A futuristic interior for a VIP helicopter is being unveiled here this week by AgustaWestland. A mockup of the design for the AW169, by fashion studio Lanzavecchia+Wai, can be seen at EBACE. After working with the most famous and prestigious fashion houses, such as Versace and Lagerfeld, on the GrandNew and AW139 helicopters, AgustaWestland decided to do something different and avant garde for the AW169, which is to be certified this year.
Rolls-Royce’s CorporateCare engine maintenance program is growing by leaps and bounds and is making a real difference to aircraft resale values, says Stephen Friedrich, VP, Sales and Marketing, Civil Small and Medium Engines. “We now have 1,500-plus aircraft signed up, and more than 70% of all new Rolls-Royce deliveries are enrolled,” he says. “We’re no longer seeing market acceptance but market demand.” Indeed, the sign-up rate exceeds the number of new deliveries as used aircraft five, 10 or even 20 years old are enrolled.
“We wanted to match the values of AgustaWestland, and felt that helicopter interiors were not a mirror of their outsides,” says Francesca Lanzavecchia of design studio Lanzavecchia+Wai, whose unique Stream design concept for an AW169 passenger cabin is displayed in model form at the manufacturer’s Booth 6629.
Mahjong in the sky? Sure. But the Chinese owner of a BBJ2 currently being outfitted by BizJet International will have bragging rights to the first fully STC’d built-in digital board for the 500-year-old game. “It will be the first of its kind,” says sales VP Ed Harris of JBRND (the former Jeff Bonner R&D), which is exhibiting here at Booth 5339.
Isle of Man, Bermuda and Cayman Islands operators are among those likely to be affected by new changes to EASA operations rules, says Aoife O’Sullivan, international aviation expert and partner at the UK-based Kennedys international law firm. The changes are a hot issue for non-EU operators, she says, who could find themselves required to meet EU Air Operators Certificate standards even if they’re not doing AOC business.
TV screens got wider, so why not bizjet windows? Boeing and Fokker Services join forces in Geneva to offer a new perk to passengers. You might wonder why someone has not done it before… but they have. The section of the Boeing Business Jet cabin at Booth 3223 incorporates the latest feature from Fokker Services: a 54.5-inch (138 cm) panoramic window created by “knocking-through” three of the standard-spacing windows.
EBACE is not a defense exhibition – but the effects of the weekend’s 53% referendum decision by Switzerland not to buy 22 Swedish Saab Gripen fighters could be felt by some local companies represented here. The issue is one of offsets. When their aircraft was selected over two years ago, Saab and its associated companies had placed or promised $2.5 billion worth of business with local companies just to earn the right to participate in the competition against France’s Dassault Rafale and the Eurofighter Typhoon.
When asked about Gulfstream’s plans to develop a supersonic business jet, company president Larry Flynn said the company “continue[s] to invest in a very small way,” while concentrating on its core business.
Switched-on PrivateFly, the U.K. online private jet booking company, now accepts payment in Bitcoin digital currency via BitPay. Monaco-based Olivier Janssens is the world’s first private jet customer to publicize his use of Bitcoin to pay for air travel, doing so for a trip booked through PrivateFly. Janssens, the Belgian tech entrepreneur and Bitcoin tycoon, revealed that his first Bitcoin-powered flight occurred on the evening of 27 th January, from Brussels to Nice Cote D’Azur.
When Adam Twidell launched his online business jet charter booking system in 2008, his competitors said nobody would book a private jet online. “We’ve undoubtedly proved that’s not the case,” Twidell, founder and CEO of PrivateFly, says. “Our customers demand speed, price and expertise, and they’re Internet savvy.”
Lawyer Aoife O’Sullivan is a partner at London-headquartered Kennedys, an international law firm, and has rapidly become a respected and passionate advocate of business aviation and a much sought after speaker around the world. She heads a worldwide team of 60 attorneys and finance experts, covering not only business aviation but commercial airlines, military aerospace, even satellites. As O’Sullivan puts it, her team is a team of insiders, “involved in real deals and transactions” and making her opinions and insight highly valued.
Brandon O’Reilly took over as TAG Farnborough’s CEO in 2006 and the pace of change at Britain’s only dedicated business aviation airport hasn’t slackened since. He immediately engaged with the local community and local business representatives and asked them about their chief concerns. “The major concern was, as you would probably expect, noise,” O’Reilly says.
The 328 Group brand is continually growing under the direction of its CEO Dave Jackson as he reduces the Oberpfaffenhofen-based company’s dependence on Dornier 328 turboprop- and 328Jet-related work. Jackson, who has been with 328 since 2006, says he plans to achieve diversification via internal organic expansion, and by acquisition. “We’ve nothing in the pipeline at the moment but we tend to look at one suitable acquisition opportunity per year,” he says. “We are also eyeing other locations for maintenance and completions.”
On June 19, 2013, largely unnoticed by the 3,000+ journalists attending the 2013 Paris Air Show, an event took place on the Daher-Socata stand that marked a significant milestone in European business aviation. On that day au Bourget, the French civil aviation authority, DGAC, issued the first Air Operators Certificate permitting single-engine public transport flights in IFR conditions. Previously, passenger-carrying SE-IFR flights had been forbidden throughout the European Union.
Brian Humphries, president of the EBAA (and formerly its CEO) and probably the best-known face and most-liked business aviation personality in Europe, says he is considering not standing for re-election next March. “I’ll see what they say at the board meeting, but my intention at the moment is not to stand next year,” he told ShowNews.
The African Business Aviation Association, which is celebrating its second birthday this month, has made extraordinary progress since launch under the leadership of its founder and chairman Tarek Ragheb. Show News caught up with Ragheb in Cairo just before EBACE. Apart from AfBAA’s never-ending job of liaising and lobbying with committees from the 54 African Union countries, he is concentrating on widening the nucleus of successful business aviation clusters within countries that are already performing well.
Tony Coe, chairman of the Baltic Air Charter Association since early 2013, has driven policies and practices while positioning BACA at the forefront of key issues that impact the air charter industry. BACA is the world’s largest air charter organization, formed in 1949 and closely associated with London’s famous Baltic Exchange. The work carried out by Coe and the BACA council has already led to an increase of 10% in the membership in a very short time.
Austria’s International Jet Management has obtained a landmark decision from the European Court of Justice – a ruling with major implications for the free movement of air traffic into Germany. The legal dispute lasted five years, with the European Court of Justice making its final ruling in favour of IJM on March 18.
ABS Jets, an executive jet operator with bases at Vaclav Havel Airport in Prague and Bratislava in the Slovak Republic, is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. At start-up ABS had 32 employees operating two managed aircraft, a Cessna Citation Bravo and an Embraer Legacy 600. Today the firm has grown into one of the major players in European business aviation. ABS employs more than 200 skilled professionals and operates a managed fleet of 12 aircraft, says CEO Vladimir Petak, with a 13th aircraft – a Legacy 650 – due in a few months.
Lufthansa Technik yesterday took the wraps off its latest weapon to maintain business in a shrinking market for completions of narrowbody VIP jets: a pre-customized VIP cabin for Airbus ACJ and Boeing BBJ business jets. “Lufthansa Technik has a worldwide unique and long-lasting experience in the field of pre-customized and modulated VIP aircraft cabins. There is no other completion center which has gathered that much experience with that kind of cabin outfitting or has done this kind of work so far,” says Walter Heerdt, senior vice president for marketing and sales.
EBAA, says president Brian Humpries, continues to fight proposed bad or poor legislation and bring logic and common sense answers to European business aviation legislation. New flight duty time limitations have been issued to commercial airlines but the EBAA is still working on an alternative for business aviation, air taxi, public transport and emergency services aircraft.
Based in Switzerland, ExecuJet has a global reach and an expanding fleet of business aircraft in Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. As might be expected on home territory – it is based in Zurich, despite the worldwide nature of its operations – ExecuJet Aviation Group is present in force at Booth 5629. Company officials are on hand to discuss the full suite of business aviation services, which include aircraft management, charter, fixed-based operations (FBO), maintenance and completions consulting.
Fokker Services, in an exploratory collaboration with Boeing Business Jets, has introduced here at EBACE the Panoramic Window, “The first of its kind to be developed and certified for the business aviation community.” The window, described as setting “a new standard for personalizing and designing VIP aircraft interiors,” is 138.43 cm (54.5 inches) wide and has a height of 49.53 cm (19.5 inches). It is being designed for the Boeing Business Jet (BBJ), based on the 737-700 NG model, and will also be available on the new BBJ MAX.
After some delay, it is all coming together for HondaJet. We might just see one at Geneva next year. HondaJet president and CEO Michimasa Fujino is in Geneva this week to relate the latest good news of his brainchild business jet, now on final approach for certification in the first quarter of next year. With the assessment by FAA pilots now under way, Honda has been emboldened to build the first production machine, which was recently rolled out in Greensboro, North Carolina, and will fly soon.
The Press Office at London City Airport had a tough time in early April batting off a media assault that grew to epidemic proportions. It was caused by a report from the New Economics Foundation suggesting that London City Airport should be closed and re-developed for housing. NEF’s challenge: Does it make sense to locate an airport in such precious inner-city space? What if we reclaimed this historic site and built a new neighborhood, incorporating the best thinking about sustainable urban design?
