Beauty may prove to be only skin deep once Honeywell's SAM is unleashed on your favorite business jet. SAM -- that's Structural Anomaly Mapping -- can see through the gloss to flaws within, discovering cracks and corrosion in metal and debonding and delamination in composites, flaws that quietly lurk in wait of a structural failure. SAM is, in effect, the first CAT scan for business jets. Its robotic sensors can inspect and diagnose an airplane overnight, without taking it out of regular service.
Randall Greene President&CEO, Safe Flight Instrument Corp. Founded by Leonard Greene in 1946, Safe Flight produced the first stall-warning system and went on to introduce a series of revolutionary systems including the angle-of-attack indicator, stick shakers, wind-shear alert and autothrottles. Son Randy, a veteran aviation executive and 6,000-hour ATP, was asked to head the company after his brother, Donald, the COO, was killed on 9/11 in the crash of UAL Flight 93 in Pennsylvania.
Corporate Angel Network, the volunteer organization through which U.S. companies volunteer their aircraft to transport ill patients between their homes and distant medical facilities, reports that it transported 35 percent more people in fiscal 2002 than in the previous year, setting a record for the generosity of participating firms. Frequent CAN participants include Coca-Cola, ConocoPhillips, Corning, Dow Chemical, Duke Energy, Ford Motor, GM, International Paper, The Limited, Meredith, Motorola, Pepsico, Verizon and United Space Alliance.
There's an accelerated evolution under way in air transport, the proof of which was confirmed on my recent trip to Orlando. My conveyance was a new Airbus 320 with leather seats and a 24-channel inflight TV in every seatback. The cabin was clean and the crews cheery despite full loads. I had window seats, as requested, and push back occurred to the minute, as scheduled. There were libations and snacks to keep the voyagers content during the flawless journey.
Pilots have dreamed of a day when they could receive the same kind of weather information in the cockpit as they could obtain on the ground, in real time. That day has arrived.
His all-guys skiing vacation in Vail, Colo., was nearing an end when a business acquaintance offered to give him a ride back to New York in his company Learjet, an offer he couldn't refuse. So come Sunday evening, happy, tired and unshaven, he climbed aboard, and the Learjet climbed out of the Rockies, hastening east. Soon -- too soon, he thought -- the aircraft began descending. The pilot explained that the airplane didn't have the range to make it nonstop, so they were going to fuel up in Columbus, Ohio.
Robert E. Breiling President, Robert E. Breiling Associates Inc., Boca Raton, Fla. After piloting Banshees and S2Fs off carriers, Breiling flew for Pan Am until a furlough steered him into the insurance business, where he specialized in aviation analysis. He then helped fledgling SimuFlite take wing before founding his own aviation consultancy. His annual ``Business Turbine Aircraft Accident Review'' is a reference standard.
Satcom systems took center stage at the 45th annual Aircraft Electronics Association (AEA) Convention held in late April. EMS Technologies, for example, introduced its HSD-128 Swift64 data link system, which is compatible with the Rockwell Collins ARINC 741 satcom system, thereby allowing users to surf the Internet. EMS is also developing a private-label version for Rockwell Collins called HST-900 that will enable users to talk and use data link services simultaneously.
Bombardier Aerospace's Challenger 604 has been one of the best-selling large-cabin business aircraft since production deliveries began in early 1996. As of late April 2002, there had been 234 deliveries of Challenger 604 aircraft. B/CA contacted operators of more than 50 aircraft to determine the reasons for this success and whether the trend is likely to continue.
Few developments have had the impact on business aviation -- or generated as much controversy and misunderstanding within the industry -- as fractional aircraft ownership.
Photograph: Dassault Falcon 7x To receive its FAA type and production certification, an aircraft must successfully endure an arduous series of abuses that include fuselage over-pressurization, brake mashing, nonstop wing bending, even radiation assault and a chicken-carcass cannonade. But for all that, one of the most perilous tests confronting any new model is accumulating or sustaining enough investment capital to pave the way from the design room to the production line.
Today's full-featured airborne corporate command posts, replete with encrypted satcoms, high-speed data terminals, in-cabin local area network access to corporate intranets, live television reception, personalized audio/visual entertainment and enrichment suites, customized passenger briefings and moving map display systems are a far cry from the merely comfortable business aircraft cabins of yore. Indeed, traveling in such a stimulus-enriched environment is likely to redefine the terrestrial workplace.
The NBAA is turning its attention to the emerging business jet market south of the border, having succeeded in exporting its expertise in running conventions and exhibitions to EBACE (the second European Business Aviation Conference&Exhibition will be held in Geneva on May 28-30).
Despite cumulative losses expected to approach $1 billion, Raytheon Aircraft believes a combination of layoffs, new model deliveries, production efficiencies and a customer-first focus will help it return to profitability.
Lawrence B. Smith Attorney, Tucson, Ariz. As the son of Harold D. Smith, Franklin Roosevelt's top budget director, Smith is a beneficiary of the modern federal bureaucracy. During a brief stint as an FAA attorney, he became dismayed by the agency's heavy-handed enforcement methods and determined that the FAA had no right to take such action. He's waged a quixotic fight against the system ever since. 1 What's the key issue?
You hold in your hands B/CA's 2002 Purchase Planning Handbook, the much-anticipated issue that readers turn to throughout the year, and longer. This year's Handbook is one of our most comprehensive, with several sections expanded to accommodate additional products, or as a reflection of the increasing importance of the products within the category.
Not long ago there was a 180-acre parcel of well-treed land in the northern part of my town that had been zoned commercial, but for reasons unknown to me (though I suspect tax revenue had something to do with it) the town fathers decided to redesignate as residential. After some tortuous proceedings, developers moved in and houses -- rather grand houses -- began to sprout.
It's undeniable that the U.S. National Airspace System (NAS) needs more capacity. Just ask any business aircraft operator. Reducing the vertical separation to 1,000 feet between FL 290 and FL 410 would add six new cruise altitudes, thereby increasing NAS high-altitude capacity by as much as 86 percent. RVSM, short for Reduced Vertical Separation Minimums, works, and it's slated to be implemented as soon as December 2004.
1 - The airport is located some 20 miles up the Hudson from Manhattan. What immediate effect did the 9/11 attacks have on activity here? Russell: Right after the first tower was struck, someone from the media called our operations people and said, "How dare you let an airplane leave your airport and crash into the Trade Center." We thought it was one of ours. That call made a difference. The reaction here was one of shock and utter resolve.
On Feb. 27, Cessna's Model 680 Citation Sovereign prototype made its first flight from Wichita-Mid Continent Airport, marking the start of a 2,000-flight-hour, 19-month flight-test program. This is to culminate in certification in late 2003 and initial customer deliveries in early 2004. The first prototype aircraft, CE680 Serial Number 000P, will be used primarily as an aerodynamic certification flight-test article. It also will be used for ice shape trials.
cabotage (ka b-tazh) n.(1) Trade or navigation in coastal waters. (2) The exclusive right of a country to operate the air traffic within its territory. [French, from caboter, to sail along a coast, perhaps from Spanish cabo, cape, from Latin caput, head.]
It's hardly an original idea (in fact the Founding Fathers made one a requirement for America's CEO) but GAMA's annual state of the industry address has become a must-attend evening event held at the massive Ronald Reagan Interna-tional Trade Center, just down the street from the Treasury Department in Wash-ington. It is there that you get the final score for the year, and, this year at least, it provided a nice setting for a kind of group hug.
How many business aircraft shows does the world need? Well, the United States is spoken for with the N in NBAA standing for National, leaving others, especially in Europe, to duke it out. EBACE? Well, that's European, and ILA -- that's German, according to SBAC, the organizers of the Farnborough Air Show. But I say, old chap, isn't that the British show? No, insists SBAC Chief Executive David Marshall -- Farnborough is a global shop window.
From its introduction in 1965 until production ceased in the mid-1980s, Dassault's Falcon 20 was a great airplane awaiting suitable engines. That seems to be the consensus of operators of TFE731-powered Falcon 20 aircraft contacted by B/CA for this evaluation.
