Was promoted to director of project management for FlightSafety International. McRae joined FSI in 1996 and has held instructor and project and quality management positions. Most recently he was manager of FSI's facility in Toronto, Ontario. He will continue to manage that facility on an interim basis. Before joining FSI, McRae managed capital projects for the offshore petroleum industry and held aircraft maintenance management and technical support positions with Canadian Airlines.
SHARP DETAILS relocated its corporate headquarters to a new facility at Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD). Sharp Details will be based at Dulles Jet Center, which recently opened on the north side of the airport. The new address for Sharp Details is 23800 Wind Sock Drive, Suite 100, Dulles, Va., 20166; telephone (800) 836-5204. Sharp Details provides aircraft cleaning and support services at airports along the East Coast from Virginia to Massachusetts.
INTELLIGENCE EXPERTS continue to worry about the potential role a general aviation aircraft could play in a terrorist plot, Michael Jackson, deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, told business aviation leaders last week.
ZURICH UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES WITERTHUR is collaborating with Swiss AviationTraining (SAT) on a new bachelor's degree curriculum in aviation. The curriculum includes training toward a pilot's license at SAT. Enrollment began this fall with 83 students. Zurich University said the curriculum is the only one of its kind in Switzerland and the border regions. Students have the opportunity to select from operations and management or technical and engineering specialties.
ECLIPSE AVIATION outlined a couple of hardware problems last week with the Eclipse 500 Very Light Jet, telling the company's customers it is addressing the situation as officials continue to seek an FAA Production Certificate and firm up a production schedule. See article on page 233.
ELLIOTT AVIATION won approval to provide non-destructive testing at its fixed-base operation at the Des Moines, Iowa International Airport (DSM). The Des Moines facility provides Level II eddy-current and fluorescent dye-penetrant inspections. The facility also was certified as a Cessna authorized independent non-destructive inspection facility to perform eddy-current and liquid penetrant inspections on all Citation aircraft.
December 4-6 - National Agricultural Aviation Association Convention, Orlando, Fla. Contact: Peggy Knizer (202) 546-5726. December 15 - Aero Club of Washington, 2006 Wright Memorial Dinner, honoring Norman Mineta, former Member of Congress and Transportation Secretary. Contact: Nancy Hackett, Executive Director, Aero Club of Washington, (703) 327-7082 January 7-11, 2007 - American Association of Airport Executives, 21st Annual Aviation Issues Conference, Kauai, Hawaii. Contact AAAE at (703) 824-0500.
GULF OF MEXICO helicopter operator PHI, Inc. said it received a written statement from its pilot union's leadership, confirming, as the company had requested, that "the pilot strike against the company has ended and the return to work offer was, in fact, authorized and validly ratified by the union membership." PHI said it was "in the process of reviewing the details and implications of the union's offer" and will respond formally in due course.
GARMIN received FAA approval for use of its GNS 400/500 systems for Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) capabilities. The FAA TSO C146a Gamma-3 certification enables pilots with GNS 400/500 systems to fly Lateral-Precision with Vertical (LPV) guidance approaches and receive GPS navigation via WAAS. FAA also granted AML (Approved Model List) STC approval, which clears the way for the 400W/500W units to be installed on more than 980 makes and models of aircraft.
GULFSTREAM AEROSPACE suffered another legal setback this month in its battle with CAMP Systems International. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit denied Gulfstream's petition for permission to appeal an earlier decision by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia. Gulfstream had charged CAMP with trademark and copyright infringement for using Gulfstream maintenance manuals in CAMP's maintenance tracking business without the OEM's permission. The district court rejected that contention this summer, and Judge B.
Air Methods Corp., the Denver, Colo.-based provider of helicopter medical flights, reported sharply higher earnings and revenues for the quarter and nine months ended Sept. 30.
EMBRAER sold 14 EJets to Australian carrier Virgin Blue Airlines. The contract covers three Embraer 170s and 11 Embraer 190s with options for six more aircraft. The aircraft will be used to expand Virgin Blue's domestic and regional markets throughout the South Pacific.
GULFSTREAM AEROSPACE'S Luton Service Center at London-Luton Airport in England received European Aviation Safety Agency approval to maintain G200 business jets. The center will support operators based in Europe and the Middle East. In addition to the G200, Gulfstream Luton maintains G550, G500, G450 and G350 models and legacy Gulfstream aircraft including the GII, GIII, GIV/IV-SP and GV.
Bombardier Aerospace formally opened a new $2.7 million repair and maintenance facility in Belfast, Northern Ireland, which the company said is part of its plan to expand and develop its customer support operations in that country.
Was named vice president, training and delivery standards, for CAE's commercial aviation training business. CAE will oversee hiring, qualifying, and training instructors worldwide for CAE. He formerly spent 26 years with US Airways, where he was a line pilot, instructor pilot, pilot training manager, and courseware developer. He also has been director of flight operations for Flight International, which operates Learjets.
SIKORSKY AIRCRAFT plans to open a new 25,000-square-foot engineering center next year in Fort Worth, Texas to support the company's government, commercial and aftermarket businesses. The new center is expected to employ at least 100 aviation workers with specialties in dynamic system design and analysis, avionics systems integration and aircraft handling qualities, among others. Sikorsky in January will begin holding job fairs to recruit employees in the Fort Worth-Dallas area. The new engineering center will work with Sikorsky operations in Stratford, Conn.
EADS SOCATA appointed IndUS Aviation an authorized sales representative for the TBM 700/850 high-speed turboprop family in India. IndUS Aviation, which produces a two-seat trainer, Thorp T-211, is a U.S./Indian joint company with headquarters in Dallas, Texas and in Bangalore, India.
Nearly two months after winning FAA type certification for the Eclipse 500 Very Light Jet, Eclipse executives are implementing fixes for some manufacturing problems that have arisen and trying to get a production certificate from FAA so they can start producing the new VLJ at volume rates.
CESSNA AIRCRAFT last week reached the 100th-aircraft-delivery milestone in the Citation Sovereign program when the company handed over a Sovereign to Canadian agriculture company Agrium. Cessna won Sovereign certification in June 2004 and delivered the first aircraft in September 2004. Cessna has delivered Sovereigns to customers in 17 countries in North and South America, Europe, the Middle East and Australia. Cessna delivered its 100th CJ3 CitationJet in August.
NATIONAL BUSINESS AVIATION ASSOCIATION named Ashleigh de la Torre director of legislative affairs. De la Torre will work with a team that includes Lisa Piccione, senior vice president for government affairs, and Dick Doubrava, also director of legislative affairs. She formerly was director of the Airport Legislative Alliance for Airports Council International - North America, where she managed the alliance's legislative advocacy work, the association's political action committee and legislative updates. Before that she was legislative assistant to Sen.
BN-2, BN-2A, BN-2B, BN-2T, and BN-2T-4R Series (all individual models included in Type Certificate Data Sheet (TCDS) A17EU, Revision 16, Dated Dec. 9, 2002) airplanes [Docket No. FAA-2006-25668; Directorate Identifier 2006-CE-44-AD; Amendment 39-14815; AD 2006-23-03] - Requires inspecting the horizontal stabilizer attachment bolts and anchor nuts for damage and wear and replacing damaged and/or worn parts with new, modified parts.
FAA Administrator Marion Blakey pledged to continue to fight to preserve the nation's small airports, calling them the "lifeblood of the GA community." Speaking this month to attendees of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association's Expo in Palm Springs, Calif., Blakey said, "We all remember Meigs Field. And I, for one, don't want to see that nightmare repeated any time soon."
Model PC-7 airplanes [Docket No. FAA-2006-25582; Directorate Identifier 2006-CE-42-AD; Amendment 39-14813; AD 2006-23-01] - Requires repetitive eddy-current, non-destructive inspections of the nose skin and adjacent structure above the left and right main landing gear bay and repetitive visual inspections of the forward support structure of the floor panel for crack damage. If damage is found, this AD requires contacting Pilatus to obtain a repair solution and incorporate the repair.
