The National Air Transportation Association is unconvinced that the FAA has made its case for requiring aerial sightseeing operators be certificated under FAR Part 135. The NATA notes that the FAA itself has estimated about 700 of the 1,700 Part 91 air tour operators would be driven out of business by new requirements contained in its NPRM.
Safe Flight Instrument Corp., White Plains, N.Y., has promoted Joseph M. Wilson to the position of executive vice president. He was previously vice president of operations.
Diamond Industries has opened a new 117,000-square-foot Diamond Composite production center at Weiner Neustadt, Austria. Aircraft parts produced there will move into the production chain of the existing factory in Weiner Neustadt and at Diamond's assembly plant in London, Ontario. The company said the expansion was necessary to accommodate high world demand for its DA-42 Twin Star and the upcoming single-engine five-seat D-JET. The expansion allows for a total production capacity of up to 600 aircraft per year.
CHC Helicopter Corp. acquired Schreiner Aviation Group of Hoofddorp, the Netherlands on Feb. 16. Schreiner operates a worldwide fleet of approximately 50 aircraft, providing helicopter and fixed-wing aviation services primarily to the offshore oil and gas industry in Europe, Africa and Asia. Headquartered in St. John's, Newfoundland, CHC is the world's largest provider of helicopter services to the global offshore oil and gas industry, with aircraft operating in 30 countries and approximately 3,400 employees worldwide.
``As long as I can remember coming to Keystone company meetings, and for me that's been a long time,'' says Peter Wright Jr., ``the first order of business has been to make the shop and our operations safer, better and in compliance with new rules, old rules, everything.'' Ten of Keystone's pilots were recently recognized by the NBAA for as many as 13,000 hours of safe flight each. Keystone itself was cited for a total of 49,441 consecutive accident-free hours flown over a five-year period.
Five Learjet 40 light business jets have been delivered to operators in North America and Europe. Two of the Learjet 40s went to traditional U.S. operators, two entered service with Bombardier's Flexjet fractional ownership program, and one aircraft was delivered to Cirrus Aviation, a charter operator based in Germany. All five jets were delivered in January.
Basically, the executive helicopter costs twice as much to operate, plus presents a high acquisition price per passenger seat when compared with a typical fixed-wing jet, a Sikorsky sales rep pointed out. So why buy one? ``Fundamentally, the helicopter saves executives in a corporation the same amount of time as a jet, only over a shorter distance,'' the marketing maven explained.
YOU'VE GOT TO LOVE Norman Mineta, secretary of transportation. He came into the job at the beginning of 2001, espousing the view during his Senate confirmation hearing that ``transportation is key in generating and enabling economic growth, in determining the patterns of that growth and in determining the competitiveness of our business and world economy.'' Mineta spent nearly three decades in Congress, much of that time chairing aviation and/or full transportation committees.
CMC Electronics Inc., Montreal, has appointed William J. Allison chairman of the board of directors of the company. Allison has over 25 years of experience in the development and implementation of aerospace and defense electronics products and systems. Most recently, he was vice president and general manager of Northrop Grumman's navigation systems division.
Jeppesen has added a winter weather mosaic to its Nexrad radar weather products lineup so users can quickly and accurately identify areas of rain, snow, freezing rain, and mixed rain and snow, which each appear as a different color. The new Winter Radar Mosaic distinguishes among precipitation phenomena by applying an algorithm that incorporates Nexrad base reflectivity returns, surface precipitation reports, surface temperature and dew point reports, and other weather model inputs.
Executive Jet Management added three aircraft to its charter fleet in January. A Gulfstream IV will be based at New York's Long Island MacArthur Airport (ISP), a Falcon 2000EX will operate out of Boca Raton (Fla.) Airport (BTC) and a CitationJet will be based out of Port Columbus International Airport (CMH) in Ohio.
For fuel farm and fuel truck operators and maintainers, Air BP Aviation Services' Fuel Quality Control seminar in May will be supplemented with an additional two days of in-depth equipment training taught by experts from OEMs. Air BP Aviation Services will conduct its regular Fuel Quality Control Seminar, which includes FAR Part 139.321 fire training, at the Sheraton Cleveland Airport Hotel in Cleveland, on May 4 and 5. The equipment training programs will be conducted May 6 and 7.
We use the DeLorme Mapping Co.'s XMAP topographical program with electronic, seamless 1:24,000 topographical maps that are compensated to WGS 84. Many properly staffed flight departments could benefit through the use of this tool, or one similar to it. It was with this program that the critical terrain northeast of Scottsdale was located, and with this same tool the author helped the Airline Pilots Association and subsequently NBAA find numerous obstacle clearance errors in FAA radar MVA charts.
Cessna Chairman Russ Meyer, joined by GAMA President Ed Bolen, made a multi-day round of meetings in Washington, D.C., recently to present the case for extending the temporary bonus depreciation component of the tax codes. They met with legislators, staff aids, White House personnel and Treasury Secretary John Snow, as well as other business trade associations. Meyer spearheaded the tort reform effort that many contend was key to the revitalization of single-engine aircraft manufacturing in this country.
The Team DRF rescue organization reported its helicopters and air ambulance aircraft flew a total of 32,865 missions in 2003 -- 27,959 of them in Germany. Team DRF operates in Germany, Italy and Austria. The Team DRF organization flies helicopter emergency rescue missions, intensive care patient transfers between hospitals and patient repatriations from abroad. The team partners operate 42 air rescue centers in Germany, Austria and Italy with a total of 53 helicopters, six ambulance aircraft and three JAR 145 maintenance facilities.
Avcon Industries has an order for a turnkey RVSM upgrade to Kalitta Charters' fleet of 12 Learjet 20 series aircraft. Avcon is a subsidiary of Butler National. The work is scheduled to be completed just a month before the Jan. 20, 2005, FAA deadline for excluding non-complying aircraft from controlled airspace above 29,000 feet. Avcon said it has slots for similar modifications for other customers, but not for long.
CAE SimuFlite won an exclusive contract to train Flight Options pilots at the company's Dallas-Fort Worth training center. The three-year contract, valued at $28 million, is the largest ever for CAE SimuFlite. If Flight Options exercises an option to extend the contract for an additional two years, the value of the arrangement could rise to $48 million, said the company. Cleveland-based Flight Options offers shares and leases in more than 200 aircraft, including King Airs, Beechjets, Hawkers, Citations, Falcons, Challengers, Gulfstreams and Legacys.
With less than 12 months left until the Jan. 20, 2005, deadline, the NBAA is urging all operators who would be affected by DRVSM implementation to immediately begin equipping their aircraft. The association cautions that the FAA is unlikely to extend the deadline.
Bombardier delivered three more Model 415 amphibious firefighting aircraft to the Italian government, increasing the Italian Department of Civil Protection's 415 fleet to 16 aircraft. The aircraft are scheduled to enter service for this year's fire season. The contract with Italy contains an option to install a search and rescue system kit to convert one aircraft to the new Bombardier 415MP multi-purpose version, which is expected to be certified soon. Since entering service in Italy in 1995, the Bombardier water bombers have accumulated over 30,880 flight hours.
Stevens Aviation has updated its Web site's online forms for maintenance and refurbishment quotes to include DRVSM modification requests (www.stevensaviation.com/rvsm). Stevens says it will also add government information links to assist aircraft operators in obtaining information related to the DVRSM certification process. The company provides DRVSM mods at four locations -- Dayton, Ohio (DAY); Denver (BJC); Donaldson Center, Greenville, S.C.(GYH); and Nashville (BNA) -- and specializes in King Air, Citation, Learjet and Hawker aircraft.
APSI (Aviation Professionals Sharing Information), which meets primarily in the Northeast but is regularly attended by flight department, FBO and service organization people from across the United States, including Hawaii, will hold its first 2004 meeting on March 26 at 11 a.m. at the AIG Hangar at TEB -- 107 Lindbergh Dr., Teterboro, N.J. The topic will be international flight planning and presented by speakers from several flight planning companies.
A labor of love by Raytheon's Little Rock, Ark., Service Center gave a facelift to a rare airworthy B-17G, Thunderbird, owned by the Lone Star Flight Museum of Galveston, Texas. Raytheon employees stripped the Flying Fortress of all exterior paint and most interior appointments and repainted the aircraft and renovated most of the interior, including doors, tables, walkways, machine guns and much of the aircraft's glass. The Sherwin-Williams Co. and Raytheon Aircraft Services-Tampa also helped out, with the former donating the topcoat and the latter donating the primer.
When I took over this flight department, I had no experience with rotary-wing aircraft, and when I looked at the operating cost of our helicopter, the numbers almost stopped my heart!'' The speaker was Doug Schwartz, AT&T's aviation manager, and the sentiment he expressed is well known among business aviators of the fixed-wing persuasion: Helicopter operating costs, taken on their own without the qualifying factor of context, will always eclipse that of turbine-powered airplanes with the same number of seats.
In terms of ambiance, Dave Flitner's cattle ranching and resort operation on the side of the Bighorn Mountains in Northwestern Wyoming is about as far from the boardrooms and glass-and-steel canyons of Manhattan as you can get. But like the S&P 500 corporations that operate helicopters to promote executive productivity, Flitner uses a Bell 407 in much the same way to oversee and manage his family's 300,000-acre spread. He just wears a Stetson and jeans instead of a blue suit and wingtips.
Keystone Helicopter of West Chester, Pa. (see ``Sounding the Wright Key,'' page 60) now makes maintenance ``house calls'' with a truck-borne mobile maintenance team to provide 24/7 on-site service to its customers. Keystone COO David Ford says the Keystone Helicopter Instant Service team can be dispatched to provide on-site emergency services or repairs, ``such as gear box and engine change-outs, avionics and mechanical troubleshooting, structural repairs -- even aircraft recovery if necessary.''
