Imagine needing to hire a veteran business aircraft technician and coming across Lee Boulanger's resume. Here's a mechanic with more than 20 years working on Bombardier Challengers, a laundry list of impeccable references, and a record of success that's earned Boulanger a Challenger aircraft maintenance supervisor position at Bombardier's service center in Hartford, Conn. A thoroughly experienced maintenance pro, and quite likely the perfect man for the job. Perfectly qualified, yes. But the right man, she is not.
Manufacturer ups and downs. Raytheon Aircraft is laying off another 220 workers in Wichita and Salina, Kan., while Lancair is gearing up to recall some of the 200 people it laid off in Bend, Ore., late this summer. Raytheon's cuts include both hourly and salaried workers in jobs across the entire product line and were necessitated by the ``continued weak economy and lower estimated [aircraft] build rates for 2003,'' said spokesman Tim Travis.
Ha! Ha! Just Kidding. The FAA gave the industry a considerable fright before backpedaling and adding 75 days to the comment period on its guidance on how to comply with proposed new repair station rules. The first release of the Advisory Circular covering repair station manuals gave only 15 days for industry comments. This came barely two weeks after four industry groups had petitioned the agency to delay implementation of the rules because the industry did not have an opportunity to review and comment on the guidance.
Jazz, Air Canada's regional airline affiliate, plans to cut 391 jobs. This is in addition to the 1,300 job cuts announced by the parent airline in August. Spokesperson Debra Williams said that while the number of jobs to be eliminated has been determined, the airline will endeavor to keep the number of actual employees out the door at a minimum by using such things as special leaves of absence and job sharing. Pilot and flight attendant positions account for 29 percent of the cuts.
By David Collogan david_collogan@ mcgraw-hill.com Seeing 2002 grow smaller in the rear-view mirror will be a welcome sight. bi Washington Bureau Chief David Collogan is editor of B/CA's sister publication, The Weekly of Business Aviation.
ONE OF THE NICEST things about the upcoming holidays is that they'll mark the closing days of 2002, a period of time that most of us will be happy to consign to a cobwebbed corner of the memory bank.
The Boeing Co. has acquired all of FlightSafety International's (FSI) interests in FlightSafety Boeing Training International (FSBTI). The new organization will operate as a subsidiary of The Boeing Co. and will continue to report to Commercial Aviation Services, a unit of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Boeing and FSI announced the details of the agreement in September. FSBTI, which Boeing and FSI operated as a joint venture since 1997, has 800 employees at 21 locations worldwide, 70 full-flight simulators and numerous fixed-base and maintenance training simulators.
Ballistic Recovery Systems (BRS) of South St. Paul, Minn., will work on improving emergency parachutes for small aircraft under a $600,000 small business innovative research (SBIR) Phase II contract from NASA. The company will focus on improving parachutes for ``personal jets,'' which may play a large role in NASA's Small Aircraft Transportation Systems (SATS) program, the company said. SATS is NASA's five-year research and development program intended to combine ``smart'' airplanes and ``smart'' airports to make small aircraft safer and easier to fly.
That knocking you hear in a piston engine is caused by detonation. Also called spark knock, detonation results when the air/fuel mixture explodes everywhere at once prior to spark ignition. When the fuel air/mixture is compressed, its temperature increases even as residual heat from the previous cycle is absorbed into the cooler mixture. If the fuel's flame point is exceeded, the mixture can explode all at once without waiting for a spark. The combustion pressure wave that meets the ascending piston is heard as a knock.
The association of Independent Contract Aviation Professionals (ICAP) is being formed to support independent contract pilots, flight attendants and maintenance technicians. The group's creation follows discussions at the first annual independent contractors' breakfast at this year's NBAA convention.
There's a new sheriff in town. John E. Thompson is resigning as chief pilot at Byerley Aviation in Peoria, Ill., to serve a four-year term as the newly elected sheriff of Bureau County, Ill. Bureau County lies due north of Peoria; so give a wag of your wings to John as you pass between Princeton and Spring Valley, Ill., on descent into PIA.
Everywhere I go, people say, `I know Showalter,''' says Jenny Showalter, a third-generation member of the family whose Florida FBO, Showalter Flying Service, is known far beyond its leasehold at Orlando Executive Airport.
A shortage of propylene glycol, the key ingredient of de-ice fluid, may make that often-vital substance scarce, or substantially more costly, this winter -- possibly both. Propylene glycol is brewed from isopropyl alcohol and glycerin, which are in turn processed from vegetable matter. While Dow Chemical's two processing plants at Freeport and Plaquemine in the Bahamas were shut down for scheduled maintenance, tropical storms damaged the source crops and the processing facilities could not be restarted before that vegetable material became unusable.
Air Nostrum of Spain won the gold medal and title of ``Airline of the Year'' at this year's European Regions Airline (ERA) Association General Assembly in Salzburg, Austria. Silver and bronze winners were the same as in 2001 with Norway's Wilderoe taking second place and Air Dolomiti of Italy in third. The winners were selected by an international panel of journalists who judged 15 submitted entries. The winning criteria included profitability, traffic growth and innovation.
Engine issues are slowing Eclipse 500 flight testing, though the program is advancing on other fronts. After the twinjet's first flight in August, the only two EJ-22 engines were removed from the aircraft and shipped to the manufacturer, Williams Research. Eclipse officials stated that the engines need to produce more thrust and that there are challenges fitting all the engine accessories into the available engine space. At press time, Eclipse did not have a projected date for when the 500 will fly again.
Hunt and Palmer and Air Partner, both British air charter operators, have announced significant increases in their businesses over the past 12 months. The former said it expects a 25-percent improvement in business over 2001, while Air Partner said its pre-tax profits jumped to 85 percent and sales rose 12 percent to $161 million. M.V.
Honeywell Primus Epic integrated avionics have been chosen to equip the PlaneView cockpit in the Gulfstream G500 and its SPZ-8400 avionics for the G300. The two aircraft are part of the expanded and renamed Gulfstream line of aircraft. The G500 is a 5,800-nm version of the GV-SP that is designed to compete against the Falcon 7X and Bombardier Global 5000. The GV-SP, newly designated the G550, also incorporates the PlaneView avionics. The G300 is a variant of the GIV-SP with less fuel capacity and range. The G400 is the equivalent of a fully loaded GIV-SP.
Jet Source, Carlsbad, Calif., has named Frank Milian as chief operating officer. Milian also serves as chairman of the National Air Transportation Association's Air Charter Committee.
FlightSafety International, La Guardia Airport, N.Y., has announced four recent promotions. Kyle Davis is now assistant manager of the company's Toledo Learning Center. Patrick Dulac is assistant manager of the Le Bourget Learning Center in Paris. Jack Ellis has been named manager of the new Orlando Learning Center. Chip White is now assistant manager of FlightSafety's two St. Louis Learning Centers.
Chinese aircraft manufacturer, AVIC 1 Commercial Aircraft Co. selected the General Electric CF34-10A turbofan to power the ARJ21 regional jet airliner the company is developing for use on feeder routes in China. GE signed a letter of intent to supply engines for both the 79- and 99-seat versions of the ARJ21.
Rockwell Collins, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, has named Bruce King vice president and general manager of communication systems for its government systems business. In addition, Robert K. (Kelly) Ortberg has been appointed as vice president and general manager of air transport systems for the company's commercial systems business.
FAA officials plan to form an advisory committee, similar to the ETOPS ARAC (see above), to support its efforts to review and revise FAR Parts 135 and 125 (see Intelligence, November, page 17). Officials expect shortly to release the charter that will outline plans for the task. Kathy Perfetti, manager of the FAA's newly established Part 135 and Fractional Ownership Operations Branch, has been working with industry and already has received a number of expressions of interest from potential participants. The FAA wants to keep the committee relatively small in number.
As part of its continuing effort to trim costs, Bombardier Aircraft has eliminated several management positions, including two key posts and familiar names associated with product development. Peter Reynolds, vice president of the company's Wichita flight-test center, and John Taylor, vice president of product development in Montreal, were among those let go in late October. Reynolds is a well-known flight test pilot and received numerous industry awards during his three decades at Learjet and Bombardier. F.G.
The FAA is offering bird-strike data online in the hope of promoting more reporting, an FAA official told The Weekly of Business Aviation. Identification and tracking data of bird species involved in collisions with aircraft are compiled by the FAA and its partner, the Smithsonian Institution's Feather Identification Lab, which has more than 620,000 bird species in its 150-year-old collection. After bird strikes occur, airport operators send the remains -- which are often feathers -- to the lab for identification.
