Saab 5123L, confirm that you are a turboprop,'' inquired a Washington Center controller on the day we flew the Saab 2000. His inflection was unmistakable: ``Aren't you actually a jet?'' We imagined that he thumped his aging computer console a couple of times, trying to clear its digital cobwebs, as he watched us climb out of Dulles at 240 KIAS. At 37,000 pounds, the Saab 2000 admittedly was well below its 50,260 pounds MTOW, with only a few passengers on board. The relatively light weight, however, doesn't discount the Saab 2000's performance accomplishments.
C. Donald Bateman, AlliedSignal Commercial Avionics Systems' chief engineer of Flight Safety Systems, has an iron stomach, which is an essential part of his job description. Bateman has pored over hundreds of controlled-flight-into-terrain (CFIT) accident reports to find out why flightcrews flew otherwise well-working airplanes into the ground, frequently snuffing out the lives of all on board.
Collins Commercial Avionics recently has been drawing a lot of attention from business aircraft operators. Some of the most innovative and promising new avionics technology in years is being developed in the firm's labs. It's called Pro Line 21.
When engineer Sam Williams first envisioned a small, simple turbofan based on high-technology materials and manufacturing methods, no class of airplanes existed to provide a market for an engine generating less than 2,000 pounds of thrust. It was the mid 1970s, and few outside the defense industry had ever heard of Williams International, the Walled Lake, Michigan company that Williams had founded two decades earlier to build small gas turbines for missiles, drones and APUs.
Walk through Raytheon Aircraft's Plant III in Wichita, and you might well miss an innocuous-looking gray door in the middle of the building. Indeed, the door is almost invisible to the employees who bustle around computer-controlled machine tools, rather strange-looking composite test structures and two-story-high autoclaves big enough to swallow a city bus.
It wasn't so long ago that calling Flight Service or subscribing to a commercial flight-planning service was the only way corporate and regional airline pilots and dispatchers could get preflight weather briefings.
Like most people in the world of work, you've likely heard a lot about the Internet and all it has to offer anyone with a computer and a modem. But so far, you may not have heard what the Internet has to offer business aviation. We've been spending a little time in ``cyberspace'' lately, and discovered plenty of compelling reasons for you to sit in front of your PC, crank up your modem and see what's out there. Even if you're a regular user of one of the online services, you may have wondered what other areas of the Internet have to offer aviation.
The current generation of high-performance turbofan aircraft are designed to cruise in the mid forties or above-not for boardroom bragging rights, but for exceptional fuel efficiency, to avoid the traffic congestion of lower altitudes and to top most of the weather. The result is a smoother ride for passengers. A few aircraft even push FL 510 when they are lightly loaded. A price must be paid, however, for such high-performance rewards: Pilots must exercise razor-edge pitch control during climb, cruise and descent.
Friday, June 10 marked a watershed event in the history of the Canadair Challenger. A conforming prototype of the new Model 604, with a B/CA editor on board, flew nonstop from Wichita Mid-Continent Airport to Paris' Le Bourget-a distance of 4,242 nm over the Earth, or 4,011 miles equivalent still air distance, accounting for the winds aloft. This was the longest distance ever flown by a Canadair Challenger.
Being able to gather and analyze data about your flight department provides a solid foundation when you work with your company's top management. The reporting capability of a computerized management system is essential to this task. Happily, the recent development of graphical flight department management software is making the tasks of tracking, reporting and projecting an operation's activity easier than was the case only a few years ago.
Early in 1998, if all goes according to plan, the FAA's Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) will be operational. WAAS, which is the FAA's official term for Wide Area Differential GPS (WADGPS), will enhance navigational signals from the global positioning system (GPS) in three ways: improve its accuracy, monitor signal integrity and assure critical-level signal reliability.
The Astra, since it was certificated in 1985, has earned a position as a performance star in the mid-size business-jet class (although sales have not been stellar). Indeed, it set 22 world records, clearly demonstrating Israel Aircraft Industries' (IAI) engineering prowess. IAI now has an even higher performance Astra, the SPX, that is slated for certification in late September, less than 14 months after its first flight in August 1994. (The current Astra SP will remain in production.)
Icing, as a potential threat to aircraft, ebbs and flows through history like the ocean tides that flood certain sections of the coast. In an effort to guard aircraft and coastlines from the most probable and predictable onslaughts of nature, engineers have carefully devised cost-effective defenses.
The Official Airline Guide is one of the most effective ways to justify the acquisition of a corporate shuttle aircraft. Run your fingers down the pages, and you'll find a list of dozens of smaller cities that have little airline service. The air fares to many of those cities, which have not benefited from the competitive effects of airline deregulation, have skyrocketed.
For 13 years, James D. Raisbeck, president of the company that bears his name, has been defying the odds. Raisbeck Engineering's specialty is building modification kits, or ``systems'' as Raisbeck prefers to call them, for Beech King Airs. Most modifiers don't survive a third as long as Raisbeck Engineering, let alone thrive as this Seattle-based firm has done. The proportion of Raisbeck-equipped Beech King Air 200 aircraft, for example, has increased from five percent in 1985 to 35 percent of the active King Air 200 fleet today, the firm's records show.
