Aviation International News July 2023

OEMS: ASCEND IS LATEST CITATION UPGRADE

CHARTER: BIG LOSSES HIT FLEET OPERATORS

WEATHER: WHY IS SPECIAL VFR SO SPECIAL?

SAFETY: NOTAM FIXES ARE COMING. FOR REAL.

The Art of Aviation

Technology and design combine to form the heart of today's completions and refurbs

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29 Expert Opinion: Eco protests, a call to action

17

4 Textron Aviation unveils Ascend as latest in XL family

6 Bombardier’s EcoJet program takes steps into the future

8 Father of EGPWS Don Bateman passes away at 91

10

GAMA: 1Q business jet deliveries on par with 2022

12 Paris 2023: Gulfstream special-missions business replacing military transports

14 Paris 2023: Boeing Global Services charts a data solutions path

16

42 Special VFR’s unknown link to flight safety

Paris 2023: AIA chief warns of sustained shortage of technical workforce

20 Special Report: Personalization, technology top today’s business jet interiors

32 Legacy Tails: The Premier stands ‘outside its time’

34 Discounting, debt, deficits plague select private jet programs

38 Fixing notams: at long last, changes are coming

Getting to yes on CPDLC

Textron Aviation unveils Ascend as latest in XL family

BY MATT THURBER

Textron Aviation took the wraps off the latest iteration of its popular 560XL family— the Cessna Citation Ascend—during EBACE 2023, announcing major upgrades to extend the midsize twinjet’s production run well into the future. Key features of the $16.725 million airplane include Garmin G5000 avionics, autothrottles, more powerful Pratt & Whitney Canada (P&WC) PW545D engines, a higher maximum takeoff weight (mtow) and payload, increased range, flat cabin floor, and other cabin amenities. The Ascend is expected to enter service in early 2025.

The trenched floor on the 560XL, while it provides more headroom, has bucked the flat-floor trend in modern business jet design. In the case of the Ascend, engineers didn’t change the fuselage’s external dimensions to accommodate the flat floor but essentially filled in the trench.

Then designers were able to create new cabin seats that take advantage of the flat floor with more room to move. Other changes include power at every seat and wireless phone charging. The Clairity cabin management system lets passengers wirelessly control cabin lighting, temperature, window shades, and the entertainment system.

News Briefs

FAA SEEKS MORE INFO ON 5G RADALT INTERFERENCE

Flattening the floor shrinks the height of the cabin by eight inches when measured from the previous bottom of the center trench in the 560XL. New cabin height is 60 inches. Cabin windows are 15 percent larger, and Textron Aviation engineers improved the cabin noise levels to near those of a modern car.

Meanwhile, the P&WC 545D delivers more power and better fuel efficiency with an improved high-pressure compressor, single-stage high-pressure turbine module, and exhaust mixer.

A Woodward autothrottle system is integrated with the Garmin avionics—the same as on the Latitude and Longitude. G5000 avionics feature three ultra-high-resolution 14-inch displays; four touchscreen controllers; autopilot with envelope protection; a Garmin GSR 56 Iridium satcom; Garmin GWX 8000 StormOptix radar; and a second Iridium satcom for CPDLC and FANS 1/A communications.

Textron Aviation’s preliminary specifications anticipate a range of 1,900 nm at high-speed cruise with four passengers, up from the XLS+’s 1,750 nm. The new mtow is 20,500 pounds, 300 pounds higher than the XLS+. Maximum payload grows to 2,390 pounds, up from 2,240 pounds. z

The FAA appears to be shifting much of the burden related to information generation and gathering aimed at resolving 5G C-band radio altimeter interference to avionics and aircraft OEMs, aircraft operators, and a civilian contractor to the agency. In a special airworthiness information bulletin, the FAA requested that manufacturers of radio altimeters and aircraft, as well as operators, continue to voluntarily provide “specific information” related to those altimeters’ design, functionality, and usage; continue to test the equipment in cooperation with federal authorities; and report results to both civil aviation authorities and spectrum regulators.

HONDA, VOLATO STEP IN AFTER JET IT CEASES OPERATIONS

Greensboro, North Carolina-based HondaJet fractional provider Jet It ceased operations on May 18, leaving displaced shareowners and employees in its wake. At the time of its shutdown, Jet It had 21 HondaJets but the CEO of competitor Volato, Matt Liotta, said as many as 12 were being held in maintenance centers pending payment. Atlanta-based Volato moved quickly to accommodate stranded aircraft owners and pilots impacted by Jet It’s demise. Separately, Honda Aircraft formed a support team to provide free assistance to fractional owners of HondaJets previously managed by Jet It.

AVIONICS SALES SOAR IN 1Q23

Worldwide business and general aviation avionics sales jumped by 22.6 percent year-over-year in the first three months, topping $777 million, the Aircraft Electronics Association reported. Forward-fit sales drove that leap, up 32.1 percent to nearly $468 million in the quarter, while retrofit sales also rose by 10.5 percent to $310 million.

The Citation Ascend breathes new life into the 560XL family.

EBACE 2023

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News Briefs

CIRRUS PLANS HONG KONG IPO

Cirrus Aircraft is preparing for an initial public o ering (IPO) after filing an application with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on June 8. The company reportedly aims to raise $300 million. While U.S.-headquartered, China Aviation Industry General Aircraft-owned Cirrus has opted not to go public via a Wall Street flotation under Securities and Exchange Commission rules. According to the company, it does not yet have a defined timeline to complete the IPO while Hong Kong’s financial regulators vet its listing application.

Bombardier’s EcoJet program takes steps into the future

BY CURT EPSTEIN

One year after Bombardier unveiled its small-scale EcoJet blended-wing research demonstrator, the Canadian airframer revealed the existence of its bigger brother at EBACE 2023. Bombardier added that the aircraft achieved first flight late last year.

At twice the size of the previous scale model, this new aircraft—with an 18-foot wingspan—represents the conclusion of the first phase of the test program and the start of the second. The company believes this second phase will deliver a lowercarbon emissions aircraft design in pursuit of net-zero emissions goals by 2050.

“The technology that we have on the EcoJet program is how we at Bombardier are going to get there,” said Stephen McCullough, senior v-p of engineering and product development. “As we get closer and closer to what the full scale will be, the results have better resolution.”

The project aims to reduce aircraft emissions by up to 50 percent through aerodynamic and propulsion improvements. Among them, the aircraft’s design includes what Bombardier describes as its sixth-generation transonic wing. EcoJet also has a new aircraft control architecture. “The EcoJet research project has garnered a high level of interest across the industry, and we are looking forward to mobilizing partners as we continue to define the future of business aviation,” said McCullough.

As to whether the next step in the program would be a full-scale aircraft, McCullough noted that as the aircraft design scales up, it will allow for the installation of more representative equipment than smaller versions. But he added a determination has not yet been made. “It’s a technology demonstration platform, and really we will get through the phase of the larger-scale model that we have today, and then we will decide what is the next-step size—if there is a next-step size— to mature the technology,” he told AIN z

GOGO INTROS LARGE BIZJET LEO BROADBAND ANTENNA

Following the launch of its HDX small-formfactor antenna for low-earth-orbit (LEO) connectivity, Gogo Business Aviation has unveiled the FDX antenna for larger aircraft. At the same time, the company said its LEO systems will be grouped under a new “Gogo Galileo” brand. Like the HDX, the FDX is an electronically-steered unit that connects with the company’s LEO broadband solution, which uses OneWeb’s satellite network. In the meantime, Gogo said supplemental type certificate approval for the HDX antenna on a Bombardier Challenger 300 is under way, with Duncan Aviation providing engineering and certification support.

AIRBUS HELICOPTERS LANDS MAJOR ORDER

On the last day of EBACE 2023, Airbus Helicopters announced a blockbuster deal with Italian operator Air Corporate for 43 rotorcraft, including 40 single-engine H125/ H130s which, depending on its decision at a later date, could be outfitted as VIP ACH125/ACH130s. Additionally, the deal includes three ACH160s in Line configuration with the Lounge interior package, to join the two ACH160s already on order. This latest deal builds on Corporate Air’s previous 28-ship order with Airbus.

Bombardier’s EcoJet research program looks to develop a new airframe design that could result in carbon emissions savings of up to 50 percent.

EBACE 2023

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Father

Don Bateman passes away at 91

BY MATT THURBER

Don Bateman, an electrical engineer and inventor of the ground proximity warning system, passed away on May 21. He was 91.

Bateman spent most of his career as chief engineer of flight safety avionics at Honeywell before retiring in July 2016. In 2005, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He held 40 U.S. and 80 foreign patents for aircraft terrain avoidance systems, head-up displays, speed control/autothrottle, stall warning, automatic aircraft flight control, and weight-and-balance systems.

Bateman will be forever remembered for his efforts to prevent controlled flight into terrain accidents with the design of the ground proximity warning system (GPWS), which later became the enhanced GPWS or EGPWS. Using sensors and a highly accurate terrain database, EGPWS warns pilots of risks of nearby terrain and obstacles. It is credited with saving thousands of lives, and Honeywell has produced more than 65,000 EGPWS systems so far.

According to Honeywell, “Bateman’s dedication to saving lives by making aviation safer is what led him to form a team of ‘mavericks’—a group of engineers with a unique passion for what they were building, and a strong sense of purpose.”

“He was a joy to be around,” said Bill Reavis, a retired Honeywell public relations executive. “Don was always of the opinion that we should have given EGPWS away. It was all about safety with him. He was so passionate about it.”

Bateman and his team would study every aviation accident to try to find common root causes, Reavis recalled, “and then say, ‘let’s work on this,’ and that’s how they would continually improve the product.”

News Briefs

GULFSTREAM SEES G700 CERTIFICATION BY YEAR - END

“Working on Don’s team for six years provided me a unique opportunity to learn from the master and how to create a culture for high-performing teams,” said Honeywell senior technical fellow Thea Feyereisen. “There was nothing that Don enjoyed more while working than a good argument (he took delight in diversity of thought) or a good laugh (he loved a good joke). I felt empowered as one of the team of ‘mavericks.’ He was my number-one promoter, and I felt that that endorsement from my boss gave me a little superpower cape by association!”

Feyereisen worked with Bateman on other Honeywell products, including synthetic vision using the EGPWS database to create a 3D view of the outside world. “He immediately became a champion for the new technology and called it a game changer in terms of prevention of premature descent and loss of control,” she said.”

“He always credited the people who came before him,” said Bateman’s younger daughter, Katherine McCaslin. “He’d look back and say that aviation is built on the shoulders of so many great innovators. He really felt like his work at Honeywell was standing on the shoulders of giants to make an impact.

Bateman leaves behind a wife, Mary, four children, eight grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. z

Gulfstream Aerospace is now expecting certification of the G700 near the end of this year, according to president Mark Burns. It more recently expected the G700 to get FAA approval in the third quarter, but Burns said pandemic-related issues, including sta ng shortages at the regulatory agency, are causing the process to take “much longer than anticipated.” G800 certification is expected six to nine months after the G700; it’s exempted from many of the flight tests the larger sibling completed thanks to systems commonality.

FALCON 10X TAKES SHAPE

Development and testing of Dassault’s 7,500-nm Falcon 10X is proceeding apace. Primary parts for the 19-passenger ultralong-range jet are now in production, as well as long-lead elements such as the landing gear. Key systems and components are now undergoing tests at various Dassault and supplier locations. Among them is the all-composite wing test article, which has now completed 10,000 equivalent flight cycles. Meanwhile, the flight simulator bench has conducted 300 representative “flights.”

FIRST FULLY CONFIGURED GLOBAL 8000 FLIES

The first fully configured Global 8000 made its inaugural flight in mid-May, Bombardier said at EBACE 2023. The aircraft, which was formerly FTV-5 in the Global 7500 program and the same airframe that went supersonic during the early stages of Global 8000 flight-testing, has been configured as FTV-1 in the Global 8000 program. On its first day of flight testing in full configuration, the large-cabin twinjet flew more than seven hours without incident. The OEM is anticipating certification for the 8,000-nm twinjet in the second half of 2025.

DON BATEMAN

News Briefs

100TH LONGITUDE ROLLED OUT

GAMA: 1Q business jet deliveries on par with 2022

BY CURT EPSTEIN

Business jet deliveries remained virtually unchanged in the first quarter of 2023 from the same period last year, while turboprop deliveries increased by more than 6 percent, according to the General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA).

Manufacturers delivered 117 jets in the first three months of 2023, one fewer than they did a year ago, while the same number represented a seven-unit increase for turboprops. The higher-end pressurized turboprop segment, however, was off by 5 percent, with two fewer deliveries in the first quarter of 2023. Total airplane billings declined by 3.5 percent year-over-year.

Delivery totals for most jet OEMs were equal to 2022 numbers or slightly lower in the first quarter of 2023, though there were some exceptions, particularly in the verylight-jet category. Cirrus ramped up yearover-year deliveries of its single-engine SF50 Vision Jet, handing over seven more in the first quarter of this year than in the same period in 2022, while for the first time in five years, Eclipse Aerospace delivered a pair of Eclipse 550s. Pilatus delivered three more PC-24s in the first quarter than it did in the same time last year.

Daher and Piper were the only pressurized turboprop manufacturers to improve on their first-quarter 2022 delivery totals,

with the former handing over three more single-engine TBMs in the first three months of this year, and the latter improving upon its M600 total.

For turbine-powered helicopters, the news was more robust, with deliveries increasing by more than 50 percent, from 100 in the first quarter of 2022 to 153 in the same period this year. Total rotorcraft billings soared by nearly 60 percent to $800 million for the quarter.

Airbus Helicopters saw an 88 percent increase in its year-over-year output, more than doubling its H125 production, with deliveries rising from 14 to 30 for the quarter. Leonardo delivered 12 more units than in the 2022 period, nearly tripling AW119Kx aircraft it handed over, while Robinson Helicopter increased its R66 production by 10 over its first-quarter 2022 total of 21.

“The continued health of the general aviation manufacturing industry is encouraging, particularly in light of persistent supply-chain, workforce, and North American regulatory process challenges,” said GAMA president and CEO Pete Bunce. “Our manufacturers are focused on meeting this thriving product demand with new aircraft which incorporate advanced technologies that further enhance safety and fuel performance.” z

Since entering service in 2019, Textron Aviation’s super-midsize Longitude, the Wichita-based company’s largest inproduction business jet, has reached 100 units manufactured. Textron recently rolled it out and, after completion, the twinjet will be delivered to its new owner later this year. “A milestone like this wouldn’t be possible without the owners and operators…or the extraordinary workforce that designs, builds, and maintains this aircraft,” said Textron Aviation president and CEO Ron Draper.

GLOBAL JET CAPITAL: BIZJET LEVEL- OFF THEN GROWTH

In its third-annual Business Jet Market Forecast, Global Jet Capital (GJC) expects continued growth for the next five years in preowned business jet transactions and new deliveries. But that is tempered by what it characterizes as a “leveling o from the unprecedented demand that our industry experienced post-pandemic.” In 2023, the forecast expects new and preowned transaction unit volume to drop 2.6 percent while transaction dollar volume should climb by 1 percent. This is due to more demand for larger jets and new-production jet deliveries growing 6.3 percent and dollar volume by 12.2 percent in 2023, according to GJC. From the peak of 3,243 preowned transactions in 2021, unit volume is expected to grow again from a 2023 low of 2,635 to 3,129 in 2027.

PEARL 10X TO FLY THIS YEAR

Rolls-Royce reported that its Pearl 10X engine is on track to begin flight trials on the company’s Tucson-based Boeing 747 testbed later this year. The engine—which is destined for Dassault’s forthcoming Falcon 10X—delivers more than 18,000 pounds of thrust. More than 1,500 hours of ground running time have been accumulated to date and have confirmed the engine’s reliability and performance.

Cirrus delivered seven more SF50 Vision Jets this year than in the first quarter of 2022.

Gulfstream special-missions business replacing military transports

BY DAVID DONALD

The EC-37B is an electronic attack platform that targets the enemy’s command and control communications network, as well as radars and navigation systems. Currently the role—known as Compass Call—is handled by the Lockheed EC-130H, a variant of the Hercules. The fleet has been in service since 1982 and, following a lengthy career that included active service in all of the major U.S. military actions over four decades, is ready for replacement.

L3Harris is the lead systems integrator in the Compass Call Rehost team, alongside Gulfstream and BAE Systems. As its name suggests, the program ports the current Compass Call Baseline 3 system from the EC-130H into the G550. Five Gulfstreams are receiving this system and should be in service with the 355th Electronic Combat Group at Davis-Monthan AFB in Arizona by year-end.

Following these initial aircraft will be at least five more with the Baseline 4

system. The Air Force plans to operate at least 10 EC-37Bs but may expand the fleet to 14.

Choosing the G550 as a platform for the system highlights the trend to employ business jets for special missions that were once performed by modified airliners or military transports. Advances in electronics have shrunk the size of mission systems, along with their power requirements.

Similarly, increased automation, the rise of artificial intelligence, and the improvement in datalink communications have greatly reduced the number of human operators required onboard. Compared with earlier platforms, the modern business jet also provides improved range and higher service ceilings, increasing the e ff ective horizon for surveillance systems. Business jet cabin environments also make life far more comfortable for the crew.

Gulfstream is not the only manufacturer to benefit from this trend.

Bombardier’s Challenger 650 and Global Express/6000/6500 fly electronic missions and Dassault’s Falcon family has also been adapted to electronic roles.

Gulfstream is no stranger to the special missions world, and the sector remains an important element of the company’s portfolio. The original turboprop- powered Gulfstream I was the basis of the U.S. Navy’s TC-4C Academe multi-engine trainer, and the jet-powered Gulfstream II, III, and IV have all been modified for a variety of special missions.

Perhaps the most notable are the two Gulfstream IV-SPs converted for Sigint gathering. Known in service as the S 102B Korpen (raven), the Gulfstreams have recently been active along NATO’s border with Ukraine. Many Gulfstreams have been acquired by governments and air forces for VIP and staff transport duties, those in U.S. service being designated VC-11 (GII), C-20 (GIII/IV), and C-37 (GV/550). z

The first mission-equipped Gulfstream EC-37B flew a four-hour inaugural flight from L3Harris’s Waco, Texas, facility on May 4.

Paris Airshow 2023

The future is our starting point

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Boeing Global Services charts a data solutions path

BY CATHY BUYCK

Paris Airshow 2023

Anyone participating in a Boeing results or investors’ presentation can’t fail to notice that the company’s global services segment gets barely any attention. Yet with revenue of $17.6 billion and positive earnings from operations, Boeing Global Services (BGS) accounted for nearly 30 percent of the U.S. aerospace giant’s total revenue and nearly all its operating profits last year.

BGS’s financial performance clearly outshines that of its more well-known peer segments, Commercial Airplanes (BCA) and Defense, Space, and Security (BDS). In 2022, BGS reported a 15.5 percent operating margin while both BCA’s and BDS’s operating margins ended in negative territory, specifically 9.2 percent and 15.3 percent, respectively. With a 17.9 percent operating margin in the first quarter of this year, the services segment exceeded pre-pandemic margins and again represented Boeing’s only profitable business segment.

BGS received $4 billion in orders during the quarter and the backlog stood at $19 billion. Revenue totaled $4.7 billion, up 9 percent year-over-year. “We get more and more confident about that business and the team that’s running this, so I think it’s going to accrue to our benefit over the next several years. We love the service business…It’s a franchise,” said Boeing CFO Brian West BGS formed in 2017 with the integration of the OEM’s commercial, defense, and space services capabilities. Its global portfolio spans parts and distribution, engineering, modifications and maintenance, training support, and digital analytics with names such as Jeppesen, ForeFlight, and recent acquisitions such as CloudAhoy. The parts and distribution business, including

the former Aviall, remains the largest revenue contributor, but the digital solutions and analytics business has increasingly expanded, owing to the growing need to integrate data across subsegments, BGS executives told AIN during a briefing in Frankfurt, Germany, as the company prepared for last month’s Paris Airshow.

BGS employs some 450 staff at the Frankfurt site, which formerly printed up to 1 billion Jeppesen navigation charts a year. That same building now serves as home to BGS’s largest Digital Solutions & Analytics Lab. “Jeppesen stands as one of the first successful digital transformations in the world,” remarked Brad Surak, BGS vice president of digital aviation solutions. Boeing acquired Jeppesen in 2000 for $1.5 billion in cash.

The transition from paper charts to Jeppesen’s electronic flight bag (EFB) serves as a perfect example of BGS’s “double bottom line” approach that also includes sustainability, noted Surak. Since

its launch in 2012, the Jeppesen EFB enabled more than 40,000 paperless flights and removed 6.3 million kg of paper from airplanes, resulting in 271,500 tonnes of fuel savings and avoiding almost 900,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions.

BGS has also expanded its digital aviation products to help airlines transition to an integrated operations center. “The operations center is the nerve center of the airline, but we see that airlines often have seven to 10 different solutions, and these systems operate in silos,” he said.

Integrating the systems for core capabilities such as flight planning, flight scheduling, tail assignment, crew management, communication, and operations control in one inter-connected digital suite will improve the integrity of day-to-day operations and enable airlines to quickly recover from disruptions, he maintained. In a subsequent step, the Boeing Integrated Operations Center will join with maintenance, according to Surak. z

Users have downloaded the Jeppesen FliteDeck Pro charts and navigation app on more than 350,000 mobile devices.

THIS IS FORWARD THINKING

The challenge

Developing solutions to stay ahead of the ever-evolving aerospace industry

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AIA chief warns of sustained shortage of technical workforce

BY CATHY BUYCK

The aerospace industry faces an array of challenges, but geopolitical instability, persistent strains on supply chains, and concerns over the aviation industry’s capability to decarbonize didn’t prevent Aerospace Industries Association CEO Eric Fanning from heading to last month’s Paris Airshow with optimism.

“There is tremendous excitement that American manufacturers are able to return to Paris, the world’s largest air show, after four years…after four rough years,” Fanning told AIN.

In 2019, North American manufacturers accounted for 18 percent of the more than 2,450 companies exhibiting their products. In 2023, 422 exhibitors were listed from the U.S. just ahead of the show, representing high-technology manufacturers and suppliers from across every sector and tier of the civil and defense industry.

Fanning acknowledged that very stressed supply chains is still a major topic of discussion at the show. “The good news is that air travel is picking back up,” he said. “Memorial Day weekend travel exceeded pre-pandemic levels. Demand on the civil side is looking good.”

Demand on the defense side also remains high, owing mainly to Russia’s attacks on Ukraine. OEMs and their suppliers can’t keep pace with the resulting demand. The historical counter-cyclical environment of defense and non-defense is gone, Fanning remarked. The civil and defense industries largely share a supply chain, which, said Fanning, “is not built for a simultaneous resurgence of demand of the two sides of the aerospace industry,” he said.

Fanning sees three major concerns that could slow resolving the supply chain difficulties and hamper growth: inflation, access to skilled workers, and geopolitical tensions—including the changing relationship with China—affecting accessibility to trade, minerals, and materials. Attracting and retaining talent with critical or niche skillsets presents “the real long-term issue,” he asserted. “The issue is not limited to the aerospace industry but it is probably the number-one strategic concern of the industry. It is going to take some creative solutions [to solve it],” he explained.

The European aerospace industry and the broader aviation ecosystem are experiencing a similar shortage of skilled workers in part due to the perception of its nature as a polluter, which has led to a decline in its appeal and dissatisfaction with working conditions.

“We don’t see the same loss of attractiveness here [in the U.S.] as in Europe,” he said. “The West, and certainly the U.S., has under-invested in developing a technical workforce. Part of globalizing high-tech manufacturing and complex products was influenced by factors such as cheaper labor but also labor availability.”

In May, AIA and PwC released a new study highlighting the labor market dynamics facing aerospace and defense companies. The A&D industry will continue to experience “serious challenges to fill its workforce ranks over the next several years,” concluded Scott Thompson, PwC’s Global Aerospace & Defense Leader. “Given these challenges, it is especially important for the industry to change course in how it engages with top talent,” he wrote. “Perhaps the most urgent need is to redouble efforts to promote the industry as one that can offer exciting and meaningful careers developing and producing some of the most innovative technology that exists in any field.”

Regarding the industry’s drive to become more sustainable, Fanning said he believes the U.S. is equally committed as its European counterparts despite the EU’s headline-grabbing programs and regulations such as the Green Deal, Fit for 55, and ReFuelEU. “Everyone is in on this,” declared Fanning. “It is the right thing to do. Moreover, delivering increased sustainability is a very clear market demand.” z

ERIC FANNING AEROSPACE INDUSTRIES ASSOCIATION CEO

 The issue is not limited to the aerospace industry but it is probably the number-one strategic concern of the industry. It is going to take some creative solutions [to solve it]... 

Paris Airshow 2023

FLIGHTSAFETY INSTRUCTORS AND SIMULATORS CONTINUE TO IMPROVE OVER TIME

Some of the best things in life get better with age: fine wine, artisanal cheese…and companies that practice continuous improvement like FlightSafety International (FSI). Over the more than 70 years since the company was founded, it has introduced myriad innovations in simulator technology, culminating most recently with mixed-reality rotorcraft simulators pioneered by the newest member of the FSI family, Frasca. And not only has the hardware improved over time, but the “humanware” also continuously gets better as FSI challenges its instructors to become experts in their field and find innovative ways to enhance safety through training.

FSI INSTRUCTORS STAY BEYOND PROFICIENT TO MAKE PILOTS PREPARED

It’s one of those approaches that even professional pilots dread: Mountainous airport at night with gusty winds and weather nearly to minimums. Frank, the captain of the Cessna Citation X, is not terribly worried as he’s been through this drill before. It’s his fifth approach to the airport in the soup, and he has it under control. But just past the inner approach fix, the engine fan speed begins to drop and seconds later the LO OIL PRESS L and MASTER WARNING indicators flash. Jeremy, the second-incommand, starts calling out the engine shutdown and engine failure during final-approach procedures while Frank performs and confirms each step, trying to keep the airplane from losing altitude among the tall Colorado mountains.

When it’s all over and the wheels of the Citation touch the ground, Jeremy lets out an audible sigh of relief before calling out

the touchdown procedure. As the airspeed bleeds off and it becomes obvious the jet will make the turnoff, the scene outside the windshield freezes and engine noise suddenly ceases. Frank and Jeremy have completed their recurrent checkride in a FlightSafety International (FSI) Level D simulator. But Frank and Jeremy aren’t FSI customers; they’re instructors finishing up their recurrent training.

“Regardless of whether an airplane requires a type rating or not, our instructors teaching in that aircraft go through the same initial and recurrent training that our clients do,” says Richard Meikle, FlightSafety Executive Vice President of Operations and Safety.

INSTRUCTORS:

FLIGHTSAFETY’S

BACKBONE

FlightSafety, which Albert Ueltschi founded in 1951 to provide airline-level

training to corporate pilots, has since expanded its focus to maintenance technicians, cabin a endants, and other aviation professionals. Throughout its more than 70 years of existence, FSI has continuously invested in technology to produce higher fidelity simulators, but it has not forgo en that instructors are still the key to making learning happen.

“One of the things that FlightSafety does exceptionally well is to a ract and retain highly qualified talent,” says Doug May, FlightSafety Executive Vice President of Operations and Courseware, who served as an, engineer,flight test pilot or executive at Bombardier, Cessna, Bell Helicopter, and Textron Aviation before joining FSI. “Our instructors are well-versed in the aircraft that they’re teaching from military, corporate, or even flight test experience they’ve had prior to coming to FlightSafety. Their breadth of

experience is one of the differentiators that sets FlightSafety apart from other training companies.”

FlightSafety employs more than 1,600 instructors worldwide, with 93 percent serving as fixed-wing flight or maintenance instructors and the remainder in rotorcraft. Most FSI instructors become specialists in one or two aircraft, keeping up with model changes to teach “differences” courses as well as initial and recurrent training.

FlightSafety sets high standards for hiring instructors, including an unrestricted ATP certificate or at least one unrestricted PIC type rating with a minimum of 2,500 hours of total flight time. That’s just the beginning, though. The first three to four months on the job are spent training in various aspects of being an instructor, from learning how FlightSafety conducts training to completing multiple initial and recurrent courses.

“Teaching at FlightSafety turns generalists into specialists,” says Meikle. “A flight instructor at a typical flight school teaches the general concepts of how to be a pilot: manipulating the flight controls, the basics of navigation, etc. They could train in a Cessna 172 one day and a Piper Cherokee the next. But our instructors are specialists—they teach the nuances of a specific airplane to a master’s level. So, they have to know the airplane at a Ph.D. level. Our flight instructors are considered experts in their field.”

Steve Watkins has been an instructor pilot at FlightSafety since 2001. “I think one of the nice things about FlightSafety is that we don’t have people just from the airlines, the military, or the private sector,” Watkins said in a video posted during FSI Instructor Week 2023. “Our instructors come from all phases of aviation. You get such a culmination of that vast knowledge and when they’re able to pass on that expertise to another pilot, that’s invaluable. I get to work with some of the best pilots in the world.”

JUST BECAUSE IT DOESN’T LEAVE THE GROUND DOESN’T MEAN THE SIM’S EASY

FlightSafety instructors must enjoy challenges. After all, they’re tasked with teaching people who already know how to fly and are often quite familiar with the aircraft. Many FSI instructors agree that recurrent training is the hardest to provide as the instructors must be able to explain the anomalies that students are seeing in the field.

“Our instructors are incessantly getting grilled, although it’s not in a malicious way,” says May. “But if both the instructor and student have significant experience with the topic they’re discussing, the level of conversation they can have will be very different than it’d be if one of them were new to the topic. Many of our clients are well-versed in the aircraft and want to learn more, for example, about how one inoperative system might affect other aircraft systems. Instructors are essentially being tested all the time.”

Since FSI courses run from a few days to a few weeks, one might think instructors would get tired of teaching the same material over and over. But Meikle says the opposite occurs: each new set of students brings new challenges and keeps instructors motivated.

“While each session is based on the same set of materials, every class is different because the clients have different backgrounds and experience levels,” Meikle says. “Clients relatively new to the aircraft will ask different questions than people who have been flying it for some time and have seen a lot of anomalies. Those conversations are powerful learning opportunities.”

While it’s true that the simulator instructor can press pause and reset when things get dicey, simulator training presents its own set of challenges for the instructor. In addition to knowing the aircraft systems, the instructor must know how to run the simulator. But just as a good pilot must understand aircraft systems, simulator instructors need to

D. Richard Meikle FlightSafety Executive Vice President of Operations and Safety

understand the simulator systems and be able to tell whether something going wrong is an aircraft system response or a simulator system response.

“The simulator instructor also has to manage the weather, air traffic control services, airfield lighting, etc.,” May says. “It takes a fair amount of skill to control all that seamlessly without clients feeling like they’re in a simulator. A skilled instructor will create such a realistic scenario that you’ll walk out of the simulator sweating.”

Teaching in the simulator can also be more demanding because of the concentrated and more focused learning environment. “The simulator provides the ability for almost nonstop instruction during the session by continuously setting up scenarios exactly where you need to focus rather than flying to a spot and then teaching,” May says.

 Regardless of whether an airplane requires a type rating or not, our instructors teaching in that aircraft go through the same initial and recurrent training that our clients do .

INSTRUCTORS HAVE OPPORTUNITIES TO GROW AT FSI

FlightSafety instructors often have access to OEM documentation and experts that the casual pilot may not have, especially when an OEM is developing a new aircraft model. Often, FSI instructors work closely with OEM engineers and flight test personnel to ensure that simulators will replicate the flight characteristics of the aircraft as closely as possible. For example, FlightSafety had two simulators built and the curriculum ready by March 2023 for the Gulfstream 700, which is scheduled to receive FAA certification in mid-2023.

“The Falcon 10X is another example of FSI/OEM cooperation that will result in training availability coinciding with the aircraft’s anticipated entry to service in 2025,” May says. “Joint teams are already developing the simulators and training content. As the aircraft design matures, so will the simulator and the courseware. The instructors will be ready to teach in

the Falcon 10X simulators even before the aircraft is certified.”

Due to FSI’s partnership with GE Digital, FSI instructors also have the unique opportunity to use quality assurance data from more than 300 flight departments and 1,200 aircraft to tailor training to address safety issues.

“We don’t see individual data—we only see aggregated data—but it helps us to identify issues out in the field that we can address in the training,” says Meikle. “We have great insight to aggregated crew behavior as it relates to runway excursion threats such as instability on final, etc., based on the GE Digital data, and that allows us to drive the training to address things causing instability that may be pilot-induced. For example, we’re seeing pilots driven by ATC requests to maintain a higher speed to the initial approach fix marker become unstable as they try to slow the aircraft down in a shorter time frame. So now we can discuss this in training and help pilots

make be er decisions so they don’t have an excursion and find themselves sitting in the aircraft off the end of the runway thinking, ‘I wish I would have gone around.’”

FlightSafety instructors also have myriad opportunities to grow within the company’s qualification system. Typically, a new instructor becomes qualified to teach initial training on a particular aircraft. The next step would be to qualify to teach recurrent courses in the aircraft, and finally to become an examiner. After that, instructors often become qualified to teach courses per EASA standards or for other national aviation authorities.

“FlightSafety is a great place for instructors to work because we provide the support, the resources, the dedication, and the commitment to safety that allow instructors to grow and make a difference,” May says. “And this is a job where you can say, ‘I made a difference in somebody’s life today.’”

PIONEERS IN FLIGHT SIMULATION SYNERGIZE FOR FUTURE SUCCESS

In 1951, corporate pilot Albert Lee Ueltschi rented a Link trainer to provide pilot training in the Marine Air Terminal at New York’s LaGuardia Airport under the name FlightSafety, Inc. Essentially an eight-foot-long by twofoot-wide wooden box in the shape of an airplane with a 10-foot wingspan (when wings were connected), the Link trainer ran on compressed air controlled by the pilot inside the box and an instructor at a desk. Outfi ed with the same controls and instruments as an airplane, it mimicked flight and served as the world’s first flight training device (FTD). FlightSafety purchased four Link trainers in 1953, then a Link Translator (the company’s first flight simulator) in 1955.

Meanwhile, in 1949, an 18-year-old pilot from Chicago named Rudy Frasca joined the U.S. Navy and began serving as a flight instructor using Link trainers at nearby Glenview Naval Station. Frasca left the Navy after the Korean War to study aviation psychology at the University of Illinois,

using Link and other early flight training devices in his research. Combining his experience from the Navy and university research, Frasca built his first flight simulator in 1958 and founded Frasca Aviation— later to become Urbana, Illinois-based Frasca International—in his garage

More than 60 years later, the two companies merged their talents when Frasca became a wholly owned subsidiary of FlightSafety International (FSI) in January 2022. The acquisition paves the way for future innovation at FSI, including the introduction of a more tactile feel to cockpit trainers.

“Our customers have told us that they would like to see more realistic cockpit trainers in our learning centers, and that’s exactly what Frasca brings to the table,” said Michael Vercio, FSI Executive Vice President of Simulation Systems. “We’re harmonizing the ability to share engineering between the two companies to build new devices in a product line that o ffers the renowned Frasca

name as a leader in FTD markets tied to FlightSafety full-flight simulators.”

EARLY DAYS OF SIMULATOR TRAINING

Serving as the personal pilot for Pan American World Airways president Juan Trippe, Ueltschi saw how corporate pilots didn’t have access to the same formal training as airline pilots. Founding FlightSafety was how he sought to change that and he continued to look for ways to improve this.

By 1962, Ueltschi and his growing team at FlightSafety developed their first typespecific trainer using an actual flight deck si ing atop a hydraulic motion base connected to analog computers. As new business jets—including the Falcon 20, Learjet 23, and Gulfstream II—entered service in the 1960s, FlightSafety created simulator-based training courses for each model, often using the actual flight deck or components. In 1966, Falcon Jet named FlightSafety its

factory-authorized training provider, the first of more than a dozen OEMs to do so over the next 50 years. For example, FlightSafety has been an authorized training provider for Cessna since 1974.

“In engineering at Cessna nearly 15 years ago, I worked on most of their business jet lines,” said Vercio. “When we were ge ing ready to launch a model into service, we worked closely with FlightSafety to ensure that the simulator was ready the day the airplane went into service. We would take flight test data off our airplanes and provide data and actual aircraft parts to FlightSafety for use in the simulator, and then we engineers would sit in the pre-launch courses and validate everything the instructors were teaching.”

FlightSafety opened its first Learning Center in 1966 in Houston, and rapidly became the name in business aviation training. It added centers in Florida and California within another year and, by the end of 1969, was training more than 2,500 professional pilots and 4,000 student pilots per year in an industry that was just ge ing started. By 1978, the company was operating 30 simulators in 16 Learning Centers across the U.S., Canada, and Europe.

THE FRASCA WAY

While Ueltschi concentrated on providing type training for professional pilots,

Frasca developed training techniques for student pilots. Its first customer, Aviation Training Enterprises at Chicago’s Midway Airport (which later merged with Texasbased American Flyers), needed a device to train instrument students. Frasca believed motion was ineffective and promoted fixed base training devices. A movable model aircraft mounted above the instrument panel provided the cues as to how students’ control inputs affected the aircraft.

“My father’s philosophy was to always listen to the customer and the problem they’re trying to solve,” said Rudy’s son, John, who currently serves as Frasca president and CEO. “He did that with his very first customer: listened to them, watched them, worked with them, and came up with a device that met their requirements without going overboard. He didn’t get excessively involved in the latest technology, just making sure the device continued to work.”

From then on, Frasca became known for producing high-fidelity fixed-based FTDs and cockpit/procedure trainers for the flight school and university markets. The company produced its first tabletop simulation trainer in 1960; since then, it has delivered more than 3,000 devices ranging from Advanced Aviation Training Devices (AATD) to Level D Full Flight Simulators (FFS), to 70 countries worldwide.

“I remember flying around the country with [Rudy] in his Mooney and if there was a customer at that airport, we’d stop in, look at their simulator, and fix it if needed,” John said. “I remember him saying a broken simulator doesn’t earn anybody any money. He just had that way of thinking: the integrity to do what you say you’re going to do, to build a good product to meet the customer’s requirements and keep it working.”

Simulator training became a family business as Rudy put all eight of his kids to work either at Frasca International or at the airfield that he bought in 1980. John earned his first paycheck sweeping floors in 1972 at the age of 12. He progressed from general laborer to working in the machine shop, then in the electronics shop helping to design the simulators.

“I studied electrical engineering at the University of Illinois for a year, but decided I was having more fun building the simulators,” John said. “So, I dropped out and started working full-time on the sims, then led project management and progressively more things. Each step of the way, Dad would let go and let us kids take it over. So it was essentially a 50-year succession plan.”

Rudy and Ueltschi crossed paths many times as their companies grew to become leaders in flight simulation and training— Frasca focused on small general aviation

aircraft used by flight schools and universities while FlightSafety concentrated mainly on larger business aircraft and regional jets. Each company incorporated myriad innovations in its simulators, from analog to digital controls, from fixed to full-motion bases, and from no visual systems to realistic 3D renderings and virtual/mixed-reality systems. Over time, Frasca has purchased material from FSI to build equipment, and FSI has purchased simulators from Frasca.

In early 2021, FlightSafety selected Frasca as a subcontractor on its U.S. Navy TH-73A aircrew training services contract. The two companies worked together in earnest as Frasca developed Level 6 and 7 TH-73A Advanced Helicopter Training System FTDs while FlightSafety supplied the instructors and aircrew training support. The eight new FTDs already delivered to the Navy are being used for curriculum design, validation, and verification, and to provide initial rotor-wing training, including hover, formation flight, nightvision device, and shipboard operations, as well as course-rules familiarity and instrument flying. In addition, Frasca is modifying 10 TH-57B/C FTDs to reflect the TH-73A helicopter.

“Frasca did a fantastic job on the devices that they manufactured and delivered to FlightSafety and the Navy,” said Vercio. “So, when we saw that performance and high quality, we realized that we’d found a partner in Frasca that could enhance the lower-level training devices that we’re not really good at developing. Bringing these two great companies together will pay dividends in terms of having the bestquality training across the entire training spectrum.”

JOINT FUTURE OF SIMULATION

FlightSafety’s acquisition of Frasca couldn’t come at a be er time for the flight training industry as it struggles to provide the number of capable pilots needed to ease a shortage predicted prior to—and exacerbated by—the Covid-19 pandemic. With an estimated shortfall of

John Frasca CEO

Engineers from FlightSafety’s simulator manufacturing facility in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, have already begun sharing flight characteristics and programming data with Frasca engineers to enhance FTDs for use at FSI Learning Centers and in the collegiate markets already cultivated by Frasca. In return, Frasca is creating technologies that fit specific market needs, such as its mixed-reality simulation for military helicopter training.

“Simulation is a mix of expertise and technologies that all have to improve in harmony,” John said. “It doesn’t happen overnight. You start by prototyping ideasand then you produce demonstration products to get user feedback. Then develop production units such as the TH73 Mixed Reality Part Task Trainers. We’re seeing a lot of success with mixed reality, which combines real-world tactile controls and virtual-reality goggles. It works in certain segments of simulation, certain training tasks, but you can’t apply it to everything.”

17,000 to 30,000 pilots needed by the airline industry in 2023, and even business aviation pilot training impacted due to lack of instructors and facilities available, FlightSafety plans to incorporate Frasca strengths to funnel pilots through training faster without sacrificing quality.

“We’ve seen a lot of pilots coming in with fewer hours than before, so we’ve had to alter our courseware and training mechanisms to make sure that we’re bringing those pilots up to speed faster,” Vercio said. “By bringing more Frasca tactile-feel FTDs into our Learning Centers, we can increase the students’ learning outside the Level D sims using the FTDs to grasp ‘switchology’ and routine procedure training. So when you do get to your Level D, you’re actually using it to train for emergencies, adverse conditions, and to get checkrides completed.”

Frasca demonstrated its mixed-reality helicopter trainer in the FlightSafety booth at the 2022 IITSEC conference, inviting pilots from all backgrounds and abilities to fly the sim. Taking up a mere fiveby-eight-foot footprint, the sim includes a two seat, fully enclosed cockpit with complete panels and controls. Mixed-reality goggles combine a virtual reality depiction of the outside world with real-world images of the cockpit instruments, controls and pilots. Sensors track the pilot’s eye movements so the instructor can see where the pilot is looking—especially crucial during instrument training.

“It’s astonishing how good the mixedreality trainers are,” John said. “I don’t know that mixed reality is quite ready to substitute for aircraft time, but it’s going to lead to that. We’re at that initial step of a new technology finding its way, and I truly expect it to expand from the defense world into the commercial world. That’s exciting.”

 My father’s philosophy was to always listen to the customer and the problem they’re trying to solve. 

Avionics

Getting to yes on CPDLC

BY DAVID HUGHES

The FAA plans to allow additional business aircraft to use en-route controller-pilot data link communications (CPDLC) again, ending a moratorium that began late last year. But the long-term goal of the NBAA and the General Aviation Manufacturer Association (GAMA) is to have the FAA define what constitutes acceptable CPDLC performance for avionics.

About 1,000 business aircraft, mostly jets and a few turboprops, had joined a trial program that allowed them to use en route CPDLC. However, on October 25, the FAA closed the trial to new entrants, citing concerns over acceptable performance criteria.

As a result, participating aircraft started to dwindle over the next seven months. Some of that decline was due to jets that were sold and then not allowed by the FAA to remain in the trial program, according to GAMA.

Under a recent decision from the FAA, the CPDLC trial for business and general

aviation will formally close. But business and general aviation aircraft involved in the trial will be able to continue to use en route CPDLC and can be joined by additional appropriately equipped business aircraft starting August 31.

That resolved the question of when new aircraft can be included in the use of domestic en route CPDLC; “Now new business aircraft won’t be frozen out,” said Heidi Williams, director of air traffic services and infrastructure for NBAA.

NBAA and GAMA see domestic U.S. en route CPDLC as having significant benefits for business and general aviation just as departure clearance with CPDLC does. The relay of clearances and non-urgent instructions via text messages increases cockpit crew situational awareness and reduces frequency congestion.

“We have seen great benefits from Data Comm [the FAA platform for digital

communiations] across the board from the tower with departure clearance and en route CPDLC,” Williams said, noting it reduces readback errors and enhances safety. She anticipates business aviation will adopt CPDLC at a higher rate than was originally envisioned.

However, not all questions are resolved.

In a March letter to officials from the FAA Air Traffic Organization and Aviation Safety Organization, the two associations wrote about the FAA calling out certificated avionics as not meeting an acceptable level of CPDLC performance. This occurred without the FAA defining what constitutes acceptable performance.

Needless to say, this caused confusion in the business and general aviation industry. The associations’ letter encouraged the two FAA organizations to find a path forward for business aviation to use en route CPDLC.

Avionics

In a meeting of the FAA’s Data Comm implementation team (DCIT) on May 24, a plan was presented to resolve this simmering issue and also allow new business aircraft to use en route CPDLC again. The FAA also aims to define acceptable performance criteria for all aircraft by May 2025, including those involved in business and general aviation, airline, and military operations.

“This will provide clarity for CPDLC participation for business and general aviation and airline and military aircraft for what is acceptable and unacceptable performance,” said Jens Hennig, GAMA v-p of operations. “We applaud the FAA for taking this step because this has been an area of confusion with the program for four or five years.”

The FAA has had much more data to establish criteria for the airlines but still wants to collect more data from business and general aviation en route CPDLC operations, while more of the 22 air route traffic control centers in the U.S. become equipped.

The NBAA’s Williams said she understands that the FAA wants to gather more data to make an informed decision on business aviation. “There is a strong desire to work on any avionics issues so we can get to success,” Williams said.

NEW CLASSIFICATION

As it lifts the moratorium, the FAA is rolling out a new scheme for classifying aircraft of all types using en route CPDLC, and business and general aviation aircraft that have been involved in the trial will come under two of the three new categories. They will either be rated as Yellow

(aircraft with known CPDLC-related avionics issues but allowed to use CPDLC) or Green (aircraft without CPDLC issues). The Red classification is for aircraft with critical CPDLC-related avionics issues that prohibit the use of en route CPDLC.

When the FAA decided in October 2022 to accept no new business aircraft applications for the CPDLC en route trial, it had a specific reason. “The FAA did not feel comfortable with an indefinite trial with no end point in sight,” said Hennig.

As for the new criteria, Hennig said he expects that the government will modify Advisory Circular 90-117 or another publication such as the Aeronautical Information Manual when it determines what it wants acceptable performance to be.

The approximately 1,000 aircraft, mostly business jets and some turboprops, that participated in the trial will be grandfathered and are not expected to have to make any equipment changes to continue to operate, Hennig said. Some airplanes that will return to operation with CPDLC may have nonsafety items to address within a defined timeframe.

DCL

The FAA had said it needed to publish acceptable performance levels for all types of operators and until it did so, the agency would not accept any more business jets into the trial program.

As a result, GAMA members have been delivering new business jets equipped in better ways for en route CPDLC than aircraft already in the trial, and yet they were not allowed to join and participate. However, these aircraft have been allowed to use CPDLC for departure clearances. Hennig said this hiatus on en route CPDLC has been very frustrating for both GAMA and NBAA; GAMA has aircraft manufacturers with aircraft rolling off the line that can’t participate in the program while NBAA has members with new aircraft who can’t participate.

The FAA began working to provide CPDLC departure clearances (DCL) in 2012 and en route clearances in 2014. Acceptable performance has never been an issue with DCL using CPDLC and many business aviation aircraft can be equipped to use this service.

The FAA completed CPDLC departure clearance deployment to 55 towers by December 2016, 2.5 years ahead of schedule. More towers have been added since then. “We’ve been doing CPDLC departure clearances now for a while, and everybody loves it,” said Hennig. Now pilots don’t listen to clearances on voice radio and read them back to verify they are correct. Instead, they just receive a data message with the clearance they can review for accuracy, acknowledge receipt, and then push a button to load it into their flight management system. One of the most useful applications of DCL is when something in the ATC system

En route controller-pilot data link communications (CPDLC) greatly simplify pilot and ATC communications with texting-style messaging that is unambigous and relatively easy to use.

changes, such as when a weather event requires a new departure runway or lots of reroutes. Rather than reading each crew a new clearance, the controller can send a data message with a new route to each aircraft in the queue waiting to take off with engines running. “The burning of jet fuel, while you are waiting for a new clearance, is reduced,” Hennig said. “I think aircraft operators love it because the benefits have been so tangible.”

Initial en-route clearance functions include the transfer of communications, initial check-in, altimeter settings, altitudes, limit speeds and crossing restrictions, airborne reroutes, limited controller initiated reroutes, and initial direct-to-fix. Additional features are planned for future implementation including some yet to be budgeted such as support of 4D trajectories, interval management, and tailored arrivals.

THE SOLUTIONS

MRO Duncan Aviation has been installing FANS/CPDLC avionics for a decade. Activity started in 2013 when the first phase of FANS was mandated for the North Atlantic tracks (NAT). As these mandates were implemented, many business aircraft had to be equipped or retrofitted with new avionics to avoid being barred from the preferred tracks with the best tailwinds to Europe and the least headwinds headed to the U.S.

“There are multiple solutions depending on the aircraft,” said Justin Vena, a Duncan senior avionics installation sales representative. He has hosted a four-part video series “Understanding FANS” for Duncan that is available on YouTube and co-authored a 26-page book on the subject.

“Not every aircraft has a CPDLC solution,” Vena added. “It is largely FANS upgrades that have been driving installations in business aviation.” The same model aircraft may have different configurations requiring different STCs.

The FAA requires FANS now for CPDLC but there may be different technology in the future, Vena said. “What we are talking about continues on page 60 

THE PERFECT PLACE FOR BUSINESS AIRCRAFT

Personalization, technology top today’s business jet interiors

BY JAMES WYNBRANDT

From green executive airliners to legacy turboprops, completion and refurbishment activity is strong and demand is ascending, according to a spectrum of industry bellwethers. They report customers’ top priorities today are for personalization and technology, and new platforms, connectivity systems, and customization tools provide as much accommodation as customers can afford—pending certifications, of course. A review of current developments and projects showcases some of the expanding capabilities and choices, and how they’re being deployed in cabins and interiors.

NARROWBODIES

Narrowbody activity dominates the current executive aircraft market, and recent ACJ319neo deliveries from Jet Aviation illustrate each side of the personalization and technology trends. One redelivered in May features a hand-crafted, art-decoinspired cabin, designed in collaboration with interior architect Colin Radcliffe. Dark woods, open-pore walnut veneer, a massive bulkhead-mounted “sunburst” marquetry, and custom-dyed ombre carpet highlight the interior’s monochrome palette.

On the tech side, an ACJ319neo delivered in October features the Basel-based company’s quietest and lightest cabin interior to date, the weight reduced in part via the center’s first installation of flexible organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screens in a VVIP interior. The three 55-inch OLED screens, following the ceiling’s curves, are lighter and use less space than conventional displays.

One of the pair of narrowbodies in Lufthansa Technik’s (LHT’s) completion facility at its Hamburg headquarters, an ACJ320neo, is being outfitted with LHT’s

Lufthansa Technik’s design for a Boeing 777X for the Middle East market welcomes guests into a spacious reception area.

first antenna for connectivity with Starlink, the low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellite network, promising 10 times higher speed than current onboard Ka-band connectivity. The system will set the new standard for completions and refurbishment projects, Wieland Timm, LHT’s head of sales for VIP and special aircraft services, said. First-time buyers, he added, are skewing younger, between 35 and 45 years old, and are “interested in [having] the gimmicks available, from IFE, gaming, or whatever is currently in their villas or on their boats, integrated into the aircraft.”

ACJ319neo due for induction in the second half of this year. The Basel-headquartered facility has already redelivered this year a BBJ Max 8 and AC320neo.

 You can refurbish a 20-year-old BBJ with [only] 10,000 hours for $10 million, and have a brand-new BBJ... 

He expects more makeover demand. “You can refurbish a 20-year-old BBJ with [only] 10,000 hours for $10 million, and have a brand new BBJ,” he said. Meanwhile, a green ACJ320neo is in completion now, scheduled for redelivery early next year.

AMAC Aerospace may incorporate an in-development wireless charging system and honeycomb carbon-fiber phenolic panels created with JCB Aero, its French composite structures subsidiary, in the green completions of a BBJ Max 8 and

With the ACJTwoTwenty now launched ( see next section ), Comlux Completion will incorporate innovations developed for the program—such as noise reduction, high-speed satcom, and wireless IFE technologies—into refurbishments on an ACJ319 and ACJ320 slated to arrive at the Indianapolis facility later this year, said group executive chairman and CEO Richard Gaona.

A pair of head-of-state refurbs are underway at Citadel Completions in Lake Charles, Louisiana. A BBJ737 is in for a complete “spacious and opulent” interior upgrade, said senior v-p of operations and general manager Neil Boyle. Highlights include embroidered cream leather seating, a stunning custom lattice screen, decorative metal-bronze plated finishes, and marble surfaces throughout the cabin along with marble flooring in the galley, entry area, and lavatories.

Concurrently, a BBJ 737-7 set for summer redelivery has a wireless IFE system and CMS, including touch switches and panels,

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and touchscreen monitors, to complement its new, “sleek, modern” interior.

ACJ TWOTWENTY

The first ACJ TwoTwenty, the newest member of the Airbus Corporate Jets family, was delivered to launch customer Five, a Dubaibased hospitality firm, in May, and publicly debuted at EBACE. An executive version of the A220-100 regional airliner, the ACJ TwoTwenty interior offers twice the floor space and three times the volume of a largecabin business jet, yet has the same hangar footprint and about the same price ($78 million to $82 million), interior included.

The cabin can be outfitted with a wide choice of certified zone and configuration modules and seating arrangements, mixed and matched in four “signature ambiances.”

Airbus Corporate Jets partnered with Comlux Group on the project, with the former’s Sylvain Mariat heading the design team, and Comlux performing the installation and certification at Comlux Completion. Production target is six per year, said Comlux Group’s Gaona.

Costing 40 percent less to operate than a narrowbody exec-liner, LHT introduced at EBACE ACJ TwoTwenty variants for governmental and military operators, positioned as cost-effective alternatives to the large-cabin business jets or narrowbody transports they currently use. A traditional governmental-style cabin design for up to 41 passengers features an executive area with working, conferencing, and sleeping areas forward; and an aft delegation area with a mix of economy class seats. A conventional airliner-style interior layout with a private forward area is also available.

LHT also unveiled MedEvac configurations for the airframe, including a version accommodating up to eight stretchers for transporting lightly and moderately injured or ill patients; and a configuration with two new-generation patient transport units for intensive care patients.

WIDEBODIES

The widebody arena has “witnessed a steady recovery and restored confidence in the VIP completion and refurbishment

markets” over the past year, said Chad Thorne, v-p of sales and marketing at Greenpoint Technologies, and the Boeing specialist has capitalized on both. Recent project signings include two head-of-state 787-9s—the Bothell, Washington firm’s seventh and eighth BBJ Dreamliner interior completions—and a BBJ refurbishment.

LHT also has three widebodies under outfitting now and this year was awarded completion of the first ACJ330neo, with redelivery projected for late 2025. Looking ahead, Timm anticipates, “There will be more widebodies [for green completions] than slots available in the market”—perhaps six to 10 green aircraft over the next three to five years, he said. “Nobody can cope with all these aircraft.”

AMAC, with an ACJ350 now in completion, is prepared for the “new challenges, new technology, and new materials” presented by the partially composite Airbus widebody, as well as Boeing’s 787 and 777X, group executive chairman and CEO Kadri Muhiddin said in a recent company update.

Expanding its presence in the sector, Fokker Services Group (FSG) unveiled a new widebody hangar in Hoogerheide, Netherlands. Accommodating aircraft including the A330, A350, 787, and 777, the hangar “will make a crucial contribution to the company’s long-term objective, as market demand for completion services continues to surge,” said FSG CEO Roland van Dijk, and put the Dutch company “in an uncontested position to become the partner of choice for the widebody airframe maintenance and completions and conversions market.”

Comlux recently declined to take on an ACJ330 completion project, an airframe on which the company has already performed one completion, “Not because we don’t have the technology,” Gaona said, but rather in consideration of the company’s

The “Modern” lounge option is one of three preconfigured styles available for the ACJ TwoTwenty.

bandwidth and focus on the TwoTwenty. “We have made a strategic decision that we are not going to be part of the [widebody completions] market.”

THE AIRFRAMERS

Boeing Business Jets has taken orders this year for a BBJ 737-7, two BBJ 787-8 Dreamliners, and the first option to purchase a BBJ 777-9, the Chicago-based airframer announced at EBACE. Spanning its narrowbody and widebody models, the orders demonstrate the company is “offering the right combination of comfort and performance in our operating economics,” said president Joe Benson.

Range-wise, at 6,600 nm, the 737-7 is the longest-range, single-aisle executive jet, according to Boeing. With a 9,945 nm range, the widebody BBJ 787-8 is distinguished by its all-electric system architecture, a 6,000-foot cabin altitude, cabin humidification system, and smooth ride technology.

The BBJ 777X, expected to enter service in 2025, will be the first business jet capable of connecting any two cities in the world nonstop, with a projected range of 11,025 nm, and with more than 3,000 sq. ft. of floor area, offers the largest interior space of any new civil aircraft in the world. Innovations include an all-new carbonfiber composite wing, whose outboard sections can fold upward to fit in with current airport infrastructure.

Airbus Corporate Jets booked three orders in the first quarter of 2023—including the first for an ACJ330neo—compared with five total orders for 2022, Benoit Defforge, president of the ACJ, reported at EBACE. “With the TwoTwenty arriving,” he said in reference to the service entry of the newest ACJ model, “I’m sure we’ll achieve much higher figures.”

The company’s previous market for executive jets numbered some 500 total aircraft, said Defforge, but with the ACJ TwoTwenty competing against large-cabin business jets, “The targeted market is over

JOE BENSON PRESIDENT, BOEING BUSINESS JETS

3,000 aircraft. And half of these 3,000 aircraft are today above 10 years old,” he said, underscoring the “potential in this aircraft in years to come.”

The 5,650-nm range of the 16-passenger TwoTwenty is below that of ultra-longrange, purpose-built business jets’, but “enables you to reach over 99 percent of the flights actually done by large-cabin aircraft across the world,” Defforge added.

Meanwhile, the ACJ330neo brings the new engine option (neo) Rolls-Royce Trent 7000 powerplant, new wing, and technologies migrated from the A350, reducing fuel burn by 12 percent versus the previous generation of the popular airframe. Of some 26 ACJ330/340s now in service, 16 are more than 20 years old, Defforge noted, adding, “Now is the right time to start thinking about replacing these old aircraft.”

BOEING 777X

With the forthcoming Boeing 777X literally the next big thing in completions, providers are readying plans and designs for their interiors. Greenpoint Technologies unveiled this year its Zen interior concept offering what it calls, “An exclusive retreat for the sophisticated jetsetter seeking a profound connection with nature.” Taking inspiration from Japanese Zen gardens, designers incorporated organic elements

including biophilic features and sustainable, natural materials “to cultivate a serene and harmonious environment.” It’s “a modern and technologically advanced aircraft cabin epitomizing tranquility, seamlessly integrating connectivity and bespoke details,” said senior design director Annika Svore Wicklund. Shortlisted for the Private Jet Design Concept Award at this year’s International Yacht & Aviation Awards, Greenpoint showcased the design in a 1/20th scale BBJ 777X model at EBACE.

LHT unveiled at EBACE the initial segment of a 777X VIP cabin concept that incorporates a modern twist on traditional elements of Middle Eastern culture, “meeting the unique needs of our VIP clients in the region,” LHT said. The design features an expandable cocoonlike bedroom and private area at the front of the aircraft, flowing into a spacious office, reception area, and large majlis, or social meeting room. The aft section hosts entourage or delegation seating. It’s the first design developed with native aircraft data provided by Boeing, according to LHT, made available through sister company Lufthansa Airlines, an announced 777X customer, which ensures the concept’s feasibility.

BUSINESS AIRCRAFT REFURBISHMENTS

Business jet and turboprop refurbishment customers are “completely engaged in the process” and focused on both “trying to maximize” upgrade potential and “personalizing” their aircraft, said Elliott Aviation director of paint and interior sales Meghan Welch. “They’re getting exactly what they want,” she added, echoing comments from a spectrum of aftermarket upgraders.

The Moline, Illinois-based company’s refurbishment clients are incorporating custom design details into the interiors. Galleys are modified to accommodate dining preferences. Personalized glassware

sits in custom cup holders. While Part 135 charter operators want branded paint and interiors for their fleets.

A pair of recent refurbishments from Lincoln, Nebraska-based Duncan Aviation repeat that theme. Owners of a Citation 750 “wanted the seats to be the stars” of a complete refurbishment, said project lead designer Heather Pridemore at the company’s Battle Creek, Michigan facility. All the seats were contoured, their profiles accentuated with blue accent stitch lines, created with the company’s new CNC upholstering machine. The cool gray color scheme incorporates black composite ebony veneer and updated satin chrome finish on all plating. The new paint scheme features navy blue, silver, and gold accents.

Meanwhile, the now all-white cabin of a refurbished Bombardier Global Express handed back in May retained only the blue stone inlays in the drink rails of the original interior, and mixes patterned fabrics and sheepskin seats to create texture, depth, and warmth. Performed at its Provo, Utah facility, Duncan’s Molly Pfeiffer collaborated on the design with Olivia Putman at Studio Putman.

Putman’s mother, French designer Andrée Putman, designed the interior of the Concorde.

Similarly, VIP Completions in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, “collaborated with our long-time client’s personal designer to deliver an exceptional level of customization” on the refurbishment of a Bombardier Global Express delivered early this year, said president Ben Shirazi. The divan features a weave and texture inspired by the classic Chanel bouclé jacket—one of the client’s fashion trademarks—while the bright paint scheme, “also makes a bold statement about the owner’s sophisticated sense of style,” he said.

So do the cabin tech upgrades, which include CMS control via Crestron touch panels, customized Alto MySound audio optimization system, upgraded high-definition monitors, dynamic RGB lighting, and a Plex media server.

At Canada’s Flying Colours, a Challenger 850 refurbishment last year called for an elegant, durable interior with shades of gray, black, and white, and a stylish complementary exterior paint scheme. The deceptively simple seat design incorporates a “very complex diamond scheme,” echoed in dado

Duncan Aviation overhauled a Citation 750’s interior and exterior, giving the seats special attention.

panels and carpeting, said executive v-p Eric Gillespie. The hand-stitched, quilted diamond pattern on the recovered seats creates an impressive 3D-dimension effect.

This fall, the firm will refurbish a Global 6000 during a 240-month inspection and install for the first time Bombardier’s Nuage seats as an aftermarket retrofit. Also on that work order: full soft goods, full re-veneer of all monuments, CMS upgrade, a cabin layout change, and new exterior paint, “to better meet the client’s personal needs,” said Gillespie.

Currently, Flying Colours is performing a fleet refresh on Flexjet’s Gulfstream G650s involving both interiors work and new paint.

Jet Aviation, which in December 2022 unveiled plans to increase refurbishment capabilities at its Dubai DXB location in the UAE, in May announced delivering the first complete refurbishment from the facility performed on a Gulfstream G450. The project included hard and soft furnishings and a design refresh. The reworked veneer flaunts a high-gloss “piano black” finish, complemented by the upholstery’s palette of sleek gray. A second jet is meanwhile in the final stage of refurbishment at the facility.

The Middle East is “a key strategic hub in our network,” Jet Aviation senior v-p regional operations EMEA Jeremie Caillet said, noting that in addition to full cabin refurbishments, the DXB facility can perform avionics modifications and upgrades, including high-speed internet.

AMAC also reported high demand for refurbishments on large-cabin Gulfstream and Bombardier business jets in Basel, performed at its recently built large-cabin MRO facility, Hangar 5.

A “FACTORY CERTIFIED” REFURB

Bombardier has introduced the “factorycertified” appellation to the preowned market, offering refurbished jets through its Certified Pre-Owned (CPO) program. Bombardier selects the best aircraft it takes in trade and finds on the market for

the refurbs, providing them with fresh paint, upgraded avionics and connectivity systems, and a one-year manufacturer’s warranty.

One recent example, a 2008 Challenger 605, had its cabin, lavatory, and

galley updated to reflect “the design trends popular among today’s new aircraft buyers,” said director of preowned aircraft acquisition and sales support Thomas Fissellier. The cabin connectivity system was upgraded to a high-speed

Applying the fine details to a cabin interior monument at Flying Colours.

Collins Aerospace Ka-band system and the flight deck to Collins Pro Line 21 Advanced avionics.

Since program launch in 2021, about a dozen Bombardier CPO jets have been sold. “As an OEM, we see an amazing opportunity to protect the residual value of our fleet,” said Fissellier.

CABIN TECH

The amalgamation of Viasat and Inmarsat, the coming LEO era via Starlink and OneWeb, growing air-to-ground options from Gogo and SmartSky, and an insatiable appetite for data are keeping a spotlight on connectivity.

“A lot of the buyers are trying to understand all the [connectivity] options— When are they going to be available, which ones are working now, and which is going to be better,” said Nate Klenke, sales manager of modifications at Duncan. “That is creating some delay in decisions.”

Flying Colours’ Gillespie said connectivity “is a part of every conversation we have,” adding that, “Customers demand connectivity throughout the aircraft, along with the requisite charging, connections,

With connectivity established, “The focus is on exciting new cutting-edge IFE/ CMS functionality systems that pair elegantly with redesigned cabins, and provide all the comforts and features VIPs enjoy in their residences,” said Boyle at Citadel. “It’s a very personal touch for the family and friends to experience highclass comfort and functionality with a nice blend of style and sophistication in open spaces.”

Per its pledge to “provide customers with more sustainable choices throughout the completion process,” Jet Aviation is using a bio-based resin to bond composite parts for two current head-of-state completion projects. Comprised of up to 25 percent locally sourced plant origin material, the bio-resin, developed in-house, has less environmental impact than epoxy resin, saves weight, and scored exceptionally well in flammability testing, said v-p of completions, Christoph Fondalinski.

King Air interiors specialist Aviation Fabricators has introduced the Monarch sidewall kit for 300-series King Airs, upgrading the twin turboprop’s interiors to factory-new King Air 360 standards. It

Airhawke, a Canadian engineering and cabin design firm that supports completions and refurbishment projects, is adapting augmented reality technology to improve the completion process. Virtual reality is already used in the industry to visualize imaginary objects—a divan or complete interior, for example—in space, noted CEO David Vanderzwaag. But augmented reality overlays virtual reality atop the physical space, “So you see both at the same time.” That enables designers and engineers to “walk into the green airplane, put on Microsoft HoloLens glasses, and see in situ where elements are going to sit and how they’re going to interface with the

DAVID VANDERZWAAG CEO, AIRHAWKE

F/List provides sustainable innovations

BY CURT EPSTEIN

In the foothills of the Austrian Alps, set amid bucolic farmland, is the global headquarters of F/List, a family-owned company that in the 35 years since its founding has become a major purveyor of luxury fittings and materials to the high-end aviation, yacht, and residential markets. The company has worked as a supplier to virtually every aviation OEM.

F/List says its sustainable innovations are deeply rooted in the company’s philosophy, and during a recent visit by AIN, its material wizards showed off its newest product lines, which are making their way into first-class airline and private jet cabins, as well as onto opulent yachts. The company also displayed its in-house capabilities in research, development, and product testing.

Inspired by its Shapeshifter vision of a future where cabin furniture can morph into various shapes to allow customers to do more with the same space, F/List displayed a seemingly solid-wood credenza that can silently and swiftly change its shape into that of a desk using pneumatic actuators artfully concealed beneath a layer of flexible wood veneer. The company has put an identical unit through hundreds of cycles, with little sign of wear.

While most cabin outfitters consider side ledge storage bin covers “dead” space, the company also demonstrated a cordless cell phone charger built into the storage cover with a cradle depression that magically vanishes when the phone is removed. Lastly, it showed off the seamless wood door on a storage cabinet that simply retreats sideways around the corner and back of the unit, rather than opening outwards into what would be the aircraft aisle. “We decided that maybe with morphing components we can do something very special here, as in bend it around the edge,” said Melanie Prince, the company’s head of innovation.

While these designs remain a part of the potential future, the materials used in their construction, down to their electronics and actuators, were all made and extensively tested in-house. F/List employs staff from diverse disciplines—ranging from electronics and jewelers to automotive designers and chemical engineers—to develop its products. Once the functionality of a large-scale model of the actuator was approved, company technicians embarked on a mission to miniaturize it.

F/List, which first made a name for itself in the high-end space by outfitting yachts, is a master of wood-veneer technology, befitting its start as a carpentry shop. It takes extraordinary measures to acquire prime supplies of natural wood, which are then sliced into thin sheets. To ensure the wood grains match in each interior, every veneer sheet is numbered and cataloged, with all necessary parts mapped out on the sheet before the first cut is made. Those veneers can even be embossed with any design the customer desires. F/List has since branched out into stone veneers and metal cabin hardware and fittings.

Stemming from the Shapeshifter concept

is the company’s line of Aenigma materials, which recently earned a Red Dot award in product design. It uses cutting-edge chemistry to fuse traditional jewelry techniques with aerospace technology to create a decorative, customizable material derived from high-performance natural fibers, metals, and a resin matrix.

It can be produced in nearly limitless colors, textures, thicknesses, and patterns ranging from a metallic stingray skin theme to textured glowing geometric patterns. “When we started the Shapeshifter, we figured we would start with leather because leather can morph and bend, but it’s not really happy stretching,” Prince explained. “It sags and it creases so we said this is not going to work, so we needed to try to build our own material.”

That Aenigma material, which is durable and stretchable, made its commercial debut in one of the company’s major yacht completions, which called for an abundance of stingray skin leather for wall coverings. “They needed about 1,000 stingrays on the wall and our team was feeling a little sad that we would need to kill that many stingrays, so they basically took one of the skins,

F/List’s customizable Aenigma flexible fabric, derived from high-performance natural fibers, metals, and a resin matrix, can be manufactured in any pattern, color, texture, and thickness and made its commercial debut in one of the company’s yacht interior designs.

created a mold, and without killing any further animals were able to reproduce stingray leather with a non-animal basis.”

Among the company’s newest engineered materials is Whisper Leather, a sustainable plant-based alternative to ultra-leather. It is manufactured from a polymer derived from cornstarch, with a viscose backing. “What we wanted to do is a finish that is not only sustainable but is extremely customizable,” explained Prince. “We can make any texture you’d like, we can make any color you’d like, and we can make something that so far nobody else can do in the timeframe we can—we can create artwork.”

As an example, she showed a painting reproduced as a side-wall covering, right down to the brush strokes, which was done in a matter of weeks. “So, you can have a

collection of sidewalls commissioned by specific artists and you can have them on walls and rotate them in and out of the airplane,” noted Prince. She added that the material—which can be manufactured in a wide selection of surface finishes for sidewalls, bulkheads, or any area where a textile material is required—has already been certified and is flying aboard an aircraft.

F/List also showed off its sustainable Linfinium, a linseed oil-based recyclable product that can be used for anything from countertops to flexible flooring. Through the addition of ingredients such as stone dust (recycled from its stone shop), recycled cork, and even ground apricot pits, the company can alter the properties of the material to change its firmness and surface texture to match needs and service requirements. To provide a high-end

TAKING FLIGHT. Navigating

Future.

sparkle to its products, it will add motherof-pearl buttons from a local manufacturer of traditional clothing, which are ground up and mixed in. In addition to the limitless customization possibilities, Linfinium can be machined into any shape, with the material removed in the finishing process retained for eventual further use.

As its prowess in material engineering increased over the years to encompass a wide range of products including carbon-fiber composites, the company also developed a full suite of testing capabilities. These range from designing and building its own repetitive lifecycle testing rigs and the software that runs them for flammability, heat release, smoke, adherence, fluid resistance, UV resistance, and extreme-climate testing. In the past, F/List would even contract with outside companies to provide certification testing, but even with the ongoing expansion of its in-house testing division, the company is now far too busy with the testing of its own products to take on outside work.

According to Prince, the company basically covers “the entire ecosystem of the lifestyle of the ultra-high-net-worth individual,” and to better serve its customers in all three of the high-end markets it provides for, F/List (named after company founder Franz List) now has a global footprint with satellite facilities in Denver; Melbourne, Florida; Montreal; Sorocaba, Brazil; London; Berlin; and Dubai, UAE. Of the more than 1,000 F/List employees worldwide, 700 are based at its Thomasberg headquarters, which includes its primary manufacturing and final assembly facility.

To accommodate the growth, the company will break ground this year on Plant 3 at its home location, which currently offers 278,000 sq ft of production space. Plant 2 is largely dedicated to aviation serial production, and the completion of this 50,000-sq-ft facility will free up space through the relocation of the aviation final assembly, quality review, and shipping departments. z

WE’RE FLYING HIGHER WITH THE SUPPORT OF OUR SPONSORS!

Eco protests: a call to action

Doubtless with some exceptions, just about everyone who traveled to Geneva in May for the annual EBACE show sincerely believes they are an environmentalist, concerned about the impact of flying and other human activities on our shared planet and committed to doing something about it.

That would include the lively and diverse group of protestors who joined the officially sanctioned demonstration outside Palexpo on the evening of the show’s opening day, and also all the industry executives who participated in multiple EBACE meetings focused on sustainability and reducing aviation’s carbon footprint.

It would also include the estimated 100 or so overtly hostile protestors who earlier the same day forced their way onto the EBACE static display of aircraft, breaching security at Geneva Airport and disrupting operations for an hour or more. Dozens of aircraft were diverted or flew in holding patterns, burning far too much fossil fuel needlessly.

For the companies that made major investments of time and money to come to EBACE, it is easy to feel indignant about the unprecedented protests targeting business and private aviation. And especially so for companies whose aircraft were damaged when protestors swarmed onto the static display with handcuffs, intent on circling the jets, and also for showgoers who choked on the pepper spray dispensed by police in a bid to restore order.

Seven protestors handcuffed themselves to a Gulfstream on static display, with three attached to the nose gear and four on the jet’s cabin entry door handrails, while more secured themselves to other aircraft.

But this isn’t a moment for the industry to wallow in self-pity. This isn’t the first time the industry has come under fire, and

BY CHARLES ALCOCK AIN SENIOR EDITOR-INTERNATIONAL

it won’t be the last. Perception is reality and an increasingly widely-held perception is that business aviation is the poster child for reckless damage to the environment.

What’s new, and troubling, is that air shows and conventions now seem to be on the front line. In February, protestors disrupted EBAA’s Air Ops conference in Brussels after reportedly managing to register for the event based on a bogus connection with an industry executive.

On June 7, the private aviation sector suffered one of its most egregious acts so far when protestors broke onto the ramp at Sylt Airport in northern Germany and covered a Cessna Citation CJ1+ almost entirely with orange paint before gluing themselves to the business jet and the tarmac. Local police confirmed that five people aged between 21 and 60 were arrested and that a criminal investigation is underway.

In November 2022, groups including Extinction Rebellion and Scientist Rebellion, who were also present at EBACE, tried to disrupt operations at business aviation facilities in the UK, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. These protests included blockades in the London area at the entrances of Farnborough Airport and the Harrods Aviation FBO at Luton Airport.

Similar protests were also staged in the same week at Milan Linate Airport when around 500 members of Greenpeace rode bicycles into the business aviation enclave at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport and blocked aircraft from being moved. In September 2022, protestors sprayed graffiti on the Signature Flight Support FBO at Paris Le Bourget Airport.

But let’s circle back to the evening of May 23 and the “official” protest outside EBACE that show organizers, EBAA and NBAA, had facilitated (as they were required to do under local Swiss law) to the extent that they paid for access to the site on which it was held.

This AIN reporter was present, and it has to be said the protest was peaceful without overt hostility to any of the showgoers. It included singing and a comedy routine performed in French and English depicting aircraft cabin crew making announcements about the imminent destruction of the planet. I was able to mingle with protestors, some of whom seemed intrigued that, as a journalist supposedly aligned with their enemy, I would want to hear their side of the story.

Six or more speakers made it clear the fundamental demand was that business and private aviation must be completely and indefinitely grounded, as a first step to suspending or severely curtailing pretty much every form of air transport. What struck me, though, was that the underlying cause of resentment goes beyond carbon and climate change.

WHAT’S THE BEEF? SAVING THE PLANET OR RAILING AGAINST INEQUALITY?

During the early 1980s as a student reporter, I covered the bitter coal industry strike in Britain, and I have to say that the current wave of anti-aviation protests

has the look and feel of the class war I witnessed back then. To paraphrase the messaging of groups like Extinction Rebellion: it’s not just that private jet flights have a disproportionate impact on the environment in terms of carbon footprint per passenger, but that some, if not many of these passengers, are viewed as bad people: overly entitled billionaires exploiting the poor, tax evaders, mobsters, and worse.

One of the speakers argued that private aviation is for the 0.01 percent, a population group that she deemed even more despicable than the much-maligned One Percent.

She didn’t want to hear my suggestion that most of the people in Palexpo were there paying their mortgages and putting kids through school, aspiring to little more than being in the top 10 percent wealth group at best. I didn’t get the chance to deliver a homily on the number of jobs companies and individuals using private aviation are responsible for generating.

It’s hard to know how to counter this narrative. But during a fascinating EBACE panel session on the “Future of Business Aviation” in which I participated, my fellow panelist Ian Petts, head of yachting and aviation services at Equiom Monaco, urged the industry to redouble its efforts to talk up business aviation’s contributions to the economy.

At the same time, he added that companies must urgently recruit a more

diverse workforce in a way that could break through stereotypes about its profile. That’s partly a response to the serious skills shortage faced by the industry, but also with a view to changing the optics around a perceived country-club culture in which industry leaders can be all too readily caricatured as too male, stale, and pale. I ticked all the boxes for this profile, and I was all too well aware of the assumptions being made by the protestors when I engaged with them in Geneva.

But the fact is business aviation isn’t going anywhere, and many of the people it serves aren’t going back to the airlines or even to the trains. That doesn’t mean they are oblivious to their environmental responsibilities. The trouble is, the environmentalists outside the doors of EBACE simply don’t believe the environmentalists inside the doors are sincere, branding their efforts to cut carbon as “green-washing” propaganda.

The drive to make sustainable aviation fuel more available and widely used is viewed by these activists as entirely bogus. In their view, tools such as book-andclaim and carbon offsetting are no more than spreadsheet ploys and disreputable accounting intended to dupe the gullible into believing that real change is coming.

After being on the front lines at EBACE, one change in the narrative I’m now convinced must happen is for industry advocates to stop parroting the line that

aviation’s global carbon dioxide emissions account for around 2 percent of all aviation emissions and around 0.04 of all global man-made emissions.

Even if this is true, it is only true in the here and now and is a hollow response to the inevitable rise in these proportions as other industries cut their carbon output. It does little to address the unavoidable challenge of meeting the ICAO-endorsed commitment to achieve net-zero carbon by 2050.

ACTION TO CUT CARBON IS A LEGAL REQUIREMENT, NOT A NICE-TO-DO

Too many people in the industry still seem to view carbon reduction as a nice-to-do aspiration or a suggestion. It’s not; it’s the law—international law.

Under the terms of The Paris Agreement adopted by 196 signatories at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 25) held in Paris in December 2015 at Le Bourget Airport (of all places), states committed to a goal of restricting “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 Celsius above pre-industrial levels” and to pursue efforts, “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial levels.”

Subsequent UN COP conferences have refined these objectives and backed them up with more specific calls to action. These legally binding commitments have since been enshrined in specific commitments

The author covering the climate protests at EBACE 2023.

DAVID MCINTOSH

 I was able to mingle with protestors, some of whom seemed intrigued that, as a journalist supposedly aligned with their enemy, I would want to hear their side of the story. 

made by just about every industry on the face of the earth.

At the start of June, the World Meteorological Organization issued new data predicting that the world is on pace to see at least one year in the future in which the global average surface temperature tops 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial levels. If that trend continues, it could blow a hole in the COP 25 Paris objectives and increase pressure for tougher action on climate change.

On November 30, the COP 28 conference will convene in Dubai and will be chaired by Sultan Al Jaber whose day job is being the CEO of the UAE’s state oil and gas producer Adnoc—an appointment that has triggered extreme cynicism among environmental groups.

The bottom line, though, is that if aviation doesn’t do its share of the heavy lifting, then governments will likely have to resort to more sticks and fewer carrots to shift the dial. That, and/or other industries will have to do more, and that’s hardly going to improve the standing of aviation in the court of public opinion.

On the very day of the protests at EBACE, France’s transport minister Clément Beaune confirmed the introduction of his long-threatened ban on domestic airline flights between the cities of Nantes, Bordeaux, Lyon, and Paris Orly Airport, on the basis that train services are available for these routes with a travel time of less than two hours and 30 minutes.

The question is whether these measures, which are widely considered to be political gestures, will be the last and whether measures like this could be extended to private aviation. Let me help you with that: no and yes, although it’s hard to be sure how this might play out.

At a meeting of European Union transport ministers on June 1, the Belgian and Irish governments indicated they will join efforts by France and the Netherlands to target emissions from business aviation. However, EU transport commissioner Adina Vā lean insisted that she has no

intention of proposing any such measures before the end of the European Commission’s current mandate, which ends on June 30, 2023.

The rotating presidency of the European Commission will next be held by Spain, followed by Belgium, before transitioning

to Hungary in the second half of 2024. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban has described the EU’s policy to deal with climate change as “a utopian fantasy”—a position that might at least make private aviation seem progressive by comparison in the eyes of its opponents. z

Protestors sprayed a Citation jet with paint at Sylt Airport in Germany.

The Premier stands ‘outside its time’

BY ROB FINFROCK

History is chock full of aircraft said to have come before their time, with technologies or designs that only gained broad acceptance years after their introduction. Others might be considered more “outside” their time; it’s fair to say the Beechcraft Model 390 Premier I/IA leans toward the latter. Certainly, the Model 390 looked promising when Beechcraft’s then-owner Raytheon committed to the program in the mid- nineties. The manufacturer leveraged its experience with composite construction from the ill-fated Starship to design a thoroughly modern, single-pilot business jet intended to compete against cross-town rival Cessna’s popular ownerflown CitationJet.

The jet that resulted is roughly the size of a Citation CJ2 and uses the same Williams FJ44 turbofans but with a nearly five-foot shorter wingspan contributing to higher cruising speeds. A two-tube Collins Pro Line 21 avionics panel came standard on the Premier I, with a three-screen system optional. The eight-passenger cabin is also

larger than the CJ’s, with a 5.5-foot tall aisle providing nearly “stand-up” walking room.

The first Model 390 flew in December 1998, with four aircraft used for certification testing, and the FAA bestowed its approval in March 2001. Despite promising specs, however, the Premier I’s entry into service was riddled with complications. Poor landing performance topped the list of owner complaints, attributed to twitchy brakes and a complex lift-dump system to negate ground effect from the speedy wing.

Operators also criticized early models’ excessive cabin noise levels and substandard (and decidedly non-Beech-like) assembly and fit-and-finish quality. Even the Premier I’s ramp presence came under some fire, to the point that aftermarket providers offered a painted-on fourth cabin “window” to visually balance the aircraft’s tall and somewhat stubby appearance.

Beechcraft answered most of these criticisms in 2006 with the updated Premier IA, featuring updated three-screen avionics, more consistent assembly quality

and improved cabin design and materials, and—most needed—higher-performance brakes. Less than two years later, Beech announced the Premier II with more powerful engines and aerodynamic enhancements for greater range and performance.

However, the 2009 recession forced the slowdown of that program, with a rebranding as the Hawker 200 the only significant announcement before Hawker Beechcraft’s 2013 bankruptcy shuttered development for good. Ultimately, fewer than 300 Model 390s were built, and 204 remain on the FAA registry. Most are owner-flown, but there are a few in charter fleets.

A QUIRKY, BUT ROOMY, ‘HOT ROD’

While the Model 390 proved to be more of a niche offering than a true CitationJet competitor, the aircraft does have a loyal following. First and foremost, operators of the type applaud the airplane’s performance.

Owner Greg Mink purchased his Premier IA from a European operator in September 2013 to replace a Mitsubishi MU-2

turboprop twin. “We looked at the CitationJet and CJ1 but the target range and speed difference [compared to] the MU-2 wasn’t all that significant,” he said.

While “there were also a lot of concerns [at the time] as Beechcraft had gone into bankruptcy and the market was depressed,” the Premier IA’s advantages won Mink over. Although the airplane “isn’t terribly range-y” at around 1,100 nm with NBAA reserves, he noted it suits his mission very well.

“From my home base in Indianapolis, you can make it anywhere on the east coast or south into Texas,” said Mink, who posts his flying adventures on YouTube as Premier 1 Driver. “Heading west, you can grab fuel in Denver and then head to anywhere on the West Coast.

“And, best of all, it’s a hot rod,” he continued. “You’ll climb out at 220-240 knots. It’ll burn 420 pounds a side while cruising at Mach .78, with a nice, big cabin that’s really comfortable for passengers.” The higher wing loading compared to a Citation also smooths out most turbulence, he added.

That said, others note the airplane also has its share of unusual attributes relative to its primary light jet competition. “Everywhere you look on a Premier is something that is too complex,” said Maxim Goldstein, a pilot and instructor for a Part 91 aircraft management operation. (Goldstein also posts his flying experiences on YouTube as Max Jet Review.)

Goldstein pointed to the Premier’s external- mounted electronic fluid monitoring panel, replacing the simpler sight gauges used on other types. He also noted a propensity for “glitches” on initial startup after the airplane sits on a cold or rainy ramp. The aircraft’s composite fuselage may also complicate the replacement of antennas or receivers that must be bonded to the airframe with backing plates and strong epoxies.

“And let’s say I need to recharge the nitrogen for the emergency brake,” he added. “That’s a pretty common item. On a Citation, you can quickly access the port

through the baggage compartment. The Premier requires you to disassemble quite a few panels to reach it.”

Despite these quirks, Goldstein also speaks highly of the aircraft’s performance. “It’s actually overpowered,” he stated. “Most times pilots want more power, but you don’t really feel that way in the Premier. There’s enough power for you to have to think about managing it properly.”

On takeoff, “you will need more runway than you would in a Citation,” Goldstein continued, “but on basically any day, even at ISA +10, you will still climb to [flight level] 410 with no problem. After an hour [your indicated airspeed] will be up against

the barber pole. And the cabin is nice and roomy.”

The aircraft also represents a compelling value on the preowned market, with examples ranging from around $1.5 million to under $3 million. With the type now under the Textron Aviation umbrella, Mink noted maintenance hasn’t been a major issue.

“We really haven’t run into situations where we’ve been delayed for significant amounts of time waiting for parts,” he added. “There are plenty of service providers, the Williams engines are pretty darn reliable, [and] getting parts from Collins is never a problem.

“I really enjoy flying the airplane,” Mink concluded. “It really is a little time machine.” z

Rollout of the Premier I on Aug. 19, 1998. First flight took place on Dec. 22, 1998.

With a spacious cabin given it’s small size, the Premier I/IA can seat up to eight occupants.

Discounting, debt, deficits plague select private jet programs

BY MARK HUBER

Important parts of the Covid-fueled business aviation bounce have begun to fade. What began as a triple-play of bad news for three industry operators—Wheels Up, VistaJet, and Jet It—during 10 consecutive days in May might be a harbinger of things to come, according to industry analyst Brian Foley. “I do think that there’s more to come. The common theme that I’ve seen is they’re [distressed fractional, membership, and subscription-model companies] all losing money to begin with and never made a dime,” he told AIN

Nick Copley, president of the SherpaReport, added to AIN, “Overall, the industry has just been through a record-breaking boom in demand over the last couple of years, and it looks like we are on the other side of that now. So as Warren Buffet said,

‘Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.’ It’s certainly a time to do more due diligence in selecting providers and ask them harder questions, especially if you are spending hundreds of thousands or potentially millions of dollars with them.”

Foley pointed out that charter activity is down 25 percent since its Covid apex and that many new customers are likely to retreat to flying “economy plus,” soured by industry actors who underpriced, overpromised, and under-delivered. “I’m sure there are some naïve users who are new to aviation and don’t know what the correct price [of service] is. But I put most of the blame on the investors who got onto this train either without doing their due diligence or after being pushed onto it by investment banks,” he said.

The size of that investment has been staggering, likely surpassing the amount of capital that poured into the very-lightjet space before it became a “dot com with wings,” in the words of long-time aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia. For Wheels Up,

BRIAN FOLEY FOUNDER, BRIAN FOLEY ASSOCIATES

Fractional provider Jet It shut down operations in May, but other companies are trying to provide alternatives for shareowners.

VistaJet, and Jet It alone, the combined investment is approaching $8 billion when you factor in the $2.1 billion Wheels Up raised via a stock public offering in 2021, the value of which shrunk to $60 million by early June. But rather than generating profits, that investment helped fuel a financial pyre reminiscent of when very-light-jet maker Eclipse made a $1 billion investment hole in the New Mexico desert and was forced into bankruptcy in 2008.

During the last nine quarters, Wheels Up has lost $853 million, and it’s on track to lose around another $100 million in the quarter ending June 30—mounting losses that helped lead to the exit of founder and CEO Kenny Dichter on May 9.

Even as Wheels Up was losing hundreds of millions of dollars, Dichter’s compensation package was valued by the company in its proxy statements, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, at $9.5 million in 2021 and $8.6 million in 2022, more than the salaries of major airline CEOs in 2021 at companies including American (Doug Parker $7.24, million) and Southwest (Gary Kelly, $5.8 million).

Dichter’s bonuses were tied in large part to the company’s revenue and customer growth—metrics that he achieved spectacularly. During Covid, the company’s

RICHARD ABOULAFIA MANAGING DIRECTOR, AERODYNAMIC ADVISORY

customer base grew by 31 percent, to more than 12,600 members, and revenues jumped from $385 million in 2019 to $1.58 billion in 2022. But Wheels Up continued to struggle financially, culminating in $555 million in losses last year.

But even as Wheels Up was losing money, it spent its new-found cash from its public stock offering—via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC)—on acquisitions, which helped drive the revenue numbers.

Foley compared the behavior to that of an over- leveraged residential real estate investor who buys a single rental and then drains it of equity to purchase six more on credit. Wheels Up acquired a string of charter, charter management, aviation services, and technology companies,

presenting the challenge of integrating five FAA Part 135 certificates into one and integrating disparate aircraft types into its once-streamlined fleet of King Air 350s and Cessna Citation XLs.

And as losses continued to mount, Wheels Up mortgaged a good part of its owned fleet, 134 aircraft in all, for net proceeds of $259 million at 12 percent interest in October 2022. Dichter characterized the move to AIN as “buying some runway.” But the interest rate raised eyebrows and began to fulminate concern among investors that private aviation was no longer a safe bet due to its customers’ historic inelastic price tolerance.

Foley warned that history could be replicating the financial fallout that emanated from the very-light-jet bust of nearly two decades prior. “It could be 10, 20 years or more before investors forget about this and stick their big toe back [in the water],” he said, adding that this obviously has implications for the emerging and capital-intensive eVTOL space as well.

His caution seemed to be borne out when in April, Flexjet abruptly shelved its plan to go public via a merger with a SPAC. Officially, the company said its decision came about because it was in its best interests. But Foley thinks “the handwriting is already on the wall as far as the lack of capital that will come into the business [meaning the business aviation industry taken as a whole] as a result of this [recent contagion] and that a lot of people are going to get hurt.”

A week after Dichter departed the C-suite (he remains on the Wheels Up board), the Financial Times published an examination of subscription jet service provider VistaJet’s finances, charging that the company’s auditor had issued a “going concern” warning, its debt had doubled to $4.4 billion, cumulative net losses over the last four years had been $436 million, and cash on hand had dwindled to $134 million against $831 million in prepaid flights. A “going concern” opinion is not necessarily a harbinger

Wheels Up has lost hundreds of millions of dollars while expanding rapidly by buying a series of charter, management, aviation service, and technology companies.

DAVID MCINTOSH

of bankruptcy, but it can adversely impact credit ratings and increase the cost of borrowing, according to a 2022 study in the Accounting Research Journal. VistaJet’s unsecured debt rating from Fitch earlier this year was “BB-,” defined as “debt instruments that are generally considered speculative in nature,” according to Investopedia. The new debt was assigned a recovery rating of RR3 by Fitch, meaning it has “characteristics consistent with securities historically recovering 51-70 percent of current principal and related interest.”

Over the last two years, Vista issued another $1.5 billion of unsecured debt—$1 billion at 6.375 percent interest last year and a five-year, $500 million bond offering at 9.5 percent this year (against a current prime rate of 8.25 percent). In a news release, parent company Vista Global Holdings said the latest debt offering was “two times oversubscribed” and “attracted overwhelming interest from leading institutional investors and pension funds.”

Cumulative debt was driven by VistaJet’s rapid expansion via a string of acquisitions between 2018 and 2022, including charter operators XOJet, Jet Edge, Talon Air, Red Wing Aviation, and Air Hamburg; charter broker Apollo Jet; and charter platforms Camber Technologies and JetSmarter. However, those acquisitions also fueled the company’s rapid growth.

Chairman Thomas Flohr laid out his vision for not only his company but the industry earlier this year in an interview with consultancy McKinsey. “One thing on my mind a lot is that we have a massive consolidation process happening right now in this industry,” he said. “There are thousands of small operators around the world. If you look at the history of any industry over time, there is generally consolidation because it helps with buying power, with reach, with infrastructure, with efficiencies, with technology investments, and so forth.”

Foley noted that Vista recently formed a brokerage subsidiary that could be

used to dispose of its aircraft. Too much of that at any given time could spell not just trouble for the used aircraft market but for new aircraft sales from the OEMs. Honda Aircraft seemed to realize this when Jet It shut down its fractional program with HondaJets.

Two companies are leading contenders to provide “alternative aircraft management options”—Volato in Atlanta and JetToken based out of Las Vegas. Volato CEO Matt Liotta told AIN that Jet It’s main problem was that it dramatically underpriced hourly operating and management costs. While Jet It charged $1,600 an hour, Volato charges $3,425 plus fuel, and JetToken bills up to $5,800 an hour for straight charter.

While just 21 aircraft were enrolled in that program, Honda Aircraft produced only 17 new aircraft in all of 2022 and the potential for those orphaned aircraft to find their way onto the market could not merely have depressed prices of used aircraft, it could have dampened demand for new ones. So when Jet It shut down its HondaJet program and left its fractional owners to fend for themselves, within days the OEM moved in to offer those owners assistance via a special support team at no charge.

Honda Aircraft said it was taking the action to help owners with “seamless transitions to alternative aircraft management options.” As part of the available assistance, fractional owners will be provided with pilot services to move aircraft to Honda Aircraft’s Greensboro, North Carolina headquarters with up to 90 days of free parking.

But, despite Honda Aircraft’s assistance, Jet It fractional owners could still be left with a mess as several aircraft are fractionally owned by Jet It itself, which as of early June, had yet to file bankruptcy. JetToken chairman Mike Winston told AIN that he thought it could take up to three years to untangle those aircraft.

Foley fears the contrails left by failed or failing operators could sour first-time users of private aviation who “get in one of those programs and get hurt, creating an adverse, lasting [negative] image of private charter that is unfair to other programs that are stable and profitable. It’s sad.”

Volato’s Matt Liotta urges consumers to do their due diligence and examine whether what they are being charged “makes sense” in the context of being able to sustain the program and the company administering it. “When something is too good to be true, it probably is.” z

 When something is too good to be true, it probably is. 

VistaJet owns most of its aircraft, but it has also moved away from its early business model by acquiring a series of charter operators, brokers, and technology companies.

DAVID MCINTOSH

Fixing notams: at long last, changes are coming

BY STUART “KIPP” LAU

On a rare occasion, Democrats and Republicans found common ground on an issue. That issue, something pilots in the U.S. have agreed upon for years, is that the current notam (notice to air missions) system stinks.

In late May, Congress gave final approval for the Notam Improvement Act of 2023. Bipartisan support pushed the act to the finish line, one of the few standalone bills to make it through both chambers.

The tipping point for this bill to pass was the “notam outage” or service interruption that took place on Jan. 10, 2023. A technical glitch and sloppy work by a government contractor shut down flights in the U.S. for just under two hours, affecting thousands of travelers. This was the first time since Sept. 11, 2001, that flights in the

U.S. were grounded on such a broad scale. The cause this time was the introduction of corrupt software into a 30-year-old computer system, not international terrorism.

With the bill’s passage, the FAA is now required to establish a task force to recommend improvements to the notam system. The bill also sets a deadline—Sept. 30, 2024—to complete the implementation of a modernized federal notam system and have a backup plan in place to avoid outages of this safety-critical system.

Another important element of the Notam Improvement Act is a requirement for the new FAA notam system to offer machine-readable and filterable information in the format used by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

Not surprisingly, the bill drew broad

industry support. “Notams provide realtime information about airports and airspace to help ensure a flight is conducted safely. However, several flaws in the current system were revealed in January, when the FAA issued a nationwide ground stop in the NAS [National Airspace System] following a widespread system outage,” NBAA president and CEO Ed Bolen said. “This legislation is an important opportunity to address and remedy current notam limitations through careful application of the latest technologies.”

He continued, “We must ensure that notams are not only readily available to pilots but that the system is also resilient and relevant, with prioritization of the most critical safety information focused on operational requirements.”

FAA RESPONDS TO NOTAM OUTAGE

The Notam Improvement Act addresses two major issues: an obsolete computer system that supports critical flight safety information affecting the NAS and formatting, readability, and useability issues that have been a thorn in the side of every enduser of the system for decades.

According to the FAA, “A notam is a notice containing information essential to personnel concerned with flight operations but not known far enough in advance to be publicized by other means. It states the abnormal status of a component of the National Airspace System—not the normal status.”

Less than a month following the outage, acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen briefed the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on NAS modernization efforts, the future of notams, and the FAA response to the service interruption.

Nolen provided details on the notam system saying, “The FAA’s overall notam system consists of two systems—an older U.S. notam system (legacy system) and a newer Federal Notam System. The older portion of the notam system relies on 30-year-old software and architecture.” He continued, “The Federal Notam System portion is newer and serves as part of the foundation for the FAA’s ongoing notam modernization effort.”

He then described the architecture of the legacy system and the incident where a contractor unintentionally deleted files while working to correct synchronization between the primary and backup databases. Those three backup databases are physically located in Oklahoma City (two) and Atlantic City (one).

In the early morning hours of January 11, the system was restored, but formatting issues remained. After consulting with airline and safety experts, Nolen said he “ordered the ground stop to maintain safety and to preserve predictability.” Once resiliency testing was completed, he lifted the ground stop.

BAD NOTAMS

(NOTAMR A7139/17) - THERE IS A FENCE UP TO 3M HGT AT DIST OF 2661M FROM RWY 14L EXTREMITY, 2847M FROM RWY 32R EXTREMITY. CONSTRUCTION EQPT OPR WI FENCED AREA, EQPT DO NOT PENETRATE APPROACH/TAKE-OFF CLIMB SURFACES. 05 MAR 11:00 2018 UNTIL 01 MAY 23:59 2018 ESTIMATED.

ARR OF WHITE RHINOS FM REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA FOR RELOCATION TO THE OKAVANGO DELTA.PILOTS TO EXER CTN ON LDG,TAX AND TKOF INCASE ANIMALS BREAK LOOSE. ON THE 25TH,28TH AND 1ST BTN 0300-0800, 25 MAR 03:00 2017 UNTIL 01 APR 08:00 2017.

GMMW/EL A0165/17 08MAR 1456Z (NOTAMR A0108/17) PERSONS AND EQPT. 0800/1600, 08 MAR - GRASS CUTTING ON THE MVT AREA. PRESENCE CAUTION RECOMMENDED. FOLLOW ATC INSTRUCTIONS. 14:42 2017 UNTIL 08 APR 16:00 2017

!FDC 7/5705 SFO IAP SAN FRANCISCO INTL, San Francisco, CA. RNAV (RNP) Z RWY 10R, AMDT 2A...

RNP 0.20 DA 409/ HAT 399 ALL CATS. TEMPORARY CRANES UP TO 131 MSL BEGINNING 3980FT NORTHWEST OF RWY 10R (2015-AWP-1790-NRA, 2015-AWP-1839 THROUGH 1842-NRA). 1704051332-1707301332EST

MAY 2017:06-13-20-27 -JUN 2017:03 SLAUGHTER BOARS OPERATION BY NIGHT WITHIN THE AIRPORT(GMMB)

VOMF/MADRAS A2410/16

REF E-AIP INDIA, ENR-2 AIR TRAFFIC SERVICES AIRSPACE ENR 2.1 FLIGHT INFORMATION REGION (FIR), TERMINAL AREA (TMA)-UNDER CHENNAI CONTROL AREA-SECTOR UMM (.) DURING HIGH DENSITY TRAFFIC DYNAMIC BIFURCATION OF UMM SECTOR INTO UMM-NORTH AND UMM-SOUTH ON TRIAL BASIS WILL BE IN PROGRESS.

Examples of profoundly useless notams that regularly clog the briefing papers pilots are required to peruse prior to departure. Note the lack of significant safety issues. (Source: Death to Notams)

Preliminary findings of the service interruption point to an error by a contractor. There was no evidence of a cyberattack or any other malicious attempt. According to Nolen, “We have implemented new protocol that [now] requires more than one individual to be present and engaged in oversight when work on the database occurs.”

WHY NOTAMS STINK

Mark Zee, founder of the OpsGroup flight information service said, “Your job as a pilot at briefing time, is to find the one notam that will end your career

or endanger your aircraft, in a package the same size as a short novel.” Somewhere, after reading about faded taxiway lines or non-standard markings, buried deep in the briefing packet, is information about a runway closure or an unusable approach.

Unfortunately, this played into the July 2017 incident involving the flight crew of Air Canada Flight 759. After a long nighttime flight, from Toronto to San Francisco, the Airbus A320 pilots overlooked a notam that Runway 28L was closed. When cleared for a visual approach to Runway 28R, they

instead lined up on a taxiway that was parallel to the runway.

On this taxiway, there were four airliners awaiting takeoff—two Boeing 787s, an Airbus A340, and a Boeing 737. Combined, including the Air Canada A320, there were more than 1,000 passengers on these aircraft.

An alert pilot sitting in the cockpit of an airliner waiting in line to takeoff spoke up on tower frequency and saved the day. Had a collision occurred this would have been one of the worst accidents in aviation history. Instead, it was the nearest of all near collisions. The A320 descended to 81 feet above the surface and missed the tail of an Airbus A340 by only 14 feet.

This event prompted then-National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) chair Robert Sumwalt to declare that “notams are a bunch of garbage, that no one pays attention to…” during a public hearing on the incident.

THE NOTAM ALLIANCE

The OpsGroup parses information from various sources and provides intel in briefings to its membership in plain English.

The Air Canada event in San Francisco energized OpsGroup’s Zee to lead a crusade to fix the notam problem. The Notam Alliance, led by Zee, is an industry group made up of notam users and other experts, who have identified five issues with the current notam system—let us call them the “five C’s.”

First, is the count, or number of notams. The number of notams in a briefing packet is overwhelming. As Zee said, “We’re drowning in the data, but missing the message.” Worldwide, there will be over 2 million notams published this year.

Next is the formatting issue; everything is printed in CAPITAL letters. From a human-factors design perspective, this makes a notam difficult to read because each word appears as a block or rectangle. The origin of this problem dates to the early-1900s when the world communicated by telegrams.

The next issue, coding, is another carryover from the telegraph. Categorization and abbreviations used to display critical flight information in notams are based on “Q-codes” from 1909 and the International Telegraph Alphabet (ITA-2) character set from 1924. Pilots often scratch their heads trying to decipher these codes.

Next, according to the Notam Alliance, is that there is a bunch of crap or junk presented in each briefing packet. Notams, as presented today, are all equally weighted, meaning the importance of the “lawnmowers adjacent to a runway” has the same weight as a runway being closed. Nothing is prioritized.

groups (for example: runway, taxiway, approach, or ATC), and then further subdivided into topics such as runway closed, runway lights, and runway length.

In March, the group ran weeks of tests using large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT 4 to demonstrate how well random notams could be understood by a machine. According to the Alliance, “the results show that artificial intelligence (AI) has reached a point that it can understand a notam with greater than 98 percent reliability.”

From May 8 to 12, the group ran a “sprint” to bring all of these developments together. In all, more than 300 people participated in the event. The goal, according to Zee, “was to design and test a prototype system to post-process notams, tag them, summarize them, and sort and filter them into a newly designed briefing package.”

The final issue is control, since we must rely on a single source—the state (country) that issues the notam. According to Zee, notams are not always reliable—often the full story is missing. This was identified as a factor in the shootdown of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, a Boeing 777, over Ukraine in July 2014, which killed 298 people.

FIXING NOTAMS–THE SUPER NOTAM!

According to the Notam Alliance, for almost 60 years there have been various attempts to improve the notam system with limited success. To fix notams, a key part of the Notam Improvement Act calls for the new system to be machine-readable, the information must be able to be filtered, and presented in a common language.

In February, members of this group began to ask the question: what do pilots want?

After eight weeks, a group (50 individuals) of notam end-users that included pilots, dispatchers, airlines, and other aircraft operators created a list of 50 tags. These tags were categorized into eight

The output of this exercise was the “Super Notam” using a tool that will become an open-source application. Once the notams are ingested, AI tags the notams and provides a summary using plain English. Next, rules are applied to sort the information using a matrix to match different airports, flight phases, and flight information regions, as an example.

The Super Notam briefing package has a primary and appendix section. The primary section includes all relevant operational notams. Everything else—the “dark notams”—is filed in the appendix. A dark notam follows the philosophy of the “dark cockpit,” where indicators and annunciations appear blank when they are operational.

The Notam Improvement Act of 2023 provides a path to provide a system that is stable and usable to improve safety in the NAS. According to AOPA senior v-p of government affairs Jim Coon, “These changes to the notam system are long overdue. AOPA appreciates the bipartisan effort to ensure pilots can feel safe operating in an accurate and updated system.” z



...changes to the notam system are long overdue... 

Special VFR’s unknown link to flight safety

BY COLLEEN MONDOR

Seventy years ago, in April 1953, Western Air Lines Flight 636 crashed shortly after 11 p.m. into San Francisco Bay, killing eight of the ten people onboard. According to the accident report, the ceiling was 800 feet broken with visibility of 10 miles in San Francisco when the DC-6 departed, and 700 feet overcast with the same visibility at Oakland, the destination 11.5 miles away.

Flight 636 was cleared under the “visual trans-bay” departure, a procedure for visual flight rules (VFR) operation between San Francisco and Oakland when conditions at both airports had ceilings less than 1,000 feet and/or visibility under three miles. While the approval circumstances were unique to San Francisco Bay, they should sound familiar to modern pilots because, while slightly altered over the years, the trans-bay operation was what we recognize as Special VFR.

Do a quick search through the regulations and you find that the Special VFR clearance can only be issued by ATC upon request and mandates very specific weather conditions. As currently written in FAR 91.157, in addition to ATC approval, the aircraft must remain clear of clouds and visibility must be at least one statute mile (except for helicopters, which require only a half mile). Night approval further requires the pilot and aircraft to be instrument-rated and qualified.

While it can be relatively common in regions prone to fog or smoke, Special VFR tends to generate a lot of confusion, and when associated with an accident, can result in incorrect assumptions from the nonflying public while stubbornly resisting long-term analysis by investigatory agencies.

During the investigation into the 2020 Island Express Helicopters crash that

killed Kobe Bryant and eight others near Calabasas, California, it was reported early on that the Sikorsky S-76B transitioned Burbank airspace via a Special VFR clearance shortly before the accident. The weather in Burbank was 1,100 overcast with 2.5 miles of visibility with haze.

The New York Times described this environment as “less-than-optimal visual conditions,” and there was a great deal of speculation in the press about why the pilot failed to file an instrument flight plan. (He was instrument rated and the aircraft was instrument-equipped, but Island Express was not approved to operate IFR.)

The Special VFR clearance was not regarded as part of the probable cause but its prominence in coverage reflected continued questions about what Special VFR means, who should use it, and when

it is a reasonable flight safety option.

These familiar questions highlighted that although Special VFR has been around for nearly 75 years, we are still not sure what its impact has been on flight safety.

71-YEAR-OLD SPECIAL VFR

According to the Western Airlines accident report, San Francisco’s trans-bay clearance was approved in April 1952 for the purposes of “expediting traffic” under certain IFR conditions, alongside similar basic minimum visibility deviations established between Ft. Worth and Dallas, Texas; Spartanburg and Greenville, South Carolina; and Winston-Salem and Greensboro, North Carolina.

In San Francisco, there was a sliding scale for ceiling/visibility requirements: 1,000 feet required one-mile visibility, 900 feet required two miles, 800 feet required three miles, 700 feet required four miles and 600 feet required five miles. No flights were permitted below a ceiling of 500 feet.

The minimum deviations appeared during the period when basic VFR minimums were still being hashed out in meetings with user groups and the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB). The words “Special VFR” first appear in published regulations in May 1952, but their use there is not as it is today. Published as an amendment to Air Traffic Control Rules under Part 60, “Special VFR operations within a control zone” includes details addressing cloud clearance and varying degrees of visibility along with multiple subsections dictating aircraft separation, aircraft congestion, and touchand-go operations, among others.

The language of that amendment, in conjunction with the San Francisco-type deviations, suggests that the CAB was still working towards definitive exceptions to basic VFR minimums. Five years later, following extensive discussions and the Air Traffic Rules Conference in June 1957, the

agency was prepared to introduce and formally use the terms “basic” and “special” when describing VFR minimums. The rules were published in August 1958 with an approved Special VFR clearance for aircraft in a control zone requiring clear of clouds and visibility of at least one mile.

With the new amendments, the CAB published extensive remarks detailing how the rules had evolved and the research conducted in their development. It was noted that Special VFR was studied as a causal factor in accidents only by analyzing midair collisions.

have failed to comply with the published procedures, which mandated that if ceilings below 500 feet were encountered, the aircraft must climb to 2,000 feet and hold for an IFR clearance. The CAB was confident the deviation was not the problem, but rather what the pilots chose to do when they encountered conditions they did not expect.

The final probable cause in this crash was the crew’s continued descent into the water in an attempt to stay below a cloud layer that investigators believed must have been encountered at 500 feet.

There was also a contributory factor of “sensory illusion,” which prevented the crew from realizing their true altitude. This cause/factor combination is remarkably similar to that of Island Air Express nearly 70 years later. That pilot was found to have continued VFR into IMC, resulting in spatial disorientation and, ultimately, loss of control. He apparently was confused about the helicopter’s altitude, telling ATC shortly before the crash that he was climbing when the helicopter was actually in descent.

The CAB discussed that “persuasive arguments” had been advanced but there was no case to be made that increasing VFR minimums would reduce midairs. It noted, “One finding is particularly telling: 98 percent of all midair collisions in the past 10 years have occurred in weather conditions exceeding 3 miles in visibility— the other 2 percent have occurred in visibility conditions of about 3 miles.”

There is no evidence that any analysis was conducted before or since the 1950s of accidents involving VFR into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) or continued flight into adverse conditions as associated with Special VFR activity. The trans-bay deviation was explored in the crash of Western Airlines Flight 636, but investigators concluded the pilots must

HISTORIC ERROR

By not studying Special VFR-adjacent accidents, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is continuing the historic error of ignoring a plausible mitigating factor in controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) crashes. Finding accidents to study that include Special VFR in the investigation report is not easy, but a recent search of the NTSB database brought up a few that highlight the potential negative impact of the clearance.

In January 1995, a Bell 206B departed Burbank under a Special VFR on a Part 135 charter flight for Wolfe Air Aviation. The ceiling was 300 broken, with 2.5 miles of visibility in light rain and fog. The pilot reported clear of the zone and then crashed into high-voltage transmission wires on the Hollywood Freeway about

 One finding is particularly telling: 98 percent of all midair collisions in the past 10 years have occurred in weather conditions exceeding 3 miles in visibility—the other 2 percent have occurred in visibility conditions of about 3 miles. 

seven miles south of the airport; two people were killed and two received serious injuries. Radar data showed the helicopter never climbed more than 300 feet above the ground. The probable cause was continued VFR into IMC.

In October 2000 a Cessna Caravan flying for Empire Airlines under contract to FedEx departed on a scheduled flight from Bellingham, Washington. The pilot obtained a Special VFR clearance in a ceiling of 500 feet with a visibility of two miles. Multiple ground witnesses reported the aircraft as barely visible in the fog (some only heard it and never saw it). The Caravan crashed eight minutes after departure into the trees on nearby Lummi Island, killing the pilot and sole occupant. The probable cause was attempted flight into adverse weather conditions and failure to avoid trees.

In April 2002, a Cessna T182 operating under Part 91 obtained a Special VFR to land in Amarillo, Texas; conditions at that time were 300 feet overcast and visibility of four miles. The pilot briefly acknowledged a communication from approach eight minutes after the clearance, but then

there was no further contact. The aircraft impacted a power plant about five miles northwest of the airport, killing both people onboard. The probable cause was the failure to avoid the power plant and intentional flight into adverse conditions.

400 feet and never activated the airport’s lighting system. It subsequently crashed one mile away at an elevation of 425 feet; four people were killed and six received serious injuries. The reported weather at St Mary’s, when the Special VFR was issued, was three miles of visibility and a ceiling of 300 feet. The probable cause was the pilot’s decision to initiate a VFR approach into night IMC conditions.

A common element in these accident reports is an emphasis on events after the Special VFR clearance while distancing the clearance from its prominent position in the causal chain. This was even the case in the rare example of ATC being cited for improperly issuing a Special VFR.

In November 2013 a Hageland Aviation Caravan departed Bethel, Alaska, on a scheduled Part 135 flight for the village of Marshall. It overflew that destination due to weather and continued on to its second destination of St. Mary’s, which does not have a control tower. The pilot received a Special VFR clearance to land there from Anchorage Center, located over 400 miles away. Witnesses at the airport reported the aircraft overflew the runway at less than

In 1993 an Aero Commander flying under Part 91 crashed on Christmas Eve after the clearance was given into the airport at Chico, California. Investigators found that just prior to the clearance a special weather advisory had been issued with ceiling indefinite, sky obscured, and visibility zero. There were three causes for this accident, which resulted in one fatality and two serious injuries: the improper issuance of the clearance, the pilot’s continued VFR into IMC, and his failure to maintain control following spatial disorientation. The pilot also was not instrument-rated, as required for night Special VFR approval.

This accident was an isolated example, however, and traditionally, as in nearly all accidents involving any pilot decision- making, crashes that include continued flight in poor weather with or without a Special VFR are determined to be the primary fault of the pilot.

As an unnamed FAA official put it to the New York Times during coverage of the Island Express crash: “A pilot is responsible for determining whether it is safe to fly in current and expected conditions, and a pilot is also responsible for determining flight visibility.”

NTSB investigators at the site of the Island Express Helicopters crash, where the pilot lost control after flying into IFR weather while attempting to continue flying under visual flight rules.

 A pilot is responsible for determining whether it is safe to fly in current and expected conditions, and a pilot is also responsible for determining flight visibility.

PRESSURES TO FLY

In both Part 91 and commercial operations, however, Special VFR can exacerbate existing pressures to fly. For commuter and air taxi pilots, it can lead to the suggestion that a pilot “go take a look” and see if VFR flight can proceed once out of the zone.

An obvious example of this would be the February 2020 crash in Alaska of Yute Commuter Service’s Piper PA-32 scheduled flight to Kipnuk. As reported by the NTSB, a Special VFR was obtained to depart Bethel Airport with conditions of 600 feet overcast, four miles of visibility, and mist. One minute after departure, visibility was down to a mile and a quarter. When the crash occurred 30 minutes later, conditions at both Bethel and Kipnuk had worsened to one-half mile visibility with the ceiling as low as 400 feet with light snow, mist, and freezing fog.

Investigators never found a definitive source of pressure on the pilot, who was killed with all four of his passengers, but this flight was only his fourth revenue flight for the company and an FAA hotline complaint from the previous summer suggested the regular abuse by management of basic VFR minimum standards. Similar allegations were made to investigators following the accident by former employees.

For Part 91 operations, there is perhaps

no more poignant example of the treacherous combination of Special VFR and pressure, primarily self-induced, than the 1996 crash that killed Jessica Dubro ff in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Jessica was one month short of her eighth birthday and flying with her father and a flight instructor in pursuit of the fame associated with setting the unofficial child-pilot cross-country speed record. She instigated a media frenzy as they flew their Cessna 177B Cardinal from California in April on a planned loop across the lower 48 to the east coast and back.

Upon arrival at 5:30 p.m. in Cheyenne on April 10, Jessica told reporters she was tired, and according to investigators, her instructor phoned his wife that night and told her he was “very tired.” The group’s overall fatigue was noticed by a member of the media who escorted them to their hotel and later told investigators they discussed being tired but were “adamant” that the flight had to depart the following day by 6:15 a.m. to stay on schedule.

The next morning, after multiple media interviews at the airport, the instructor requested a weather briefing at 8 a.m. He filed a VFR flight plan for Lincoln, Nebraska, and while taxiing out at 8:18 a.m. requested a Special VFR. Visibility in Cheyenne was two and threequarters miles, with a ceiling of 2,400

broken, 3,100 overcast, thunderstorms, and light rain. The tower approved the clearance and informed the instructor the field was IFR. The aircraft took o ff three minutes later and crashed almost immediately, impacting the street in a residential neighborhood 4,000 feet north of the departure end of the runway. There were no survivors.

The accident’s probable cause was ascribed to the pilot’s improper decision to depart into deteriorating weather conditions in a slightly overweight aircraft with an unfamiliar density altitude, which resulted in a stall. A factor was a desire to adhere to their “overly ambitious itinerary” due to media commitments.

Special VFR is a valuable tool for operations in areas with specific and isolated weather conditions. However, a failure to thoroughly study its relationship to CFIT accidents and its influence on pilot or operational decision-making hampers any ability to determine if that value outweighs the risk. There are certain airports and regions in particular where Special VFR wields an outsized influence. The FAA either knows or should know about these locations; it would be worth their time to discover just how much they have been missing by ignoring what Special VFR’s permissiveness can persuade a pilot to do. z

Weather conditions that resulted in a Special VFR clearance near the time of the Yute Commuter Service PA-32 crash in Alaska in February 2020.

Vita load stabilizers speed helicopter hoist rescues

BY MARK HUBER

In 2009, high school student Caleb Carr was on a night-training search and rescue mission in the Oregon mountains when a fellow volunteer suffered a cardiac arrest. The medevac helicopter sent to the scene could not land due to the terrain and attempts to lower a rescue basket failed due to high winds. Eventually, the aircraft left the area, and Carr’s fellow volunteer died.

The incident inspired Carr, now CEO of Vita Inclinata and Broomfield, Coloradobased Vita Aerospace, to seek a solution to the problem. But it wasn’t until his business partner and chief technology officer Derek Sikora hit on an idea while staring

out an airliner window that the answer became apparent: a lightweight, computercontrolled package of battery-powered ducted fans that attaches to the bottom of a litter and stabilizes the load—called the Vita Rescue System (VRS).

The VRS uses high-powered fans to autonomously mitigate litter basket swinging and spinning during hoist operations, accounting for winds, rotor downwash, and environmental conditions. Using VRS can reduce medevac hoisting times from 20 minutes to two, the company said.

The technology has wider applications including helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft,

and cranes for search-and-rescue, military, firefighting, public safety, construction, wind energy, and oil-and-gas missions, among others. The larger Vita Lifting System is also used in a variety of heavy-lift construction operations, including wind turbine installation and maintenance, and ski lift pole placement. The company was founded in 2015 and delivered 42 systems from December 2021 through the first quarter of 2023.

“Derek, was sitting on a plane and basically looked at a jet turbine and said ‘Why the hell not?’” Carr told AIN. The idea was cultivated in a garage with inexpensive

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Chinese fans mounted onto a small drum. “We validated that you can swing up things using fans to control them. That would have never been possible 15 years ago, because eVTOL [electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft] is what’s really driven the electric ducted fan market and, along with electric cars, the battery market. Fifteen years ago this type of capability did not exist.”

Today, Vita Aerospace is dedicated to the idea that conventional helicopter hoisting is imprecise, time-consuming, and unsafe and claims that its technology “eliminates tagline issues, human error, and environmental factors from the equation by creating total load stabilization for helicopter hoist operations.” Vita has developed scalable load stabilization systems for civil, parapublic, and military aircraft.

For basic search and rescue litters, the 47-pound underside-mounted VRS is capable of controlling loads up to 1,000 pounds. About half of that weight comes from its potassium-ion batteries, which are good for between 8 and 16 hoist operations before a recharge of 30 minutes is needed.

Carr said the company chose potassium batteries over lighter lithium-ion cells for safety reasons. “If you’re going to have a system near a patient, you’re going to want batteries that do not have the capacity of becoming inflamed,” Carr said. “We’ve spent millions of dollars in innovating those batteries and prevent just that.” He expects to be able to lighten the VRS “as battery technology improves.”

Meanwhile, the system is designed for fast battery swaps. Carr notes that during a recent demonstration with the Portuguese Air Force, sorties were flown all day via battery swaps.

Being able not only to stabilize the load, but also direct it has other operational advantages such as being able to minimize the impact of rotor wash, particularly for water rescues. In a recent demonstration, the company proved the ability “to fly a litter o ff-axis underneath the helicopter,”

said Carr. “We can actually fly a load to the left or the right beneath the aircraft, breaking the border [of the rotor wash].”

There also are potential applications for manned and unmanned fixed-wing aircraft with a modern adaption of the Fulton Surface-To-Air Recovery System utilized by the CIA and various military branches for retrieving personnel during the Cold War, Carr said.

Training on the VRS consists of three hours of initial classroom instruction and six hours of flight time, assuming previous hoist operations experience. Additional training is required for specific mission types. By way of example, Carr said it took roughly two days last year to train crews that did not have previous search and rescue experience on the VRS for use in Ukraine with a medevac Mil Mi-8 twin-turbine helicopter. Ukraine has requested 30 VRS systems for use by helicopter fire and rescue units.

Maintenance is a relatively simple affair. There’s a required annual inspection and preflight checks. Carr points out that “there are only four moving parts in the system,” so unless it is being used in a saltwater environment, maintenance requirements are minimal. During preflight, a crewmember would examine the fan tubes to check for breakages or obstructions.

“That’s basically it,” Carr said, noting that the company provides support both from headquarters and from field technicians. Systems built to military specifications can cost upwards of $250,000 while land-based systems are available for a fraction of that price. Delivery times on orders are averaging 60 days, even accounting for ongoing supply chain disruptions. Carr said his manufacturing team “did a pretty good job of buying considerable inventory last year” even though it required “putting a lot of money forward.”

Carr said Vita is aggressively pursuing military and foreign markets for the technology and is having discussions about applying it to tiltrotor aircraft. He noted that it is already deployed on Leonardo AW139 intermediate twin-engine helicopters used for search and rescue operations in the United Arab Emirates. The technology could be applied to helicopters as small as an Airbus H125 turbine single, he added. And he’s also looking at lift pole installation in Saudi Arabia, where a mammoth ski resort is being planned using man-made snow. The resort will be part of the proposed $500 billion, 10,000-sq-mi Noem complex. “It’s going to be six times the size of Breckenridge [Colorado ski resort]. Speaking as a guy who lives in Colorado, that’s really going to be something.” z

Battery-powered fans mounted underneath the hoist allow the Vita Rescue System to maintain a stable platform during helicopter rescue operations.

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Atlantic Aviation Lands at Washington Dulles Airport

Atlantic Aviation added a major destination to its FBO network as it assumed operations at Washington Dulles International Airport (KIAD). In the conclusion of a rigorous RFP process first issued by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority in January 2022, Atlantic was selected in February as the winner for the facility formerly operated by Jet Aviation and was awarded a 20-year lease on the property, with a pair of fiveyear renewal options. The new contract calls for a minimum investment of $20 million over the first 10 years of the lease.

One of two FBOs on the field, the location includes a 14,200-sq-ft terminal featuring a spacious lobby, passenger and pilot lounges, conference room, and 150,000 sq ft of heated hangar space. The leasehold also includes nearly 60,000 sq ft of office and shop space.

Chartright Adds Second FBO in Canada

Chartright Air Group has added a second FBO to its lineup with the opening of a facility at the greater Toronto-area Region of Waterloo International Airport (CYKF).

The newest member of the Air Elite FBO network, the Hangar 64 facility at Waterloo provides a terminal with a VIP lounge for private aircraft passengers, seating area for corporate shuttle service passengers, crew lounge, 10-seat conference room, concierge, kitchen with complimentary refreshments, crew car, and customs service. In-house aircraft maintenance service is also available.

Along with 150,000 sq ft of ramp—including a designated medevac area—the complex also features 100,000 sq ft of hangar space capable of sheltering aircraft up to a Boeing 767. As part of the facility, the World Fuel Services-supplied company, which also provides airline fueling, built a 47,550-gallon (180,000-liter) fuel farm.

Signature Inaugurates Revamped Anchorage FBO

Signature Aviation held a reopening of its FBO at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (PANC) in Alaska, following a more than year-long renovation program. Housed in the former Kulis Alaska Air National Guard facility, the 14,000-sq-ft terminal takes its interior styling from the local culture and offers a wood-burning fireplace, passenger lounge, complimentary snack bar, conference room, pilot lounge, and two snooze rooms.

Given the airport’s location on great-circle routes between Asia and Oceana to the U.S., as well as Europe to the U.S. West Coast, the newly reconstructed FBO includes a dedicated U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility, making it the only service provider in the state to offer this and permit passengers and crews to clear customs at the same time their aircraft is being fueled.

Like the FBO, PANC is open 24/7 with no curfew, and with its exceptional snow removal program, it has never been forced to close due to inclement weather.

Pentastar Breaks Ground on Hangar Complex

Detroit-area FBO Pentastar Aviation has broken ground on a hangar development at Michigan’s Oakland County International Airport (KPTK). The greenfield “Hangar 1964” project, a nod to the year Pentastar was founded, will occupy one of the last remaining undeveloped plots of land at KPTK. The six-acre plot acquired by Pentastar was part of a failed development project during the mid-2000s and includes three acres of ramp.

With an estimated cost of more than $11 million, the complex will include a pair of 25,000-sq-ft hangars bracketing a twostory 5,800-sq-ft lounge/office area for tenants. Given the latest changes to NFPA 409 requirements for foam fire suppression in Group 2 aircraft hangars, the company is in negotiations with the local fire authority for a variance to install 30-foot-high doors on the hangars. When complete, the additions will bring Pentastar to more than 200,000 sq ft of aircraft storage space.

Space Coast Executive Jet Center: a Small FBO, but Not for Long

Space Coast Executive Jet Center (SCEJC) is the prototypical mom-and-pop FBO, according to its owner, Carsten Petersen, who purchased the facility in 2021 with his wife, Wendy. One of two service providers at Florida’s Space Coast Regional Airport (KTIX), the company has occupied the same 1,500sq-ft terminal since the late 1970s and has a sta of six full-time employees. “Titusville has been a sleepy little city for years, but it is growing now,” said Petersen. “There are about 6,000 housing units being built, and big companies are buying land.”

Part of that boom is due to the growing commercial space industry. “We have seen an influx of space companies coming in,” Petersen told AIN. “We’ve got SpaceX here, we’ve got Blue Origin, Lockheed, Boeing; so because of that, investors are starting to show interest in this area.”

Despite its small size, the terminal includes all the amenities expected from a larger facility: passenger and crew lounges, a 15-seat conference room, showers, a concierge, and even a refreshment bar with coffee and a five-tap soda dispenser.

The Titan-branded facility, which claims the majority of the business on the field, pumps approximately half a million gallons of fuel a year. It is normally open from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m. with after-hours callout available. The FBO also has a 12,000sq-ft hangar capable of accommodating super-midsize business jets.

Early on in Petersen’s ownership tenure, the FBO hosted billionaire Jared Isaacman, ahead of his SpaceX flight as part of a charity endeavor that raised millions of dollars for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Isaacman arranged to fly in some of the pediatric patients to view the launch and to greet the arriving flights. Petersen, his wife, and some of their neighbors donned

inflatable costumes to meet them on the ramp. The idea stuck in Wendy’s mind and now—depending upon the daily mood at the FBO—flight crews might be met on the ramp by an exuberantly hopping tyrannosaurus. “There’s a lot of pilots that actually think this is funny,” explained a bemused Petersen. “I don’t know why you do it, I don’t see it’s funny, but they do like it.”

The FBO, which is at the commercial airport closest to Kennedy Space Center, handles aircraft as large as the Air Force C-17 transports that deliver fully assembled satellites scheduled for launch. It also provided Petersen with one of his more interesting moments when he was called out one night for an emergency arrival, which turned out to be an aircraft with a cargo of live baby squid, part of a physiology experiment destined for the international space station. Something had gone wrong with the previous batch, so the replacements were quickly whisked over to the launching pad and loaded aboard their rocket ride. According to Petersen, business is steady all year round, but he noted that

his 220,000-sq-ft, fully lit ramp is crowded when historic rocket launches occur.

The growth of the area and the rise of the commercial space arena has Petersen thinking. “We all of a sudden realized that we may get very busy, so we need to expand, and we need to start doing it fast,” said Petersen. “We are trying to hire some smart people to come up with maybe a new concept for an FBO. Maybe it will become a space welcome center or something like that.”

Designs are being drawn up for a multimillion-dollar 5,000-sq-ft facility, and to support that, Petersen said, several investors are looking to secure o ce space in the future building. In addition, a private developer is about to break ground on two hangars, one of 75,000 sq ft capable of holding a BBJ and another between 25,000 and 50,000 sq ft, both of which will be managed by SCEJC. While the expectation is to open this FBO in Q4 2024, Peterson acknowledged that despite the permitting process already underway, he is behind schedule for that timeline. C.E.

Space Coast Executive Jet Center o ers a cozy terminal at Florida’s Space Coast Regional Airport (KTIX). The outdoor seating o ers a view of launches at the Kennedy Space Center.

PE Firm Acquires Majority Stake in Yingling Aviation

AE Industrial Partners (AEI)—a long-time investor in the business aviation space—has acquired a majority share in Kansas-based Yingling Aviation. Located at Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport, Yingling operates a 24/7 FBO and also provides Part 145 MRO services to private aviation and government customers.

Yingling chair and CEO Lynn Nichols and president Andrew Nichols will remain active leaders and investors in the company, which was founded in 1945 and occupies more than 300,000 sq ft of facility space with a staff of 180 employees.

“This investment represents the beginning of our strategic vision of creating a unique, independent platform of scale providing best-in-class services within this growing market,” said Jon Nemo, a senior partner in the private-equity firm. AEI’s past industry experience includes ownership of former FBO chain Landmark Aviation and maintenance provider StandardAero.

AMAC Aerospace Plants Flag in Saudi Arabia

AMAC Aerospace has opened a branch in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the Basel, Switzerland-based executive airliner specialist announced. In making the move, the company cited an “increasing regional demand” for completion and MRO services and “the tremendous presence of business and commercial aviation” in the kingdom.

The new office is headed by Ghalib al Subeaei, who brings experience and connections throughout Saudi Arabia and the Middle East to the position.

Concurrently, at its Istanbul repair station, AMAC is ramping up service capabilities and authorizations for the

BY AIN STAFF

Dassault Falcon 6X in anticipation of its certification.

JSSI Sees Record Growth and Expands Services

Jet Support Services Inc. (JSSI) saw its best sales year since its inception in 1989, with a near-30 percent jump in sales. The record sales come as JSSI continues to increase its portfolio, including the launch of JSSI Maintenance Software to provide maintenance tracking solutions following the 2021 acquisitions of Traxxall and SierraTrax.

Chief revenue officer Francisco Zozaya suggested that there would be further milestones coming in 2023. “We continue to invest in technology, the engine behind our maintenance intelligence and software offerings. We are also expanding our engine and APU rental pool, as well as our hard-tofind parts inventory, filling a major gap in the industry.”

HondaJet Service Center Opens in Southeast Asia

HondaJet operators in Southeast Asia now have access to improved support with the opening of an authorized service center (ASC) in Kuala Lumpur by local company KarbonMRO.

The opening came after Malaysian aviation authorities issued approval to maintain the type to KarbonMRO’s parent company, Dviation Group, and the move cements its role as the sole ASC for HondaJet operators in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations region.

KarbonMRO has welcomed its first HondaJet for refurbishment work at the facility at Subang International Airport, Kuala Lumpur’s main gateway.

Spectra Jet Still Growing After 25 Years

Twenty-five years ago, three mechanics took a leap of faith and opened a maintenance shop near Dayton, Ohio, specializing in Learjets—because that was what they had been working on—and potential customers were lining up to give them business. As it turned out, they had planned to open and do the work under their individual A&P mechanic licenses but realized that most customers would prefer doing business with an FAA-approved Part 145 repair station. So, they took the time to obtain that approval and opened Spectra Jet the day after the November Thanksgiving holiday in 1998. Since then, business has exploded.

“Our only down year was after 9-11,” said John Yegerlehner, company president and chief inspector. He founded the company along with Mike Catherwood, who retired in 2020, and another mechanic who sold his share early on so he could spend more time with his growing family. Since opening its doors in the FBO’s hangar at Springfield/ Beckley Airport, Spectra Jet has grown from the three founding mechanics to 30 people.

In 2007, having outgrown the space it shared with the FBO, Spectra Jet built its own 18,000-sq-ft facility with 6,000 sq ft of shop space. Now the company is bursting at the seams, and customers have to schedule work months ahead of time.

Starting as an FAA-approved repair station for 30-series Learjets, Spectra Jet added all Learjet models soon after opening, then in 2007, became approved for Bombardier Challengers. Spectra Jet also was an early adopter of mobile maintenance and now has four fully-equipped vans. “We started [mobile maintenance],” he said. “I find it funny that now all maintenance companies are doing mobile service work.”

With deep expertise in Learjet and Challenger maintenance, Spectra Jet’s

technicians are eager to dig into tough jobs, rebuilding wrecked airplanes and performing 12-year inspections and major avionics upgrades.

What sets Spectra Jet apart, however, is not just the willingness to take on challenging workscopes but its ability to get large jobs done on time without promising unreasonably short turn times. In most cases, Yegerlehner said, Spectra Jet can turn around a Learjet 12-year inspection with paint and interior refurbishment in eight weeks. Last year, a customer flew his Learjet 60 from New Zealand to Ohio for a 12-year inspection.

The ability to get work done, however, is tempered by the supply-chain problems. “In the last four years, parts have become a big issue for older airplanes,” he said. Landing gear overhauls for a Learjet 45 or 75 now take six to eight weeks, up from two to three weeks. A starter-generator that used to cost $3,000 is now $12,000. A Learjet stabilizer actuator that was $15,000 to overhaul is now $35,000. “We just shake our heads,” he said. “It’s like that with everything.”

One strategy that Spectra Jet is having success with is buying airframes to part

out. “When Bombardier is quoting 120 days for a part, we’re going to have to figure out something,” Yegerlehner said. Spectra Jet ended up buying three model 60s without engines. “We paid them o in four months and started making money,” he said. “Now we have tons of 60 parts.”

Spectra Jet used to work on older Learjets but now it focuses on 45s and 60s as older ones just aren’t flying that much. But even so, the phone rings with requests for maintenance on 20-series Learjets. “Routinely there’s 200 airplanes we take care of,” he said, including many from large fleet operators that use the company for backup.

Now Spectra Jet is preparing to add other airframes to its repair station list, he said, “because Learjet stopped production and older ones are starting to fade out.”

Some customers that brought Learjets for maintenance and own Falcons are asking for maintenance, so Spectra Jet has sent a technician to Falcon school and is preparing to add those to its repair station certificate.

For Yegerlehner, who still works 50 to 60 hours a week, the past 25 years “have been amazing,” he said. “It’s been a little bit of luck and a lot of hard work.”

M.T.

Spectra Jet has grown from a small repair station opened by three mechanics specializing in Learjets to 30 people working on a variety of business jets.

Preliminary Reports

O shore Learjet Crash Claims Three

Gates Learjet 36A, May 10, 2023, San Clemente Island, California

A Learjet operated by a U.S. Navy contractor crashed into the Pacific while attempting an emergency approach to the auxiliary landing field on San Clemente Island, killing all three on board. The 1976-model jet had departed from Point Mugu Naval Air Station as the lead in a formation of two Learjets using call signs FENIX01 and FENIX02 to join Navy training exercises in Warning Area 291 (W291).

Shortly after entering W291 at 15,000 feet, the crew of FENIX02 saw the lead airplane’s flaps partially deploy and advised the lead, which acknowledged their transmission. After retracting the flaps, the lead aircraft’s crew reported “an odor in the cabin” and FENIX02’s crew saw “white or gray colored ‘smoke or gas’” coming from the aft left side of the cabin and an “unidentified fluid” trailing the airplane.

FENIX01 was no longer maintaining heading or altitude when FENIX02’s crew saw flames around its aft equipment door, advised the lead airplane that it was on fire, and recommended declaring an emergency. After FENIX01 did so, FENIX02 assumed the lead position to guide them to the airfield. The last radio and visual contact between them occurred as they descended through 9,000 feet.

Recorded ADS-B track data showed that FENIX01 made two left and then two right turns during its descent, crossing over the island before flying eastward just offshore. The last position fix was about one-half mile southwest of the island at an altitude

Accidents

BY DAVID JACK KENNY

of 1,338 feet. The heavily fragmented wreckage was subsequently found about four nm northeast of that fix, about one mile offshore in 300 feet of water. Portions of the wreckage showed evidence of a precrash fire.

Both Pilots Injured on Positioning Flight

Cessna 208B, May 12, 2023, Kajjansi Airfield, Uganda

The captain was seriously injured and the first officer sustained superficial injuries when the Caravan overturned during a runway excursion at Kajjansi Airfield. The crew had returned to Kajjansi after an uneventful revenue flight and was en route to Mweya-Kasese to board passengers for a scheduled flight to Entebbe International Airport, but returned to Kajjansi after reporting unspecified “di ffi culties” with the aircraft. As of this writing, details of the landing and departure from the runway have not yet been reported, but press accounts indicate that the engine and left wing separated from the airframe after it overturned.

Hog Hunter Survives Fall from Helicopter

Airbus Helicopters EC130T2, May 6, 2023, Carta Valley, Texas

A rear-seat passenger su ff ered serious injuries but survived after falling out of the helicopter at an altitude of about 50 feet. He was one of a four-man team hunting feral hogs on the Rancho Bellas Rocas, a large private holding about 35 miles northeast of Del Rio on the U.S.-Mexico border. The pilot and the gunner in the left rear seat were independent contractors; the

owner of both the ranch and the helicopter was in the front passenger seat. The gunner in the right rear seat was a friend of the owner’s son. Both marksmen were armed with 12-gauge shotguns. The cabin doors were locked open, and the preflight safety briefing included operation of the passenger restraints, emergency exit procedures, and main rotor blade safety while shooting.

About one hour after departing from a private airfield on the ranch property, the pilot determined that they needed to return to refuel. The helicopter was moving slowly forward when the other gunner saw the passenger in the right rear seat turn 90 degrees to face out of the cabin, step onto the pedestal mounted on the right skid, then take another step forward and fall, still holding the shotgun. He notified the pilot, who landed immediately.

They found the fallen passenger unconscious but still breathing, loaded him into the cabin, and closed the doors. While refuelling, the pilot contacted emergency services by mobile phone. Advised of an “extremely lengthy” wait, the pilot flew the passenger directly to the Val Verde Medical Center in Del Rio, where they were met by a medical team. Within 20 minutes, a civilian EMS helicopter transported him to Brooke Army Medical Center in Fort Sam Houston.

The helicopter was equipped with fourpoint restraints, but the injured passenger had used only the lap belt, which was found unbuckled. The other occupants described his behavior during the flight as “quiet,” adding that he did not seem impaired or fatigued.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department classifies feral hogs as an exotic invasive species and advises that “Aerial

The material on this page is based on reports by the o cial agencies of the countries having the reponsibility for aircraft accident and incident investigations. It is not intended to judge or evaluate the ability of any person, living or dead, and is presented here for informational purposes.

gunning is a highly e ff ective means of quickly reducing wild pig populations in areas with large expanses of sparse canopy and high densities of wild pigs.”

Final Reports

Multiple Errors Contributed to Runway Excursion

Gulfstream GIV, Aug. 21, 2021, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

The pilots’ inadequate preflight inspection of the nos e gear led them to miss the ground crew’s reinstallation of a malfunctioning “pip pin” connecting the upper scissor link to the steering collar. The pin backed out during the takeo ff roll; the pilot aborted the takeo ff , but the nose gear sheared off and the jet hit a concrete slab mount for approach lighting equipment, damaging the fuselage and right wing. There were no injuries to any of the 14 people on board.

The pilot-in-command, a 20,000-hour ATP, said the taxi and takeoff roll seemed normal until the airplane reached 100 to 110 knots, at which a “terrible shimmy” began that got “worse and worse.” He immediately aborted the takeoff using brakes and thrust reversers and the airplane initially slowed, only to veer off the right side of the runway. The pip pin was subsequently found on the runway some 2,215 feet short of the main wreckage; the remainder of the nose gear assembly was some 900 feet further down.

The pin, which is routinely removed to increase maneuverability during towing, is equipped with spring-loaded locking balls to prevent it from backing out. A plunger button in the end of the pin, also springloaded, retracts the locking balls while the pin is removed or installed, and a secondary safety pin (secured to the nose gear assembly by a lanyard) is inserted through the end of the pip pin as a further safeguard.

The linemen who had towed th e Gulfstream removed the pin without difficulty, but afterwards the plunger stuck and the balls would not extend. The G-IV handling handbook calls for replacing any pin in this condition, but after unsuccessfully trying to free the plunger, the line crew reinserted the pin and reported the anomaly to the ramp supervisor.

The supervisor recalled telling “the first crew member” who arrived, “Per tow team, check your nose pin.” However, this person was an observer pilot not type-rated in the airplane and did not recall hearing that warning.

The SIC conducted the preflight and observed that the pip pin was in and “flush;” he did not recall seeing the safety pin. He also acknowledged that he had received his SIC type rating via a logbook endorsement from a type-rated captain without benefit of formal ground school or a practical test, and was “limited in what I know with the aircraft.” The pin performed normally in post-accident testing.

Unexplained Bearing Seizure Caused Driveshaft Failure

Bell 505, July 15, 2022, Cairns Airport, Queensland, Australia

An overheated hanger bearing seized during a sightseeing flight, causing the tail rotor drive shaft to separate, but the reason for the seizure could not be determined. The pilot and two passengers had been airborne for about 30 minutes when the pilot briefly heard a loud “grinding noise…like metal on metal” while flying in the vicinity of Double Island. The noise recurred about a minute later, and the pilot decided to return to Cairns Airport, making a shallow descent to limit engine power.

At an altitude of about 10 feet he increased power slightly to transition to a hover. “A couple of big bangs” came from aft of the cabin and the helicopter yawed 45 degrees right. He pulled the throttle to

idle, the yaw stopped, and the helicopter’s forward motion into a 10-12-knot headwind straightened it back into its direction of travel. The pilot made a successful run-on landing in the grass short of the helipad, the engine shut down normally, and the pilot and passengers disembarked uninjured.

Subsequent inspection found that the forward hanger bearing had seized. The outer race was intact but the inner race had disintegrated, with only five of the bearing’s balls still present. The tail rotor driveshaft, which also drove the oil cooler fan, was separated at that point.

The aft hanger bearing was found undamaged and properly lubricated. Both bearings had been lubricated 246 hours earlier during the helicopter’s most recent 300hour inspection, and had been inspected two days before the accident after another pilot reported a strange noise that seemed to be coming from the engine bay. No sign of excessive temperature, heat damage, or unusual noise was found.

A recording of the initial noise was played for the accident pilot, who did not think it sounded like the same grinding “metal-onmetal” sound that preceded the driveshaft failure. Bell Textron advised ATSB investigators that they were not aware of any prior failures of the fan shaft bearings in Bell 505 helicopters or in the model 206, which has a drivetrain of a similar design. The failed bearing and fan shaft assembly were sent to Bell for further examination, but results had not been received by the time the ATSB issued its final report. z

BY GORDON GILBERT

July 17, 2023

U.S.: Advanced Air Mobility

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) is seeking public input on the development of a national strategy on advanced air mobility (AAM), an emerging field incorporating electric- and hybrid-electric-powered aircraft with vertical or short takeo and landing capability that could provide new levels of accessibility, convenience, and connectivity for people and cargo. The DOT seeks comments regarding: what should be addressed in the AAM national strategy; what respondents believe are existing barriers to the success of AAM implementation; and what steps should the federal government focus on in the short (two to three years), medium (four to eight years), and long term (eight-plus years) to maximize the potential for successful AAM operations. Comments are due July 17, 2023.

July 24, 2023

Europe: Flight Dispatcher Rules

An EASA notice of proposed amendment (NPA) establishes minimum requirements, responsibilities, and qualifications for serving as a flight dispatcher, a position mandated for European-registered commercial aircraft operations, including most business jet charter companies. Because current requirements are “confusing,” the proposed amendments are designed to standardize flight dispatcher training across EASA member states and to ensure a level playing field. Comments are due by July 24, 2023.

July 31, 2023

U.S.: Aviation Noise Policy

The FAA invites public comments to review and suggest updates to the agency’s civil aviation noise policy. The policy sets forth how the agency analyzes, explains, and publicly presents changes in noise exposure impacts from aviation activity, including unmanned aircraft systems, spacecraft, and emerging-technology aircraft. The FAA specifically seeks comments on how revisions to the policy may improve agency decisions regarding community annoyance and health issues, and to suggest how the agency can better manage and respond to a community’s aviation noise concerns. Comments on the policy review are due by July 24, 2023.

July 31, 2023

and Aug. 1, 2023

U.S.: Maintenance Schools

As part of an interim final rule overhauling aviation maintenance technician school regulations (Parts 65 and 147), the FAA is transitioning from using the mechanic practical test standards (PTS) as the testing standard for obtaining a mechanic certificate. As a part of this transition, the FAA developed the mechanic airman certification standards (ACS), which adds taskspecific knowledge and risk-management elements. The FAA will use the PTS as the testing standard until July 31, 2023. Starting Aug. 1, 2023, the FAA will use the ACS to conduct mechanic certification tests.

Aug.

10, 2023 and May 16, 2024

Canada: ADS-B Out Mandate

Due to continued supply chain impacts stemming from the Covid pandemic, the previously announced implementation date for ADS-B Out in Canada was delayed beyond the original date of Feb. 23, 2023. As a result, the mandate will come into effect as follows: Class A Canadian airspace on Aug. 10, 2023; Class B Canadian airspace on May 16, 2024; and Class C, D, and E airspace to occur no sooner than 2026. The new dates have been developed from stakeholder feedback regarding supply chain limitations and backlogs to acquire and install the necessary equipment.

Aug. 14, 2023

Europe: Extended Range Operations

EASA is proposing amendments to large twin-engine airplane extended range operations (ETOPS) rules for diverting to a suitable alternate airport in case of a singleengine failure, cabin depressurization, or other emergency affecting range. The proposed amendments are primarily updates and clarifications to improve the robustness of existing rules without introducing major changes. For example, EASA proposes to incorporate into the EU legal framework most of the related ICAO standards dealing with regulatory administration and technical requirements. Furthermore, some amendments are proposed to increase harmonization with FAA ETOPS rules. Comments on the proposal are due by Aug. 14, 2023.

Nov. 30, 2023

Europe: Travel Information and Authorization System

ETIAS (European Travel Information and Authorization System) is an online pre-travel and pre-boarding requirement applying to visa-exempt third-country nationals planning to travel to European states. Expected to be implemented in November 2023, the information is submitted via an online application ahead of their arrival at borders, enabling pretravel assessment of irregular migration risks, security, or public health risk checks.

April 24, 2024; Oct. 24, 2024; April 25, 2025

U.S.: Airport SMS

Under new regulations certain air carrier airports certified under FAR Part 139 will be required to submit an implementation plan for a safety management system (SMS) on the following deadlines: April 24, 2024 for airports designated as hubs; Oct. 24, 2024 for airports with 100,000 or more annual operations over the previous three years; and April 25, 2025 for airports classified as port of entry, landing rights, user fee, and international facilities. In each case, the SMS must be implemented no later than 12 months after receiving FAA approval of the certificate holder’s implementation plan. Most general aviation airports will be able to obtain a waiver from the SMS requirement.

Dec. 2, 2024

Europe: Part 145 SMS

Starting on Dec. 2, 2022, EASA Part 145 maintenance organizations were required to meet revised regulations. However, there is a two-year transition period, to Dec. 2, 2024, to allow them to correct any findings of noncompliance with the new Part 145 requirements. The main change is the required implementation of a SMS.

May 29, 2026

Canada: CVR and Data Link

Multi-engine turbine-powered aircraft configured for six or more passenger seats and requiring two pilots have been granted a temporary exemption from new cockpit voice and data link recorder requirements that are effective on May 29, 2023. The exemption is due to Covid-related delays in parts production, supply chains, and transportation, as well as labor shortages at manufacturers and installers. This exemption is in effect until the earliest of May 29, 2026, or a date when the exemption is canceled by Canada’s DOT.

For the most current compliance status, see: ainonline.com/cc

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People in Aviation

BY KAIT WILSON

The Canadian Owners and Pilots Association (COPA) appointed Mark van Berkel as president and CEO. Van Berkel has been a member of COPA for 20 years. He earned his pilot license shortly after college and remains an active pilot with an IFR rating. He has held roles as an avionics AME, chief avionics specialist for Transport Canada Aircraft Services, and founder of avionics manufacturer TrueNorth Avionics, which he later sold to Satcom Direct.

Ontic appointed Brian Sartain as COO. Sartain has more than 35 years of experience in the aerospace industry, having most recently served as senior v-p of repair and engineering services at AAR. He will assume his role on June 5 and will be responsible for day-to-day manufacturing operations.

Dave Makowski was hired by Elliott Aviation as COO. Makowski has more than 40 years of experience in avionics, operations, and maintenance, having worked for more than 25 years with Delta Air Lines and 10 years with NetJets. He most recently served as senior v-p of maintenance management at Wheels Up.

Deena Sullivan was promoted to president of Corporate Wings. Sullivan has more than 17 years of experience in the aviation industry and previously served as president of client services.

The Air Charter Association (ACA) appointed Atlas Helicopters operations director Alana Burns to serve on its board with an emphasis on developing membership in the rotorcraft sector. Burns brings 20 years of industry experience to her new position at ACA.

Charles Bolden Jr. , Matthew Jesch , and David Paddock were appointed to the National Aviation Hall of Fame (NAHF) board of trustees. Bolden is a decorated naval aviator, test pilot, astronaut, and NAHF enshrinee who served as the 12th administrator of NASA from 2009 to 2017. Jesch is the CFO of Tailwind Technologies and has more than 35 years of financial and

operational experience with public and private companies. He will also serve as the organization’s treasurer. Paddock serves as president of Jet Aviation and has more than 25 years of aviation industry experience.

Janine Iannarelli , founder and president of Par Avion, was elected chair of the European Business Aviation Association (EBAA) Associate Member Advisory Council. Iannarelli has been a member of EBAA since the early 1990s and an active participant in the council since its formation.

Cirrus Aircraft promoted Patrick Sniffen to executive director of global marketing. Sniffen served as Cirrus’s director of marketing for more than three years. He previously held roles with Signature Flight Support as v-p of marketing and Jet Aviation as v-p of marketing and communications for the Americas.

Private aircraft management, charter, and maintenance providers Priester Aviation and Mayo Aviation promoted Carl Bennett to v-p of quality and safety, succeeding Kurt Humm, who is retiring. Since 2018, Bennett has served as director of safety for Mayo Aviation, which merged with Priester Aviation last year. His new role extends to both companies. He has more than 35 years of Part 135 experience.

Crystal Kubeczka was hired as v-p of sales for Paragon Aviation Group. Kubeczka’s aviation background includes 15 years with FlightSafety International as a subject matter expert in Gulfstream programs, and most recently, as v-p of sales-America at International Trip Support. She is also a member of NBAA’s international operators steering committee and scheduler and dispatchers committee.

Speedbird has hired Doug Dvorak as v-p of sales. Dvorak has more than 10 years of experience in private jet charter and aircraft sales, having previously served as director of sales for multiple companies.

PATRICK SNIFFEN

CRYSTAL KUBECZKA

MARK VAN BERKEL

DEENA SULLIVAN

Zeineb Lassoued was appointed by ACC Aviation as regional v-p for the Middle East and Africa. Lassoued, who has seven years of industry experience, most recently served as a commercial director at a Monaco-based company.

Discovery Air appointed Cameron Singh as director of business development. Singh has more than 10 years of industry experience, having led various FBO locations for Signature Aviation. He most recently held leadership roles with the Business Aviation Group.

Andy Wegman was hired as director of aviation on the Enterprise Services—executive operations team for investment company BlackRock Wegman has more than 30 years of aviation experience, having served as a U.S. naval aviator and as a NATO operational commander. Following military retirement, he held roles with Phoenix Air, Aerodynamics, Fiserv, and Priester Aviation. His most recent position was director of aviation and chief pilot with T-Mobile.

Elite Jets hired Peter Boyd as director of aircraft management. Boyd’s experience includes being director of business development and strategy for JSX, senior account director for the western region and Asia-Pacific for Jet Aviation, and a consultant with Chartright Air Group.

Nathalie Drolet was hired by ACASS as sales director for its Northwest U.S. and Western Canada territories. Drolet previously served in sales and marketing at Bombardier and in sales, market analysis, and business development roles at Eclipse Aviation, BBA Aviation, and AirSprint Private Aviation.

West Star Aviation promoted Adam Bendele to Bombardier team lead and hired Lee Smieja as Gulfstream project manager and Jay King as project manager for Bombardier at its Chattanooga, Tennessee facility. Bendele has been with West Star for 16 years, previously serving as a Challenger crew lead at the Grand Junction, Colorado facility before relocating to Chattanooga in 2020. Smieja has more than 20 years of aviation experience, including a stint at Gulfstream Aerospace. King has more than 17 years of aviation experience. z

Michael “Mick” Pittard, 80, passed away on May 27. Pittard served for two years in the U.S. Navy and earned a degree in accounting from Ball State University. In the 1970s, He opened Hoosier Air Sales, which was later known as Indianapolis Aviation, Kokomo Aviation, and the FBO at Lafayette Airport that became Purdue Aviation. An ATP-licensed pilot with several type ratings, Pittard also founded commuter airline Direct Air and air charter operator Aviation Charter Services. Pittard served as chair of the NATA air charter committee and as a member of the NATA board of directors before being elected as board chair in 1996. He retired in 2015. In 2022, he was inducted into the Indiana Aviation Hall of Fame as an industry entrepreneur and champion. He leaves behind a wife, Debbie, seven children, eight grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

AWARDS AND HONORS

Sheltair Aviation president and CEO Lisa Holland has been recognized with a 2023 Tampa Bay Business Women Award in the transportation and aviation category. Holland succeeded her father, Jerry Holland, as president of Sheltair in January 2020, navigating the company through the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Flight Safety Foundation awarded Bob Agostino, v-p of American Aero FTW at Fort Worth Meacham International Airport, with its 2023 Business Aviation Meritorious Service Award during a ceremony at the organization’s Business Aviation Safety Summit in New Orleans. The award, which has been presented annually since 1975, recognizes Agostino’s “safety accomplishments over a career that spans nearly five decades,” according to the foundation.

The Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) has presented Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) with its annual “Wright Stu Award” to “honor his ongoing leadership and contributions to America’s aerospace industry and national security.” The award was given to Moran during AIA’s spring board of governors meeting in Washington, D.C.

John Foster III, co-founder of OgaraJets, has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Aircraft Dealers Association. The award recognizes “Foster’s 50 years in aviation sales while serving as a model of professional standards for the entire industry.”

ZEINEB LASSOUED

PETER BOYD

is the difference between FANS and the Aeronautical Telecommunications Network [ATN]. ATN gets into more datalink functionality in that more information is communicating with ATC. Some ATN-capable avionics equipment is being shipped and installed now in business jets and that is going to be really good for departure and enroute clearances now and even more so in the future.”

The NAT mandates drove a lot of the FANS installations starting in 2013, which Vena said moved in a series of waves up to the present time. A basic datalink installation requires an FMS, an upgraded cockpit voice recorder to capture data link messages, a compliant datalink for FANS, and a safety services-approved satcom link.

Typically the FMS has to be modern unit on the market after the advent of RNAV approaches using localizer performance with vertical guidance (LPV) minimums. Most of the aircraft being equipped with FANS also added LPV and ADS-B at the same time. The push to get equipped with FANS/CPDLC drove other avionics upgrades in 2013 and beyond.

FANS installations dropped o ff during the pandemic, as did a lot of avionics modification work, while maintenance and cabin modification work picked up. Now, if a new business jet owner with sufficient range but without FANS decides he or she wants to fly to Europe, that is the big driver in getting a FANS/CPDLC upgrade.

However, departure and en route use of CPDLC in domestic U.S. airspace are becoming more of a factor, Vena said. “It is still a bonus reason to get a FANS installation done but is not the real driver to do it yet,” he said.

Some STCs come with push-to-load of flight plans, and more customers are adding that now. Vena said CPDLC installation can cost between $150,000 and $400,000, depending in part on whether LPV capability is already installed and the required satcom system is already onboard.

Another advantage of CPDLC is that it reduces controller workload and increases safety during a shortage of controllers. z

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