Leasing continues to be a popular vehicle for enjoying the benefits of business aircraft without the attendant tax exposure, and 1996 proved to be another growth year for the equipment leasing industry. New business volume was up, and lessors taking possession of aircraft at lease terminations experienced better-than-anticipated residuals due to a brisk resale market. One major lease/finance company claimed it increased its business aircraft portfolio by 20 percent.
Sure, we're all in aviation because we love it. But at the end of the day, we also have to face cold, hard economic reality. B/CA gets calls every week from readers wondering how much money pilots make in general, and how a particular pilot's salary, bonus and benefits compare to his or her peers. We've done salary stories in the past, but this time, we went straight to the source--our pilot readers--for answers. Our data reveal the average annual salary a corporate pilot is $61,548. The median salary reported is $57,100.
Over the last few months, we logged responses to a salary questionnaire included with the November 1996 issue of B/CA. In all, almost 600 postage-paid cards were returned, predominantly from corporate pilots in the United States. Our response rate of a little over two percent of pilot readers was about par for a direct-mail survey.
It's hard to resist the temptation to gather a little data on operations. While we had pilots provide salary information, we slipped in some questions on their operations as well. Three-quarters of the pilots who responded say they fly for FAR Part 91 operations, with 20 percent flying for a combined Part 91/135 operation and just five percent operating solely under Part 135. Still, many Part 91 operators seem to be adopting at least some of the requirements of Part 135.
Now that Atlanta-based SeaGil Software has tied the knot with Marietta, Ga.-based Flight Watch International, the maker of BART scheduling/dispatching software is busy making further refinements of this Windows-based management system. The company is currently integrating its FLAP (automated flight analysis program) into its BART suite. SeaGil President Anthony Byrne says the company is also looking to integrate a moving map system and voice-activated flightcrew log accessing.
Harris Corporation of Melbourne, Fla., which developed a weather satellite data access system for the U.S. military and weather processing systems for use by FAA meteorologists, has created a sophisticated new weather and flight planning system for general aviation.
Yet another company has launched an on-line flight tracking system. TheTrip.com, a full-service on-line business travel and reservations service, has introduced its FlightTracker service at www.thetrip.com. Visitors to the site can view up to 20 aircraft and five airports at a time. Queries by airline flight number give tabular displays of a flight's status, showing departure airport, destination, tail number or airline and flight number, ETD, ETA, flight status (i.e., ``In Flight''), distance to destination, and closest city, altitude and speed.
Michael Bloomfield, CAMP Systems Inc.'s VP for its Andromeda scheduling system, has left CSI to purchase a company in an unrelated aviation market. CAMP President Wayne Hoppner says Andromeda development and support will continue as before, although some product development may be outsourced. The Ronkonkoma, N.Y. company's Internet-based e.Card access system for CAMP subscribers will be launched this winter, says Hoppner.
Aircraft operators in Europe now have until January 1, 1999-a year later than originally planned-before Eurocontrol begins mandatory implementation of 8.33-kHz VHF com frequency spacing, according to the agency (B/CA, February 1996, page 26).
Gulfstream expects that customer G-Vs will start entering service by the end of March. Deliveries of green aircraft to completion centers started in December 1996, when the FAA granted provisional certification. This provisional approval came just two months later than originally scheduled when the G-V program was officially announced four years ago (B/CA, October 1992, page 52).
A recent study undertaken by researchers at the FAA's Civil Aeromedical Institute (CAMI), in Oklahoma City, underscored the old canon that flying sophisticated single-engine aircraft requires a commensurate level of skill and training. By analyzing the performance of a number of GA pilots in a CAMI flight simulator, the researchers found that many airmen were frequently unable to detect subtle autopilot pitch sensor failures or make proper recoveries to other autopilot/autotrim failures.
The latest avcomps buzzword is real time. This month's new or upgraded avcomps all share the ability to do what they do in real time-as it happens. In today's real-time, globalized business world, extending this capability to business aviation seems only natural.
If operating an ``airline-size'' transport is a possibility for your flight department, you would do well to familiarize yourself with Daniel Systems Incorporated (DSI) of Opa Locka, Florida. The company's low profile in the maintenance management business belies the scope of its capabilities. Daniel Systems has been providing its aviation asset management software support to airlines, fleet operators and aircraft repair centers since 1968, and currently provides operators its services in two versions: COMPS and DSIS.
Operators of large and small aircraft maintenance facilities will appreciate the ease-of-use features found in the Log Book Organizer 2000. LBO 2000 is a new CD-ROM developed by Tim Carr, a former maintenance facility and charter operator owner. The program was designed to ease the record-keeping of maintenance, operating hours, cycles and other information. It features a suite of five databases: airframe, propeller, turbine engine, recip engine and APU.
For more than a decade Piper Aircraft's pressurized, single-engine Malibu airframe has intrigued modifiers and pilots as a potential candidate for gas turbine power. In fact, Piper itself even experimented with the concept briefly in the late 1980s, evaluating a Malibu equipped with an Allison 250 turboprop, but the company abandoned the project when it became preoccupied with internal financial problems.
It is hard to believe, but the FAA's DUATS program is almost seven years old. And at last, GTE DUATS, one of the FAA's two DUATS providers, has just released a new, Windows-compatible interface to DUATS. The new software, called Cirrus, enables its users to automate most of the process of dialing up and downloading DUATS briefings, creating flight plans off-line and filing flight plans. This is good news to pilots and others who found GTE DUATS' earlier DOS interface unattractive and clumsy to use.
Gulfstream's aggressive development program for its newest flagship is paying off. FAA certification (under an Amended TC based on earlier Gulfstream models plus changes through FAR Part 25 Amendment 81) for its 6,500-nm range G-V is on schedule for late this year. Four aircraft now are in the flight certification program. A fifth development aircraft, formerly used for static structural tests, is being reconfigured as a customer demonstrator.
Birmingham International Airport (BHX) in England was the arrival point for a Western European Foreign and Defense Ministers conference in May. Top diplomats came from 27 countries, from as far as Iceland, Finland, Spain and Turkey, including eight delegations from within the former Soviet Bloc. The resident FBO, Execair Aviation Services, together with personnel from Birmingham International Airport, the British Foreign Office and various security agencies, were responsible for the smooth running of the event.
Illustration: FBO AND AIR TAXI BAROMETER The National Air Transportation Association's monthly index of FBO and charter businesses showed an overall 10.32 percent increase in April and May of this year over the base period (fourth quarter 1995). The statistics are derived from a representative sample of NATA members. PRODUCT ANALYSIS: KLN 900 Now that we've flown several hundred hours using the KLN 90B panel-mount GPS receiver, we've been thoroughly impressed with its performance and utility.
Photograph: Flight Dymanics' HGS 2000 installed in a Falcon 2000. REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK: FLYING BLIND Guy Mitaux-Maurouard is a brave man. In late June, Mitaux, chief test pilot for Dassault civil aircraft, settled into the right seat of a Falcon 2000 flight-test aircraft for a flight from Istres, France. I took the left seat of the Flight Dynamics HGS 2000-equipped aircraft and swung the large holographic combiner into view. ``What do you want to do today with the HUD?'' Mitaux inquired.
Photograph: This 206L-4 LongRanger is one of 18 helicopters that Bell had at DeKalb-Peachtree airport. BELL HELICOPTER AT THE OLYMPICS The Olympics proved to be a marathon exercise in logistics for Bell Helicopter, which provided no fewer than 18 aircraft for the three weeks of the games. ``I don't think we have ever participated on this scale before for this long a period,'' said O.K. Moore, head of Bell's Olympic team.
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania-based Flight Data, Incorporated has released a Windows 95-compatible version of its DUAT/Plus for Windows access software. This handy little utility automatically will dial-up DTC DUATS at user-predetermined times. Also, it can download a customized weather briefing and file flight plans. The software supports the FAA's new TAF and METAR weather formats.
One of business aviation's ``Holy Grails'' has been to find a reliable way to offset the cost of ownership of an aircraft when it isn't being used for its primary mission of transporting corporate employees. Some operators have found that chartering their aircraft can be an effective way to reduce the costs of ownership, but finding passengers is often a hit-or-miss affair. And what do you do when you need another aircraft on short notice or when you're deadheading?
In today's instrument panels that are dominated by large-format displays, mechanical spinning gyro standby attitude indicators are among the last carryovers from the era of clocks and dials. Properly cared for, these instruments can go 7,000 to 10,000 hours between failures, but only if they are overhauled at regular intervals by skilled technicians. Many operators, though, report having failures at much more frequent intervals.
Jary Engels, chief pilot for Honeywell Phoenix flight operations, has devised an effective test to evaluate pilot performance using a head-up display (HUD). He puts you in a strange aircraft equipped with a prototype Honeywell/GEC Marconi HUD 2020 with which you've never flown and says, ``Your first hand-flown approach using the HUD will be a simulated Category II ILS to Williams-Gateway Airport Runway 30 Center.''
