly of Business Aviation. To maintain some momentum in the development program, Eclipse engineers came up with the idea of using Teledyne Model 382-10E low-bypass turbofans, which produce about 810 pounds of thrust, CEO Vern Raburn told the Weekly.
Lots of died-in-the-wool, twin-turbine traditionalists point to the lack of a second engine on the TBM 700 as the best reason for not owning one. The TBM 700, indeed, has an average single-engine turboprop accident rate of 1.76 accidents per 100,000 flight hours, according to Robert E. Breiling, the well-known safety analyst based in Boca Raton, Fla. But none of the 11 TBM 700 accidents that occurred up to the end of 2002 had anything to do with a malfunction of its Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-64 engine, Breiling asserts.
Aviation Technology Group (ATG) has chosen the Avidyne FlightMax Entegra integrated flight deck and flight control system for its Javelin aircraft. Rob Fuschino, ATG vice president of operations for ATG and former F-16 test pilot, said the Entegra was especially suitable for the Javelin's single-pilot, tandem cockpit design. The Entegra uses two 10.4-inch diagonal displays, including a primary flight display (PFD) and a data link-enabled multifunction display (MFD) in each of the forward and aft cockpits.
The August Greenhouse Patter Playback featuring a July 1980 column sure is timeless (page 132). Pride vs. prudence: I'd call it the ``gotta'' syndrome. I've gotta be there. They've gotta be there. We've gotta go. The ``gotta'' syndrome has killed or injured too many pilots and passengers to be ignored, and Torch Lewis really pointed it out in his column. As part of my instruction, I always tried to instill in my students that they don't gotta be anywhere. If there is any doubt, there is always a later time that would be safer and more certain.
Adam Aircraft displayed its new jet-powered A700 and piston-powered A500 at AirVenture 2003. The A700, powered by two Williams FJ33s, made its first flight in July. Pilots Bruce Barrett and Glenn Maben climbed to 15,000 feet and conducted stability, control, slow flight and aircraft systems tests during the 50-minute flight. The FAA cleared the A700 for cross-country, and Barrett and Maben flew it to Oshkosh on July 31.
Mooney will build a light sport aircraft, the Mooney Toxo, under an agreement with Construcciones Aeronauticas De Galicia, manufacturer of the Toxo light sport aircraft in Spain. Mooney will manufacture, design, assemble and market the two-seater airplane from its plant in Kerrville, Texas. J. Nelson Happy, president of Mooney, stated: ``This is a major step for our company. No other traditional aircraft manufacturer has entered the light sport aircraft market before, but we believe that the time has come for us to do this.
Superior Air Parts has a new Web site to support its XP-360, a ``zero-time'' piston aircraft engine primarily aimed at the sport aircraft market. Customers can configure and literally build an engine interactively online. As customers accessorize or customize the basic engine, price and specifications match the customer-selected configuration. The site is www.xp-360.com.
U.K.-based Harrods Aviation has signed an agreement with MacCarthy Interiors Ltd. to provide full aircraft interior refurbishment and support to corporate aircraft. The service will be available at Harrods Aviation bases at Luton and Stansted, and field service will be available throughout Europe, according to the two companies. MacCarthy Interiors will station personnel at Harrods Aviation bases with design and manufacturing support from McCarthy's facility at Redhill Aerodrome near Gatwick. M.V.
Bringing data link weather efficiently into the cockpit has required overcoming several technological hurdles. When it comes to ground-based data link transmission, using something such as ARINC's Globalink/VHF service would seem a natural, but the hurdle has been expanding the bandwidth to provide adequate data transmission capability.
The U.K.'s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) believes that there is ``a pressing need for new airport capacity in the southeast of England,'' in response to the U.K. government's consultation documents on future air transport policy.
Lanmar Aviation has received FAA Repair Station certification for Raytheon King Airs and Model 1900s, and Pratt & Whitney PT-6 engines. Lanmar is on the Web at www.lanmaraviation.com.
Embraer says it is confident it will meet the Embraer 170's new November certification date and expects Brazil to offer some financing to US Airways, the first U.S. operator of the aircraft. The company's executive vice president of airline markets, Frederico Curado, told Aviation Daily that like all banks, Brazil's development bank BNDES doesn't have unlimited funds and has been in talks with Embraer to flesh out the depth of the bank's involvement.
The C model has a full complement of Honeywell and Garmin avionics, including Bendix/King two-tube EFIS 40 on the pilot's side, dual Garmin GNS530 com/nav/GPS/moving map units, Honeywell KMD 850 MFD with RDS200 weather radar, IHAS880 traffic and terrain warning system, Honeywell FIS-B weather data link, KN63 DME, Garmin GTX-327 transponder, Garmin GMA 340 stereo audio panel provisioned for entertainment system input and Stormscope.
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia-based National Air Services (NAS), which operates the NetJets Middle East fractional ownership program, and Arab Banking Corp. (ABC) of Bahrain have signed an agreement for the financing of a $30 million Gulfstream IV-SP. ABC is the largest bank in the Middle East, and five-year-old NAS has an owned and managed fleet of 11 aircraft.
Does the holding of a fractional share in an aircraft constitute true ownership of an asset or the purchase of a transportation service? In carrying out the contracted transportation service, is the fractional program manager conducting a private or commercial operation? Do you think that since the five-year initiative to hammer out FAR Part 91, Subpart K those questions have been unequivocally answered?
