Piedmont Hawthorne is preparing a Saab SF340A corporate shuttle demonstrator as a result of its recent alliance with Saab Aircraft Leasing Inc (SAL). Michael Magnusson, president and CEO of SAL, said, ``We are targeting the corporate shuttle market, as this sector is growing fast both in the U.S. and Europe, but we are not aiming these refurbished aircraft at the VIP market.''
The September 11 highjackings and attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon caught the nation, the world by surprise. The long-term ramifications are unknown, but its effect on business aviation was immediate and, except for lifeguard flights, for three days left the industry grounded and wondering aloud. Here are some of the voices from that time:
Two senior FAA executives depart for greener and perhaps more peaceful pastures. Nick Lacey, long-time head of Flight Standards until a recent reassignment prompted him to resign from the FAA, report for duty at the Washington consulting firm of Morton, Beyer and Agnew in early September. His former boss, Tom McSweeny, associate administrator for regulation and certification, and the senior safety, certification and enforcement officer, will end his 28-year FAA career and join Boeing's Washington, D.C., office.
Petroleum Helicopters, Inc. (PHI) Chairman Carroll Suggs retired in mid-September after selling her 52-percent interest in the company for about $30 million. Oil and gas industry veteran Al A. Gonsoulin, a 4,000-hour fixed wing pilot who acquired the majority of the stock from Suggs, is now Chairman of the PHI board of directors.
Larry Ginocchio, a Cessna sales manager and son of Peter Peter Ginocchio, Dassault Falcon Jet's retired senior vice president of Customer Support, was killed September 5 in a hunting accident in northern Quebec. After graduating from the University of South Carolina in 1992, Ginocchio worked for Simuflight Training International and later was involved in sales at Galaxy Aerospace. He joined Cessna in 1999 and handled CJ and Bravo sales in South Carolina, Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia and Tennessee.
Photograph: Gulfstream VSP Town officials in Islip, N.Y., have approved a $50,000 fee for aircraft using Long Island-MacArthur Airport (ISP) between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. The ``noise surcharge,'' is to ``compensate the town and its citizens for the cost of dealing with serious community concerns'' over the flights, which it has deemed loud, disturbing, unnecessary, and ``detrimental to the life, health, welfare, safety and good order.'' The fee is applicable to all aircraft, regardless of size.
After conducting air charters under other operators' certificates for the past several years, Rifton Aviation Services has finally gotten its own FAR Part 135 certificate. The Newburgh, N.Y.-based (SWF) operator is now authorized to conduct worldwide charters with 10 or more passengers using its current fleet of three company-owned aircraft: an eight-passenger Dassault Falcon 2000, an 11-seat Gulfstream IV and an eight-passenger Cessna Citation Excel.
The NBAA Maintenance Committee has created guidelines to provide maintenance training standards for business aircraft manufacturers and training companies. IBM's Jim Janaitis, chairman of the training subcommittee, said his group has been working on the standards since October 1999. The document is based on the Air Transport Association (ATA) standards and it further clarifies several aspects specific to business aircraft operations. Due to the varying needs and types of operations, the NBAA has kept the content of the guidelines general.
Transport category aircraft, as defined under FAR Part 25, are designed to ``survive'' encounters with birds, at least to the extent that most catastrophic consequences can be avoided and the aircraft can return safely for landing. The design criteria apply primarily to three major components: the empennage structure, windshields and windows, and engines.
Are you looking for another project to tackle in your flight department? Consider heading up the hotel selection committee. When you check on hotel amenities, inquire if they have a dedicated exercise room. Ask what equipment is available and if it all works (it's frustrating to arrive at the end of a long day and find out the only treadmill is inoperative, or the exercise room has been converted to a file storage room, or the pool is closed).
Helicopters do their best work in tight, tough situations. And often those tight, tough operational situations are made more difficult by darkness, marginal weather and urgency -- the latter almost always the case with emergency medical services and law enforcement.
August 30 -- The flight attendant on an Embraer ERJ-135ER suffered a broken leg when the aircraft encountered severe turbulence near Richmond, Va. According to crew statements to the NTSB, the aircraft was flying at 15,000 feet, vectoring between storm cells at the time of the encounter. The cells were between 15 and 25 miles from the aircraft, when it suddenly pitched up and rolled 20 degrees to the left and right. The remaining two crewmembers and 28 passengers were uninjured. No damage to the aircraft was reported.
As part of the carrier's ``proactive'' cost-cutting measures, Mesa Air Group Chairman/CEO Jonathan Ornstein and President Mike Lotz are taking 50-percent base pay cuts, while pay for other senior management is being reduced by 20 percent. Ornstein and Lotz's former compensation was $200,000 and $175,000, respectively. The carrier is also following the lead of most major airlines with a 20-percent flight reduction at its CCAir and Air Midwest subsidiaries.
September 12 -- A Let L410 crashed on takeoff from Chichen Itza, Mexico, killing all three crewmembers and 16 passengers on board. Officials suspect engine failure in the accident, adding that the crash was followed by an intense fire that hampered rescue and recovery efforts. Registered to Mexican air tour operator Aero Ferinco, the Czech-made turboprop was returning to Cozumel where the passengers were to rejoin a cruise ship bound for Miami.
Bombardier Aerospace has acquired Air Charter Online. Air Charter Online (www.aircharteronline.com), based in Mahwah, N.J., was founded in 1995 to consolidate aircraft availability information from charter operators.
Garrett Aviation announced it had retrofitted Honeywell's Primus Epic Control Display System on a Gulfstream III. The installation includes three large flat-panel displays, a pair of integrated avionics computers, two display controllers, a multifunction display controller and a remote instrument controller. Base price for the retrofit, including equipment, installation and certification, was less than $600,000.
A new Midwestern dispatchers and schedulers group has been formed, spearheaded by Theresa Lushina and Terri Tarkowski of Motorola's flight department. The group held its first meeting at Illinois' Shaumburg Regional Airport on June 11. The next meeting is scheduled for October 11. Persons interested in joining the group or attending meetings can call either Lushina or Tarkowski at (847) 541-1014.
Within days of the mid-September terrorist attacks, The National Air Transportation Association (NATA) created a Business Aviation Security Task Force to ensure that business and charter aircraft operations can perform their missions ``without fear or misuse.'' NATA Chairman James Christiansen will chair the task force, with participants expected to include representatives of charter companies, flight departments, fractional providers, FBOs, airport management, manufacturers and government.
The days of sniffing out wiring anomalies with a megger meter are becoming numbered with the development of portable wire integrity test equipment. One such system being developed by Honeywell for the airline industry is called the Nova Wire Integrity Program. Nova will perform wiring system modeling, failure analysis, trend monitoring, prognostics, diagnostic analysis, data logging of test results and automatic test generation.
My backyard is a hotbed of tranquility. Each pleasant summer evening Madam Queen and I adjourn to the patio, viewing overhead airliners crisscrossing one another making tic-tac-toe patterns in the sky. An occasional bee drops by our table to sip a drop of merlot, only to find it doesn't taste like nectar. There are scores of tall trees in our hillside neighborhood making a huge cageless aviary for our evening listening pleasure.
One annual tradition at the NBAA Meet-ing and Convention is the release of forecasts on the state of business aviation from Rolls-Royce, Honeywell, the Teal Group and National Aircraft Resale Association. While the recent events are having an effect on the economy, travel plans and the overall economic outlook, thus rendering the forecasters' conclusions questionable, we have summarized the major findings of each of the reports, which were made prior to September 11:
In an effort to improve services, Jet Aviation has combined its avionics resources from the company's Dusseldorf, Saarbrucken, Munich, Hannover and Cologne locations at its facility in Kassel, Germany. In addition, the ``Kassel avionics competency center'' has increased the number of qualified technicians, enlarged the avionics shop and updated the equipment. ``A major investment has been made in new-generation avionics and testing equipment for Honeywell, Rockwell-Collins and S-TEC,'' said Johannes Turzer, Jet Aviation Germany's vice president and general manager.
