Federal Aviation Administration, among the objectives of its Flight Plan 2004-2008 initiative, wants to come up with some sort of composite safety index that will measure the safety of the entire U.S. civil aviation system. The index would include the full spectrum of aviation activities, from general aviation through the scheduled airlines. FAA assembled about two dozen representatives of government, industry and academia to discuss the issue last week.
Docket No.: FAA-2003-15659 Petitioner: F & E Aircraft Maintenance, L.L.C. Section of 14 CFR Affected: 14 CFR 145.35 and 145.37 Description of Relief Sought: To permit F & E Aircraft Maintenance, L.L.C. to obtain an airframe rating on its repair station certificate without meeting the housing and facility requirements of Sec. 145.35 and 145.37.
Transport Canada suspended the operating certificate of Georgian Express Thursday, less than a week after one of the carrier's Grand Caravan turboprops was involved in a fatal accident that claimed 10 lives. See article below.
Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), the ranking Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, last week offered little hope that business aviation would be given access to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) anytime in the near future. "I think DCA should have been opened a long time ago to general aviation," Oberstar said.
GULFSTREAM POSTS BEST QUARTER FOR AIRCRAFT ORDERS - Gulfstream Aerospace logged orders for 34 new business jets in the fourth quarter, the best three-month period in the company's history, according to Nicholas Chabraja, chairman and CEO of parent company General Dynamics.
DINA GREEN was hired as manager, seminars for the National Business Aviation Association. Green, who officially starts today (Jan. 26), formerly managed communications for the National Aircraft Resale Association. She also managed projects, media relations and meeting and convention planning for the National Association of State Aviation Officials. Before joining NASAO in early 2000, Green spent five years with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky and Walker as a senior paralegal.
AVCARD, the Baltimore, Md. area aviation fuel and services credit card company, has formed a subsidiary in the United Kingdom, AVCARD Services, Ltd., to support the firm's growing international business.
NTSB WANTS FAA TO REQUIRE BETTER BUCKLES ON CREW SEATS - The National Transportation Safety Board's (NTSB) investigation of the crash of an Air Midwest Beech 1900D last January in Charlotte, N.C., led the board to suggest that FAA require guarded buckles on crew seats on those aircraft that currently have unguarded rotary seatbelt buckles. Crash investigators found the captain's body four feet in front of the cockpit and her rotary seatbelt buckle undone, while the first officer remained in his seat.
AVCRAFT PREPARES FOR PRODUCTION RESTART - AvCraft Aviation has begun gradually rebuilding the work force in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, in preparation for restarting the production line for the 30-seat 328Jet regional aircraft. AvCraft, the new owner of the former Fairchild Dornier 328JET, said in December that production would begin soon (BA, Dec. 15/269), and last week announced that work would re-start this quarter with the first completed aircraft rolling off the production line by the fourth quarter.
NATIONAL BUSINESS AVIATION ASSOCIATION'S 15th Annual Schedulers and Dispatchers Conference drew a record 236 exhibitors and an estimated 1,400 registrants last week in Savannah, Ga. The event had grown to the point that NBAA held the meeting in a convention center for the first time last week. NBAA President Shelley Longmuir and Edsel B. Ford, the great-grandson of Henry Ford, addressed conference attendees, and some $30,000 in scholarships was awarded to eight people for professional development.
NETJETS will expand the operating area for its Gulfstream IV-SP and Gulfstream V business jets Feb. 1, "allowing the company to waive ferry charges for owners of these aircraft when flying aboard these aircraft." The ferry charge waiver applies to flights that originate or terminate in the continental U.S. and is designed to benefit customers who use the Gulfstreams for international trips.
U.S. Senate appropriators have taken temporary action to ensure Midway Atoll remains open for aircraft operations until a provision in a major spending bill, which will provide long-term financial support for the airfield, is enacted.
"THE RJ DEMAND CURVE...has gone flatter than a tortilla," according to The Boyd Group/ASRC, Inc., the Evergreen, Colo. aviation forecasting firm. "With the combination of those [RJs] in service and those on firm order, there will be a glut of 50-seat jets in the years ahead," Boyd said last week in an overview of the aviation industry for 2004. Overall, The Boyd Group is predicting traffic growth between 2.4 percent and 2.7 percent at U.S.
March 2-3 - ASME International (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) Aero Engine Life Management Conference, Thistle Royal Horseguards Hotel, London, England, (404) 847-0072; [email protected] or www.asme.org.igti March 15-17 - Helicopter Association International Heli-Expo 2004, Las Vegas, Nev., (703) 683-4646 March 22-23 - American Association of Airport Executives, ACI-NA, Spring Washington Conference, Loews L'Enfant Plaza Hotel, Washington, 703-824-0504, www.airportnet.org
Long-time FAA contractor Harris Corp. teamed with agency personnel to jointly bid to manage and operate the nationwide network of Automated Flight Service Stations (AFSS). FAA announced late last month it was seeking bids on a proposal to outsource the AFSS network, which provides a host of information, weather and advisory information to pilots (BA, Jan. 5/1). FAA moved forward with the competition under Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76, which permits outsourcing of certain government functions under certain circumstances.
FACING a growing mountain of negative comments about its proposal to tighten restrictions on local sightseeing and air tour flights, the Federal Aviation Administration Friday announced it was extending the deadline for submission of comments. The original deadline was Jan. 20, but FAA granted an extension until April 19 after formal requests by the National Air Transportation Association and the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.
Honeywell Aerospace, a major manufacturer of environmental control systems (ECS) for aircraft, acquired The Hymatic Group Ltd. of Redditch, Worcestershire, England, which also produces ECS units for the aerospace market. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Hymatic, formed in 1937, had sales of more than $40 million in 2002 and has 230 employees. Based in modern facilities near Birmingham, the company is regarded as a world leader in miniature Joule-Thomson cryogenic cooling devices and techniques for infrared applications.
ATA PRESIDENT Jim May "would love to see" the government implement a registered traveler program, he told reporters this month, but he said such a program "doesn't make sense if we can't provide meaningful benefit" to those registered travelers. "We're just not there yet" in crafting the parameters of such a plan with the Transportation Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security, he said. For such a program to succeed there has to be a balance between security and the ability to expedite passage through the screening process, May said.
U.S. CUSTOMS SERVICE has begun requesting that certain business jets traveling to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey divert to Newark International instead for clearance. National Business Aviation Association, which received reports of these diversions, said the Customs Service only cites security as the reason for the diversion. Customs will not elaborate on the reasons for the diversions, or the reasons for selecting a particular aircraft, a senior NBAA official said, but added that the diverted flights all appear to have originated in either Mexico or France.
National Business Aviation Administration last week recognized the first group of aviation professionals to pass the Certified Aviation Manager examination, which was administered at the association's convention in October. Some 22 aviation managers passed the test, completing a certification process that NBAA developed to set a standard of quality for flight department management.
HONEYWELL won FAA certification for an avionics package that would bring Citation 500 jets into compliance with new domestic reduced vertical separation minimum requirements slated to take effect Jan. 20, 2005. The avionics package includes two AM 250 altimeter systems coupled to a KFC 325 flight control system and EFIS 50 electronic flight instrument system. The FAA supplemental type certificate covers Citation 500 models with serial numbers 001 through 0274.
