Unfortunately, aviation often suffers from a tombstone mentality, which finds motivation to solve a critical safety problem only after it causes a particularly nasty airline accident (or two or three). The catastrophic crash of American Eagle 4184 on Oct. 31, 1994, near Roselawn, Ind., is an example; that accident focused attention on the inflight hazard posed by freezing drizzle.
Each year B/CA editors honor individuals within business aviation who have demonstrated an unusually high commitment to the community and its betterment -- through improved equipment, operations, regulation or advocacy. Over the years these leaders have come from industry, associations, government and elsewhere, and have hailed from North America, Europe and Asia. The criteria they all meet and the characteristic they all share is effective excellence in furthering business aviation.
Larry, we're going down!'' Those words were uttered by Roger Petit just seconds before their Air Florida 737 hit Washington, D.C.'s 14th Street Bridge less than one minute after takeoff from National Airport. It's ironic that as ``Palm 90'' waited patiently on that snowy Jan. 13, 1982, Capt. Larry Wheaton pointed at the run-up pad and said, ``THAT's where we should be deicing.'' Wheaton went to an icy grave in the Potomac River not knowing how right he was.
Flight departments will be tasked with providing more lift as the economy continues to recover, but often they're also being told to minimize additional costs.
Business aircraft operators won't be landing at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) anytime soon, but the NBAA and certain of its member companies are making inroads with the TSA toward earning the same DCA and special use airspace access privileges as certificated air carriers have.
Domestic RVSM is slated to become effective in the U.S. national airspace system at 0901 Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) on Jan. 20, 2005. Canada and Mexico are expected to follow suit.
I was standing in the PrivatAir exhibit at EBACE, chatting with Dave Hurley, an old friend who's now the outfit's vice chairman. Upon mentioning that I hoped to visit friends in Germany, he volunteered, ``Well then, you've got to fly with us.'' I hesitated. After all, this would complicate ground travel and schedules, I'd wind up at the wrong airport, my hotel reservations were elsewhere. A quandary. Fully three seconds passed before I accepted.
Dassault Aviation announced the Falcon 900DX tri-jet at EBACE in late May. It will replace the Falcon 900C in the firm's long-range business jet lineup. The 900DX, in essence, is a 900EX, complete with Primus Epic EASy cockpit and 5,000-pound-thrust Honeywell TFE731-60 engines. But fuel capacity is 18,830 pounds, a 10-percent reduction compared with the 900EX. Max range for the $31.65 million Falcon 900DX with eight passengers is 4,050 nm, versus 4,400 nm for the $34.65 million Falcon 900EX.
YOU'VE SEEN THOSE wooden paperweights with the laser-etched fronts that look like shadowy blobs. Stare at one for a while, and the word ``FLY'' suddenly pops out. I've encountered these things for years. I know that the word ``FLY'' is there, but yet I never see it at first glance. I always have to stare, relaxing my focus until the image somehow reverses and the word emerges.
The civilian helicopter market saw relatively robust activity in 2003, a trend that forecasters predict is likely to continue through 2004 and for years thereafter. Bell, for example, closed out its books for last year having delivered 97 turbine helicopters to civil operators. Meanwhile, American Eurocopter posted 74 deliveries in 2003 and inked another 25 sales at the Helicopter Association International's Heli-Expo 2004.
The de Havilland DH125, so quintessentially British, made its debut at the 1962 Farnborough Air Show. It had a proper cabin for carriage class conveyance, including a fully enclosed lavatory, an ample galley and a luggage closet. The first delivery occurred two years later to a Swiss customer and delivery rates quickly soared to 50 per year. Ongoing demand was spurred by de Havilland's making successive improvements to Series 1, 2 and 3 aircraft.
Transport Canada awarded Bombardier's Global 5000 full type certification on March 12; JAA and FAA certification are to follow later this year. Launched in February 2002, the Global 5000 is derived from the Global Express and aimed at what the manufacturer calls the ``super large'' jet segment long dominated by the Gulfstream IV/400 and Falcon 900. Capable of flying nonstop from continental Europe to the central United States at 0.85 Mach, the $33.3 million twinjet features Rockwell Collins' new Airshow 21 cabin electronics system and Honeywell's Primus 2000XP cockpit.
Further solidifying its ever-expanding list of meetings and conference venues, the NBAA, in partnership with Brazil's Associao Brasileira de Aviao Geral (ABAG), is hosting its second Latin American business aviation gathering on April 15-17 in So Paulo. This, the Latin American Business Aviation Conference and Exhibition (LABACE), is expected to outdraw 2003's initial event that was attended by nearly 3,000 registrants. The NBAA is well known for, and largely financed by, its annual U.S.
Despite a 14-month delay in FAA/EASA certification of the Embraer 170 and the reorganized introduction of this next generation of regional jets, the recent rollout of the Embraer 190 (the longer fuselage version of the 170) and its healthy order book has brought broad Brazilian smiles to the faces of anxious company executives. In the corporate jet arena, Embraer is determined to increase the ``nationalization'' or Brazilian content of its Legacy corporate jets, with company technicians fitting more of the $2 million interiors in Brazil.
A BIT OF MIDDLE SCHOOL humor. A burglar who has been casing a home for weeks waits until the owner leaves for work, goes to a side window, jimmies it open and enters. He's walking stealthily through the living room, eyeing the artwork and antiques, when a voice shatters the quiet, announcing, ``Jesus is watching!'' The thief nearly jumps out of his skin. His heart begins to race and he turns his head this way and that, looking for the speaker. He sees nothing.
IT IS PERFECTLY NATURAL for pilots to invest an instructor with their trust. After all, it's the instructor who demonstrates the right way to fly and helps bring the pilot to a higher level of understanding and competency. However, that trust should never be given automatically or without limitation because instructors do err, sometimes disastrously. A businessman pilot took some instrument instruction in a single-engine airplane through an FBO at Marshfield, Wis., Municipal Airport (MFI).
Upon learning that Shevers was both an Eagle Scout and a newly minted Purdue engineer, Cincinnati Milling Machine Co. hired him on the spot. What the company did not know was that the young grad, a private pilot, was far more interested in airplanes than tool and die. Booted within six months, he began working as a flight instructor and soon peddling aviation gimcracks on the side. Today, ``Sporty's'' employs 200 shipping 12,000 different products. 1 How did you come up with the name `Sportsman's Market'?
MY MOTHER'S FATHER died when I was a little boy. Still, I remember him a bit, in particular at one meal at his lovely Forest Hills home when I spilled my glass of chocolate milk. Grampy suffered neither fools nor flaws and as the brown liquid spilled onto the floor he glared first at me and then at my grandmother, who, bless her, rose immediately in my defense. The crisis abated, but he was clearly upset, and consequently so was I. That anecdote draws a terribly unfair picture of a man who deserves a rousing epitaph.
THE TEAM HERE AT B/CA has a notably broad range of expertise. We've a make-it-from-scratch-just-like-grandmama-mia chef, a peripatetic competition bass fisherman, a trophy-winning kickboxer, a know-it-all Yankee fan, a Grand Canyon curator, a clock meister, and a masterly mariner. Then, too, we all know a few things about airplanes. It was because of that last body of knowledge that an aviation savvy executive recently got us invited to a working session of a Wall Street outfit that was reviewing its executive travel, with an eye toward business aviation.
The term of office for John Goglia, the NTSB's most candid and aviation savvy member, is about to expire and it appears he will be replaced by another presidential appointee. After spending 30 years fixing airplanes for his own repair operation and serving US Airways in numerous maintenance positions, in 1995 the Massachusetts native won appointment to the Board, becoming the first licensed mechanic to hold that office.
In our December 2003 issue, to help mark the centennial of powered flight, we unveiled four individuals, some with us still and some not, whose contributions to the business aviation community were visionary and long-lasting, and changed the course of the industry for the better. Now, having entered the second century of flight, we, the editors of B/CA, are honored to cite four more. As already stated, so many people have contributed so much, it would be impossible to recognize them all, and so we have selected a few extraordinary individuals to represent the many.
Sandel Avionics and Universal Avionics System Corp. successfully defended themselves in federal court against charges by Honeywell that their respective TAWS designs violated Honeywell's Enhanced GPWS patents. U.S. Magistrate Judge Mary Pat Thynge granted Universal's and Sandel's motions for summary judgment regarding the firms' non-infringement on Honeywell's EGPWS patents on the eve of the trial, which had been set to begin Oct. 31.
David M. Tait, OBE CEO, Avocet Aircraft, Westport, Conn. A native Scot, Tait jokes that he got into the aviation business ``by mistake,'' and has remained for three decades. He helped launch Sir Freddie Laker's transatlantic Skytrain service, and then guided Sir Richard Branson in creating and building Virgin Atlantic. For his service, Queen Elizabeth II awarded Tait, now an American citizen, the Order of the British Empire in 2001. The following year he took charge of Avocet. 1 Eclipse, Mustang, Safire and Adam all have a long head start.
Imitation may be the purist form of flattery, but it doesn't always equate with success in the marketplace, especially where fractional aircraft ownership programs are concerned. Which, perhaps, is another way of saying, just because Richard Santulli pulled it off, doesn't mean you can with one or two airplanes and a handful of shareholders.
Bombardier Aerospace's 7th Annual Safety Standdown, held in Wichita, Oct. 28-30, drew more than 330 attendees. Begun to expose Learjet demonstration pilots to more than what they were learning during simulator-based training, the program was opened to general operators four years ago and attendance has been growing steadily. Explaining the program's appeal, Robert Agostino, Bombardier's chief pilot in Wichita, told B/CA, ``Pilot error has been constant over the last 25 years as a cause of accidents,'' and to change that ``takes attitude, knowledge and discipline.
