EBACE Convention News 05-19-15

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Embraer 450 sails into EBACE by Chad Trautvetter

Embraer’s flight-test Legacy 450 landed here at Geneva International Airport on Sunday afternoon, marking the midsize jet’s debut in Europe. The airplane–flown by company test pilot William Souza and demonstration pilot Rafael Mene-zes Ricardo–made the journey from the company’s base in São José dos Campos, Brazil, in 12 hours 36 minutes, stopping for fuel at Recife International Airport in

Brazil, Amílcar Cabral International Air-port on Sal Island, Cape Verde, and Mál-aga–Costa del Sol Airport in Spain.

It is on static display this week at EBACE, flanked by the rest of the com-pany’s product line, which includes the Phenom 100 and 300, Legacy 500 and 650 and Lineage 1000. “The Legacy 450 and the Legacy 500, which will be presented

EBAA sets roots in Genevaby Kerry Lynch

The 15th edition of the European Business Aviation Convention & Exhibi-tion (EBACE) is shaping up to rival the show’s strongest years, with 460 exhibi-tors occupying 2,200 exhibit spaces and 58 aircraft on static display, according to Steve Brown, COO of NBAA, which co-hosts the annual event with EBAA.

EBACE organizers have been in negotiations with Geneva Airport

executives about the future of the show, and Brown told journalists yesterday at an eve-of-show briefing that he antic-ipates the convention “will be here for many years to come.”

Fabio Gamba, CEO of EBAA, pointed to informational sessions here this week that are designed to prepare attendees for regulatory, economic and

The Embraer Legacy 450 landed here in Geneva on Sunday afternoon, making its European debut. It made three stops along the journey from the company’s headquarters in São José dos Campos, Brazil.

Continued on page 94 u Continued on page 94 u

Avionics Flight Planning Operators EBACE Debuts Customer Support

King Airs Get Fusion InfusionBeechcraft King Air buyers can now opt for Rockwell Collins Pro Line Fusion touchscreen avionics. AIN senior editor Matt Thurber got a chance to fly with the system. 0

Nexus Opens New Vienna Center Adding to its existing facility in Monaco, flight support specialist Nexus opened another European customer service center in Vienna last month. It will focus on Central and Eastern Europe as well as Russia. Page 21

Formula 1 Legend Orders Global 7000Auto racing icon Niki Lauda, a brand ambassador for Bombardier Business Jets, has ordered a Global 7000 ultra-long-range aircraft. He expects to take delivery in late 2018. Page 24

HondaJet Makes Premier AppearanceWith provisional U.S. certification in hand, Honda Aircraft turns to Europe, with the first appearance of its HondaJet here at EBACE. Its over-the-wing engine mount affords more cabin space. Page 63

Dassault Falcon Ramps Up ServiceDassault continues improving the customer service network for its Falcon business jets. New features include a pair of Falcon 900s dedicated to delivering parts for AOG aircraft. Page 77

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Falcon sales climb in 2015 as 5X and 8X testing advancesby Thierry Dubois

Falcon business jet sales are off to a good start this year, Dassault Aviation chairman and CEO Eric Trappier told a pre-EBACE press conference here yester-day. Three of the French manufacturer’s new Falcon 8X trijets are now involved in flight testing in a development pro-gram that is progressing as planned, and the French airframer is now preparing its other new model, the 5X twinjet, for a June 2 roll-out, followed by its antici-pated first flight this summer.

After a strong 2014, during which 90 Falcon orders were logged, “2015 is start-ing on the same foot,” Trappier said. While the Falcon 7X is still the best seller, he also mentioned strong demand for the Falcon 2000 series in the U.S. “2014 was the turning point in the U.S. recovery; some companies that had been sitting on the fence are now replacing older air-craft,” added John Rosanvallon, Dassault Falcon Jet president and CEO.

Dassault has found that Russia, the Commonwealth of Independent States, Brazil and China are not as dynamic as they used to be for Falcon sales. In

Europe, fractional ownership, in par-ticular, has not recovered, according to Rosanvallon. Dassault and NetJets have therefore terminated an order for 20 Falcon 7Xs that were to be delivered between 2016 and 2022. Trappier insisted that these negative indicators should not detract from an overall favorable picture in the aforementioned countries.

The third Falcon 8X flew for the first time on May 11. It will be used to test cabin equipment and soundproofing. The first prototype has opened the entire flight envelope, Trappier said, having flown as fast as Mach 0.96 and as high as 51,000 feet. Some high-energy braking trials have taken place, too, and Transport Canada has just certified its Pratt & Whitney Canada PW307D turbofan powerplant. Dassault is confident that the 8X is on track for certification in mid-2016.

Meanwhile, Dassault acknowledged that it is now facing the possibility that some delays in the development of the 5X’s Snecma Silvercrest engine could mean changes to the new type’s timeta-ble. “Our engineering team is currently

analyzing Snecma’s revised development plan and assessing the possible impact for the 5X program,” Trappier stated. The Silvercrest is now due to complete certifi-cation in the first half of 2016.

Snecma’s head of civil engines, Cédric Goubet, spoke at Dassault’s press con-ference and mentioned difficulties in modifying the company’s Gulfstream II flying testbed to take the Silvercrest test engine. Although the flight test campaign is now well under way in San Antonio, Texas, the issues have added several months to the project.

Moreover, a technical problem emerged on the oil-fuel heat exchanger. In the con-text of “a new, more stringent regulation,” the oil-fuel thermal balance fell slightly short of target, according to Goubet. A solution is being implemented but it needs new cast parts, which have long lead times.

Nonetheless, at Dassault’s Bordeaux factory the first Falcon 5X is proceed-ing with ground testing, including engine run-ups. In Toulouse, ongoing airframe static and fatigue tests have cleared the aircraft for flight testing.

The new combined vision system, which merges infrared and synthe-tic vision sensors, is being tested at Dassault’s flight test center. It will be cer-tificated first on the 8X and 5X and then will likely be applied to future Falcon pro-grams too, said Olivier Villa, Dassault’s senior v-p for civil aircraft. o

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Bombardier Challenger 650 makes debut at EBACE 2015

The Bombardier Challenger 650, a refreshed version of the CL605 with new avionics and more powerful engines, is making its public debut this week here in Geneva. “We are thrilled to unveil our Challenger 650, which is scheduled to enter into service in the second half of 2015,” said Eric Martel, president of Bombardier Business Aircraft (Static Display, Booth Z115).

Launched at last year’s NBAA Convention in October, the 3,200-nm/5,926-km Challenger will feature the Bombardier Vision flight deck based on the Rockwell

Collins Pro Line Fusion avionics system, originally designed for the Bombardier Global 6000. Vision features large 15-inch displays and includes head-up guid-ance, synthetic vision, enhanced vision, MultiScan weather radar and the Integrated Flight Information System. The new model made its first flight on February 26.

Priced at $33.25 million, the twin-jet’s passenger cabin borrows design ele-ments from the cabins of the Challenger 350 and the now-shelved Learjet 85. Improvements include wider seats, a galley with a temperature oven, more

personal storage in and around the seats and an audio/video-on-demand system.

The Challenger 650 is powered by two GE Aviation 9,220-pound-thrust CF34-3BMTOs, which have 5 percent more take-off thrust than the CF34-3B engines on the 605. The additional thrust is pilot select-able via a new performance thrust setting.

The Challenger 650 is flanked by sev-eral other Bombardier jets at the EBACE static area, including the Learjet 75, Challenger 350 and Global 6000. The company is also showing a full-scale mockup of the Global 7000 at its booth.

“We currently have more than 570 Bombardier business aircraft flying within Europe, and with a full range of products and services, we are committed to main-taining our leadership position within the market,” concluded Martel. –C.T.

With its service entry scheduled for later this year, Bombardier’s Challenger 650 makes its first EBACE appearance this year.

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Luxaviation, ExecuJet unite to form global unitby Charles Alcock & Thierry Dubois

Luxaviation (Booth S123) marches into EBACE with a sig-nificantly larger footprint. Earlier this month, the fast-growing busi-ness aviation services group almost tripled its size when it acquired ExecuJet Aviation Group for an undisclosed sum. As has been the case with other acquisitions the Luxembourg-based company has made in recent years, Switzer-land-based ExecuJet will continue to trade under its own name and under the leadership of its exist-ing management team.

The deal makes Luxaviation one of the largest business avia-tion operators in the world, with a combined fleet of more than 250 aircraft. Before the takeover, Luxaviation had 520 employees in six European countries and a fleet of 85 aircraft. ExecuJet has a global workforce of almost 1,000 across Europe, Asia, Africa, Australasia, Latin America and the Middle East. Founded in 1991, it operates a diverse fleet of 165 aircraft, including a sig-nificant Global Express contin-gent and other Bombardier jets, along with Boeing Business Jets, Gulfstreams, Dassault Falcons and Pilatus PC-12 turboprop sin-gles. It is active in aircraft man-agement, charter, maintenance, and completions management, as well as operating a worldwide chain of FBOs.

Diverse Corporate PortfolioIn addition to the Luxavia-

tion parent company, launched in 2008 by Edison Capital Part-ners founder Patrick Hansen (who is CEO), the group already includes Luxaviation Ger-many, Abelag (Belgium), Unijet (France), London Executive Avi-ation (UK) and Masterjet (Por-tugal). It also has a commercial office in Singapore.

ExecuJet will be led by its for-mer president and COO Ger-rit Basson, who now holds the title CEO. Hansen will serve as the company’s new chairman,

replacing founding CEO and chairman Niall Olver, who will continue to support ExecuJet as an advisor.

“The acquisition of ExecuJet is the next step in our growth strategy and significantly increases Luxaviation’s global reach,” Hansen commented. “ExecuJet’s operations give us a strong presence in some of the world’s fastest-growing business aviation markets, including Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, as well as a significantly larger managed fleet.”

Olver has long been an advo-cate of consolidation in what he sees as an overly crowded

business aviation market. With ExecuJet’s previous major share-holder, Irish financier Dermot Desmond, unwilling to make further significant investment in the group, Luxaviation made an offer to take over.

“I became convinced that Patrick Hansen has the vision to consolidate the industry, and ExecuJet has become the corner-stone of this process at Luxavia-tion,” Olver told AIN. “For our customers, nothing changes; they are still dealing with the same peo-ple, and the bigger platform [that ExecuJet is now part of] gives them a bigger network of services and will allow them to benefit from greater economies of scale.”

International FBOsExecuJet operates a chain of

19 FBOs around the world at the following locations: Bali (Indo-nesia), Barcelona, Ibiza, Gerona and Valencia in Spain, Berlin, Cambridge (UK), Dubai (two FBOs), Cape Town and Johan-nesburg in South Africa, Lagos (Nigeria), Wellington (New Zea-land), Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), Melbourne (Australia), Istan-bul (Turkey-two FBOs), Zurich and right here in Geneva. At 11 locations, the group also pro-vides extensive maintenance support to operators of aircraft

produced by Bombardier, Tex-tron (Cessna Citations and Hawkers), Dassault, Embraer and Gulfstream.

Even before the ExecuJet deal, Luxaviation had aggressively pursued a strategy of taking over existing executive air char-ter operators to accumulate a large flock. After acquiring Lon-don Executive Aviation (LEA) in 2014, it followed up with the takeover of Geneva-based Mas-terjet earlier this year. While looking for synergies, Luxavia-tion has remained keen on main-taining the individual brands of the operators it acquires, CEO Hansen told AIN. Through fur-ther acquisitions, Hansen is tar-geting a 500-strong fleet by 2019.

The next to latest takeover, Masterjet, holds a Portuguese AOC but operates business jets from Paris Le Bourget. It has 44 employees in Paris and 13 avia-tion experts in Lisbon, operat-ing a fleet of eight jets–Falcons, Learjets and an Airbus A320. “With the addition of the A320, we will be able to serve the ‘head of state’ market,” Hansen emphasized when the deal was announced in January.

It will continue its strategy of retaining the identity, leadership and operational independence of each operator within the group,

while pooling many operational services, including fuel purchas-ing, maintenance and insurance. “The brands have their values,” Hansen said. He emphasized he wants neither to regroup the companies’ air operator certifi-cates, nor to cut jobs. “We need as many people as possible, as organic growth is quite strong, and we know where we want to go,” he told AIN.

Procurement SynergiesNevertheless, synergies can be

found in procurement. “There is plenty of low-hanging fruit,” Hansen said. For example, the unit cost for insurance is lower with 250 aircraft than it is with 10. Another benefit is in shorter dead-head ferry flights, as dispatchers booking trips will seek out the closest suitable aircraft available within the group-wide fleet.

Hansen made it clear his business is rather about man-aging other people’s aircraft, as opposed to owning aircraft. “We only have one aircraft on order–an Embraer Phenom 300–for a specific charter need,” he said. And he is not willing to move to a more homogeneous fleet–which is usually considered as a strong point because it translates into lower maintenance costs. “We want to show as many owners as possible we have expertise in their aircraft type,” Hansen explained.

In future, pilots within the group should be able to replace each other when needed to fill in for a temporary vacancy. “The challenge lies in [rationalizing the] national interpretations of EASA rules,” Hansen noted.

Speaking about the European market, he anticipated stability in the near term, as overall growth over the past several years has been offset by “a strong down-turn for flights from Moscow,” since 2014. The favorable trend for large-cabin business jets continues, he noted, but prices are stagnat-ing. Prior to the ExecuJet acqui-sition, the Luxaviation group was logging a combined 25,000-30,000 flight hours per year.

Now that the work of merg-ing ExecuJet’s and Luxavia-tion’s forces is complete, Olver indicated that he may focus his efforts on restarting the SPn light jet program, which was stalled by the August 2008 insolvency of Grob. He told AIN that, as owner of the SPn patents, he has been approached by new prospective partners. In his view advances in carbon fiber tech-nology make the aircraft an even more compelling product now than in the past and he is “more confident we can meet market expectations.” o

AirClub: A Different Approach to Expansion

AirClub has also set its sights on worldwide expansion, despite fierce competition that saw Luxaviation take over former AirClub operators LEA and Masterjet over the past two years. AirClub president Jurgen Van Campenhout told AIN he hoped to announce the addition of one or two new operators at EBACE.

One of them might be a second U.S.-based company. The first, Primejet, joined early in 2014. “We want to estab-lish a network in the U.S.,” Van Campenhout said. With the ultimate goal of establishing global coverage, AirClub has appointed a vice president responsible for the U.S. and Asia–Primejet’s Cheryl Janke. “Some of our members’ aircraft are already based in Singapore, Malaysia, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Chile,” Van Campenhout added.

A candidate for membership in AirClub has to meet a number of criteria. The first one is the safety record, accord-ing to Van Campenhout, followed by service quality, number or aircraft and bases–among others.

Currently, AirClub’s members include Air Alsie (Booth Y105), ACM, Air Hamburg (Booth O114), Flying Group, Globe Air, Primejet and PrivatAir. The combined fleet consists of 95 aircraft. These are mainly jets, from the Cessna Citation Bravo to the Boeing 757.

Synergies have emerged, such as negotiating lower prices with suppliers. Van Campenhout also mentioned volume pricing on catering. Regarding crew hotels, AirClub has been successful at lowering prices, as well as nego-tiating favorable terms and conditions such as allowing late cancellations.

AirClub is happy with its online booking system, which it believes is the first of its kind in the industry. “It is work-ing very well,” Van Campenhout said. For example, prospective clients can see a photo of the actual aircraft interior, as opposed to a generic picture of the model. The online payment feature, however, has had limited success. Van Campenhout estimates only about one payment per month has been made online since the system went live in the spring of 2014. “Few customers are ready to pay five-digit amounts online,” he said. He expressed hope that this is going to change over the next two to five years. –T.D.

Patrick Hansen, CEO Luxaviation Group

Using a strategy of establishing a large equity group, Luxaviation has built up its charter fleet. The acquisition of ExecuJet nearly triples the number of business jets under Luxaviation’s leadership.

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Jet Aviation to complete first 787by Charles Alcock

Jet Aviation is preparing to complete the interior of the first privately-owned Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner. The work, which is being done for an undisclosed Middle Eastern

customer at the company’s Basel, Switzerland, facility, will take just over two years and is due for delivery in 2018.

The company’s engineers have been working with Boeing

on specifications and prep-arations for VIP versions of the Dreamliner since 2011. Since winning the contract, Jet Aviation (Booth A050) has stepped up its cooperation with

the airframer to establish a seamless flow of technical data between the two companies.

The aircraft interior has been developed by the UK’s Andrew Winch Design and features a master bedroom, bathroom and office suite, a large open-plan dining and living area, as well as separate rooms for guests. It will also be equipped with a state-of-the-art communications system, along with a sophisticated light-ing, heating and soundproof-ing package. Boeing Business Jets president David Longridge described the 787-9 VIP com-pletion as a “milestone project.”

“We have a precise under-standing of the data required by Boeing for the Dreamliner to validate the modification of sys-tems and structures,” said Neil Boyle, vice president and gen-eral manager of the Jet Aviation Basel facility. “Developing this degree of engineering speci-fication so early in a project is unprecedented. As a basis of comparison, such engineer-ing maturity is typically only attained with the traditional metallic aircraft by the final design review. In this sense, Jet Aviation truly is writing ‘the rule book’ for completing car-bon fiber aircraft.”

In March, Jet Aviation won a contract from an undisclosed Asian customer to complete the interiors of a pair of Boeing 777-300ER aircraft. The work has already begun at the Basel facility and deliveries are scheduled for the third quar-ter of 2018. Since it was estab-lished in 1977, Jet Aviation’s Swiss completions center has completed more than 200 air-craft, including 25 Boeing jets since 1999. o


A VIP Boeing 787 Dreamliner is slated to be completed at Jet Aviation’s Basel facility for an undisclosed Middle Eastern customer.

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Pro Line Fusion touchscreen avionics give King Air panels a futuristic lookby Matt Thurber

During a March visit to Tex-tron Aviation’s Wichita headquar-ters, AIN had an opportunity to fly the Pro Line Fusion-equipped King Air 250 and try out the first business aircraft equipped with touchscreen primary and multifunction displays. EBACE visitors can examine a Fusion-equipped King Air 250 in the static display area here at Palexpo. The aircraft I flew in Wichita belongs to Rockwell Collins and was used to certify the upgrade, which will be offered as a retrofit for Pro Line II- and 21-equipped King Airs and forward-fit in new King Air C90GTx, 250 and 350i/ER models.

The new avionics replace exist-ing Pro Line 21 systems in new King Airs, and the most obvi-ous difference between the pre-vious and new flight decks is the orientation of the displays: por-trait with Pro Line 21 and wider-view landscape with Fusion. Three 14-inch displays span the width of the instrument panel, filling what used to be blank or knob-filled space interspersed with the three Pro Line 21 dis-plays. Gone are the Rockwell Collins FMS-3000 control dis-play unit (CDU), two multi-seg-ment caution advisory system (CAS) panels and the RTU-420 radio tuning unit. The flight con-trol and audio control panels are retained. The result is a far more modern-looking cockpit but also a system with multiple interfaces, including touch on the panel dis-plays, cursor control devices for each pilot, a QWERTY key-board and some knobs and but-tons. The touchscreens are the resistive type, which requires a more positive push to activate.

“We found out that the touch [displays] added a level of sim-plicity to the system that we’ve never had before. And you don’t have to know a lot about the sys-tem to make it operate. If you want to change something, you simply touch it. That’s all there is to it,” said George Palmer, Rockwell Collins flight-test pilot and the demo pilot for our flight in the King Air 250.

Flight PlanningStarting with flight planning,

the first step is to press the FMS button on the multifunction keyboard panel, which replaces the FMS CDU in the console. Rockwell Collins designers chose

to use a QWERTY layout for the keyboard, which I find easier to use because I spend so much time typing on that type of keyboard. The FMS button is one of nine quick-access buttons next to the keyboard that provide a shortcut to various functions.

The FMS function is where planning starts and, for simplic-ity, offers two pages: “plan” and “fly.” Planning matches the ATC clearance sequence to make the process more intuitive.

To enter data–for example, the origin airport–you first type the ID using the keyboard. The selected airport (in this case

KICT) doesn’t automatically populate the “Orig” field, even though that field is highlighted. The typed characters show up in the bottom left side of the work-ing window on the MFD, in a scratchpad area. Once informa-tion is in that scratchpad, you can put it in any allowed field. To insert the scratchpad “KICT” into the “Orig” field, touch that field on the display, and a small window pops up, asking whether you would like to copy or paste. Paste is the default highlight, and when you touch the “paste” button, the desired data is pasted into the “Orig” field.

This is an interesting way to make sure the pilot is certain about the data being entered, and I found it didn’t take long to get

used to this philosophy. “It’s what you’re used to with a normal com-puter system,” said Palmer.

After entering the ori-gin airport, estimated time of departure, cruise altitude and destination, you can flesh out the flight plan by adding depar-ture and arrival procedures, waypoints, airways, transi-tions and approaches. The sys-tem walks the pilot through the process, and I found it simple to understand. Once the flight plan is done, touch the “Exec” (execute) button; the route is then effectively displayed on the moving map.

Touching the weight-and-balance button brings that page up, and we entered our 3,000-pound fuel load and the weight for one passenger. Takeoff weight was just 21 pounds shy of the 12,500-pound mtow for the King Air 250. Some of the Fusion weight and space savings come from eliminating the tra-ditional FMS and incorporat-ing those hardware and software elements inside the touchscreen displays. The basic operating weight of the Pro Line 21 King Air 250, including one pilot, is 8,760 pounds, and with the full fuel load of 3,645 pounds that airplane has a payload of just 185 pounds. The Pro Line Fusion system weighs about 75 pounds less than the Pro Line

21 system, which will add some much needed full-fuel payload to the King Air 250.

After entering a few items on the displays, I soon came to appreciate the different ways of navigating around the big screens. Touch anywhere, and if there is something there that can be changed, a menu of options will pop up. If you’re not sure what items are touchable, just touch anywhere in the middle of the display, and everything that can be modified by touch will be highlighted in gray. Setting V speeds simply requires touching the bottom of the airspeed tape. Tapping any waypoint will offer, among other options, the avail-ability of setting up a custom hold (if a published hold isn’t already there).

If for some reason you don’t want to reach out and touch a screen, moving around the

screens or data fields is easy to do with one of two cursor control panels near the key-board. The cursor knobs tilt to move a cross-shaped cursor on the displays, or you can even tab the cursor by twisting the outer knob. The inner knob is for character-by-character data entry and for scrolling menus up and down. Pushing the inner knob is the “enter” or “click” button. An unusual button on the cursor panel is an “esc” key, something I haven’t seen on any airplane but that is familiar to any computer user. The “esc” key simply “allows you to cancel an in-process edit, close a pop-up dialogue box or move the cur-sor back one level,” according to Rockwell Collins.

Tuning radios can be done in different ways. One is to use the tuning knob on the cursor control panel, which has the standard outer-knob MHz and inner-knob KHz convention and push/swap to toggle between pri-mary and standby frequencies. Or there is a handy “Qiktune” button: to enter a frequency, type it into the scratchpad, then push the Qiktune button to enter it into the standby frequency field for whichever radio is selected on the audio panel. Changing a transponder code is simple: typ-ing in the four-digit code and hitting Qiktune enters the code (after first switching the tran-sponder on if it isn’t already running). If ATC asks for a code and ident, you simply type in the code then the “I” and hit Qik-tune. “It’s that easy,” said Palmer.

Flying Fusion TouchWe set up the flight plan for

departure from and return to Wichita’s newly renamed Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport with an initial climb to 5,000 feet. Rotation speed and V1 were 102 knots and V2 107, easily set up by touching the speed tape and entering the numbers. While set-ting the altimeter on either the pilot’s or copilot’s PFD sets both, you still have to dial in the baro setting for the L-3 GH3900 standby instrument mounted at the top of the glareshield, which is where one of the old CAS pan-els used to be located.

CAS messages are inhib-ited until the aircraft reaches 60 knots, so only red warning mes-sages will illuminate until reach-ing 400 feet. A new feature is an audio callout for engine prob-lems, Palmer added, “which it didn’t have before because it had the old annunciator panels. If something goes wrong with the left engine, it’ll say ‘left engine’ or ‘right engine.’”

After taking off, we climbed at 160 kias, eventually leveling off at 8,500 feet west of Wich-ita. Palmer pointed out some features of the avionics as we flew, such as the ease of touch-ing a waypoint then selecting the “direct to” button followed by the “nav” button on the auto-pilot. “You see how there are no more buried CDU pages,” he said. “We didn’t even have to go to these quick-access buttons or bring up any menus.”

This King Air 250 is equipped with Sirius XM weather, and while XM weather images can be over-laid on the moving map, they can’t share the space with the onboard Rockwell Collins turbulence-detection radar. However, it’s

The front office of Textron Aviation’s Beechcraft King Air series has taken a giant step forward, and it’s the pilots’ fingers that are doing the walking.Touchscreen technology from Rockwell Collins’s Pro Line Fusion will add value to the already stalwart line of twin turboprops.

Continued on page 12 u

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easy to run XM Nexrad images on the MFD and the radar on the PFD–useful for comparing the strategic (XM) and tactical (radar) views. For a long-range look at the XM picture at a greater distance, you can either range the map out or slide the map around with a finger on the display. When finished evaluat-ing the Nexrad picture, just push the “center map” button to return to the airplane-centered view.

Palmer selected some nearby special-use airspace overlays then showed how touching them pulls up applicable infor-mation. A lot of customization is available, including display of high or low airways and VORs, waypoints, altitude lim-its at waypoints and so on. “I don’t have to go head-down,” he said. “It’s all head-up; situ-ational awareness is perfect for the pilot to see the information.”

Although the touchscreens don’t allow rubber-banding a new waypoint as on an iPad flight planner, touching any existing waypoint brings up a menu of options for that waypoint. Or you can simply move the cursor to anyplace and go directly to that new user-created waypoint. When airways are visible, you can place the cursor at any point on the air-way and Fusion will draw a route to join the airway there. “Look at all the stuff you just did,” Palmer said, “and you didn’t have to go to the legs list [on an FMS]. It’s all easy to understand.”

Holds are similarly simple. Pressing on a waypoint offers holds as an option. If ATC asks for a present-position hold, just press the airplane symbol on the map and holding at that position is an option too. For a hold in a specific direction and non-standard turns, just type in the inbound course, slash and “L” for left turns (for example: 234/L), touch the correct field on the display and then “execute.”

With the destination airport set in the flight plan, Pro Line Fusion offers a simple visual way

to select an approach. By dialing the range below 50 nm, feathers for the available approaches grow on the destination airport. It’s not necessary to dial the range down further, because touching any of the feathers selects that approach. Where there are parallel runways, as is the case at Wichita, it doesn’t matter where you touch the feath-ers on the screen. Just touch both feathers, even if they are close together, and the display shows both approaches. In this case, we selected the ILS 1R with vectors, then touched the “execute” but-ton, and that’s it. All we had to do was select the approach button on the autopilot, then after we inter-cepted the final approach course, Fusion automatically switched from FMS guidance to the ILS.

Even simpler, once we reached 31 nm from the desti-nation, Fusion painted a cyan final course line and automat-ically tuned the ILS frequency.

Before we turned back toward Wichita, we ran into some mod-erate chop, and I tested the func-tionality of the touchscreens in turbulence. The displays’ four edges are beveled to provide a steady, grippable surface. I was able to plant my finger where needed to actuate the touchscreens in the moderate chop. “When it’s really rough,” Palmer said, “it’s probably better just to [use the cur-sor and knobs], but it’s not bad.”

We set up the windows the way Palmer prefers, with a full-window synthetic-vision view on the PFD and the moving map and approach chart on the MFD. I experimented with plac-ing the chart on a half-screen on the PFD, and this would proba-bly be my preferred view. Other options include checklists, traf-fic on the TCAS, flight plan and so on. “Some guys like four windows,” he said, “but to me that’s just too much. This sys-tem’s got a lot of different ways of doing things. At first it seems to make it a little complicated, but once you learn the system, you have that freedom to do dif-ferent things.”

As we descended and turned toward the final approach course, the Rockwell Collins white dome on the synthetic-vision display

showed us exactly where to look for the airport. Emanating from the dome, the cyan final course line was now right ahead, just where it should be and giving us a satisfying sense of situational awareness confirmation. “We see the airport out there,” Palmer said, “we see the extended course line; you couldn’t get better situ-ational awareness.”

At 11 miles from the final approach fix, ATC cleared us for the ILS 1R approach, and we set the heading bug then pushed the approach button on the autopi-lot. I watched as the FMS auto-matically switched to the ILS for guidance. As we got closer to the runway, the white dome gradu-ally turned opaque, then the syn-thetic vision filled in the details of the runway.

The wind was blowing across the runway from the northwest, and it was still a little bumpy down low as the King Air crabbed along the final approach course. I switched off the autopilot to get more used to the King Air’s han-dling before the landing and fol-lowed the flight director along the ILS. As we crossed the outer marker, the marker beacon flashed next to the top of the glideslope indicator on the PFD.

Slowing to the 99-knot ref speed as the runway slid under the nose, I eased off the power. Palmer made sure I kept the nose down toward the run-way–I tend to want to flare too much when I fly larger air-planes–then he helped me touch down smoothly on the mains as I pulled the power levers briefly into reverse.

While I was looking out the window during the landing, I could see that the synthetic vision view perfectly matched the outside view. Fusion auto-matically pulled up the taxi dia-gram after we slowed.

Touchscreen ImpressionsUsing the Pro Line Fusion

touchscreens is natural and uncomplicated. Contrary to one caveat on using the technology in larger aircraft, I never felt like I was sitting too far to reach the displays, and even during some moderate chop I could activate everything on the displays or use the hardware cursor, knobs and buttons with no trouble.

With Pro Line Fusion, Rockwell Collins has cracked the code for big touchscreen displays in business aircraft, and once more pilots get used to Pro Line Fusion touchscreens, I’m betting that more aircraft man-ufacturers are going to seek this kind of technology to keep their customers happy. o

Classic line modernized, but prices stay the same

Now that Textron has owned Beechcraft for more than a year, Textron Aviation is mov-ing ahead rapidly with product improvements, the most recent a significant upgrade from the existing Rockwell Collins Pro Line 21 flight deck to the Pro Line Fusion touchscreen avi-onics in the King Air 350i, 250 and C90GTx turboprops. The Fusion cockpit can be seen here at the EBACE static display in a King Air 250. (See accompany-ing flight report.)

Patrick Buckles, Textron Avi-ation King Air business leader, said the system is fully mandate-ready with ADS-B out, WAAS/LPV and TCAS7.1. “With all this,” Buckles said, the list price of the three King Air models “will stay the same.”

The first to be delivered with the new touchscreen avionics will be the King Air 250 in the third quarter, followed by the 350i in the fourth quarter and the C90GTx in next year’s first quarter. Landmark Aviation’s Winston-Salem, North Carolina facility is working with Rockwell Collins to STC the King Air 350 Pro Line II to Fusion upgrade and will offer similar packages for other King Airs with Pro Line II avionics. The retrofits for more modern Pro Line 21-equipped Kings Airs will be offered by Textron Aviation service centers.

According to Buckles, Tex-tron Aviation did consider Garmin avionics for the King Air modernization. “We talked with 250 of our King Air customers,” he said, “and really understood what they want to see in the cockpit, what kind of missions the King Air is used for. In this case Fusion was the system that best met their requirements.”

Cabin ImprovementsTextron Aviation also

announced electronic window shades that dim more quickly and

will be standard on all three King Air models (not just the 350i, as was previously the case). The new shades have five settings, thanks to a built-in controller. When the aircraft is parked on the ramp, the shades will automatically go to the darkest setting to keep the cabin cool and protect the inte-rior from UV damage.

On the 350i and 250, Gogo Business Aviation’s air-to-ground Internet Wi-Fi system is now standard; it is optional on the C90GTx. Gogo Text & Talk, which allows passengers to use their own smartphones, will be an option on all three models, for U.S.-based customers ini-tially and then elsewhere.

The Rockwell Collins Venue cabin management system is no longer available on the King Air

350i. Across all the King Airs, “we felt that providing Wi-Fi as stan-dard equipment was more what our passengers were looking for,” Buckles explained. “The major-ity of them are bringing their own audio and video on their device. We’ve gone to just Gogo Wi-Fi and passengers’ iOS devices.”

Textron has built exper-tise in additive manufacturing. Glareshields for new Pro Line Fusion-equipped King Airs are made with 3-D printing.

Textron Aviation will continue investing in the King Air line, according to Christi Tannahill, senior vice president for turbo-prop aircraft. “We spend a lot of time in the field understanding customer requirements and how we continue to support them,” she said. “This has been one of our biggest investment years over the past five years and now, as Textron Aviation, we have the engineering support to do that.”

As for plans to bring a high-performance turboprop single to market, she said, “We’re talk-ing with our customers, and we see that there’s a requirement for that. Stay tuned.” –M.T.

The versatility of Rockwell Collins’s Pro Line Vision touchscreen system allows simple, head-up control of many functions, not just flight planning and navigation chores.

The King Air line from Textron Aviation’s Beechcraft family is receiving an infusion of new 21st century technology, but the company is hinting at more innovation to come.


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Future comes to King Air paneluContinued from page 10

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Universal, Rockwell Collins team up on an ADS-B suiteby Charles Alcock

In partnership with Rockwell Collins, Universal Avionics is offer-ing operators a new integrated

package to comply with the man-date for automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B).

Here at the EBACE show, the companies announced an incen-tive program that allows them to combine the Rockwell Collins TDR-94(D) Mode S transpon-der with the Universal Avion-ics SBAS-FMS (Satellite-based Augmentation System-Flight Management System).

The SBAS-FMS is an approved Arinc 743A position

source, meeting the requirement for ADS-B out compliance. It interfaces with ADS-B transpon-ders. “The biggest value of this package is that operators receive a new, integrated SBAS-FMS,” said Carey Miller, Universal Avionics’s business development manager. “While providing ADS-B out compliance, our solution also provides a path to

future technologies and man-dates such as LPV [Localizer Per-formance with Vertical guidance] and Link 2000+. Other solutions only address ADS-B out.”

In promoting the limited-time offer, Universal Avionics (Booth Z108) pointed out that European operators also need to consider the requirements of Europe’s new Data Link Services Imple-menting Rule (DLS-IR). This will reduce the number of air-craft exempt from data link man-dates, although the final list of exemptions has yet to be agreed.

According to the company, some 4,000 business aircraft will need updated ADS-B and Link 2000+ equipment by 2020. With no more than around 40 avionics shops qualified to do the work across the continent, it believes there could be an installation bottleneck if operators do not act soon. In addition to meet-ing mandates, the new equip-ment also promises improved safety and fuel economy.

For a more affordable com-pliance solution, operators with legacy Universal Avionics FMS equipment may be able to keep their control display unit and install a SBAS navigation com-puter unit with antenna and the Rockwell Collins TDR-94(D) Mode S transponder. For new cus-tomers, Universal Avionics is offer-ing an upgrade incentive program valid for the rest of 2015 allowing them to trade in their legacy FMS or GPS systems for new units.

Operators with aircraft equipped with SBAS-FMS will also benefit from Performance Based Navigation (PBN), larger database memory, dependable data and reliable subscription service, and access to more than 3,972 APV (LPV) approaches worldwide. Eurocontrol has indicated that after ADS-B and Link 2000+ implementation, it will be increasing the use of SBAS approaches.

Universal Avionics also is offering an upgrade incentive



Universal is offering an incentive to install its UniLink UL-800/80, Communications Management Unit (left) in tandem with its SBAS Flight Management System.

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InSight Integrated panel now has Jeppesen databaseby Charles Alcock

Universal Avionics’s new InSight Integrated Flight Deck has become the first to use Jeppesen’s

Airport Mapping Database (AMDB), which provides timely and accurate information about

airports worldwide. According to the companies, the combina-tion improves both the efficiency of flight deck operations and safety through improved situa-tional awareness.

The InSight Integrated Flight Deck’s synthetic vision system (SVS) uses the AMDB data to render accurate, high-resolution diagrams. These show runways

with actual markings, taxiways, parking areas, buildings and other obstructions, such as con-struction areas, as well as sur-face roads. The technology is intended to complement surface navigation systems.

“We are proud to have partnered with Jeppesen to be the first to bring this exceptional tech-nology to the business aviation

market,” said Dan Reida, Univer-sal Avionics’s sales and marketing vice president. “The realistic dis-play of the airport environment is truly unparalleled.”

The InSight display system is designed as an integrated flight deck package, featuring an embedded SVS with advanced mapping capability, electronic charts, radio control, broadcast weather support and graphical flight planning. The new system is already flying on Universal Avionics’s Cessna Citation VII, and the company (Booth Z108) expects to have a supplemental type certificate for retrofits in the fourth quarter of 2015.

MD Helicopters is the launch forward-fit customer for InSight. The flight deck will be standard equipment on its Next Genera-tion MD Explorer rotorcraft. o


program for operators to install its UniLink UL-800/801 Com-munications Management Unit. The equipment supports compli-ance with Link 2000+/controller-pilot data link communications (CPDLC) requirements.

The offer to trade in existing data link systems is available to operators regardless of whether or not their current equipment was supplied by the Tucson, Arizona-based manufacturer. As well as CPDLC capabilities, the UniLink UL-800/801 CMU also provides embedded auto-matic dependent surveillance-contract (ADS-C) capability, as well as ACARS/CMU function-ality, uplink forecast winds and flight information services. o

Universal, Rockwell CollinsuContinued from page 14

Universal Avionics’s InSight Integrated Flight Deck now features Jeppesen’s Airport Mapping Database (AMDB).

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Despite a rocky start to 2015, industry officials believe that the business aviation mar-ket remains on track to slowly improve this year in Europe.

The year began with pock-ets of momentum, with the number of flights increasing in Western Europe and business jet deliveries turning around after a plunge in 2013. “Market activity stabilized last year, and would have recovered, had it not been for the Ukraine/Russia effect,” said Richard Koe, man-aging director of business avia-tion market research specialist WingX Advance.

WingX reported flight opera-tions in Western Europe picked up 3 percent in 2014. Europe-wide, flight operations were down on the year 0.5 percent, but that reflected the drop from the Ukraine and Russia.

The European market share of business jet shipments, meanwhile, had an unexpected turnaround last year following the drop in 2013, according to Jens Hennig, vice president of operations for the General Avi-ation Manufacturers Associa-tion. On ly 15.6 percent of 2013 business jet shipments went to Europe, the lowest level since GAMA began tracking the re-gional data in 2007. This was down from 26.3 percent just five years earlier. But in 2014, busi-ness jet shipments in Europe turned up, accounting for 19.5 percent of the global deliveries.

Honeywell also found a rebound in purchase expec-tations last year as it sur-veyed operators for its 2014 Business Aviation Outlook. Honeywell noted expectations had returned to levels from before the market stumbled in 2013. “European operators are still contending with sluggish growth and increased politi-cal tensions. Within the current

setting, the buoyancy of opera-tor attitudes is surprising,” the company had reported.

The Ukraine EffectDespite the positive indica-

tors in 2014, the market took another turn in the first cou-ple of months of this year. Operations dropped by about 5 percent in the first quarter. The conflict in the Ukraine took an increasing toll on business avia-tion operations in the early part of the year as well. “Combined with the uncertainty of Europe’s fragile economic recovery, flight activity in Western Europe has also been dragged back, especially in Germany and France,” Koe said.

European Business Aviation Association CEO Fabio Gamba said business aviation officials had anticipated a stronger first few months. “We were surprised to see January and February fall,” he said.

The turn in the early months may cause EBAA to slightly revise its outlook for the year, but Gamba said he believes enough indicators support optimism for growth in the market this year, even if it will be at low levels.

While turmoil and economic uncertainty in countries such as Ukraine and Greece play a role in operations, he noted they are relatively small contributors to the overall business aviation market in Europe.

“The forecast is still posi-tive because…the economy is going in the right direction.” This is particularly true in the southern economies, such as Spain, Portugal and Italy. Gamba also sees lower fuel prices helping to spur activity and encourage growth.

Hennig agreed. “Is there cause for alarm? No, not neces-sarily. Business aviation tends to closely follow the economy and

the degree of confidence in the economy,” he added.

Koe shared this view. “The Ukraine/Russia market is not going to recover any time soon but probably doesn’t have that much further to fall,” he said. “Meanwhile, barring further external crises, such as Grexit [Greece exit from the Eurozone] or escalation of the stand-off with Russia, the EU econo-my’s weak cyclical recovery will be supported by low oil and cheap money, and its acceler-ation should begin to catalyze investment in and use of busi-ness jets.” Further, operations have remained up in the first few months in the United Kingdom, by about 3 percent, he added.

Both Koe and Gamba had predicted a slight recovery of just less than 1 percent in 2015. This recovery is being driven by gains in corporate and pri-vate flying, Koe said. “In the U.S., the market’s recovery

was heralded by a much stron-ger recovery in charter, which has percolated through to frac-tional and now full ownership [private operations],” he said. “But in Europe we don’t expect much upside in charter, at least at the aggregate level.” The cus-tomers that are returning more likely are the big corporations and high-net-worth individuals.

Shifting MarketThis points to a shift in the

business aviation market, Gamba said. “We see non-commercial operations growing little by lit-tle.” Commercial business air-craft operations once accounted for two-thirds of all operations. But as Europe has recovered from the downturn, that has shrunk to about 60 percent.

But like in the U.S., new air-craft delivery growth is first oc-curring with the large, long-haul aircraft, Koe said. “Through-out the recession there has been growth in ‘ultra-long-range’ jets, with increased activity reflect-ing increased ownership,” Koe said. “This trend will continue, with no shortage of aircraft in production attracting custom-ers to this market.” He cited the Gulfstream G550 and G650 competing against Bombardier’s Global lines and new Dassault Falcon family as examples.

Gamba noted the increas-ing globalization of Europe-an businesses. European com-panies are looking to buy aircraft to fly to regions out-side of Europe, he said. This is beginning to show up in op-erational data, Gamba add-ed, noting that in recent years the average length of a flight has increased and the number

of long-haul flights has trend-ed upwards.

At the same time, the used market continues to put a damper on new light to midsize aircraft sales. “The still-down-ward direction of pricing in the pre-owned market will give very little stimulus to the heavy-mid/mid/light jet segments, where there are clearly too many new models competing for a diminished appetite for new air-craft,” Koe said. Customers of midsize and smaller aircraft will instead lean toward the “fan-tastically low” prices of the rel-atively young used aircraft available, he said.

Also feeling the effects of a slower market turnaround are turboprops. The European mar-ket share of turboprop deliver-ies fell from 21.9 percent in 2008 to just 7.7 percent last year. “The shrinkage in the turboprop market share for Europe has also been consistently occurring in each year at a rate of 1-2 per-centage points,” Hennig said. He noted that the turboprop market may see some benefit from the upcoming rule to per-mit commercial single-engine turbine operations in IMC, but he believes that the European economies will be the underly-ing driver of growth in the tur-boprop sector, as well as in the lighter business jet segments.

Industry leaders remain cau-tious, however, knowing the mar-ket faces other pitfalls beyond macro-political and economic forces. Gamba pointed to other factors, including access to ground and air infrastructure, shortage of skilled business aviation workers and both government and public perception of the industry. o

European business aviation cleared for a slow climbby Kerry Lynch

PALEXPO PANORAMA

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of get-togethers such as EBACE. With the state of business aviation so deeply affected by world events–especially European business aviation–it’s critical for the industry to meet in a face-to-face setting to address the good and the bad issues of the day. After all, the entire business case for business aviation is to “be there” to gain the full experience necessary for complete situational awareness.

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API winglets standard on new BBJs by Kerry Lynch

Boeing Business Jets has agreed to offer the newly-certified Aviation Partners, Inc. (API) Split Scimitar Winglets as standard equipment aboard the BBJ. API secured U.S. FAA certification of

the Split-Scimitar design on the BBJ on April 21 and anticipates European Aviation Safety Agen-cy approval shortly.

Certification followed a flight-test program lasting almost

four months using a BBJ that had the winglets added at PATS Aircraft Systems in Georgetown. The winglets in-clude a Scimitar-tipped ven-tral strake along with the

existing blended winglet. The design reduces drag, increas-ing payload and/or range. On long-range flights, range improves by about two per-cent over the current Blended Winglet configuration.

“The upgrade will essentially give a BBJ with seven [auxil-iary] tanks the range of an eight aux tank airplane,” said Gary

Dunn, API vice president of sales and marketing.

Beyond the performance improvements, Boeing Business Jets president David Longridge said two reasons drove the deci-sion to make them standard on the BBJ. “One, API’s track record is unparalleled. Also, a num-ber of airlines have bought these winglets. That’s the acid test.”

“Huge Interest”API has received approval on

the 737-700, -800 and -900 series over the past three years and already has accrued an order book for installation on 1,700 aircraft, about 500 of which have already been upgraded. API chairman and CEO Joe Clarke estimated a market for 5,000 of the winglets.

“We are already seeing huge interest in the Split Scimitar Winglets from the BBJ commu-nity,” said Dunn.

The original BBJ is the last of the current BBJ family to receive certification with the new winglets, approval for the BBJ 2 and BBJ 3 coming ear-lier with the certification of the Boeing 737-800 and -900 series.

For new airplanes, the winglets will be installed at PATS, where auxiliary tanks are added to the BBJ already. The winglets can be retrofitted on the fleet at approved installation facilities.

The retrofit builds on the existing blended winglet, which involves beefing up the inter-nal structure, adding the ven-tral strake and replacing the aluminum winglet tip caps with Scimitar tip caps.

The use of the existing winglet structure reduces costs, Clarke said, noting the retrofit will cost between $550,000-$575,000. With out existing winglets the cost would be almost double that. The retrofit takes about four days, he said.

The first in-service BBJ equipped with the winglets is on display here in the EBACE static park. o


Boeing Business Jets displays its BBJ demonstrator with newly certified API Split Scimitar Winglets here at EBACE.

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A new chapter has opened: on May 11th, 2015 the first PC-24 completed successfully its

first flight that lasted 55 minutes. This first flight marks the beginning of a test campaign

totaling around 2,300 flight hours. The rigorous flight testing will lead to the certification,

prior to entry into service in the first half of 2017.

Pilatus Aircraft Ltd • Switzerland • Phone +41 41 619 61 11 • www.pilatus-aircraft.com

PC-24 MAIDEN FLIGHT ACCOMPLISHED

PC-24_Stans_First Flight_199x264_110515.indd 2 11/05/15 18:25

www.ainonline.com • May 19, 2015 • EBACE Convention News 21

Nexus opens office in Vienna, expands European support opsby Charles Alcock

Nexus last month opened a new flight operations support center in the Austrian capital Vienna. The facility is the group’s second European support center, with the first being run through a Monaco-based joint venture started with French air trans-port logistics group FlyTrans in 2012.

The Vienna center has five staff pro-viding a variety of operational support services, including overseeing move-ments and handling arrangements at particular airports within Europe. The team has experience of airport station and operational management, as well as aircraft finance and marketing.

With a particular focus on supporting clients in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as in Russia, the Nexus team will also support aircraft management oper-ations and provide concierge services. Beyond Europe, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia-based Nexus also has operational sup-port centers in India (Mumbai), Rwanda (Kigali), Hong Kong, Shanghai, Bahrain and the U.S.

“The experience and knowledge of our newest European office team, as well

as the expansion we offer to the business and corporate aviation market, increases our commitment of offering exceptional support services in line with our Nexus vision and values,” said Nexus president and CEO Abdullah Al-Sayed.

At last month’s ABACE show in Shanghai, Nexus signed a memoran-dum of understanding with Asian Sky Group (ASG) to work together on plans including the formation of a joint ven-ture company to provide flight opera-tions services in the Asia Pacific region. Initially, a flight operations center will be created in Hong Kong with ASG obtain-ing the necessary approvals, providing infrastructure, human resources and manpower. Nexus will provide “tech-nical expertise, IT solutions, systems, quality control, its global network, inter-national partnership, international cer-tifications, relationships and resources,” said the companies in a joint statement.

Last year’s acquisition of aviation risk-management and safety audit pro-vider Wyvern Consulting (Booth W101) marked the latest chapter in the expansion

of Nexus. U.S.-based Wyvern became part of Nexus Services America follow-ing an acquisition from online charter portal Avinode. Its Wyvern Wingman and Wyvern Registered audits now are being promoted by Nexus.

The company also has partnerships with training provider FlightSafety International, security specialist FAM International and consultants MAZ Aviation Group. Last year, through its alli-ance with FlightSafety, it signed a contract with South Korea’s Aquila International through which it will train Korean flight dispatchers in Saudi Arabia. It has also been training staff from Nigeria.

In 2014, the Nexus flight operations center moved into a new high technology headquarters in Jeddah, and introduced a new flight dispatch system. The flight

operations center includes four core teams: the service excellence team, which is the main interface with clients; scheduling and planning; flight support; and dispatch.

The Nexus office in Rwanda has been operational since early 2014, provid-ing support across Africa. Working with local partner Crystal Venture Limited, it supports flights throughout Africa and also provides flight dispatch training for local operators.

According to Al-Sayed, in 2014 Nexus grew at around 24 percent in the volume of flight activity it supports worldwide. The growth rate for Saudi Arabia alone is more like 40 percent. The Nexus group also includes interiors specialist GDC Technics (Booth X089), now expanding with a new 840,000-sq-ft headquarters at Alliance Airport, Fort Worth, Texas. o

Business aviation support specialist Nexus has added a new flight operations center in Vienna. It joins a Monaco facility founded in 2012 as a joint venture with logistics specialist FlyTrans to support bizav in Europe.

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Meridian moving west; expanding at Teterboroby Charles Alcock

U.S. business aviation ser-vices group Meridian is about to start construction of a new FBO at Hayward Executive Airport in northern California. The first phase of the project, which is due to be complete by the end of 2016, will include a 30,000-sq-ft hangar and a

6,300-sq-ft terminal building.Hayward is situated on the

southeast side of San Francisco Bay with convenient access to San Francisco itself, and also to the cities of San Jose and Oakland. With a 5,694-foot (1,735-meter) main runway, the airport (KHWD) can accept

most large business jets, and it is not restricted by any opera-tional curfews. The new facility is being built by specialist FBO construction group Tectonic.

“We see a lot of growth potential in the Bay Area,” commented Steve Chandoha, president of Meridian’s New York-area FBO at Teterboro. “With its prime location, we expect our new facility will be popular with both managed aircraft clients as well as with time- and cost-sensitive tran-sient aircraft. We currently have one charter aircraft based at

Hayward and Greg Johnson, our director of business devel-opment on the West Coast, is working to add several more.”

Meridian (Booth O104) currently operates a charter/management fleet of 48 air-craft, ranging in size from a Cessna Citation Mustang to a Boeing Business Jet. The operator has been audited to IS-BAO Stage 2 level and also holds Wyvern Wingman and ARGUS International Plati-num ratings. Since the start of 2015, it has added a Bom-bardier Challenger 605 and

a Dassault Falcon 2000EX EASy to the managed fleet.

Meanwhile, at Teterboro, the company is planning to replace its existing Hangar 12 with a new 40,000-sq-ft struc-ture. The new two-story build-ing is about twice the size of the existing hangar and will include office space and more room for the maintenance team that sup-ports Meridian’s fleet. Mov-ing some maintenance activity to the new hangar will free up space for supporting transient aircraft in the company’s other Teterboro hangar.

Construction work is expect-ed to be complete by December 2016. The company is aim-ing to minimize disruption to its operations.

Meridian’s maintenance oper-ation holds FAA and EASA Part 145 approvals. It is an authorized service center for Honeywell’s TFE731 engines and for its -36 series auxiliary power unit, as well as serving as a parts depot for Honeywell avionics and mechanical spares. The facility is also an approved warranty repair center for Bombardier air-craft and houses a mobile sup-port crew for the airframer. o

Stratajet adds new twist to online charter bookingby Charles Alcock & Ian Sheppard

Charter booking site Strata-jet.com (Booth UO63) is pre-paring for a full commercial launch this summer after secur-ing $5 million in fresh invest-ment from an undisclosed backer–which Stratajet says has led to the company being val-ued at $25 million.

In April, the UK-based com-pany embarked on a market-ing roadshow called Operation Longreach that used a Piper Chieftan to visit 145 airports across Europe in a bid to more than double the size of the group of 12 operators it currently

has beta-testing the system by launch time.

Stratajet has been in devel-opment for the past four years while founder Jonathan Nicol (a former RAF Tornado and Army Apache pilot) and his team refined the algorithm that he says delivers the charter indus-try’s only 100 percent accurate, real-time charter booking sys-tem for consumers. Essentially, the system is intended to calcu-late the true cost of an empty leg by working out the net difference in cost of the requested new trip and any empty leg involved.

“This means that the con-sumer pays less and the operator makes a greater profit margin,” Nicol told AIN. “For instance, if an aircraft finishes a flight in Madrid at noon on Monday and it is needed back in Lon-don on Thursday, the system can calculate the true cost of a flight out of Barcelona between these days. If the second flight isn’t on the same day [as the arrival in Madrid] it will cal-culate costs such as overnight expenses for the crew and air-craft parking charges.”

Stratajet employs a London-based research team to ensure that the system includes up-to-date information on all relevant costs, such as airport landing and parking fees. At a briefing at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London late last month, head of

Stratajet director of marketing Olivia Scarlett, above. The London-based

company recently added 14 staff members. Founder Jonathan Nicol,

right, has ambitions of placing his empty charter legs alongside airline listings on

travel-booking sites such as Kayak.

Meridian is building a new FBO at Hayward Executive Airport in California. At the same time it is expanding its existing Teterboro facility with the addition of an enlarged hangar.

Meridian has a long history of service at New York City-area Teterboro Airport, and its modern-architecture passenger terminal provides an exciting view of the skyline.


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Maine ‘tech-stop’ field lures U.S.-bound trafficby Curt Epstein

For many corporate aircraft heading west from Europe, their first glimpse of the U.S. isn’t the spires of New York City, but the shores of Maine. Bangor Aviation Services, the munici-pally-owned and operated FBO at Bangor International Air-port, the closest U.S. airport to Europe, sees upwards of 400 private flights each month from business jets crossing the Atlan-tic. While Maine is lacking in neither scenic beauty nor New England charm, that isn’t what draws the flocks of private trav-elers. “We’re a tech stop,” said Kevin Kipler, the airport’s ramp service manager. “That’s what we’re known for in the business, and aircraft primarily come here to clear customs, to get their fuel, get serviced and get out of here.”

As part of its quick-turn fame, U.S. Customs and Immigration is available 24 hours a day at the airport’s customs office. While the passengers are being processed through customs, their aircraft is simultaneously being serviced outside. “If their final destination is maybe New York, they may have to wait two hours [there] before they see customs,” noted Kipler. “Here they are going to see it and be gone in 30 minutes.” Due to its customs service and 11,440-ft runway, the airport also receives between 100 and 200 transatlantic diversions a year, for a variety of reasons including medical emer-gencies, mechanical problems, low fuel, or security issues.

The airport-owned FBO, which operates 24 hours a day,

is somewhat unusual. Except for two dedicated customer ser-vice representatives, it shares its 22-person staff with the airport. “The people that work out of the FBO aren’t strictly just FBO employees,” Kipler told AIN. “In the course of a day they could fuel a [Cessna] 152, do a lav on a CRJ700, and then help with an air start on the Antonov 224.” His NATA Safety 1st-trained staff performs fueling for all air-craft at the airport, with six Jet A tankers ranging from 10,000 gallons down to 3,000 gallons, plus hydrant carts that can fuel jetliner-class airplanes directly from pipes connected to the 3-million-gallon fuel farm. All told, on the general aviation side alone, Kipler estimates the air-port pumps more than a million gallons of fuel a year.

As far as aircraft services go, the FBO can provide lav, water and international trash disposal, along with oxygen and nitro-gen service. Given its Northeast location, winters can be severe, so Type I and Type IV deicing is available with optional forced air, from a trio of trucks. Given its ownership by the airport, the FBO is in little danger of run-ning out of aircraft parking space, with more than 20 acres of ramp area available.

The airport recently concluded a $5 million construction project to redo more than 17 acres of tar-mac, including strengthening the apron near the FBO to accom-modate bizliner-size aircraft such as the BBJ or ACJ.

Bangor International has FAA/EASA-certified techni-cians on call around the clock to perform light maintenance or liaison with OEM authorized service centers in a diagnostic function in case of more serious private aircraft repairs.

In light of the epic winter the New England region just endured, which saw record snowfall amounts, the airport is showcasing its snow-removal

capabilities and its all-weather reliability. Visitors to its booth (DO65) will be asked to guess how many cubic feet of snow were removed from its runway this past winter. Those whose guesses fall within a given range will be entered into a drawing for a $350 gift card for L.L. Bean, one of America’s most famous retailers–espe-cially when it comes to foul-weather gear. o

��

Equiom experts deepening ranksFiduciary services and

asset ownership specialist Equiom is back at the EBACE show (Booth A089) with an expanded team of aviation experts. Following the Isle of Man-based company’s recent appointment as manager of the Moore Stephens Trust Com-pany, it has added aviation spe-cialists Ayuk Ntuiabane and Grant Atchison to its ranks.

The group also has expanded its activities to other territories with the acquisition of Ardel Trust Company (Guernsey) Ltd and AFP Group in Hong Kong. These moves have given Equiom’s clients additional options for multi-jurisdictional registration

of aircraft. It also has offices in Malta and Jersey.

Equiom representatives here in Geneva this week also include VAT director Steve Cain and Edward Leigh. “I believe we offer an unrivalled level of aviation industry knowledge and expertise to our clients,” said Cain. The company has strong expertise in areas such as value added tax and customs regulations. Atchison addressed the Euro-pean Business Aviation Asso-

ciation’s International Aircraft Transactions Seminar yesterday to explain recent policy “clarifications” on aircraft importation and customs issues. –C.A.

marketing Olivia Scarlett said that the company had just taken on 14 new staff, and was in the process moving to new offices near London Victoria Station.

The system interfaces with flight operations software used by operators so that it takes account of true real-time avail-ability of the aircraft. The inte-gration of the flight operations software is achieved through the Stratafleet inventory man-agement software, which the company provides to oper-ators for free. It also offers StrataFBO software to allow FBOs to interface with the main website.

“With real-time pricing we can move business aviation away from being a niche sector and into mainline transporta-tion,” said Nicol, adding, “99.5 percent pricing accuracy just doesn’t cut it anymore.”

Stratajet’s goal is to have its charter availability posted along-side scheduled airline flights in leading travel-booking systems, such as Expedia and Kayak. Cus-tomers pay a five-percent com-mission on the price of flights booked either online or by phone.

According to Nicol, around 30 to 40 percent of empty leg flights are not being put to commercial use. Stratajet accepts operators only after personally checking the details of their air operator certificates and safety standards.

Scarlett added that the ulti-mate aim would be to go global with the system, but that the U.S. would be the next step–and transatlantic flights would be the proving ground for a global system. o


Stratajet adds new twist in bookingsuContinued from page 22

Equiom VAT director Steve Cain is here representing his company during EBACE.

Bangor (Maine) International Airport’s 11,440-ft runway is only one of the attractive features that U.S.-bound aircraft from Europe have grown to appreciate. Quick-turn fuel and expedited customs service make the airport a prime entryway to the New World.

AFRICAN CHARTER CLIENTS NOW HAVE A ‘SUPER 27’ OPTION

Swiss-based charter operator Vertis Aviation (Booth Q090) has added this upgraded Boeing 727 (known as the Super 27 VIP) to its African fleet. The 43-passenger aircraft is based at South Africa’s Lanseria International Airport, near its regional sales office in Johannesburg. The company also operates a new Bombardier Global 6000, a Learjet 45 and an AgustaWestland AW139 helicopter in Africa. Elsewhere, the Vertis fleet also includes a Gulfstream G650, three Airbus Corporate Jets, a Bombardier Global XRS and a Global Express, as well as a Dassault Falcon 7X. � –C.A.

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The ins and outs of flying to-and-from various geographical regions remains an ever-changing picture. Sessions here at EBACE address some of the issues involved in interna-tional operations, including the seminar on airport access this Wednesday morning. Earlier this spring in the U.S., the 42nd annual NBAA International Operators Conference (IOC) brought 565 pilots, flight-planning specialists and support professionals to San Antonio, Texas, to exchange experience and knowledge on the ever-changing rules and realities of international business aviation operations. The four-day conference (March 23-27) fea-tured more than 40 immersive presentations (all available online: www.nbaa.org/events/ioc/2015/presentations/#2015-03-23Tab) from highly experienced subject-matter experts.

This year organizers linked eight global regions via an imaginary around-the-world flight, originating and ending in San Antonio. The meandering route presented a spec-trum of destinations and airports on the flight plans of today’s international operators and highlighted the attendant challenges of such operations. The regional presentations examine necessary permits, vaccinations, operating rules for the route, and briefings on the airport conditions, facilities and services, security issues and more. As the presenta-tions underscored, while each region has its specific anomalies, lessons from one location are often universally applicable.

THE REGIONAL REVIEWS

Southeast Asia and PacificSoutheast Asia & Pacific, the region

traversed by the global route’s first leg–San Antonio (KSAT), Honolulu (PHNL), Port Moresby (AYPY), Jakarta (WIII), Manila (RPLL), supported by interna-tional planners Jetex Flight Support and BaseOps–quickly put attendees in their accustomed operating mode, combining both adventure and uncertainty.

Dustin Duke of Anadarko Petroleum, who flies extensively in Southeast Asia,

noted the recent typhoon that swept Van-uatu in Oceana is the type of event oper-ators need to consider, given the region’s limited infrastructure and administra-tive resources. Should Port Moresby be in a typhoon’s path, for example, “there’s not much hangar space, and if you need to leave in a hurry, permits take time, and local holidays [of which there are many] can increase permitting time.”

Rich Nath of World Fuel, parent com-pany of BaseOps, noted Indonesia has ramped up enforcement of its overflight permit requirement, recently scrambling Indonesian Air Force jets three times to

intercept aircraft entering its airspace without overflight permits. As of June 25 this year, all aircraft operating at or above FL290 in Indonesia’s airspace will require ADS-B. Similarly, as of last December 11, ADS-B is required throughout the Hong Kong FIR. The region’s airspace will likely see more regulation as part of “an effort to increase capacity in South China Sea airspace by reducing lateral separation between routes, and will be predicated on RNP [Required Navigation Performance] 4,” Nath said. “It’s several years away, but it’s almost inevitable.”

China, Russia and the “Stans”

China limits operators to two flight plan change requests for each flight, noted Joe Morgan, senior flight coordinator for Ivanhoe Capital, during the briefing on the route across China, Russia & the Stans–Manila (RPLL), Shanghai (ZSPD), Beijing (ZBAA), Novosibirsk, Russia (UNNT), Moscow (UUWW), Astana, Kazakhstan

(TSE). Any alteration of routing, destina-tion, day of operation or aircraft consti-tutes a change; alterations of departure time or passenger manifest do not. But since changes are virtually inevitable in interna-tional operations, Morgan suggested crews in China simply “hold on to the changes, and go from [request] one to four, instead of giving them two and three, as well.”

Sheng “Jimmy” Young, country man-ager for Universal Aviation, said “a third revision can be negotiated if you ask nicely.” Young reminded attendees Beijing Capital Airport has instituted a 48-hour time limit on business aircraft parking. The airport has sent “warning letters” to some international service provid-ers and operators that have exceeded the limit, Young said, though no enforcement action has been reported.

Russia, by comparison, takes a rela-tively laissez-faire approach, and operators are “welcome to change schedules, times and exit points and make technical stops in Russian territory, and the permit is still valid,” said Dimitry Konovalov, Universal Aviation, Eastern Russia. Russia aims to create a 72-hour visa-free window for tran-siting passengers at 10 airports. He noted that as “exchange rates are incredibly high, fuel and handling prices are down at least 30 percent” over the past year.

India and the Middle EastHeading south across the Himalayas to

the Subcontinent, operators face moun-tain weather, summer monsoons, poor infrastructure and low visibility, among the litany of challenges Mark McIntyre of Mente cheerfully described as he cov-ered India, first stop on the presenta-tion’s route from Russia to the Middle East–Astana (TSE), New Delhi (VIDP), Mumbai (VABB), Dubai (OMDB)–han-dled by Jeppesen.

Crews who arrive in India without approval from the controlling author-ity can’t use the “normal” minimums shown on approach charts, but must use

INTERNATIONALOPERATIONSNavigating a World of Changeby James Wynbrandt

While China has long shown great potential for business aviation, the Asia-Pacific region is well known among Western operators for its challenging conditions.

Women are now servicing jet fighters in the UAE.

Restricted AOM (Airport Oper-ating Minima), not shown on charts. “At the end of a long flight, you’re a little fatigued, your bandwidth is challenged by the controller, so have paper charts with the restricted numbers put in,” McIntyre recommended, adding, “We like to keep our eyes on the luggage, but in India that’s difficult. It’s an uncomfortable situation.” Do bring a tow bar (“They might not have one for your aircraft”) along with chocks and a ladder. Be familiar with converted meteorological visibil-ity standards and calculations.

Flight crews in Saudi Ara-bia must observe cultural norms

and prohibitions regarding dress codes, alcohol and relations between men and women, which apply to fellow crewmembers, as well. Fraternizing with the oppo-site sex in a hotel’s concierge lounge is permissible because it’s not considered a public place, unlike a hotel restaurant. If a female is on the flight deck, the panel’s consensus was to have a male crewmember handle communications with control-lers. McIntyre suggested female flight crewmembers don an abaya before deplaning, though a pilot attendee who’s been “liv-ing in the Kingdom for 25 years” said women needn’t cover their

faces, but should wear a garment that covers their arms down to their hands.

Africa From Dubai, the first leg of

the route featured in the Africa Regional Review–Dubai (OMDB); Nairobi, Kenya (HKJK); Johan-nesburg, South Africa (FALA); Abuja, Nigeria (DNAA); Dakar, Senegal (GOOY)–ended in Nai-robi. Steve Knouse, an interna-tional captain with John Deere Global Aviation, chose a loop-ing northerly route for his G550 that kept him away from Horn of Africa and Arabian Peninsula hot


INTERNATIONAL Equipment MandatesAt last March’s NBAA International Operators Conference, Shawn Scott of

Scott International Procedures discussed equipment. In his session on emerg-ing datalink technology and airspace integration, he said “errors in datalink-equipped aircraft are nearly on a par with non-datalink” aircraft, in a recent review of 22 weeks of incidents occurring in NATS (North Atlantic Track Sys-tem) airspace. Of 96 aircraft involved, 44 were Fans 1/A (ADS-C and CPDLC) equipped, and 52 were non-datalink equipped. The errors included six gross navigational errors, 38 vertical errors, 36 lateral deviations of less than 25 nm, and 26 ATC interventions to prevent lateral errors. The most common cause: pilots are flying the flight plan rather than the clearance. Use headsets when getting clearances, Scott advised. With NATS in the midst of phasing in reduced separation minimums, airspace is becoming unforgiving of poor decisions.

Approximately 75 percent of responding attendees fly Fans-equipped air-craft, according to an app poll at the conference.

Failure to equip will be costly for operators that ply the North Atlan-tic. Scott’s colleague Bill Smith said fuel burn is about 22.5 percent higher for an aircraft rerouted out of NATS because it lacks the proper equipment, while Carey Miller of Universal Avionics noted that aircraft relegated to routes at FL330 and FL340 because of equipage issues burn 10 percent more fuel than when flying at FL370 and FL380. Miller noted that in addition to proper equipment (updated FMS, CMU, annunciator cube for messages, aural alert capability and data-capable CVR, and Level D satcom system) for Fans, U.S.-registered operators need an LOA from the FAA. In 2013 the FAA processed seven Fans LOAs; last year it received 107, and “we expect about 3,000 appli-cations” this year, he said.

Meanwhile, in the rush to move toward the paperless cockpit, Mitch Launius of Air Training International was among the presenters who advised keeping paper copies of documents authorities would likely ask to see (including aircraft registration, noise certificate, insurance) gathered together in a binder that can be immediately presented. –J.W.

Continued on next page u

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spots. (He also noted CPDLC is available over large areas of Africa.)

In contrast, Rod Turpin, flight opera-tions supervisor at Rockwell Collins, which provided the route’s planning data, chose a direct route that overflew Yemen, which he acknowledged “many people don’t want to” do. (McIntyre had cited FDC 4/6334 (A0060/14) Security Advisory for Yemen, which advises against flight below FL260, in his “sampling of current Middle East prohibitions restrictions and notices.”) The direct route does, though, allow use of recently reopened airspace following February’s lifting of FAA FAR 87, Prohi-bition Against Certain Flights Within the Territory and Airspace of Ethiopia.

Bart Gault, a pilot with World Wide Operations, said Nigeria, third stop on the route (Abuja), is becoming the finan-cial hub of the continent. “More and more American companies are involved in Nigeria, so you may go there yourself,” he told attendees. “Brief passengers that things don’t happen very quickly.” Also, “carry appropriate spares and tooling and a third crewmember: a mechanic,” he advised. Should you need a part, “have someone bring it in as baggage on a com-mercial flight.”

The Ebola outbreak of the past year has created a new concern for operators and passengers in West Africa, though Senegal, last stop (Dakar) on the route through Africa, was not a site of the recent epidemic. “In West Africa, everybody wants to help and shake hands,” Galt said. “That’s not a good idea.” He noted that flocks of bats, which are known carriers of the Ebola virus, have been observed dur-ing daytime in the region, adding another level of danger to “bird” strikes. “You have to clean it. Put a mask on, gloves, long sleeves, clean it, and then throw away the clothes. Don’t have them cleaned.”

South America“Make sure passengers know how to

use survival gear,” Capt. Antonio Donizeti Savio of Lider Aviation said as he briefed

the transatlantic leg to Recife for the South America Regional Review. That flight–Dakar (GOOY), Recife (SBRF), São Paulo (SBGR), Lima (SPIM), Bogota (SKBO)–was supported by Colt Interna-tional. “Because the clouds can be higher near the equator, you might not be able to climb above the weather.”

Operators and Brazilian aviation authorities are preparing for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janiero (August 5 to 21), and both groups are planning to incorporate lessons learned from the 2014 World Cup. “People are asking about the Olympics,” Cynthia de Oliveira said of Lider Aviação’s custom-ers, and more than 1,000 business aircraft are expected for the Games. Operators can “expect restrictions,” she said, but details of temporary rules haven’t been made public. Departing Brazil may be relatively easy. “We didn’t need [the required] slots for departures at the World Cup, so we don’t anticipate we’ll need departure slots for the Olympics,” de Oliveira said. Just make sure your bill is paid. “During the World Cup, fees were three times higher than usual,” she said, and the Olympics will likely be similar. “You won’t get a flight plan unless your fee is paid.”

Venezuela’s internal problems have been reflected in changes to operations in and over the country in the past year. “A big fac-tor is the new requirement for visas,” said Nathan Lee, a sales representative at Spire Flight Solutions. Active crews are exempt for 72 hours, but non-active crewmembers and passengers require visas, which in the past have taken five to 15 days for approval but might now take up to three months, “so get started right away” if intending to go, he advised. Landing permits require “a conser-vative time frame of seven to ten business days.” Overflight permits are required, and the airspace is expensive. “Other countries charge only about 30 percent of what Ven-ezuela charges for navigation fees,” he said. The government began requiring prepay-ment of the overflight fees about a year ago.

The Caribbean and MexicoNo overflight permits are required for

transiting the airspace between Colombia and the Mexican border, under the con-trol of Cenamer (Central American Con-trol), but “If you have unpaid bills for navigation services from previous over-flights and you land in Central America, you will not be allowed to leave,” said Juan Portela, of Costa Rica’s Aeroser-vicios. International Trip Planning Ser-vices (ITPS) laid out the route through the region: Bogota (SKBO); Tapachula,


uContinued from preceding page

Challenges involving operations in Mexico come primarily from issues involving changing rules on security requirements and red tape associated with billing for navigation services.


SafetySafety, historically the NBAA International

Operators Conference’s (IOC’s) foundation and preoccupation, was the subject of U.S. National Transportation Safety Board Member Robert Sumwalt’s IOC 2015 keynote presentation, “Pro-fessionalism in Aviation.” Sumwalt used several fatal business aircraft accidents to demonstrate “cases where lack of professionalism can be a factor,” whether it stems from pilots’ flouting SOPs or their lack of systems knowledge of an aircraft. Citing an accident caused in part by pilot fatigue, Sumwalt noted the pilot had spent 12 hours at the FBO lounge waiting for his passen-gers for the ill-fated evening return flight, rather than seeking proper rest. “Why would someone not get a day room?” he asked. “Are they trying to be cheap? Companies will spend several mil-lions on airplanes, but pilots will try to save nick-els and dimes.”

The risk of operational errors rises with both the level of sleep deprivation and length of the work shift, said Daniel Mollicone, Ph.D. and CEO of Pulsar Informatics. One week of chronic sleep restriction of six hours or less per night equates to one full night of total sleep loss, he said. Continuing the theme, safety auditor Ber-nard Flashman of The-Flash outlined the ele-ments of a fatigue risk-management program that meets IS-BAO standards. A fatigue man-agement guidance manual for general aviation

operators of large and jet-powered airplanes will be released this year, he said.

The crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 was certainly on the minds of conference attendees. Had information about the actions of the first officer been known at the time, Dr. Quay Snyder of Aviation Medicine Advisory Services would likely have noted the crash’s relevance to his presentation on Fitness For Duty (FFD). Chair of NBAA’s FFD working group, Snyder noted that in addition to medi-cal conditions and fatigue, psychological, cog-nitive and nutritional factors also play a role in determining whether a pilot is fit for duty.

An effective FFD program contains mech-anisms for identifying and monitoring behav-iors and signs that indicate a potential problem, such as training difficulties, oper-ational errors, frequent sick leaves and “do not pair” requests from fellow crewmembers. A sound program also provides career and financial protections for pilots, so they are not discouraged from seeking help or report-ing suspicions about colleagues.

Institutional barriers to an effective pro-gram include privacy concerns, operational demands, lack of insurance or disability cov-erage, absence of a properly trained internal medical staff or external evaluators, and con-cerns about discrimination suits. –J.W.

Mexico (MMTP); Toluca, Mexico (MMTO); Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands (MWCR); Nassau, Bahamas (MYNN).

North of Cenamer’s airspace, Mexico has been stiffening its regulations, according to Helmuth Rueckert of ASM in Monterrey. Among the examples he cited: a 2013 regula-tion requires foreign operators to maintain a security manual for operations. Authorities sub-sequently began asking to see the security pro-tocols, “and now they’re asking for a manual specifically for operations in Mexico,” he said.

In his review of the Caribbean, John How-ard, a meteorologist with ITPS, noted that a Caricom APIS, similar to a U.S. APIS, is required 24 hours before arrival at many Carib-bean locales. (Caricom is the controlling author-ity for Caribbean airspace.) Howard implied the rules are applied a little more loosely here than at many other destinations along the IOC route. “Most of these countries rely on tourism, so they don’t want to turn you down,” he said.

Reflecting intense interest throughout the business and leisure communities, the shift in U.S. relations with Cuba and the possi-bility of loosened travel restrictions received considerable attention. The general advice for those interested seemed to be “cool your jets.” Gary Tucker, a pilot with Ball, said, “A lot of companies, including ours, have been evaluating the process” of receiving authori-zation, but it’s “still in formulation. I would wait to see how this does develop, and how OFAC [Office of Foreign Asset Control] puts pen to paper” in setting policy.

Companies seem to want to go to Cuba once the U.S. allows it. Doug Carr, NBAA’s v-p of safety, security, operations and regula-tions, received a sizable show of hands when he asked if any pilots had heard employ-ers express interest in flying to Cuba once permissible. “The FAA has asked us about how many [NBAA] members want to go to Cuba,” he explained. “Our government is trying to get a sense of your interest, so that when it’s approved they can be prepared, and the FAA can negotiate for us in meetings” about air traffic between the two countries.

EuropeAfter leading attendees back across the

Atlantic–Nassau (MYNN), Paris (LFPB), London Luton (EGGW)–on a flight coordi-nated by AvPlan, Chris Duffek, a G550/650 captain with JP Morgan Chase Aviation and co-lead of the IOC European Region, noted that business aircraft “level busts went way up” in UK airspace last year, to almost 130 from just over 80 in 2013. U.S.-registered air-craft showed the largest reversal of fortune, after declining to the mid-teens in 2013, to committing more than 30 busts last year. At London Luton, where a preponderance of the incidents occurred, pilots also often stray outside the approved departure corridors, as depicted on navigation charts Duffek pre-sented. “Pilots aren’t getting the message,” he said, urging attendees to ensure proper prep-aration and execution of procedures.


Aero-Dienst GmbH & Co. KG | Nuremberg | Germany | www.aero-dienst.de

HALL 5 – BOOTH N100

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Russia’s bizav community turns East for future partnersby Vladimir Karnozov

It is a tradition for members of the Russian United Business Aviation Asso-ciation (RUBAA) to make an appear-ance at EBACE. After all, Geneva is, and has always been, an attractive destination for their customers and partners.

This is true even today, when the Rus-sian business aviation industry has suf-fered a 45 to 50 percent reduction in market demand. That’s the estimate cited by RUBAA vice-president Eugeny Bakhtin, who spoke to AIN on the eve of the show.

This steep drop comes after a period of expansion in Russian business avia-tion during the years 2010-2013; growth that helped the industry recover from worldwide economic crisis of 2008-2009. Business aviation in the region had a more-or-less flat 2014.

While the current setback has struck a heavy blow and presents a serious chal-lenge to commercial viability of the Rus-sian business aviation, at the same time, those who have managed to stay afloat say the nature of interaction with their European colleagues has not substan-tially changed.

“The decline in demand does not bring with it any sort of fundamen-tal change in our relations with busi-ness partners in Europe,” Bakhtin said. Perhaps one notable exception is that RUBAA has had to cancel some of its previously arranged EBAA show appearances on the ground of costs, which have become prohibitively high in view of the market decline.

“And yet we try to stay in contact with our EBAA colleagues,” Bakhtin contin-ued, insisting that the chill in EU/Krem-lin relations is not the main factor in the diminished participation.

Asia-Pacific Not As Bizav-friendly For almost a year now, the Kremlin

has been looking East for political and trade partners. But the Russian busi-ness aviation community has done so to a lesser degree, Bakhtin said. “It is true that the demand for business jet flights to Asia-Pacific is on the rise. But the countries of that region cannot com-pete with Europe and U.S. in terms of the support they can render to Russian business aviation companies, especially in the areas of aircraft maintenance and supply.”

Joint projects between Russian com-panies and their Western partners in the area of business jet maintenance, ground infrastructure and fleet management have retained their economic viability, to some extent. As an example, Bakhtin refers to the project led by Avcom–a company he has been heading for over a dozen years–on setting up an FBO and maintenance center at Moscow-Ramen-skoye Airport.

A number of European companies have contributed their expertise and wares, helping ensure this project’s suc-cess. Two of the five hangars erected so far at the southern part of the air-port are already operational. They pro-vide storage for business jets and also accommodate Avcom’s maintenance division. The project is managed by International Center for Business Avi-ation (ICBA), a joint venture between Avcom and Rostec. However, the recent cooling of political relations with the West has caused some European inves-tors to refocus elsewhere.

Naturally, the Russians are looking for substitutes, including entities from China. “We are ready to develop mutu-ally beneficial relationships with Chinese investors and colleagues, be they billion-aires or not. However, experience shows that building such partnerships is not easy. Our Chinese colleagues are very cautious and choosy, especially when it comes to a decision to invest in Russian programs, or not,” Bakhtin told AIN.

A Brighter ViewSome in the Kremlin are more optimis-

tic than Bakhtin. Russian deputy prime minister Igor Shuvalov, whom President Vladimir Putin had asked to supervise Sino-Russian economic development, speaks about “a tremendous interest” from the Chinese, both public and private, in Russian projects. “And not only in the field of oil-and-gas,” he said. Shuvalov insists that some “young and very ambi-tions Chinese billionaires” expect Russia to “set up a good climate for investment and not interfere in business matters” as their only condition to expand investment programs. These potential investors, inci-dentally, are also the most enthusiastic users of business jets in the region, and the most desirable clients for Russian business aviation industry going forward.

As of today, Russia’s business avia-tion community does not have a signifi-cant example of a Chinese investment to speak of. That said, one element of Sino-Russian relations that bizav has benefit-ted from is the big project– “Force of Siberia” a pipeline that would link the north of China with large, recently dis-covered natural gas fields in Western Siberia, south of Baikal Lake. “With this and other such projects gearing up, there is already a substantial increase in demand for business jets and VIP-con-figured helicopters in Western Siberia and adjoining territories,” Bakhtin said. Avcom’s local partner Veltal, a busi-ness jet operator based in West Siberia, recently added two more Hawkers to its fleet. Bakhtin said, “We are looking at ways to expand our cooperation. One of those ways is a possible assignment of two more aircraft.”

Avcom-Technik provides line main-tenance to Veltal and other operators whose jets operate from, or make fuel stops at, Irkutsk and Khabarovsk air-ports. They are the capital cities of West Siberia and Far East regions, respectively. “We have been running an Avcom-Tech-nik line station at Irkutsk for more than two years now, and we’ll soon be opening one at Khabarovsk,” Bakhtin said.

According to him, Avcom is anxious to expand its offerings to Siberian busi-ness jet and rotorcraft operators in light

of the growing demand for their ser-vices in the regions bordering China. The Force of Siberia pipeline and the Altai (another big gas pipeline project) are seen as “main drivers” for further increase in that demand.

Representatives of Avcom-Technik and International Center for Business Aviation (ICBA) that are going to be present at EBACE’2015, and they are interested in hearing from those who are interested in helping the Russians build air bridges into China. o

Russia has long held promise as a growing market for business aviation, once it can address the regulatory issues that are hampering growth. Here attendees gather at JetExpo.

Terry Yeomans, program director IS-BAH (International Standard for Business Aircraft Handling) at the International Business Aviation Council (IBAC), reported progress on its efforts to exempt all business aircraft from import duties when traveling to Europe on business. IBAC pre-sented the European Commission (EC) Tax Department with several scenarios it deemed fit the “private use” exemption, a view the EC has now endorsed. IBAC plans to use the EC’s findings to help achieve uni-versal compliance with World Customs Organization private-use rules.

EU-ETS, the program for levying fees on aircraft for carbon emissions, received little attention in contrast to last year. Kurt Edwards of IBAC said “It still applies for flights just within Europe; Europe is waiting to see what ICAO does in 2016,” when the organization’s next Assembly takes place.

The changes in Europe’s operating environment have accelerated in the last two to three years, Joel Hencks of AeroEx said during his update on the EASA, exemplified by third-country operator

(TCO) authorizations and Safety Assess-ment of Foreign Aircraft (SAFA) ramp checks. TCO authorization is a “risk-based approach” to ensuring commercial aircraft registered outside but operating within Europe meet ICAO standards, and SAFA ramp checks are the monitor-ing mechanism. Currently only scheduled carrier aircraft require a TCO in Europe, but it will apply to all aircraft operated on an AOC as of November 26 next year. (TCOs aren’t necessary for overflights but required for technical stops.) “Send in the application as soon as possible,” he advised, “because when it becomes neces-sary next year, there will be a backlog.”

When it comes to the 54-item SAFA check, “Train crews how to behave in the first five minutes of the inspections. [Inspectors] will look far more deeply if you don’t have the right answers right away,” Hencks said. Representatives of the individual national aviation authorities will be conducting the SAFA checks, pos-sibly leading to more confusion. “You will face ramp inspectors that do not have the knowledge they should have, and problems with ramp checks,” Hencks said, bemoan-ing the lack of standard rules in Europe.

In an address to the IOC, Ed Bolen, NBAA president and CEO, cited another challenge to business aviation in Europe and elsewhere around the world: the privatization of aviation ser-vices and infrastructure, threatening bizav’s access to airports and airspace (See EBACE’s “Access, access, access” session on Wednesday). “That’s one rea-son the current FAA reauthorization debate is so important,” he said. “The United States can be a model for others. How we operate can become kind of an international standard.” o

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Wyvern endorses EVAS smoke hoodby Chad Trautvetter

Aviation safety support firm Wyvern (Booth W101) is now recommending the VisionSafe Emergency Vision Assurance System (EVAS) to customers for cockpit smoke emergencies.

EVAS, which is STC’d for a many business aircraft types, “provides a clear space of air through which a pilot can see flight instruments and out the front windshield for landing.”

The move is part of Wyvern’s new effort to fur-ther aviation safety by iden-tifying key safety issues and partnering with companies that provide the best solutions.

“As a company that studies and advocates aviation safety, many of our customers con-sult with us about their risk-management needs beyond our own suite of services,” said Wyvern CEO Art Dawley.

Under these circumstances, the company has brought EVAS to the attention of oper-ators who want to preemp-tively address smoke in cockpit safety concerns. “So bring-ing VisionSafe on as a strate-gic partner is a way for us to address these risks and provide solutions for our customers,” Dawley said.

According to VisionSafe (Booth V063), there are an average of three aircraft smoke events daily in the U.S. On aver-age, one out of three require an emergency landing due to smoke, it noted. In addition, the Flight Safety Foundation ranks smoke/fire emergencies as the third-highest cause of fatalities. At least 1,240 lives have been lost in air crashes where smoke and pilot’s inabil-ity to see their instruments was cited as the primary cause, FSF data shows. o


Wyvern Addresses Remotely Piloted Ops

Wyvern recently announced the launch of its EXACT safety assessment program for remotely piloted aerial systems (RPAS). The program (an acronym for excel-lence through assessment, con-sistency and training) is based on ICAO’s Document 10019 covering guidelines for RPAS operations. It will involve accrediting safety assessors and establishing a pre-ferred vendor network of RPAS operators, available to Wyvern’s clients through its proprietary safety intelligence tools.� –C.T.

Safety specialist Wyvern has put its name behind VisionSafe’s EVAS emergency device.

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Gulfstream focuses on new jets, but still taking care of businessby James Wynbrandt

Gulfstream Aerospace reported that the development programs of its G500 and G600 are well underway, while its European fleet has grown to more than 200 aircraft, an increase of 30 percent in the last five years. First quarter reve-nue for the company, at $2.1 billion, was down 0.8 percent from the first quarter of 2014, while earnings were up 6.7 per-cent over the same periods.

Focusing on its new models, Gulfstream president Larry Flynn said two of five G500 flight-test aircraft are built and the remaining three in produc-tion. Construction of the first G600, to be used as part of the four-aircraft flight test program, is also underway, as is the building of the G600 iron bird, which will allow full evaluation of the aircraft’s sys-tems and software. The two models were announced at the company’s Savannah headquarters last October.

Gulfstream (Booth O073) intends to use ground testing and greater authority from the FAA to approve its own flight tests to optimize the certification pro-cess. More than 34,000 hours of lab tests have been logged and the official flight

test program is scheduled to commence later this quarter.

Both aircraft feature Gulfstream’s new Symmetry Flight Deck, which incorpo-rates active control sidesticks, integrated touchscreen controllers, and Honeywell Primus Epic avionics. Certification of the G500 is anticipated in 2017 with entry to service the following year, with the G600 expected to follow with certification in 2018 and service entry in 2019.

Bolstering the development pro-gram, Pratt & Whitney Canada re-ceived Transport Canada certification in February for the PW814GA and PW815GA engines that will power the aircraft. Meanwhile, factory autho-rized training provider FlightSafety International has established a full-flight simulator for the G500 at Gulfstream’s Learning Center in Savannah, which Gulfstream engineering personnel are using to prepare for flight testing. Scott Neal, senior vice president of sales and marketing, said, “Both aircraft have been extremely well received,” though the company doesn’t break out deliveries or orders for its large cabin jets.

Product support president Mark Burns said the company continues to build its global support network, includ-ing 10 engineers based in Europe and $110 million in parts at its London dis-tribution center.

The company also reported delivery of its 500th G550, purchased by phar-maceutical manufacturer Abbott, and the first G280 registered in Morocco. The G280, with a range of 3,600 nm (6,667 km), can fly non-stop from Casablanca to New York or Dubai.

Gulfstream also announced finaliz-ing a three-year agreement with World Fuel Services, its fuel supplier, for renew-able fuels for its daily flight operations in Savannah. The fuel is a 30/70 blend of low-carbon, drop-in renewable fuel and Jet-A, providing the same performance as petroleum-based jet fuel. Flynn said the company wants to be an industry leader in the development and use of alternative fuels.

Here at the EBACE show, Gulfstream has five of its current production aircraft on static display: The G150, G280, G450, G550 and G650ER. o


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Gulfstream Leader Larry Flynn to Retire

General Dynamics last week announced that Larry Flynn, president of its Gulfstream subsidiary, will retire on June 30 due to health reasons. Flynn was slated to suc-ceed former Gulfstream president Joseph Lombardo, who is due to retire on that date as well, as president of the compa-ny’s aerospace businesses, which includes Gulfstream and Jet Aviation.

“Larry Flynn has made significant contri-butions to General Dynamics and Gulfstream during his long career, most recently with the introduction of three new aircraft in 2014,” said General Dynamics CEO Phebe Nova-kovic. “Under his leadership, he has posi-tioned Gulfstream for continued success as a global leader in the business jet market.”

As announced in February, Mark Burns, Gulfstream’s president of product support, will assume leadership of the Savannah-based airframer. He and Jet Aviation head Robert Smith will report directly to Novakovic. Burns has headed the airframer’s product support organization since 2008 and was named a vice president of General Dynamics in Febru-ary 2014. He also served as Gulfstream’s vice president of product support and as vice pres-ident of completions engineering. –C.E.

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Universal Weather seminars help plan for high-traffic events by Kerry Lynch

Universal Weather and Aviation (Booth W073) is hosting daily seminars here at EBACE to help operators plan trips during major events that typically draw large numbers of aircraft, such as the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. While the summer games will not occur for more than a year, Universal Aviation Brazil operations manager Marcia Taue stressed the importance of planning travel there now. Demand will be strong for slots parking and hotels, Taue said.

“More than 1,000 business aircraft are expected to operate to Rio for the games, putting a large strain on the local infra-structure and service providers,” she said. “Last year’s World Cup provided a good

preview of some of the challenges opera-tors will be facing.”

Universal will share some lessons learned from the World Cup to help prepare operators for anticipated reg-ulatory restrictions and the need for contingencies should plans change. Universal noted that operators should consider the potential for a surge in business aviation traffic for the opening and closing ceremonies.

The seminars, which will begin at 11 a.m. each day of EBACE, will cover handling unexpected schedule changes, best hotels for events, whether to fuel on arrival, security needs and other poten-tial requirements such as towbar use. o

Gulfstream is here at EBACE in force,with its G150, G280, G450, G550 and G650ER models on display. Back in Savannah, Georgia, development of the new G500 and G600 continues apace. Earnings were up 6.7 percent in the first quarter, despite overall revenues dropping by 0.8 percent.

Gulfstream leadership is in for some changes, as president Larry Flynn, right, prepares to retire next month for health reasons. Mark Burns, left, currently head of product support, will assume leadership at that time. Scott Neal, center, will remain senior v-p of worldwide sales and marketing.

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Flying Embraer’s Legacy 500, a brand new bizjet from Brazil

Embraer’s two newest business jets–the Legacy 450 and 500–flew into Geneva International Airport Sunday afternoon, joining a full slate of the company’s product line on the static display. The Legacy 450 is making its European debut ahead of expected cer-tification in the second half of this year. On the eve of EBACE 2015, AIN senior editor Matt Thurber traveled to Embraer’s São José dos Campos, Brazil headquarters to fly the Legacy 500 with test pilot Eduardo Camelier.

At first glance, the Legacy 500 looks large, and in many ways it is. The flat floor, for example, adds a spacious feel to the 860-cu-ft cabin, nearly the larg-est volume in its class (which includes the Citation Sovereign+ at 620 cu ft, the Challenger 300/350 also at 860 cu ft and the Gulfstream G280, the largest at 935 cu ft). Of the 500’s three competi-tors, only the Challenger also has a flat-floor cabin. The Challenger and G280 are the only jets to have a taller cabin compared to the 72 inches of the Legacy 450/500, with the Challenger offering one more inch and the G280 three more inches. Range of the Legacy 500 is 3,125 nm at 433 ktas, a little farther than the Sovereign+’s 3,000 nm and less than the G280’s 3,600 nm.

The Legacy 500’s Rockwell Collins Pro Line Fusion-equipped flight deck is not only roomy, too, but uncluttered and logi-cally laid out based on sound human factors

principles. Sidestick controls help maximize cockpit space. Cockpit windows are extra-large and provide excellent visibility.

The 110-cu-ft external baggage com-partment is quite high off the ground, but accessible via an optional (but free) ladder that fits neatly into the door. Optional heating is available for the bag-gage compartment, but it isn’t pressur-ized. An additional 45 cu ft of baggage space is available inside the cabin, just aft of the lavatory, and this is plenty of space to handle carry-on luggage that passen-gers may need to access during flight.

Small touches reveal the intent of Embraer designers, to add extra atten-tion to the interior and exterior. For example, no lightning diversion strips are visible on the smooth unblemished radome; engineers were able to figure out a way to provide the lightning pro-tection even with the strips embedded in

the radome’s composite skin. Inside the cabin, attention to detail is even more pronounced, with List Components & Furniture granite-veneer flooring in the forward galley area and lavatory, power outlets and tablet or magazine pockets at each seat and a carefully fitted milled end piece where the bulkheads meet the cabin shell and valence, designed to look good no matter how interior components shift around slightly as the fuselage stretches and shrinks during normal operations.

Like many modern business jets, the emergency exit is in the lavatory. Large cabin windows are fitted with mechanical shades, but Embraer plans to offer elec-tronic dimming shades as an option.

As it did with the Legacy 650 and Lineage 1000, Embraer selected Honey-well’s Ovation cabin management system for the new Legacys, and this is control-lable from passenger control units or iOS and Android devices. Auxiliary panels

allow connection of a variety of devices using interfaces such as HDMI, USB, RCA, VGA and 3.5mm audio. Ova-tion offers full HD video and surround-sound audio. Connectivity options in-clude Aircell’s Gogo Business Aviation air-to-ground broadband Internet sys-tem and Cobham SwiftBroadband or ICG Iridium satcom.

Both 17.5- and/or 19-inch monitors are available for the forward and aft bulk-heads, and each seat has a receptacle mount for a nine-inch monitor as well as passenger control units. The forward-fac-ing VIP seat in the first club section has a master control unit that can also adjust cabin temperature and a handset for the ICG Iridium satcom. Seats have footrests and ‘headwings’ and two seats can fold together to make a lie-flat bed.

Embraer put an enormous amount of effort into quieting the new Legacys,

both inside and outside the cabin. The Honeywell 36-150 APU is mounted with high-performance isolators to block noise, and the Honeywell turbofans are also mounted on soft engine mounts for the same purpose. The cockpit profile is aero-dynamically smoothed to minimize wind noise and the main landing gear is fully cov-ered, a first for Embraer. External antennas are mounted fore and aft and away from the occupied part of the cabin, also to min-imize noise. Mufflers in the environmental control system vent lines help, too, as does an inflatable main door seal.

The single air-cycle machine is mounted well away from the cabin, and the pressur-ization outflow valve is mounted with a noise barrier for maximum quietness. Interior insulation includes skin-damp-ing material, a sound-barrier layer and panel isolators on interior panels and low-noise carpet pad. The three hydrau-lic systems have attenuators and are also soft-mounted. The location of electrical equipment in the bays next to the interior aft baggage area also minimizes noise.

The result of all these efforts “sets a new benchmark for cabin noise levels,” accord-ing to Alvadi Serpa, who is in charge of product strategy for Embraer Executive Jets. “It’s three to four decibels lower than the Challenger 300,” he said. During the flight in the Legacy 500, I moved to the rear-most seat of the cabin’s aft divan and was able to speak with and clearly hear flight test engineer Gustavo Paixão sitting in the forward-most, aft-facing club seat.

Standard seating is eight seats in two double-clubs, with one optional belted lavatory seat. The aft seats can be replaced by one or two three-place divans that are approved for takeoff and land-ing. The forward cabinet across from the galley can be replaced by either a sin-gle passenger seat or a fold-up jumpseat. Maximum passenger capacity is 12 seats.

Flying the Legacy 500When it came time to fly the Legacy

500, Camelier and I were joined by Paixão and demonstration/instructor pilot Rafael Ricardo. With 7,780 pounds of fuel (about half tanks), two pilots and two crew, the Legacy 500 weighed just over 32,000 pounds at takeoff, well below the 37,919 lb maximum takeoff weight.

The weather at São José dos Campos Airport was VFR with scattered clouds and 21 deg C, about 10 degrees warmer than ISA. With flaps 1 set, we planned an initial climb directly to FL450. V1 was

112 knots, rotation speed 117 knots and V2 124 knots, as automatically calculated by the Pro Line Fusion avionics once we inserted the weight-and-balance data.

The Legacy 500 fly-by-wire (FBW) system is a fully closed loop system and provides envelope protection features that prevent the pilot from exceeding cer-tain limits. There are two flight envelopes designed into the FBW system, normal and limit. In the normal mode, the stick moves relatively easily until the limits are reached (33 degrees bank, plus 30 and minus 15 degrees pitch, VMO and 1.13 Vs (stall speed). The pilot can steer out-side the normal envelope into the limit envelope, but would need to hold pres-sure on the sidestick to do so.

The sticks are spring-loaded to provide some control feel, and they always return to the centered or neutral position when let go. The key to flying the Legacy 500 is that the FBW system maintains a stable flight path. Whenever the pilot allows the stick to return to neutral, the airplane will remain on whatever flight path was selected. The FBW system also automatically trims and compensates for pitch and yaw during turns and for roll during sideslips.

After a smooth takeoff, we rocketed up to FL450 in just 20 minutes, thanks to our light weight and the 7,036-pound thrust Honeywell HTF7500E turbofans. I tried some turns and got used to con-trolling the flight path with the sidestick. We stabilized at Mach .80 burning 350 pounds of fuel per side.

We descended to a block altitude below 25,000 feet to try some maneuvers and I was able to experience a variety of the Legacy 500’s unique FBW characteristics. (A longer article with more description of the Legacy 500’s flight characteristics will appear in AIN’s July issue.)

Returning to São José dos Campos, we shot an RNAV approach to Runway 15 and landed then did a touch-and-go. On the final landing, we switched on the autobraking system and landed with flaps full. After touching down on the main wheels, I pushed the stick forward fairly quickly, and the FBW system gen-tly eased the nosewheel onto the runway. The autobrakes kicked in and brought us to a rapid and short stop, aided by the powerful anti-skid carbon brakes and without any application of reverse thrust.

I don’t think it will take pilots long to learn to fly the Legacy 500, and if this flight was any indication, they are going to enjoy the process immensely. o

High above the Brazilian jungle, AIN senior editor Matt Thurber, left, put the Legacy 500 through its paces. The Rockwell Collins Pro Line Fusion flight deck makes for a comfortable workspace for Legacy pilots.

Embraer’s Legacy 500 gets a brush-up after the journey from Brazil to EBACE, accompanied by its stablemate, the 450. Just before it left, the developmental business jet got a workout from AIN’s Matt Thurber.

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F1 legend Niki Lauda expands Global footprintby Chad Trautvetter

Three-time Formula 1 champion Niki Lauda became the latest customer for the Bombardier Global 7000 when he placed an order for one of the ultra-long-range business jets on Sunday at EBACE. Lauda, a Bombardier Business Aircraft brand ambassador, currently flies a Global 6000 that he took delivery of in March. His new Global 7000 is scheduled to be delivered in late 2018.

“The Global 7000 is an incredible business jet,” Lauda said. “The cabin is large and spacious and the four separate zones provide greater comfort, especially for longer trips. With its impressive range and speed, I can easily fly from Vienna to São Paolo, and almost all other stops along the Formula 1 cir-cuit, quickly and efficiently.”

Besides this, he also cited the appeal of having the larger win-dows that will be on the in-development Global 7000.

Lauda, a rated commer-cial pilot with more than 18,000 hours, has a long history with Bombardier products. He started with a Learjet 36 around 1979 and, before the Global 6000, owned and operated a Global 5000 and Challenger 300 that he frequently used to travel to Formula 1 races around the world from his home base in Austria.

His Global 6000 won the 2015 International Yacht & Aviation Awards prize last week for best interior in the private jet design category. The interior of Lauda’s business jet combines handcrafted leather and uphol-stery details with “bold and striking” woodwork. o

Comlux’s safety record sets a high bar by David Donald

With 70,000 flight hours of accident-free operations behind it, Comlux The Aviation Group is receiving the Silver Safety of Flight award from the European Business Aviation Association (EBAA) here at the EBACE show in Geneva. The award recognizes either 70,000 hours or 30 years of accident-free operations, with Fly Comlux achieving the flight-time figure in just 12 years.

EBAA’s award is the latest significant event for Comlux in the safety sector. In October last year the company imple-mented a safety management system, and in March this year Comlux Malta was reg-istered with the International Standard for Business Aircraft Operations (IS-BAO).

Earlier this month the com-pany’s Central Asia branch, Comlux KZ based in Almaty, Kazakhstan, became the first

operator in the world to be reg-istered with the IATA Standard Safety Assessment (ISSA). This program extends the benefits of the IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) to commercial operators who do not operate under an IATA audit registry.

“IOSA has helped about 400 airlines worldwide to improve their operational safety per-formance and to reduce the number of redundant audits in the industry,” explained Jordan Karamalakov, IATA’s regional manger in Kazakhstan. “However, there are hundreds of operators that operate air-craft under the 5,700 kg thresh-old, or their business model does not allow conformity with other IOSA requirements.” ISSA was launched to redress this shortfall.

“The fact that Comlux KZ is the first airline in the world to receive ISSA registration is very important to the airline

industry of Kazakhstan,” con-tinued Karamalakov. “By this Comlux KZ has demonstrated that any carrier in Kazakhstan can be prepared for a robust audit and ready to prove confor-mance with internationally rec-ognized safety standards.”

Fly Comlux CEO Andrea Zanetto told AIN that the compa-ny’s safety culture starts at the top with its main shareholder being a committed aviation enthusi-ast. “We recognize the value of safety to the company and it has become standard behavior for us, and our customers like it this way,” he commented.

According to Zanetto, the operator, which has a fleet of around 20 aircraft, has seen an uptick in charter activity since January. He said that the Middle East market has been recov-ering well lately and there has also been significant growth in African demand. o

QUEST’S KODIAK MAKES ITS EBACE DEBUT

Quest Aircraft is here exhibiting at EBACE for the first time, featuring its Kodiak utility turboprop single. European dealer and service center Rheinland Air Service, based in Germany, partners with Quest in marketing and supporting the Kodiak in Europe. This example of the Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-powered Kodiak fea-tures Quest’s high-end VIP Summit interior. For the full story on the Kodiak's EBACE debut, see page 38.�

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Three-time Formula 1 champion Niki Lauda placed an order for a Bombardier Global 7000 on Sunday at EBACE. Celebrating the deal in championship style are Lauda, left, and Bombardier Business Aircraft senior vice president of sales Peter Likoray.

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NetJets Europe chairman and CEO Jordan Hansell, right, shakes hands with Bombardier president and CEO Alain Bellemare.

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NetJets Europe takes keys for its first Challenger 350by Chad Trautvetter

NetJets Europe received its first Signature Series Bombardier Challenger 350 yesterday morning during a ceremony at the EBACE static display. NetJets chairman and CEO Jordan Hansell took the keys to CS-CHA, which is the 500th Challenger 300-series air-craft to be delivered, from newly installed Bombardier president and CEO Alain Bellemare.

“NetJets announced it would be the launch customer for the

Challenger 350 at EBACE 2013,” Hansell said. “We have 75 firm orders planned and an additional 125 options available, worth $5.4 billion. The orders were placed in the height of the recession, so it was a big gamble for us. Fortunately, it is paying off for us.”

The fractional ownership group currently has 11 Challenger 350s operating in the U.S. since taking the first one in June last year, and NetJets Europe will receive a total of

four this year. It will have 27 of the super-midsize jets in service in the U.S. by year-end, Hansell told AIN.

“Our Challenger 350s are prov-ing to be a very popular choice of super-midsize aircraft for our cus-tomers, and we are selling shares at a fast rate,” he said. “We’re pre-selling them faster than we can take delivery of the airplanes.”

Hansell is optimistic about the market here in Europe, saying, “It is continuing to show signs of improvement.” NetJets’ Embraer Phenom 300s and Bombardier Global 6000s are also selling well in the region, he noted. The com-pany secured London City Airport approval for the Phenom 300 ear-lier this year, which increases its appeal to financial executives who work in Canary Wharf, near the downtown airport.

NetJets’ Challenger 350s has seating for up to 10 passengers and includes a club configuration and berthable three-place divan. The 3,200-nm aircraft is capable of connecting all corners of Europe and beyond, reaching North Africa and the Middle East from London.

Meanwhile, NetJets will take delivery of its first Bombardier Challenger 650 in the fourth quar-ter. The large-cabin jet, which is slated to enter service in the sec-ond half of this year, is making its public debut here at EBACE. o

WORLD FUEL AND COLT REFINE THEIR CORPORATE RELATIONSHIP

Two of the best-known business aviation fuel spe-cialists announced here at EBACE they have combined forces to form World Fuel/Colt. The move, which fol-lows World Fuel’s acquisition of Colt last year, provides customers with more loca-tions, expanded trip support services, and new finan-cial options for managing and controlling budgets. Products include the Colt Card, Avcard, Charge Card FlyBuys rewards program, regional and international trip support and aviation insurance services.

The group’s Geneva, Switzerland, office provides improved time zone cover-age for European custom-ers, and its multilingual staff enables further convenience for more customers in the region. Team member MH Aviation supplies trip support for African operation from its Johannesburg base.

“We have brought to - gether industry-leading products and services, along with some of the most experienced and talented professionals in the business,” said senior vice president of business and

general aviation sales Michael Szczechowski. “Anything [our customers] need to operate aircraft in and out of EMEA region, we can provide.”

Also here at EBACE, World Fuel Services will be announcing the winner of its Champion Get-Away pro-motion through the FlyBuys rewards program. The winner will receive round-trip tickets to Berlin and two tickets to the UEFA Champions League European soccer final (at the Olympic Stadium on June 6), as well as three nights’ lodg-ing in a nearby hotel. Non-U.S.-based Fly Buys members can qualify for the drawing by using their World Fuel/Colt contract fuel card, trip sup-port services, or Avcard right up until the time of the draw-ing at the World Fuel cocktail hour on Wednesday [May 20] at Booth A066.

In addition, non-U.S. mem-bers enrolling in the FlyBuys rewards program during this week’s show will receive 1,000 bonus rewards points. There are also a host of football-themed promotional gifts and entertainment here at EBACE for visitors to the World Fuel/Colt exhibit. –M.P.

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Quest Kodiak leading the charge in revamping EASA certificationby Kerry Lynch & Mark Phelps

Quest Aircraft’s Kodiak is not only making its EBACE debut (Static Display), but the utility turboprop single is cur-rently playing the role of de facto prototype for EASA’s plan to simplify its aircraft cer-tification process. Quest v-p Steve Zinda told AIN, “We’re a GAMA [U.S. General Aviation Manufacturers Association] member, and they’re leading the charge. Patrick Ky [EASA executive director] has visited us. We’re acting as a sort of test case for streamlining the cer-tification process, making it easier for OEMs and the regu-latory authorities, as well. It’s good for everyone.” The EASA program is being driven by an FAA mandate to simplify its Part 23 certification process, for exactly the same reasons, said Zinda.

He added that a series of developments led Quest to pur-sue EASA certification at this time, with the planned stream-lining of the process near the top of the list. “The European mar-ket is starting to strengthen,” he said, “It’s still facing a down-turn, but on the rebound. We’ve had multiple sales inquiries in recent months.” There are currently five Kodiaks based in Europe, all bearing U.S. N-number registrations.

Another reason for initiat-ing the EASA certification pro-cess at this time is the proposed relaxation of European regu-lations that currently prohibit commercial operations of sin-gle-engine aircraft under instru-ment meteorological conditions (IMC). If the European regu-lators do decide to allow sin-gle-engine operations in IMC, the market for the Kodiak–and many other single-engine turbo-props–will receive a huge shot of adrenalin.

Still more incentive for launching the certification pro-gram right now is the stabili-zation of currency. The euro/dollar relationship is becom-ing more favorable for buyers of U.S.-based aircraft, Zinda said. And finally, he added, Quest has taken on German aviation specialist Rheinland Air Service as a partner. RAS will provide sales, marketing, maintenance and support ser-vice throughout Europe, and beyond, as well as helping to

facilitate the certification pro-cess. Quest also intends to add more service centers in the long term, with current plans in place to add a second one in Germany and still another here in Switzerland. “Our goal is to have a service center within 300 nautical miles of every Kodiak operator,” said Zinda.

The aircraft on display here at EBACE is equipped, with Garmin avionics and options including a cargo pod, TKS anti-icing sys-tem, onboard weather radar and the top-of-the-line Summit interior package.

Also in Quest’s future plans is certification for Aerocet com-posite amphibious floats. With the Kodiak already U.S.-certified for Wipline amphibious floats, the Aerocet option will give buy-ers greater choice. Zinda said it is his hope that Aerocet will pursue EASA certification of its floats in tandem with Quest’s certifi-cation program, and that Quest will support the float maker in that effort.

Quest’s plans to increase its global reach are already in play, and Zinda said achiev-ing EASA certification is a big step in that direction, not only for the European market, but for others as well. “Lots of other countries recog-nize EASA certification and have reciprocity agreements for bilateral certification,” he said. “We’re already certified in Indonesia, and in the throes of completing the program in Japan. Certification is in hand for Thailand and India, with another application submit-ted in the Philippines.” China is another one of 17 coun-tries that have validated the aircraft. The expansion into the Asia Pacific region is not surprising, given the recent change in company ownership.

New OwnerThe company was sold Feb-

ruary 17 to Japanese firm Setouchi Holdings. With the in - fusion of capital from the large firm, Sandpoint, Idaho-based Quest plans to gradually increase production and firm up concepts for a second aircraft in its product line. Setouchi plans to keep the current leadership intact and continue manufactur-ing in Sandpoint.

In fact, Sam Hill, Quest

president and CEO, stressed that the company’s vision and mission remain unchanged. “Quest is the same company it has been,” Hill said. But the new ownership provides much needed capital to enable the company to add to its prod-uct line, continue its prod-uct improvements and expand production.

Setouchi comes from a manu-facturing conglomerate. Its par-ent is Tsuneishi Group, a global

company engaged in shipbuild-ing, transportation and related industries. But its relationship with Quest began as its dealer.

Quest had named Setouchi’s subsidiary, Setouchi Trading, as an authorized dealer last sum-mer, representing the Kodiak in Japan and parts of Southeast Asia. “Immediately, there was a bond,” Hill said. At the time Quest had been looking for additional investments.

Quest had recapitalized in 2011. But as it had become more successful, it still needed financ-ing to put its long-term ambi-tions in place. Setouchi took a strong interest, Hill said. But after researching the company, Setouchi executives decided that they weren’t interested in

a minority share; they wanted to buy the company. The Quest board of directors decided Setouchi was a good fit for the company and moved forward with an agreement, Hill said.

Expanding Product LineThe investment is propel-

ling the company’s research and development efforts. “We have always said we didn’t want to be a one aircraft company,” Hill said. So Quest is contem-plating its “next logical step.” While that step has not yet been fully defined, he stressed the company plans to stay true to its roots as a turboprop air-craft manufacturer. “Our back-ground is the Kodiak. That is the niche where we want to stay.

We’re not looking to be a manu-facturer of a light jet.”

He could not specify the tim-ing of the next product, and said that the acquisition was a step toward that end goal, but does not put all the necessary financ-ing in place.

The company already has had a busy research and development effort ongoing for the Kodiak. In the past year, it received FAA approvals for the integration of the Garmin GFC 700 Automatic Fight Control System, the new Summit Executive interior, a TKS Tank installation in the Kodiak cargo pod, an increase of the landing weight to 7,255 lbs and installation of dual-use USB ports. Those product improve-ment efforts are continuing, he

said, with new product enhance-ments set to roll out this year. Hill said he believes the Kodiak, with its short-field takeoff and landing capabilities, along with its avail-ability for float operations, works well with the Asia Pacific region and the airports. The 10-place single-turboprop aircraft can take off in less than 1,000 ft at full gross takeoff weight.

While Setouchi represents the Kodiak in Japan and parts of Southeast Asia, Hill empha-sized it fully supports Quest’s previously announced letter of intent with SkyView Aircraft Industry Company for repre-sentation and eventual manu-facturing of the Kodiak.

Under that deal, SkyView is the exclusive dealer for Kodiak

in China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. The contract also outlines plans for limited assem-bly and eventually manufactur-ing of the aircraft there.

With this outlook, the com-pany is cautiously preparing an expansion of production in Sandpoint. Quest delivered 30 Kodiaks last year, the most in any year since the turboprop single entered service in late 2007. The company plans to produce 32 air-craft this year but currently could scale that up to 36 airplanes. Quest already has discussed potential production increases and scalabil-ity with its new owners, he said.

The company also is look-ing at production processes with its new owners. Setouchi’s par-ent company has a broad back-ground of manufacturing, and Hill said Quest already is learn-ing new approaches to lean man-ufacturing and processes where it can maximize its capabilities without having to expand its production facilities. o

Quest’s Kodiak utility aircraft, pictured here with Aerocet floats and sporting its Summit luxury interior, is finding a worldwide market. EASA certification is high on the company agenda, aided by European partner Rheinland Air Service of Germany.

U.S . +1 . 8 4 4 . 4 4 .T X TAV | INTERNATIONAL +1 . 316 . 517. 8270© 2015 Textron Aviation. All rights reserved. Cessna’s logo and Cessna are registered trademarks of Textron Innovations Inc., used by permission. Beechcraft and Hawker are registered trademarks of Beechcraft Corporation.

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Bizav operators warned of upcoming NCC rules by Ian Sheppard

Europe’s new rules for so-called non-commercial operations with complex motor-powered aircraft

(NCC) will be a big concern for the business aviation commu-nity between now and August 16, 2016, which is the final dead-line for implementation. And according to legal experts such as Joanna Kolatsis, a partner with London law firm Hill Dickinson, there is plenty left to do to reach a state of compliance with a rule that is intended to bring business aircraft “up to the safety stan-dards of commercial operators.”

Compliance IssuesAddressing Aeropodium’s Eu-

ro pean Corporate Aviation Sum-mit in late March, Kolatis warned, “It’s going to be quite a burden-some task for some of you.” She went on to outline the rules, which cover aircraft certified to carry more than 19 passengers, or require a minimum crew of two, and have a max takeoff weight greater than 5,700 kg (12,566 pounds). “So pretty much every-thing apart from light aircraft will fall within its scope,” she said.

“At the moment we don’t have any guidance from the NAAs [Europe’s National Aviation Authorities] on interpretation,” she said, “for example, [there is no information on] the [owner’s] principal residence and whether or not you fit the description. But owners have to be careful, as [regulators] will look at sub-stance over form.

“Essentially, for the first time, private users will be faced with concepts of safety management systems. The big question, though, is going to concern responsibil-ity and accountability–the NCC declaration has to be signed by an ‘accountable manager’ and we’re not sure yet if the AM will face any personal liability.”

“You’ll have to have an oper-ations manual in place,” she continued, adding, however, that “with a single aircraft you may not have much to do–but it may be hard for the NAAs to distinguish between large and small operators.”

The implementation of new NCC rules will be debated in an EBACE conference session at 10:45 a.m. here in the Palexpo convention center tomorrow. Some in the industry are still lob-bying officials to allow a more lenient approach to regulation out of concern that the new rules could create imbalance in inter-national standards. o


New European regulations aimed at increasing safety could have the effect of setting the brakes on business aviation operators.

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Optelity future-proofs cabin interfaceby Charles Alcock

TrueNorth Avionics (Booth F045) has begun deliveries of its new Optelity Cabin Gate-way communications platform, which it launched in Octo-ber 2014. The company also

reported here at the EBACE show (Booth F045) that it is working on developing a sup-plemental type certificate for the equipment to go on a Gulfstream GV aircraft.

According to the company, Cabin Gateway gives aircraft owners significant flexibility to upgrade communications equip-ment. A single configurable unit can be tailored to meet the specific

requirements of individual opera-tors, with available features rang-ing from simple voice calls to comprehensive office-in-the-sky capability and compatibility with 3G mobile communications ser-vices and wireless connectivity.

The new Optelity products are offered as four configurable packages, starting with the Optel-ity WiFi as the basic unit at a

price of $24,995. The Optelity Flex option allows operators to pick and pay for the specific con-figuration they need.

All Cabin Gateway options are app-based, with changes in functionality being defined via software. This makes it easier to upgrade the systems because no new hardware is needed. It also makes the equipment more compatible with new communi-cations devices and applications that may come on the market.

“Our Optelity family of com-munications products represents a new way forward for connec-tivity in the aircraft cabin,” said TrueNorth CEO Mark van Berkel. “Every time you turn around there’s a new mobile device, new social media and new applications. We’ve designed our systems to be compliant with current standards, but more importantly, to rapidly come up-to-speed with standards and technology that have yet to be set or developed. The Optel-ity Cabin Gateway is the first of a number of products that is designed to defy oblolescence. Not only is it upgradeable from basic to high-end features, there is virtually no limit to its upgradability over time.”

Separately, Honeywell recently selected TrueNorth to supply a new generation CNX 250 WiFi cabin router to expand the capabilities of business jets using its CNX cabin connectiv-ity systems.

The new router unit will be smaller and lighter than existing equipment, giving more options for where it can be fitted in an aircraft.

The CNX 250 has dedicated processors and can be scaled up to accept new functions. It is designed to work seamlessly with passengers’ devices and is app-based to be more easily adapted. o


TrueNorth is now offering its new Optelity Cabin Gateway communications platform.

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Honeywell innovation pervades cabins, cockpitsby Charles Alcock

The Honeywell Aerospace exhibit here at EBACE (Booth W089) once again features an impressive array of cabin and cockpit technology. The U.S. company’s technological prow-ess is also much in evidence in many of the leading air-craft highlights of this year’s show, including Bombardier’s new Global 7000/8000 jets, the Dassault Falcon 5X and 8X, Embraer’s Legacy 450 and 500 and the Pilatus PC-24.

At the exhibit, visitors can try out the latest Ovation Select cabin management system, with surround sound speakers, high-definition monitors and PlaySta-tion gaming. They also can see the hardware for the company’s GX Aviation connectivity pack-age for the Ka-band JetWave ser-vice, as well as its Primus Epic cockpit display, Primus Elite Du885 and 875 cockpit dis-play upgrades and Bendix King

AeroWave 100 connectivity sys-tem for general aviation.

Another show highlight from Honeywell is the Oculus Rift 3-D headset that allows visitors to get a vivid experience of its visual technology inno-vations for both the cabin and the cockpit. The system gives a clear impression of how a whole host of systems function, including the flight manage-ment system, satellite com-munications, synthetic vision, the Ovation Select cabin man-agement system (CMS) and Ka-band connectivity.

Bombardier was the first airframer to sign an exclusivity agreement for the GX Aviation equipment to be standard on the new Global aircraft with a view to providing its customers con-nectivity rates of up to 30 MB per second. “We have the clean-est [system] architecture from our exclusive agreement with

[satellite provider] Inmarsat,” claimed Mike Beazley, global sales vice president for Honey-well’s business and general avia-tion division. “The system uses just three satellites to cover the world so that limits the number

of handovers and gives a lower risk of dropped calls.”

Two of three satellites for GX Aviation have been launched and the third is due to be in place by the end of June. Cer-tification is due to be complete

by the end of this year and Honeywell is set to begin flight tests in its Boeing 757 testbed this month. Bombardier will receive the first units in the third quarter of this year.


In-flight connectivity is the focus of Honeywell’s Ovation cabin management system. Ka-band technology enables connectivity rates of up to 30 MB per second. The system is available as a retrofit, as well as a factory option item.


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For Dassault’s new in-devel-opment 5X and 8X models, Honeywell’s contribution is the EASy III Epic cockpit suite. “We have a very good [avionics] legacy with Dassault on all their platforms and we’ve extended

this with the latest version of the Epic,” said Beazley. “We’ve also got a successful aftermar-ket program with Dassault [for avionics upgrades], and when they see this type of support and roadmap [for improvements for their customers] they like that.”

For Embraer’s new midsize jets, Honeywell’s main contribu-tion is their powerplant. Both the Legacy 500 and 450 models are

powered by a pair of the compa-ny’s HTF7500E turbofans–each rated at 7,036 pounds’ thrust in the case of the former, and 6,080 pounds’ thrust for the latter. Both aircraft also feature Honeywell’s 150-36 auxiliary power unit (APU), as well as the Ovation Select cabin management system. It also is providing the APUs for Bombardier’s new Global jets.

“The HTF engine has been selected by many OEMs and its reputation for reliability has helped drive sales,” commented Beazley. “In that thrust range, we have the engine of choice.”

The Ovation Select system is standard equipment on the Legacys. “The power-up time is shorter than anyone else’s and that’s a big factor when an operator is trying to get going,” said Beazley. “Also, there is no latency between the different dis-plays or between games [played on the entertainment system].”

For the new Pilatus PC-24 jet, Honeywell has provided a full Apex avionics suite, just as it has for the PC-12NG single tur-boprop. According to Beazley, this delivers essentially the same architecture as the company’s Epic system that was developed

for the cockpits of larger aircraft.Honeywell expects this year’s

EBACE show to be a busy one for its aftermarket sales team, which is offering retrofits, modi-fications and upgrades for equip-ment such as traffic and collision avoidance systems (TCAS), auto-matic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B), as well its SmartRunway, SmartLanding and synthetic vision safety sys-tems. The Ovation Select CMS is also available for retrofit.

“Since the economy is still sluggish in Europe, operators are keen to keep aircraft competitive

and we can help them do that through retrofits supported by an extensive dealer network that can do installations for some mandates in just a few hours,” said Beazley.

Honeywell’s booth here at the show also will include a desk where operators can sign up for its MSP engine mainte-nance service plans, as well as its aircraft, mechanical and cabin protection plans. The company has increased its pool of spare parts in Europe to meet a com-mitment to replace failed com-ponents within 24 hours. o

Oculus Rift 3-D goggles

Honeywell’s cabin innovation uContinued from page 44

Honeywell’s Ovation Select cabin management system incorporates touchscreen controllers for passengers to select their audio, video and gaming options.

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The company that produces the industry-leading AIN and EBACE Convention News, the magazine you’re holding, also publishes Business Jet Traveler,

which delivers six regular issues per year plus a comprehensive buyers’ guide each July. Since 2012, the magazine has also been offering annual Chinese-language

editions of the buyers’ guide that it distributes every spring in Shanghai at the Asian Business Aviation Conference & Exhibi-tion (ABACE).

Business Jet Traveler–or BJT, as it is widely known–has been helping subscribers maximize their investment in private avi-ation since 2003. It offers unbi-ased reviews of new and used aircraft; advice about buying and selling jets; and informa-tion about taxes, laws, financing, safety, maintenance, insurance and more. It also features arti-cles about new luxury autos, vacation destinations and other leisure pursuits, plus interviews with luminaries such as entre-preneur Sir Richard Branson, actor John Travolta and film-maker Francis Ford Coppola.

Popular annual features include BJT’s Book of Lists (June/July), which blends use-ful tips with entertaining trivia; Readers’ Choice (October/November), a report on the magazine’s exclusive survey of bizav users; and Gift Guide (December/January), which spotlights holiday gift ideas suited to business jet travelers. BJT received a major redesign at the beginning of 2015.

BJT’s exclusive audience of high-net-worth readers has grown substantially since the magazine began publishing. During the same period, it has garnered more than two dozen editorial awards, including 13 in the annual compe-tition sponsored by the American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE). Most notably, BJT has twice (2011 and 2013) been a winner of ASBPE’s Gen-eral Excellence Award, marking it as one of the best business maga-zines in the United States.

The publication’s editors and writers have won three Gold Wing Awards from the U.S. National Business Aviation Asso-ciation; six Folio: Eddie awards, four for Best Travel/Transpor-tation Magazine; an Aerospace Journalist of the Year award; and prizes in editorial competitions sponsored by the American Soci-ety of Journalists and Authors and the National Air Transporta-tion Association. –J.B.


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Honeywell turns to tech to upgrade its turbofans

With no new turbofan or turboprop under development, Honeywell is considering infus-ing new technology into produc-tion engines and refreshing its production processes with new materials and techniques.

The company hopes to an-nounce a new application for the 6,500- to 7,500-pound-thrust HTF7000 turbofan soon and is looking at technologies that could be applied to the en-gine over the next five to 10 years. The most recent appli-cation was the 7,323-pound-thrust HTF7350 that pow-ers the Bombardier Challenger 350, now in service. The new en-gine provides 7 percent more thrust than the Challenger 300’s HTF7000.

The company is also ramp-ing up production, to 400 engines annually from 300, in large part to accommodate the entry into service of Embraer’s

Legacy 450 and Legacy 500, AIN understands.

More than 1,000 HTF7000 engines are in service, with a combined 2.3 million hours and dispatch reliability of 99.9 percent, Nasos Karras, v-p for marketing and product manage-ment, told AIN. The most recent in-flight shutdown happened a year ago, he added.

“There is no demand for a new development” of the 5,500- pound-thrust-class TFE731, long Honey well’s workhorse for busi-ness aviation, Karras acknowl-edged. The company is never-theless studying technology for upgrades. Approximately 10,000 TFE731s are in service.

Similarly, Honeywell might incorporate new technology into the TPE331 turboprop (575 to 1,600 shp), which was designed more than half a century ago. “We are looking at opportunities in the business aviation and military mar-kets,” Karras said. The TPE331 features a two-stage centrifugal compressor, a compact and ero-sion-proof design, he pointed out.

Honeywell has taken part in the Continuous Lower Energy, Emissions and Noise (Cleen) pro-gram, led by the FAA, since 2010. As part of the program, core and engine testing of a new centrif-ugal compressor stage, able to withstand higher temperatures, is

scheduled for this quarter. Low-leakage air-air seals have been tried over 1,500 engine cycles.

The company has tested new thermal barrier coatings for the high-pressure turbine, on the tip shroud of the first stage and on airfoils. The coatings have been matured to technology readiness level 6, meaning they are ready to leave the laboratory and go to full product development.

Honeywell is also hoping to expand the use of ceramics–already employed in production for some stators and vanes–to raise temperature tolerance and engine efficiency. “The chal-lenge with ceramics remains their unproved reliability and durabil-ity, but expect this to change with time as their use and field experi-ence expands,” Karras said.

Separately, the future looks bright for additive layer manufac-turing. “This technology has no limit and we are investing heavily in 3-D printing,” Karras said. –T.D.

P&WC has new turbines on the grill by Thierry Dubois

Pratt & Whitney Canada’s PW814GA and PW815GA–which will power the Gulfstream G500 and G600, respectively–received type certification from Transport Canada in February. As of late April they had logged more than 3,600 hours/7,600 cycles, including more than 360 flight hours on the engine mak-er’s Boeing 747SP flying testbed, Michael Perodeau, v-p for cor-porate aviation and military pro-grams, told AIN.

In addition, the PW800 en gine’s common-core tech-nology, used in six PurePower engine applications, has amassed 17,000 hours of testing. “We are now doing post-certification

maturation testing–endurance testing–to ensure robustness over a long time,” Perodeau said. Endurance testing is also part of the Etops certification program.

Another routine post-certi-fication activity is developing Fadec updates. “We provide them as needed, as the aircraft flies and the airframer needs modifi-cation to the Fadec,” Perodeau explained. The G500 is slated to fly this year, followed by the G600 in 2017. The engines will be rated at 15,144 and 15,680 pounds of thrust, respectively.

The PW814/815GA will intro-duce a double-digit improve-ment in fuel burn over the previous generation of engines

in this thrust class, according to its designers. Pratt & Whitney Canada is providing the entire integrated powerplant–engine, nacelle and thrust reversers–for the G500 and G600.

On the 5,760-pound-thrust PW306D1 for the Cessna Citation Latitude, the focus will soon be on entry into service, Perodeau said. The Latitude finished FAA certi-fication flight-testing in April. “The PW306D1 is similar to the Citation Sovereign+’s engine so we expect no big issue.”

As of late April, certifica-tion of the 6,725-pound-thrust PW307D for the Falcon 8X tri-jet was said to be imminent. Meanwhile, development of the PW307B for the Learjet 85 is on hold, as Bombardier has “paused” the aircraft program.

Perodeau said that while no development is under way on the PW500 series (2,900 to 4,500 pounds), it is a high-volume program for the com-pany, thanks to the Embraer Phenom 300.

On the PW600, he noted the very light jet market has been relatively soft. “We expect a need for an engine improvement as airframers develop derivatives, but we are not there yet,” he

said. PW600 turbofans have been used so far on the Eclipse, Cessna Mustang and Embraer Phenom 100 at thrusts ranging from 950 to 1,780 pounds.

On the PT6A turboprop, Pratt & Whitney Canada is looking at introducing electronic controls, such as Fadec. Electronic engine control is already aboard PT6As powering some military trainers but there are no civil applications yet. “So far, the cost/benefit ratio was not good enough but, as tech-nology evolves, it becomes more doable,” Per odeau said. The Fadec

would be as generic and modular as possible but some differences between applications would likely be required, for example on hydro- mechanical components.

Finally, more power–toward 2,000 shp–is on the agenda. “We have the technology to do it,” Perodeau said. Today’s maxi-mum power in the PT6A series is close to 1,700 shp. Going much beyond 2,000 shp makes less sense for the PT6’s archi-tecture; the PW100, with cooled turbines, is already in that power class, Perodeau explained. o

Honeywell’s HTF7000 has proven its mettle in service.

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Passport and H-Series give GE a one-two punchby Thierry Dubois

GE Aviation is closing in on certification of its flagship tur-bofan for business aviation, the Passport, and at the same time striving to become a stronger player in the turboprop market with the H-Series.

The 16,500-pound-thrust Passport, destined to power Bombardier’s Global 7000 and 8000, entered flight-test late last year and is approaching the

first fan blade-out trial. Water ingestion was on the test card last month at GE’s facility in Peebles, Ohio. As of early May, eight Passport test engines had accumulated 1,400 hours and 1,700 cycles. The total number of engines involved in the devel-opment phase is to be 10, built around eight cores. “We have used eight engines to accumulate the cycles,” Shawn O’Day, GE Aviation’s senior v-p for business and general aviation, told AIN.

O’Day said the team is happy with the new technologies intro-duced on the engine. With the fan blisk, for example, “the airflow sees a smoother fan, a smooth front end of the engine as it flows through,” he said. As benefits, operators will no longer need to lubricate the blades and passengers will feel less vibra-tion. Specific fuel consumption is 8 percent better than that of the Rolls-Royce BR725, accord-ing to O’Day. “This turbofan is designed for business aviation–range, low noise and low vibra-tion,” he said.

The Passport marks the com-mercial debut of oxide-oxide (ox-ox) ceramic-matrix composite materials. “The exhaust mixer, the inner cowl duct, the exhaust cone are all ox-ox,” O’Day said. This lightweight material resists the high temperatures found in the exhaust area, thus improving durability and fuel consumption, according to its designers.

Also boosting efficiency, said O’Day, is the super-finish sur-face on high-pressure compres-sor blades. “On a super-finished blade, because it’s so smooth, you have a layer of air that remains over the surface, keep-ing contaminants from sticking on the blade. The blade remains cleaner and more efficient,” O’Day said. The surface of those blades is four times as smooth as conventional blades.

The CF34-3 program endures with Bombardier’s launch last year of the Challenger 650, a fur-ther evolution of the Challenger 600 series. The 650 will be pow-ered by a pair of 9,220-pound-thrust CF34-3BMTOs. The new engine will be able to use its APR rating, normally acti-vated only when one engine fails, for better takeoff perfor-mance. “What we’ve done is make the extra thrust available for takeoff regardless of whether or not an engine is out,” O’Day said. The additional power is pilot-selectable via a new per-formance thrust setting. The higher thrust setting does not

affect engine maintenance, pro-vided it is used on no more than 10 percent of takeoffs, accord-ing to Bombardier. The CF34-3BMTO will also offer a reduced takeoff thrust mode to cut main-tenance, according to GE.

The GE Honda HF120, rated at 2,095 pounds of thrust, received FAA type certification in December 2013 and an FAA production certificate (for the engines to be built in Burlington, N.C.) this past March. It is get-ting closer to entering service, as HondaJet won provisional FAA certification for the HondaJet on March 27 and expects full certifi-cation “in the next few months,” with deliveries to begin shortly after. GE Aviation itself has ordered two of the aircraft for its corporate fleet and plans to take delivery of them in 2017.

GE Honda last fall announced a joint project with Sierra Industries, of Uvalde, Texas, to develop an engine retrofit pro-gram for the Cessna CitationJet, CJ1 and CJ1+. The program is known as Sapphire.

Turboprop SegmentOn the H-Series turboprops,

GE continues to develop an elec-tronic engine control unit that is slated to enter service next year on the Nextant G90XT. “A sin-gle-lever control will simplify the pilot’s workload,” O’Day said, but he made it clear it will not be on every engine, “because there are aircraft considerations to be taken into account. You need to

go from a two-lever cockpit to a one-lever cockpit; it’s not just an engine change.” Once the new system is certified, it will be offered as an upgrade and pos-sibly for retrofit.

With nine applications for the H-Series so far, GE plans to build more than 100 engines this year. The three models–the H75, H80 and H85 (750, 800 and 850 shp, respectively)–might be joined in future by a more pow-erful version. “It is at the study stage,” O’Day said.

The most recent first flight of an aircraft fitted with H-Series engines was logged in Janu-ary, when the Nextant G90XT took to the air. The G90XT is a remanufactured Beechcraft King Air C90A equipped with H75s. Cleveland, Ohio-based Nextant was expecting aircraft certifica-tion this spring.

O’Day noted that GE is using additive layer manufacturing on the H-Series, for the fuel injector used in the starting phase.

“We have the 1950-rpm gear-box that’s entering service on the G90XT this fall, as well. We’re also offering a 300-amp starter-generator that’s going to be avail-able in all H-series production engines,” he added.

GE Aviation has submit-ted an application to EASA for approval to burn S10 diesel fuel in its turboprops. If approved by Brazil’s ANAC authorities, Bra-zilian agricultural aircraft opera-tors could cut their fuel costs by up to 25 percent. o

Generating a potent 16,500 pounds of thrust, the GE Passport engine is earmarked for Bombardier’s Global 7000 and 8000.

GE’s turboprop offering for business aircraft, the H-series, includes three models and counts nine applications, including Nextant’s G90XT, a remanufactured King Air.

WILLIAMS SEES TURBOFANS CERTIFIED THIS YEAR FOR CIRRUS, PILATUS

Williams International is in a busy period for devel-opment, with two engines–the FJ33-5 and the FJ44-4A-QPM–scheduled to receive certification this year.

Since Cirrus restarted the single-engine Vision SF50, the Williams FJ33-5 program has made prog-ress and is on schedule for certification in August, Matt Huff, Williams International v-p for busi-ness development, told AIN. “It has passed the most difficult tests for a small engine–ice slab, hail and bird ingestion–as well as blade-out retention,” he said.

Production deliveries of the 1,800-pound-thrust turbo-fan will begin in the fourth quarter. The third prototype (the second conforming air-craft) of the SF50 first flew last December and Cirrus is aiming to deliver the first aircraft late this year.

Before Diamond terminated the D-Jet program in 2013, that airplane was considered another possible application for the FJ33. The initial version of the FJ33 received FAA certification in 2004.

The “quiet power mode” version of the FJ44-4–the -4A-QPM–is on schedule to receive certification next year, Huff said. It is being developed to power the PC-24, which Pilatus rolled out last August and

had not flown by press time. The quiet power mode can be used on the ground, with the engine acting as an auxiliary power unit (APU) to supply electric power and bleed air. Williams says the noise signature is less offensive than that of typical APUs.

Another feature of the engine des-tined for the Pilatus is the so-

called Exact passive thrust vectoring. It uses a “propri-etary fluid dynamic” sys-tem. The thrust vector from the exhaust nozzle varies as a function of engine operat-

ing conditions: power setting, exhaust-gas temperature, Mach

number and altitude. The improve-ments in performance offset the

weight penalty, Huff noted. On the PC-24, each engine will provide a

normal takeoff thrust of 3,435 pounds at ISA+8C, and a new automatic thrust reserve will provide 5 percent more thrust if needed.

Williams has produced nearly 400 copies of the engine’s predecessor, the FJ44-4, which powers the Citation CJ4 (3,400 pounds thrust) and Hawker 400XPR upgrade (3,230 pounds). “The total popula-tion of FJ44s in service is approaching 5,000 and we are now at 10 million hours of service on the fleet,” Huff said. –T.D.

GE’s expertise in testing made its participation with Honda in the HF120 program a strong positive.

FJ33-5A

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ArincDirect and ICG join up, offer a new, smarter eRouterby Matt Thurber

Rockwell Collins announced here at EBACE 2015 that it has partnered with International Communications Group (ICG) to offer that company’s eRouter to Rockwell Collins business aviation customers, with the router being avail-able straight away to expand cabin ser-vices capabilities available to Rockwell Collins customers.

“It’s a smart router,” said Dave Poltorak, vice president of aviation and network services at Rockwell Collins ArincDirect (Booth 1073). “And, maybe more important, it’s service-provider agnostic. If you have our router on board you can use anybody’s service. We recog-nize customers want to choose their service provider.”

The ICG eRouter is the first that Rockwell Collins is offering to its business aircraft customers for cabin services–the company has previously delivered routers to its airline customers. “The focus with ICG is to recognize the growth and use of cabin connectivity,” said Poltorak. “There are multiple ways to communicate between the aircraft and the ground, and the smart router on board provides the least-cost routing and the choice of any service provider. We’re add-ing even more focus to the cabin and recognizing that customers are wanting more capabilities in terms of smart routing and which service provider [to] choose.”

Availability of the new router coincides with upcoming high-speed satcom services that Rockwell Collins will offer. Coming first is the Ka-band Inmarsat JetConneX (JX), for which ArincDirect is a value-added reseller (service provider). JX service will become available shortly and offers speeds of up to 33 Mbps. Rockwell Collins has also signed a memorandum of understanding to be the exclusive pro-vider of satcom terminals and also a ser-vice provider for OneWeb, a planned constellation of 600 low-earth-orbit sat-ellites that will provide high-speed broad-band connectivity. Having the eRouter on board will help customers take advan-tage of these services. “More and more customers are looking to have the smarts on board the aircraft to ensure they’re getting the most out of connectivity,” Poltorak said.

Another new feature that Rockwell Collins is adding to the ArincDirect mobile app is a new dashboard for cabin services, which should now be available in the latest version of the ArincDirect app. The main function of the cabin services part of the ArincDirect app is to help business aviation users track satcom data usage on their Inmarsat

SwiftBroadband systems. “If it’s a usage-based [service] package,” Poltorak explained, “this will provide insight into what they’re using it for. Cabin services is a fast-growing part of our business, and customers have almost insatiable demand for connectivity while flying.” The dashboard will provide new visi-bility into satcom costs. In addition to access on the ArincDirect app, the dash-board will also be available on the web.

The ArincDirect app has new features introduced during the past year includ-ing weight-and-balance calculations and a multi-leg fuel tankering module. These features supplement ArincDirect’s fuel pricing and fuel sourcing, which are part of the company’s international trip ser-vices offerings. “It’s been great to bring that together so we can leverage all our buying power, which customers ultimately benefit from” he said. Any ArincDirect or trip services customer can take advantage of the fuel sourcing services.

“A lot has happened over the last year,” Poltorak said, especially the fur-ther integration of the four services that fall under ArincDirect. They include: cabin services, international trip services, flight support subscription services and the FOS scheduling and dispatch soft-ware. “We’re the only company that has all four,” he said. “It’s one thing for them all to be owned by one company, but there is more value when you start inte-grating those capabilities.” o


ArincDirect’s app has some new features, including a simplified weight-and-balance calculator, above. The app also offers useful trip-specific weather depictions, below.

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Marshall lands HondaJet support roleby Ian Goold

Marshall Aviation Servic-es (MAS), part of the UK’s Marshall Aerospace and De-fence Group, is to establish a HondaJet dealership, including a sales and design office, at its

Birmingham International Air-port FBO in central England. MAS (Booth T131) has been appointed to provide sales, sup-port and distribution in North-ern Europe for the new aircraft,

which is making its European debut here at EBACE this week.

HondaJet sales, support and distribution is to be shared among 32 dealer territories in Europe and 53 in the U.S., ac-cording to the Japanese manu-facturer’s website. Europe is di-vided into three regions, with Belgium, Channel Islands, Ire-land, Isle of Man, Luxem-bourg, Netherlands, Scandina-via, and the northern part of the UK comprising “North-ern Europe.” The rest of the UK joins France, Greece, Ita-ly, Portugal, Spain and Turkey as “Southern Europe,” while a third region to the east compris-es about 18 further central and eastern European states. Oth-er HondaJet sales regions are: Eastern Europe, Russia and the Commonwealth of Indepen-dent States; Middle East; Asia, Australia and Oceania; Africa; Central America, South Amer-ica and Caribbean; and North America (comprising Canada, Mexico and the U.S.).

MAS is here also promoting its Bombardier Global Express maintenance, repair and over-haul (MRO) capability along-side other activities that include aircraft management/charter and aircraft-purchase and -sales bro-kerage under respective FlairJet and JETability brands. Having recently signed a contract cover-ing maintenance of a UK-based aircraft, MAS is “out in the mar-ketplace for the first time to offer any level of support–base, line, or AOG,” business development vice president James Dillon-Godfray told AIN.

The company is also high-lighting a new paint shop that recently became operational at the group’s Cambridge base. While initial painting work has involved commercial aircraft contracts, Dillon-Godfray is



James Dillon-Godfray, Marshall Aviation Services v-p of business development

Marshall Aviation’s FBO in Birmingham, UK, will be the site of the company’s sales and design office for HondaJet. The company is also expanding its other varied services.

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hoping to attract aircraft such as Boeing Business Jets.

Aircraft painting capacity had been limited previously to machines such as Gulfstream 550s, but now Boeing 747-size

aircraft can be accommodated. In addition, the 100,000-sq-ft European Hawker Beechcraft MRO facility MAS acquired two years ago at Broughton in North Wales can take Bombar-dier Challenger-size aircraft in its paint shop.

MAS is preparing to expand activity at its Birmingham FBO. The refurbished facility, which

re-opened its doors in March, will undertake MRO and tech-nical services on Global Express and Cessna Citation 500 and Hawker Beechcraft aircraft types (also supported by MAS at Cambridge).

According to Dillon-God-fray, up to seven business air-craft rotations per day are handled at the airport, where

MAS has taken on new tenant companies: Jets4UDirect.com, a single-point aviation services company and consultancy; and aircraft-cleaning and polishing company Fly Bright.

Also based at Birmingham is local charter operator Cello Aviation, which flies a 46-seat BAe146 and an 82-place Avro RJ. It has bought a Boeing

737-400 (configured for 165 pas-sengers), to arrive in June.

MAS is an established Beechcraft and Hawker autho-rized service center (ASC) for Europe, the Middle East and Af-rica, and exclusive sales repre-sentative for Textron’s King Air, Baron and Bonanza aircraft in the UK, Ireland and Scandina-via. It is now anticipating a sig-nificant new agreement to sup-port the Cessna Citation XL fleet operated by NetJets Europe.

The Broughton site is also an ASC for the Honeywell and Pratt & Whitney Canada engines. The company was pre-viously a Citation ASC before Cessna parent company Textron began to draw such activity back into its own domain, explained Dillon-Godfray.

Slow RecoveryRecovery from the recession

that accompanied the global financial crisis late in the last decade has been “very, very slow and is only now getting better,” said the MAS executive. Nevertheless, he is encouraged by a bright start to 2015, dur-ing which MAS has sold “seven brand-new King Airs in the UK alone,” including some to first-time buyers new to aviation.

In contrast, the market for used aircraft is “relatively slow,” with prices not having “recov-ered dramatically from the 2008 low point.” Asked about sales of Beech’s smaller designs, Dillon-Godfray says that there is “no great amount of interest in pis-ton singles.” Overall, he doesn’t expect to see an increase in sales activity this year.

Oxford Airport-based Flair-Jet manages seven aircraft, of which five are available for char-ter. A Citation XLS and a Cita-tion Bravo are owned by MAS, while three others–two Embraer Phenom 100s and a newly intro-duced Phenom 300–are managed on behalf of private third-party owners. (Initially based at Flor-ence in Italy, the Phenom 300, said to be the only European charter example configured for nine passengers, will operate from Ibiza in the Balearic Islands for the summer.) A King Air 350i and a Cessna Citation Mustang are not available for charter.

MAS continues to consider the Spanish market, confirms Dillon-Godfray. “A lot of char-tered aircraft fly to the south coast of Spain, but there is lit-tle support if an aircraft goes ‘tech,’” he said. He believes enough need could develop over time to support single-aisle com-mercial aircraft such as Airbus A320s and Boeing 737s. o


Marshall lands HondaJet roleuContinued from page 58

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Gama’s experts share secrets in EBACE presentation seriesby Jeff Burger

In keeping with its theme of “intelli-gent aviation,” UK-based business avi-ation services group Gama Aviation

will be hosting four events here at the EBACE show (Booth V045). The expert presentations are being provided by a selection of Gama partner companies and subsidiaries as follows:• “Culinary Excellence,” set for 11 a.m. and

2 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday, will feature a cooking demonstration by busi-ness aviation caterer On Air Dining. The presentation by CEO Daniel Hulme and executive chef Colin Barnett will include construction and delivery of two starter dishes, two main courses and two des-serts. The goal, according to Gama, “is to demonstrate how modern food tech-nology and lessons from fine dining can create amazing meals that transform an inflight experience from average to excep-tional.” Attendees will be able to judge for themselves, as tastings will accompany the presentations.

• “Are You Getting the Most from Your Aviation Operation Software?” will be

presented at 12:00 daily. This 30-minute talk will offer details and help regarding Airops software, which is used by oper-ators, brokers, FBOs and flight man-agement departments.

• “Are You Ready for Regulatory Change?” is the question to be addressed at a 30-minute seminar that Gama’s train-ing department will conduct at 1 p.m. daily. The goal is to show operators how they can prepare themselves, through Gama’s in-aircraft ATO program, for the EASA regulatory system, which is still being formulated. The semi-nar will address regulations that have recently been implemented or soon will be, including Part-NCC, which regu-lates private complex aircraft; Part-ORA requirements for landing training for type ratings; and Part-OPS, ORO and associated revised regulations for com-mercial operations.

• “Insights into a Consolidating European Aviation Market,” a seminar by WingX Advance managing director Richard Koe, will take place Tuesday and Wednesday at 3.00 p.m. Koe will discuss current views of the European business aviation market and explore reasons why industry consol-idation is such a hot topic today. o

Signature FBO network expanding throughout Europeby Charles Alcock

Signature Flight Support’s FBO at London Luton Airport is in the process of completing a $40 million redevelop-ment that is due to enter service by the third quarter of 2016. The final phase involves construction of a 48,439-sq-ft FBO building, fully equipped for both passengers and crew.

Last month, a new 75,350-sq-ft park-ing stand went into operation, signifi-cantly increasing capacity for visiting aircraft. The stand includes a storage facil-ity for Signature’s ground support equip-ment. In April 2014, the company added a 48,439-sq-ft hangar with space for a pair of Boeing Business Jets.

The new FBO building will include a covered arrivals area to shelter cus-tomers from bad weather. It will have a lounge and conference area, as well as

catering facilities that include a full bar. Passengers will be able to access aircraft on the ramp via a dedicated, secure gate for customer vehicles.

Meanwhile, in Barcelona, Spain, the Menzies Aviation FBO became part of the Signature Select network in January. The partner FBOs maintain their own brand identity and have full control of their operations, while benefitting from being promoted as part of Signature’s chain of more than 125 locations worldwide.

The Menzies facility is part of the general aviation terminal in Barcelona and includes three lounges, two crew rooms, meeting rooms and office space, as well as showers. The FBO also ben-efits from having its own customs and immigration facilities, as well as space for parking around 100 cars and a ramp

large enough for up to 75 aircraft.According to Menzies Barcelona gen-

eral manager John Kay, the level of cus-tomer service at the FBO has increased since it became part of Signature Select. “The support we receive from Signature has improved our service delivery, sales effectiveness and safety, elevating them to world-class levels,” he commented. “The additional reward for our loyal customers is supported by Signature TailWins, our pilot rewards program, which our custom-ers have found exceptional value in.”

On the eve of this week’s EBACE show, Signature Flight Support presi-dent Maria Sastre acknowledged that business aviation traffic in Europe is still not recovering to the extent seen in the North American market. However, she maintained that the company is out-performing competitors on this side of the Atlantic. “We’re doing well in a soft market,” she commented, adding that Signature’s strong presence in the UK has served it well since the business cli-mate is more positive there.

This week, Signature (Booth N114) is expected to announce further expansion of its FBO network in Europe. Sastre told AIN that pressures for consolidation within the FBO sector are still creating opportu-nities to grow through acquisitions and partnerships. “We’ve been on a transfor-mational journey for the past five years,” she said. “Working hard [to improve] our people, service, facilities, technology and customer interaction as we move to being world class and best-in-class.” o

Mark Johnstone (left), Signature Flight Support EMEA managing director, and London Luton Airport CFO Elliot Renton open the new parking stand at the FBO.

The Menzies Aviation FBO in Barcelona is part of the Signature Select network.

A UNIQUE PERSPECTIVE ON EBACE’S STATIC DISPLAY

There are lots of ways to look at a situa-tion, and sometimes an unusual perspec-tive can provide a valuable new insight. The business aviation landscape takes on a fresh view. This fellow’s vantage point turns the whole world upside down.Daniel Hulme, CEO of catering group On Air, is

staging cooking demonstrations at Gama Aviation’s EBACE exhibit this week.

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HondaJet’s European tour launches with EBACE debutby Kerry Lynch

Capping off a tour in Japan that drew more than 10,000 people, the HondaJet light aircraft is making its European debut here at EBACE with plans to visit nine locations throughout the region.

The aircraft, which in late March received its provisional type certifica-tion, was displayed at public and private

events at six airports thoughout Japan and was involved in 33 demonstrations there. Honda Aircraft president and CEO Michimasa Fujino called the tour a suc-cess, particularly because it helped cultivate awareness of business aviation in Japan.

In Europe, the aircraft is on demon-stration with HondaJet dealers, including

the newly appointed Marshall Aviation (see page 58), which will cover sales in the northern part of the UK, Scandinavia, and the Benelux countries. Other new dealers include Rheinland Air Services in central Europe and TAG Aviation, cover-ing southern Europe.

In addition to Geneva, the Euro-pean tour will involve flights in Warsaw, Poland; Cambridge, Birmingham, Leeds and Farnborough in the UK; and Mon-chengladbach, Munich and Hamburg in Germany.

Honda Aircraft (Booth Z140) has not revealed its backlog, but continues to maintain that the $4.5 million aircraft

has more than 100 orders. The company currently has 20 aircraft on the assembly line and plans to ramp up the rate fol-lowing receipt of a production certifi-cate. Fujino estimated that the company could produce 40 aircraft in the first year and possibly 60 in the next.

The production certificate is antici-pated after full type certification, which Fujino said he hopes to secure in the next few months. European Aviation Safety Agency approval is anticipated later this year.

The company, which flew the first production model in June 2014, began flying the second production model in March and a third this month. The flight test program has accrued 2,500 flight hours at 70 locations, Fujino said.

As it continues flight-testing, Honda Aircraft has launched another expansion of its campus. This expansion involves a 50,000-sq.-ft. addition to the headquar-ters to accommodate office space for sales and administration, and a dedi-cated showroom. o

Multiple new jet coverage plans unveiling this week for JSSIby Curt Epstein

Hourly-cost maintenance provider Jet Support Services, Inc. (JSSI) is launch-ing several new programs this week. The Chicago-based company has extended its Tip-to-Tail program for Embraer’s new Legacy 500 and 450 light jets, naming Turkish air taxi operator Bon AirHavacilik as its launch customer. The new programs include coverage for the airframe, the Honeywell HTF7500E engines and the Honeywell 36-150 auxil-iary power unit.

“With the Legacy 500 entering the market late last year and the 450 expected to be in service later this year, we are well positioned to support this fleet as buyers take delivery,” noted JSSI president and CEO Neil Book. “We’re able to provide an alternative program to the customer who can now come do JSSI exclusively to cover engine, air-frame and APU, otherwise they would have had to work with three different programs, three different points of con-tact and three different contracts.”

With the debut of the Bombardier Challenger 650 here in Geneva, JSSI

premiered its new Platinum engine pro-gram, which is ready to cover its General Electric CF34-3 MTO powerplants when the twinjet enters service. “We’ve got pretty extensive experience on the CF-34 engines across a number of platforms,” Book told AIN. “We were able to take the data and the his-tory that we have with those engines and were able to port it over to the Challenger 650. We believe it’s really critical that the consumer, the buyer of these aircraft have an alternative to the manufacturer when it comes to their maintenance program.”

While the company’s Platinum pro-gram provides all-inclusive scheduled and unscheduled maintenance engine including life-limited components, JSSI is quite willing and able to provide cus-tomized plans, including for those customers who choose to select less cov-erage. “One of the things that I think is special about the JSSI program is our ability to put together a program to meet the needs of a customer,” noted Susan Marr, chief administrative officer.

“If a customer does not want to include the life-limited components in their program, having the ability to take that out and then customize a rate based upon those coverage is something that we do all the time,” said Marr.

A Tip-to-Tail hourly cost mainte-nance program for the Challenger 650 will soon be launched as well. Currently JSSI (Booth A073) supports more than 175 different models under its Tip-to-Tail coverage.

On the rotorcraft side, JSSI also announced a new Platinum mainte-nance program for the approximately 900 in-service Honeywell (formerly Lycoming) LTS-101 retrofit engines for the Airbus Helicopters AS350 and the Bell 222 platforms. “As the LTS-101 engine continues its resurgence in the helicopter industry, we are proud to be the first to offer our comprehensive maintenance program to support these operators,” said Book. We’re excited because we’ve got a fairly sizable pipe-line of prospects on it, particularly in the law enforcement, oil and gas and medevac space, so we think there’s some very unique opportunities here.”

While the U.S. remains its strongest market, much of JSSI’s present growth is coming from international markets such as the Middle East, Asia and Europe according to Book. o


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NEXUS SIGNS UP ACJ319 ENGINES FOR VIP PASS

Nexus Flight Operations Services has signed up for the VIP Pass (ACJ Engine Care) service offered by Airbus Corporate Jet Centre (ACJC). The five-year support plan will cover the CFM56-5B turbofans for an ACJ319 aircraft operated by Saudi Arabia-based company through a part-nership between ACJC and engine man-ufacturer Snecma. Toulouse-based ACJC was responsible for completing the VIP cabin of the Nexus ACJ319 back in 2009.

“ACJC’s VIP Pass ensures that our Airbus ACJ319’s engines will be looked after by the companies that know them best,” said Nexus president and CEO Abdullah Al-Sayed, “as we deliver noth-ing less when it comes to serving our cli-entele and their aviation needs.”

Engine care is one element of the VIP Pass created by ACJC to offer simpli-fied and cost-effective maintenance and support packages for ACJ operators. As well as engine support, the VIP Pass can cover maintenance and upgrade, com-ponent support, field support, and cabin refurbishments and upgrades.

ACJC (Booth L089) can tailor the package to meet customer requirements to provide support on pre-agreed broad contractual commitments. For the opera-tor, that equates to predictable and fixed costs that are mostly paid on a monthly or per-flight hour basis.

Nexus Flight Operations Services also provides trip planning, flight dispatch, crew and aircraft planning, scheduling, security, maintenance management and concierge services. The group is exhibit-ing here at EBACE (Booth X089) with its sister company GDC Technics. –D.D.

The HondaJet’s singular over-the-wing engine configuration makes its European premier here at EBACE. Just concluding a tour of the Far East, Honda Aircraft preps for imminent full FAA certification.


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SUPERSONIC BUSINESS JET IS YOURS FOR $120M

Supersonic business jet developer Aerion Corp. set the price for its Mach 1.5 AS2 at $120 million and has begun accepting orders for the trijet, the company announced yesterday at EBACE. Aerion said the first 50 customers “will receive preferential pricing and other benefits.” It intends to bring its SBBJ to market in the second quarter of 2022.

“This is another step forward for Aerion,” said company chairman Robert Bass. “We are offering a select group of forward-thinking business aviation users the opportunity to fly faster and to make history with us as we reintroduce commercial supersonic fight.”Aerion and Airbus, which has been a strategic partner since last fall, are teaming on a joint definition phase and are refining the design of the aircraft.

CEO Doug Nichols said the company has made substantial progress in the def-inition of the AS2, and new low-speed wind tunnel tests are planned for September at the University of Washington wind-tunnel complex.

Aerion also has been bolstering its leadership team, including the recent addi-tion of Ernie Edwards, the former president of Embraer Executive Jets, as senior vice president and chief commercial officer. Also, it added two more executives to its leadership team: Clint Clouatre, former vice president of marketing for Embraer Executive Jets, as vice president of product strategy; and Lisa Holden, most recently director of people at Virgin Galactic’s The Spaceship company subsidiary, as vice president of human relations.

Rounding out the leadership team, Aerion named: Richard Tracy senior vice president and chief technology officer; Mike Hinderberger senior vice president of aircraft development; Warren Mazer, senior vice president of finance and admin-istration; Colin Johnson, vice president for software development; and Jeff Miller, vice president of marketing and communications. –K.L.

MEBAA rebrands show, adds new Morocco venueby James Wynbrandt

The Middle East and North Africa Business Aviation Asso-ciation (MEBAA; Booth P099) is rebranding its biennial gath-ering in Dubai, henceforth the MEBAA Show (rather than MEBA), founding chairman Ali Alnaqbi said here at EBACE. “Now we’ll put all our activities under the association name.”

Following that convention, Alnaqbi noted the association will host MEBAA Show Morocco, in Casablanca, September 1-2 this year. “This is the first time we’ll put on a full show outside of Dubai,” Alnaqbi said. “Morocco is a very promising market.”

The Association is target-ing 50 key companies to exhibit in Morocco. “We don’t want to start large, we want to man-age growth,” Alnaqbi said. Bell Helicopter, Bombardier, Gulfstream and Tag Aviation are among those who’ve already confirmed their attendance. Some 25 static aircraft and 2,500 attendees are also expected.

Alnaqbi said the Moroccan government is eager “to pro-mote business aviation in all of Morocco,” and has asked MEBAA to help. As part of its effort, the government will develop Tit Milel Airport out-side of Casablanca as the coun-try’s first dedicated business aviation airport. MEBAA will advise the country’s government on selecting an FBO for the field.

MEBAA itself, now with 240 registered members, is growing, in part due to programs like the MEBAA Aviation Insurance Scheme (MAIS), which provides members with reduced insur-ance rates and improved benefits though group coverage. Initially offered to aircraft operators and owners (some 70 aircraft are now insured through the plan), coverage is now available for FBOs, MROs and other avia-tion businesses. “This is exactly what members want, it’s really a direct value,” said Alnaqbi. MAIS can save an operator with 10 aircraft “around $100,000” per year, he said.

In Geneva, MEBAA is “here to support out peer associa-tions: NBAA and EBACE,” he said. “We all have one objec-tive: to support business avia-tion globally.” o

PC-12 SOARS PAST FIVE MILLION HOUR MARK

The Pilatus PC-12 fleet has topped the five million flight-hour mark, a milestone reached a little more than 20 years after the first of the single-turboprop aircraft entered service. Pilatus Aircraft handed over the first PC-12 in October 1994, and the fleet now has grown to more than 1,300.

“The fleet is extremely active, accumulating over half a million hours per year, with some individual PC-12s flying more than 2,000 hours annually,” said Ignaz Gretener, vice president of the General Aviation business unit of Pilatus. The aircraft have been operated in a wide range of roles, including executive transport, special missions, air ambulance, surveillance, airlines, cargo, fractional ownership, law enforcement, charter, fire spotting and relief aid roles. –K.L.

GDC Technics wins third 787 completion

GDC Technics has won a third Boeing 787 comple-tion contract, capping two years of expansion activity since Mohammed Alzeer and his partners acquired the for-mer Gore Design Completions. Alzeer declined to identify the latest 787 customer, but called the contract “a game changer, as it involves developing a new prestigious first class cabin that integrates new cutting edge tech-nologies with maximum luxury found only in VVIP aircraft.” GDC is scheduled to take deliv-ery of the green aircraft in 2017.

San Antonio, Texas-based GDC (Booth X089) is currently completing two 787s and a 777-300ER. It also has a contract to refurbish a BBJ1.

Meanwhile, the company has been expanding its facilities and global footprint. GDC has built a new 850,000-sq-ft facility at Alli-ance Airport in Forth Worth, Texas and has invested $20 mil-lion in restructuring and devel-opment, including expanding its

engineering and certification capa-bilities. The company is now a “100 percent Catia environment,” Alzeer said, referring to the industry-standard computer-aided design software from Dassault Systèmes.

GDC has also implemented its global expansion strategy establishing facilities in Europe (GDC Engineering in Munich), the Middle East, and “next year we will be in Africa,” said Alzeer, with a facility in Morocco. “Our demand is global. We have cus-tomers in China, the Middle East, in the U.S., in Central Asia. The weakness we had is we were not close to customers. That is why we have [developed] satellite facilities,” he continued.

Alzeer said the company has also invested heavily in human resources, creating an in-house training center. “Our objective is not just to create capabilities, but create human resources to effectively utilize those techni-cal capabilities.” –J.W.

WHAT’S OLD IS NEW AGAINNot named for the city in Texas, the original WACO from aviation’s Golden Age was the Weaver Aircraft Company of Ohio. In 1983, production recommenced on the Model YMF, and it remains a favorite among enthusiasts.

Ali Alnaqbi, MEBAA founding chairman

Mohammed Alzeer, GDC Technics head

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BUSINESS AVIATION

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Daher offers TBM retrofits, looks for aerostructures opportunityby Thierry Dubois

Daher (formerly Daher-Socata. Static Display, Booth X114) is here exhibiting a TBM 900 turboprop single, while promot-ing Garmin G600 cockpit retrofits for older versions. Separately, the Tarbes, France-based company is touting its aerostructures business, supplying major subassemblies for Dassault, Embraer and Gulfstream.

“2015 sales so far have been at quite a good level,” said Nicolas Chabbert, senior v-p of Daher’s airplane business unit. He mentioned a “strong” first quarter, with 11 deliveries, and a “reassuring” backlog of 47 aircraft.

Among the first deliveries of the year were the first Mexican and Spanish

registrations. The former was for an exec-utive charter operator, and Chabbert said it is very important to keep generating interest for this application.

The impact of the strong U.S. dollar, which could cause a weakening of sales in non-dollar zones, still has to be measured.

The 2015 version of the TBM 900 includes two new USB sockets in the pas-senger cabin. Chabbert had no product improvement plan to announce, as the TBM 900 is still new, he pointed out. He also had no news to report on a possible addition to the product line; the once-con-sidered jet program remains in standby mode this year.

Regarding product support, Chab-bert said the current offer–including the five-year warranty–will stay technically unchanged, but his team will strive to fur-ther improve customization and quality.

In retrofits, Daher last year in France handed over the first TBM 700 upgraded with a Garmin G600/GTN 750 avionics retrofit, replacing mechanical instruments and first-generation CRT electronic flight displays. Synthetic vision is one available option for the Garmin suite. Prices begin at $120,000 for a dual-screen G600 basic package, with an installation time esti-mated at 250 man-hours.

Last month, the first U.S. TBM to undergo such a retrofit entered Daher’s

workshop in Florida. Daher opened its new 32,000-sq-ft North American head-quarters for its TBM airplane business unit in March at Pompano Beach Airpark in Florida. The facility supplants the compa-ny’s former U.S. base at Fort Lauderdale- Hollywood North Perry Airport. Accord-ing to Daher, the new facility enables the company to offer more services for TBM operators and customers, including avion-ics retrofits, repairs and aircraft overhaul.

Speaking at the event at Pompano Beach Airpark, CEO Patrick Daher con-firmed that the company’s aerospace unit is still seeking to acquire a U.S.-based aero-structures company, “preferably on the East or West Coast,” to fulfil its quest to become a Tier 1 supplier to Boeing.

In Europe, Daher is a Tier 1 supplier to Airbus and Dassault, manufacturing the fuselages for the latter company’s Fal-con 5X, 7X and 8X. For the Gulfstream G500 and G600, Daher is supplying car-bon-fiber main landing gear doors while also manufacturing spars for the Embraer Legacy 500. Although it is not exhibiting any aerostructures here at EBACE, Daher is using the show to market its know-how.

In a rebranding effort announced in February, the manufacturer of the TBM 900 said it would henceforth be known as Daher, dropping the Socata name that the company had used since 1966. o

Swiss firms playing key roles in Solar Impulse 2 world flight

The ongoing ’round-the-world voyage of Solar Impulse 2 involves the cooper-ation of several Swiss companies. They have provided tailored systems or have embedded their engineers into the solar-powered aircraft project’s team. ABB, Omega, Schindler and Swisscom; not all are regularly involved in aerospace, but all expect a return on innovation.

Tamara Tursijan is a Solar Impulse ground engineer provided by power and automation giant ABB. She deals with the mobile inflatable hangar than accommo-dates the aircraft at those airports where no other shelter is available. The hangar was developed specifically for the Solar Impulse project and Tursijan is in charge of power inside the hangar. “I upgraded the power control system with ABB systems to make it more secure and redundant,” she said.

On the plane itself, she has helped the electric team with “wiring and upgrading some systems.” ABB also supplied some of its hardware products, such as switch-gear and relays.

Watch manufacturer Omega has con-tributed to designing an instrument that sends a warning to the pilot when the bank angle exceeds the five-degree limit. The pilot receives the alert via a vibrat-ing sleeve, also developed by Omega. The company has also created a special alarm that emits a loud buzz, between 90 to 100 decibels, every 20 minutes. The pilot has to push a button to turn the sound off and restart the 20-minute countdown.

Omega’s landing-light system, includ-ing promotional and landing LED lights, the focusing lenses, cables, power trans-former and connectors weighs just one kilogram (2.2 lbs).

On each wing, the aircraft carries one energy dispatcher, ensuring that either gondola battery can support the other on the same wing in the event that one engine fails. Another Omega contribu-tion is a DC-DC converter to convert the energy from the gondola batteries to a low voltage (28V), suitable for the cock-pit equipment. Finally, Omega supplied a test bench to simulate the plane’s electric system on the ground.

In satellite communications, Swiss-com designed a lightweight solution for the cockpit to transmit data, live images and voice. It supplied a tablet for e-mail and displaying navigation information. The pilot can receive weather images from the mission control center in Monaco. The satellite link supports the transmission of 100 parameters–engine temperature, battery voltage, aircraft position and so on.

The entire system, from the micro-phone, camera and tablet to the antenna, weighs less than five kilograms (11 lbs). The power consumption is kept below 50 watts. All the components can withstand temperatures from -40C to 80C and alti-tudes up to 30,000 feet. Swisscom experts are working at the mission control center, optimizing the bandwidth.

Elevator manufacturer Schindler emphasized what it expects from its involvement in the project. “By embed-ding [our] engineers in the Solar Impulse project, Schindler is using targeted inno-vations that revolutionize the structure of materials, improve their robustness and massively reduce their weight,” the firm said. These innovations range from the aircraft’s tubular design–described as a quantum leap in machine engineer-ing–to new honeycomb structures with extremely high torsional stability and the sophisticated solar technology.

Schindler hopes this will achieve “a marked and sustainable reduction in energy consumption” in its installations. “I have gained valuable insight into what lightweight structures can achieve,” explained Christian Studer, who usually works at Schindler New Technologies.

Last, but not least, Swiss Re is Solar Impulse’s insurance underwriter. –T.D.

Swiss watch manufacturer Omega provides cockpit instruments and power management systems for the Solar Impulse 2. Automation firm ABB, elevator maker Schindler and telecom giant Swisscom are also contributing.

The long-term success of the TBM series has served Daher well, and despite the challenge of a strong dollar, sales continue apace. Daher has undertaken a retrofit project for early TBM 700s including a Garmin G600 retrofit panel including synthetic vision and a GTN 750 navigator.

For more than 90 years, GE Aviation has led the industry with innovations like the turbo-supercharger and the world's most powerful commercial jet engine. And with new technologies like CMCs, additive manufacturing and modular power tiles, we’ll continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible for decades to come.

Join us #OutFrontEBACE at Booth A013and ask how you could win Beats By Dre Headphones!

OUT FRONTIn Aviation Innovation

81808_AIN_Convention_News_OnPt_Ad.indd 1 4/30/15 3:52 PM


With its newly widened fuselage, Cessna’s latest is a true people pleaserby Matt Thurber

A hallmark of the Citation brand has been the willingness of Cessna leadership to bring out new products that com-pete not only with other man-ufacturers’ airplanes but also with the prolific Citation lineup itself. The Citation Latitude, the newest Citation, is making its European debut in the Tex-tron Aviation area of the aircraft static display here at EBACE, and it’s a prime example. After “building a career” on two cabin cross sections conceived in the 1970s, the company (Booth V029) acknowledged the shift-ing landscape of the jet market–including European buyers and operators–and launched the Lat-itude. It introduces the first new Citation cabin cross section in more than four decades.

AIN flew the Latitude on March 30 with Textron Aviation flight-test manager and chief

pilot Aaron Tobias. With a spa-cious flat-floor cabin, efficient performance, excellent handling and a price that might poach sales from some other Citation models, the $16.25 million Lati-tude adds a tough choice for the buyer of a midsize Citation.

The new jet is being certified as an amendment to the Model 680 type certificate, the latest model being the Sovereign+, and it shares enough features and characteristics with the Sover-eign that a Sovereign+ type-rated pilot will require just differences training to fly the Latitude.

With the addition of the Lati-tude, the Citation lineup includes three equipped with the Garmin G5000 touchscreen-controlled Intrinzic flight deck as well as the M2 and CJ3+ with the G3000-based Intrinzic cock-pit. These avionics systems are easier to operate than Garmin’s

first integrated system, G1000, which populates most Cessna singles, and is more like the touchscreen-controlled G2000 system in Cessna’s speedy TTx piston single. Moving up into many of the Citation models, including the company’s largest jets, is made much simpler by the familiarity that pilots gain transitioning from the G1000/G2000 to G3000/G5000 systems.

“What we set out to do was create a new midsize airplane,” said Michael Pierce, Textron Avi-ation manager of technical mar-keting, “something unique that fits in between the XLS+ and Sovereign+. And we wanted a stand-up cabin and a flat floor.”

During the walkaround, Tobias pointed out improve-ments to the Latitude airframe. The cabin door is now electri-cally operated, and the door-frame is fitted with a single

passive compression seal, which improves dispatch reliability by eliminating the inflatable seal. The door can be opened and closed manually, and is back-driven against the motor so it doesn’t drop too quickly when opening.

There is no more “door spade” fairing, and oxygen bottles were moved from the fuselage fair-ing to the nose compartment and flight controls rerouted to allow for a thinner finger fair-ing on the belly. Baggage and nose compartment latches are a new monolithic machined style that can be closed easily with just one finger.

Well BehavedThe Latitude wing is

“essentially the same as the Sovereign+’s,” Tobias said, with the same 16.3-degree leading-edge sweep, 543-sq-ft area and smoothly upswept winglets. Wing treatments facilitate doc-ile stall characteristics, which Tobias fully explored during more than 1,000 stall tests. “It’s a pussycat,” he said. Fowler-type flaps, in three sections, are elec-trically actuated. Five sections of hydraulically powered spoilers provide lift, drag and roll con-trol, supplementing the ailerons at the outer section of the wings.

The empennage also shares Sovereign+ heritage, with a

zero-dihedral, trimmable hori-zontal stabilizer and anti-float tabs on the elevator, intercon-nected to the stabilizer. A rudder bias system enables feet-on-the-floor engine-out operation. The rudder is equipped with a single yaw damper.

The flight controls are mechanical, and this (in addi-tion to the adoption of major components from the Sover-eign+) helped speed the Lati-tude toward certification.

Two compartments, on either side of the fuselage aft of the wings, each house a nicad bat-tery. Four easily operated latches replace Dzus fasteners found on older airframes. The mainte-nance access space in the tailcone can’t be described as a typical hellhole because the area is clean and extra spacious, which techni-cians will appreciate.

The large baggage compart-ment is fitted with the same simple latches as the nose com-partment doors and can hold up to 1,000 pounds. A 50-pound-capacity coat rod is installed, too. The door has an integral step, although the 4.5-foot sill height is low enough for most people to lift luggage into the compartment with ease.

On top of the aft fuselage, a pitot-style inlet at the base of the vertical stabilizer helps

Pilot Report

Citation Latitude


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Flight Deck FeaturesThe cockpit of the Latitude

felt familiar to me since I have flown the Intrinzic-equipped Citation X+ and Sovereign+. And as it is in those jets, the cock-pit is roomy and uncluttered, with far fewer switches, knobs and controls and a slimmed-down center console than in older Citations. Small touches add to the cockpit’s comfort, such as side pocket areas that are ideal for tablet computers and other portable items, leather-wrapped yokes and console, push-to-talk switches on the sidewalls and in general a modern look and feel.

The Latitude fuselage diame-ter is 12 inches larger than the 72 inches of the XLS+, Sovereign+ and X+, and thus the Latitude’s interior cabin width expands to 77 inches compared to 66 inches in the other jets. This adds about four inches of cockpit width for each pilot, making more space for the pilot seat armrests as well as the side pockets, which also include USB chargers. Pilot seat travel is three inches longer and the windshields are larger. Because the right-seater usually sits back from the instrument panel, the right outboard touch-screen controller was moved slightly aft to match that typical seating position.

The big benefit of touch-screen controllers is elimination of the FMS control display units that usually take up space in the console. An FMS is still part of the G5000 avionics, but it is bur-ied in the circuit cards and soft-ware behind the scenes, and all pilots have to do is push more intuitive touchscreen iconog-raphy to make the airplane go where and how they want.

The four GTC 570 touch-screen controllers in the Lati-tude use infrared technology instead of the capacitive touch we are all familiar with on our smart devices or the resistive touch used for some products, which requires a more hefty push to activate. The infrared touch-screens make it easy for design-ers to build in features such as not allowing anything to hap-pen when more than one finger pushes on the screen or prevent-ing an electronic button push if the finger misses the target. This version of the G5000 now has full systems synoptics pages.

Checklists and performance cal-culations will be added shortly.

Standard on the Latitude are Garmin’s SafeTaxi airport charts. SurfaceWatch is optional and provides aural and display warnings for maneuvers such as accelerating on a taxiway, cross-ing an active runway, getting too close to the end of the runway while decelerating after land-ing and so on. SurfaceWatch will eventually be integrated with ADS-B in. The Latitude is equipped with ADS-B out as well as Sirius XM weather and radio. Datacom features for European Link 2000+ and con-troller-pilot datalink communi-cations will be an option.

Flight planning is intuitively simple, just a matter of typing in waypoints and destination, plus anticipated arrival pro-cedures, and it’s easy to make changes to a flight plan. Once the destination is in the sys-tem, the automatic pressuriza-tion system sets the arrival field elevation, then automatically schedules cabin altitude and rate of change. At the maximum alti-tude of 45,000 feet, the 9.66-psi pressure differential produces a cabin altitude of 5,950 feet. Two-zone temperature control is available, and the VIP seated passenger can set cabin temper-ature; the pilots have control of their comfort using a page on the touchscreen controller. The adjustment is done on a visual gauge, which also shows the desired temperature. I found the adjustment to be precise, with a few degrees either up or down making a perceptible difference in the cockpit environment. Ten air vents, including one behind each pilot, help distribute air in the cockpit. The Latitude is the first Citation equipped with a cabin Hepa filter, which cap-tures small particles.

Typical for large Citations, the Latitude has a hydraulically powered rack-and-pinion nose-wheel steering system, which is sensitive. The rudder pedals allow up to 7 degrees of left or right travel, while the handwheel (tiller) in the cockpit moves the nosewheel 81 degrees either side.

Latitude FlyingWe took off from Runway 15

at Burbank, California, with a slight left crosswind, and once I pushed the power levers for-ward, the Garmin autothrottles took over and smoothly brought the Pratt & Whitney Canada PW306D1 turbofans to maxi-mum power. The engines are the same as those in the Sovereign+

and have a 6,000-hour TBO and 3,000-hour hot-section interval, or can be placed in on-condi-tion service when participating in P&WC’s flight data acquisi-tion and transmission program.

We quickly accelerated through V1 of 99 kcas and rotated at 102 kcas. We were relatively light, car-rying just one other crewmember and 5,490 pounds of fuel. With a basic operating weight of 19,076 pounds, the Latitude weighed nearly 6,000 pounds short of the 30,800-pound mtow. Fuel capac-ity is 11,394 pounds, and typical payload with maximum fuel is 1,040 pounds. Burbank’s weather was normal clear southern Cal-ifornia conditions, but slightly cooler at ISA standard, and our balanced field length was just 3,000 feet.

The autothrottles helped keep us shy of 250 ktas below

10,000 feet, although that set-ting can be adjusted depending on the airspace requirements of a particular country. Dur-ing the climb to FL430, the autothrottles automatically set power for the Mach 0.64 climb speed and then, when required to level off, transitioned to the target cruise speed of Mach 0.80. Even with a few level-offs, it took only 10 minutes to reach FL270 and at our medium weight we leveled off at FL430 twenty minutes after take-off. At mtow, the Latitude can climb unrestricted to FL410 in 21 minutes and reach FL430 in 26 minutes. At that altitude and ISA -1, the Latitude settled at Mach 0.76 and 436 ktas, burn-ing about 740 pph per side.

When leveling off, the autothrottles are designed to maintain maximum continuous

thrust for about 10 minutes then reset to the high-speed cruise setting. Or I could just tap the autothrottles off before the 10 minutes are up, then tap again to go right to the cruise setting. For a longer-range cruise–the AFM recommends Mach 0.74–I could switch the SPD control on the mode controller panel to man-ual and dial in Mach 0.74 and the autothrottles automatically reset to maintain that speed. At Mach 0.74 and 423 ktas, the fuel flow dropped to just below 700 pph per engine.

We spent a few minutes at FL430 and by this time we had nearly made it to Salinas, 222 nautical miles away. The Garmin automatic flight control sys-tem, driven by low-maintenance clutchless servos, smoothly kept the Latitude on track. Turning

The flight deck is the same Garmin G5000 touchscreen-controlled Intrinzic system used in several other Citation models. Pilots can expect a roomy and uncluttered front office, with fewer switches and knobs in the panel. Passengers will enjoy bigger windows and an expanded stand-up, flat-floor cabin, 12 inches wider than that of a legacy Sovereign.


Citation Latitude

uContinued from page 68

Pilot Report

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back south, we descended at Mach 0.79 to FL380, where the cabin altitude was 4,500 feet and the true airspeed 445 knots.

At 39,000 feet, the perfor-mance charts show 437 ktas burning a total of 1,749 pph at high-speed cruise. At long-range cruise, the speed would drop to 344 ktas and fuel consumption to 1,124 pph. At our weight at high-speed cruise, we would have been able to fly for about five hours, and the total range with NBAA IFR reserves (200-nm alternate) would be nearly 2,400 nm. At long-range cruise, that distance should extend to about 2,800 nm. “[The Latitude] is pretty happy at 38,000 to 43,000 feet,” Tobias said.

The autothrottles maintain the same speed schedule when descending, including the level-off protocol. The G5000 was set to reduce speed to 200 ktas below 3,000 feet within 10 nm of the airport. The autothrottles begin the power reduction during the descent at 12,000 feet to capture 250 ktas transitioning below 10,000 feet. In our case, airspeed reached 250 knots in plenty of time, at 10,800 feet.

Envelope ProtectionOn the way down, Tobias

demonstrated the envelope-pro-tection features of the Intrinzic/G5000 avionics. For high-speed protection, the autothrottles pull the power back to main-tain speed below the Mach 0.80 Mmo, but they release after a safe flying speed is achieved. On the other end of the speed spectrum, the autothrottles advanced power as we slowed the Latitude in level flight. This is helpful for occasions when pilots might forget to advance the power after leveling off. The envelope protection kicks in even if the autothrottles are not engaged.

For any kind of high-altitude depressurization, above 30,000 feet the autopilot automatically engages the emergency descent mode and brings the Latitude down to 15,000 feet. The new digital pressurization system, with a Honeywell electronic pressurization controller, will output an amber caution mes-sage if some aspect of the sys-tem is causing a problem. This could include an outflow valve fully closed in flight, for exam-ple, allowing the caution to illu-minate even before reaching a higher altitude.

We were planning a VFR approach and landing at Camarillo Airport near the California shore-line, but the coast was socked in and we didn’t have time to file a new IFR flight plan, so we aban-doned that approach and flew back to Burbank for the ILS Runway 8 approach, which I flew by hand to get a better feel for the Latitude’s low-speed handling. Back closer to the ground, the G5000’s synthetic vision display was a welcome sight, clearly highlighting the tall moun-tains east of Burbank.

The G5000 system’s split-screen capability was also help-ful, allowing me to set up the display just how I like, with engine instruments and the map on the MFD and the approach plate side-by-side with synthetic vision on the PFD. Full flaps (35 degrees) Vref was 97 ktas, and the Latitude sailed smoothly down to the runway, with the autothrottles automatically pulling power as we crossed the threshold for a firm but satisfy-ing touchdown on the Latitude’s forgiving dual-wheel trailing-beam landing gear. I popped the speed brakes and stepped smartly on the pedals and the Latitude’s anti-skid carbon brakes brought us to a quick stop without any reverse thrust.

Tobias asked if I wanted to taxi back for another takeoff, this time with a V1 cut, and I couldn’t refuse. I got some more practice trying to avoid jerking the nose around while taxiing with the handwheel, then lined up for take-off on Runway 15. At V1, Tobias pulled the right engine, and I could feel the rudder bias system kick in because when I automat-ically tried to push the left rud-der pedal I found it was already where it needed to be. The Lati-tude climbed out easily at 2,000 to 2,500 fpm. I circled around to Runway 8 for a single-engine landing at flaps 15 and a Vref of 104 ktas. I came in a little fast this time, but there was plenty of runway, and after another decent

touchdown I got on the brakes after deploying the speed brakes then used a little reverse thrust.

Fleet Fit“We worked hard on the [Lat-

itude’s cabin] environment,” said Pierce. The windows are 25 per-cent larger than those of the XLS+, Sovereign+ and X+ and placed to optimize the passen-ger’s view. Dual-mode manually operated shades are installed, so passengers can choose between fully dark or opaque settings.

The seats, designed and built by Textron Aviation, draw on many hours of attention by human-factors engineers working with people sitting in place then trimming foam until the right shape is found. “Then we built the frame,” he explained. The seats fold back and lie flat, and are equipped with armrests that tuck into the upright. The bot-toms of the seats are left open to add to the cabin’s spacious feel.

For passengers, the Heads Up Technologies fiber-optic wire-less Clairity cabin-management system controls the environ-ment, entertainment features and lighting. Each seat has its own lighting switches, USB port and a small recess that is ideal for a smartphone, wallet or book. Clairity can be controlled using a mobile device app or also from the VIP seat and using a master control in the forward refresh-ment center. Audio content on mobile devices can be played on the excellent speaker system.

The typical Latitude cabin layout is nine seats, with a two-place couch forward, then a club seating area, two forward-fac-ing seats and an extra takeoff/landing-approved belted seat in the lavatory opposite the toilet. That seat converts to extra cargo space by folding down, but there is also a closet for hanging stor-age. Or buyers can opt to elimi-nate the lavatory seat and make that area into a larger closet. The main cabin seats are toed out by 4 degrees for more com-fortable legroom, and both sides of the seats have armrests. “We worked on making sure the floor is as low as possible,” Pierce said, “so shoulders are at the widest part of the cabin. The head and shoulder distance between the fuselage is big, so you don’t feel like you’re against the wall.”

I found that the Latitude flies a lot like the Sovereign+: no fuss and no surprises. Add to that a roomy and comfortable cabin and plenty of range and pay-load capability, and the Latitude should prove a popular addition to the Citation line, in Europe as well as North America. o

Cessna Citation Latitude Specifications and Performance

Price (typically completed and equipped, 2015 $)

$16.25 million

Engines (2)Pratt & Whitney Canada PW306D1, 5,907 lbs thrust each

Passengers (typical) 2 crew + 9 pax

Range(w/NBAA reserves, 200-nm alternate, max payload)

2,650 nm at 379 ktas

High-speed cruise 453 ktas

Long-range cruise speed 379 ktas

Fuel capacity 11,394 lbs

Max payload w/full fuel 1,040 lbs

Ceiling (certified) 45,000 ft

Cabin altitude at ceiling 5,950 ft

Max takeoff weight 30,800 lbs

Takeoff field length at mtow (sea level, standard)

3,668 ft

Landing distance 2,681 ft

Length 62.25 ft

Wingspan 72.33 ft

Height 20.92 ft

Cabin

Volume: 620 cu ft

Width: 6.42 ft

Height: 6.0 ft

Length (seating area): 21.75 ft

Baggage capacity 126 cu ft/1,000+ lbs

FAA certification FAR Part 25

Number built N/A

Pilot Report

Citation Latitude

uContinued from page 70

A pair of Pratt & Whitney Canada PW306D1 turbofans deliver 5,907 pounds of thrust each.

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New fixed-fee broker Affinity based on transparency, clarityA new pre-owned aircraft sales group

called Affinity Aviation is being publicly launched this evening. The UK-based company has been founded by Andrew

Hoy, formerly a senior sales executive with ExecuJet Aviation and Jetcraft. With the support of undisclosed finan-cial backers he has plans to expand into

other business aviation services, includ-ing FBOs and charter operations.

The company started trading with nine aircraft listed for sale on its web-site. Hoy told AIN that he intends to pro-vide a simple, transparent and discrete approach to aircraft trading that will be based on a fixed-fee structure for sellers.

“Affinity was created from all the best I learned over the last 15 years in business aviation, and its ethos is in clarity, trans-parency and building a long term relation-ship with our clients,” said Hoy. “We have the simplest fixed-fee structure with no upfront fees and a ‘no-sale, no-fee’ basis.”

The fixed-fee arrangement for trans-actions is based on the size of aircraft being sold and on a mutually agreed valuation. Affinity fixes the fee at the beginning of the process and it is pay-able once a deal is concluded, allowing sellers to accurately budget for the bro-kerage costs.

“I am intending to create a sizable business to compete on the global stage, one where all employees have a stake in the group’s activities and each form a key element in its growth,” Hoy told AIN. The initial group of employees have already been selected, along with further “stake holders” in the new business. Further announcements are anticipated soon.

European FBO on the MenuAccording to Hoy, Affinity is in the

final stages of plans to add a European FBO to its portfolio, as well as acquir-ing a global private-charter operator. It also intends to start a division focused on advising high-net-worth individuals.

Elaborating on the planned FBO side of the business, Hoy said the first FBO

is likely to be in Western Europe. In his view, FBO ownership will allow Affinity to initiate long-term relationships with private aviation clients, providing sup-port at all stages of aircraft ownership. “Our strapline is that we’re with you every step of the way,” he said.

While launching Affinity, Hoy con-tinues to pilot a privately-owned Bombardier Global XRS five days each month. Having started life as a profes-sional pilot, around 10 years ago he had to bounce back from the disappointment of being diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, which for a while put a stop to his com-mercial flying. He has subsequently been cleared by UK authorities to resume pro-fessional flying, and he also flies a World War II-vintage Spitfire fighter for fun.

Hoy also is seeking to establish an alliance of like-minded business avia-tion companies seeking to compliment each other’s services. The new Service Alliance Network will be open to mutu-ally approved members free of charge. o


Andrew Hoy, founder of Affinity Aviation

EASA OPENS RULEMAKING ON FUEL PLANNING AND PROCEDURES

Earlier this month, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) started a rulemaking process that would make mandatory ICAO amendments regard-ing fuel reserve planning, and separate rulemaking action on hot fueling proce-dures. If enacted, the new rules would apply to multi-engine jet operations.

In 2012, ICAO adopted amend-ments updating fuel and alternate air-port selection provisions and in 2013 EASA published safety information bul-letin (SIB) 2013-12 that further empha-sizes the amendments. Separately, EASA last year issued SIB 2014-16 on refueling with one engine running, as practice the agency disapproves of.

However, since some airframe OEMs and operators have developed “specific procedures for conducting hot refueling during unforeseen and exceptional cir-cumstances,” the bulletin contains guid-ance for establishing compliance. The agency is targeting a regulatory opinion on both issues by March 2017. –G.G.

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BBJ boss looks to sunny days aheadby Kerry Lynch

New Boeing Business Jets chief David Longridge expects his division to mark a strong 2015, following a year in which the organization delivered 10 and sold 13 aircraft, includ-ing four widebodies. The com-pany is on pace with deliveries this year, handing over a BBJ and two widebodies (777-300 and 787-8) in the first quarter. Several more are in completions.

While deliveries continue, new sales also have remained strong this year. “I’ve been pleasantly surprised,” said Longridge, a 21-year Boeing veteran who late last year suc-ceeded Steve Taylor at the helm of the BBJ division.

Longridge returned to the organization that he first joined during its infancy in 1996 and served as a sales director for nearly two years. After con-centrating on the airline mar-ket for a number of years in the interim, Longridge is happy to jump back into the business jet arena. “It is one of the most

fascinating corners of the avi-ation world,” he said. The air-line market is financially driven, Longridge said. While that’s also true for business avia-tion, he noted another aspect of the market. “It’s one of the few areas where there is a sheer unbridled joy.”

He notes that BBJ has changed substantially since when he first departed. When Longridge left, there were two products: the 737-based BBJ and the BBJ 2. Now, the divi-sion offers 11 products repre-senting the spectrum of Boeing’s commercial product line. For Longridge, the expansion is a welcome change. Noting his time as sales director in the late 1990s, he pointed to the “frustra-tion I had before, when people would want to buy widebodies and I couldn’t help them.”

In business aviation, people have very specific needs, and the product line must support that, Longridge said. He credited the varied product line with helping

promote the uptick in sales last year. The launch of the “Max” helped, he said, as well as cus-tomer interest in the 787 and 777. Longridge is pleased by the balance of sales.

While interest has been strong in widebodies, the 737-based BBJ is “what butters our bread,” he said. Of the 228 VIP aircraft sold, the BBJ accounts for 164.

New CombiThe push to fill varied needs

is also helping drive interest in a BBJ Combi that can serve dou-ble duty for cargo and person-nel transport. The company announced during ABACE in April that it would study the potential for such a product, based on the BBJ C, a cargo vari-ant with a cargo door. Longridge said such a product could reach market within a couple of years–if the interest is there. But the company is going to hold off on a push toward development until it gets a launch customer.

The Combi would cater towards a government or busi-ness operation operating heavy machinery that needs to be transported along with a sup-port team. He cited mining and oil-and-gas industries as possibilities. Longridge added that many customers who have looked at the cargo variant of the BBJ have asked about the potential of a combi config-uration. Longridge does not expect a large customer base for such a configuration, but does think it would serve the needs of some customers.

While offering varied con-figurations, Longridge notes that the customer must dictate

the design of the interior. While competitor Airbus is offering certain pre-set configuration designs, Longridge doubted that Boeing would duplicate that strategy. “I firmly believe when you are ready to spend that much money on an airplane, you should be able to [specify an individually designed] inte-rior rather than be fed one.” He adds he can understand the approach of offering set configuration designs, but said that Boeing plans to take a dif-ferent approach.

Boeing has been steadily building up capacity, with a net-work of 18 authorized comple-tion centers. o


Boeing Business Jets chief David Longridge has confidence in 2015.

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Dassault’s customer support has Falcon owners coveredby Ian Sheppard

France’s Dassault Aviation comes to the EBACE show on a high after its Rafale fighter secured orders from Egypt, Qatar and India. Not only this, the first flight of its new Falcon 8X busi-ness jet took place in February, and the all-new 5X is due to be rolled out at the beginning of June, just ahead of the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget Airport–a location with strong Dassault connec-tions, including its FBO.

But here in Geneva, the company is looking to demonstrate how far it has come in developing a state-of-the-art support environment for owners of its Falcon business jet family.

During a pre-EBACE visit to Dassault Aviation’s St. Cloud headquarters in Paris, the company outlined a growing worldwide network, increased use of the latest infor-mation technology, and support from its operations departments. The main planks of this support are through the follow-ing programs: Falcon Airborne Support, FalconResponse (for dealing with ‘aircraft on ground’ situations using two Falcon 900s), FalconSpares, FalconBroadcast and Falcon Operational Support.

AIN was able to see the Falcon Command Center at St. Cloud which receives and handles all customer calls and coordinates the Falcon ‘go teams.’ Soon the second Falcon 900 aircraft will be in place at the New York-area Teterboro Airport to give worldwide coverage in conjunction with the one aircraft already operating out of Paris Le Bourget.

The Falcons also provide alterna-tive lift for customers should their air-craft become unserviceable. According to Pierre Thiélin, vice president of customer support, the company does “whatever it takes” to rescue a situation for its cli-ents. “Customers expect reliability so the expectation we have is for more than 99.7 percent–that’s three delayed or cancelled flights per 1,000 attempted,” he said.

According to Jacques Chauvet, senior vice president for worldwide customer service, “What is most important is the front line people, the CSMs [customer service managers]…out of 17 CSMs, 7 are based near customers and 10 are based at St. Cloud and are traveling.”

Operators can feed back into the whole system via involvement in the operator

advisory board. This has one main meet-ing each year (most recently in February 2015), but has 10 very active working groups “involving more than 120 cus-tomers.” There is also close coordination with Dassault’s sales force, which resides within the same division of the company.

Another aspect is having spares avail-able at short notice. “Ten years ago we had Teterboro and Le Bourget but now we have 13 D/Cs, and the total spares inventory has increased from $300 million to $778 mil-lion [in that time],” said Chauvet. Soon Singapore will become the third main spare parts inventory and in 2015 two more D/Cs will be added, in Lagos, Nigeria and one in the Atlanta, Georgia, area.

Today, the service center network has 45 sites including the Dassault-owned ones in Le Bourget, Wilmington (Delaware), Little Rock (Arkansas) and São Paulo, Brazil–up from 26 in 2004. “The number of indepen-dent centers has decreased as we prefer to concentrate on our own,” said Chauvet.

In addition a major new mainte-nance, repair and overhaul facility is being built adjacent to its Bordeaux fac-tory. Dassault Falcon Service Merignac will complement the Le Bourget facil-ity using a dual hangar that has space for six Falcon 7X-size aircraft (the first 7X scheduled C-check was completed in March at Le Bourget so there is a growing need for capacity now). The new facility will open in mid-2016, helping Dassault support an in-service Falcon fleet that now totals some 2,000 aircraft.

Thiélin gave an overview of aircraft health monitoring using FalconBroadcast.

“We are always looking at what we can do with the data,” he explained. “On the Easy aeroplanes [Falcons with Easy avionics] we have ECAM and can receive maintenance messages. So we can provide the customer with a diagnostic on e-mail alert. The cus-tomer can also go to the @FalconPortal to see all their messages.” He added that it is a system that is constantly evolving and for the new 8X/5X models it is developing a new algorithmic system.

The new aircraft will also have built-in data networks allowing the collec-tion of some 17,000 parameters. “We are thinking now about what to do with all that data–20GB per flight,” said Thiélin. Much of this can be downloaded as the flight proceeds via satcom links and Dassault will use this as the basis for improved diagnostics.

So far some 130 aircraft have FalconBroadcast “equipped and acti-vated,” concluded Thiélin, who also mentioned FalconCare, the company’s

The Falcon Fleet Has Deep Roots

Dassault was successful from the early days of the business jet age, when it struck lucky in the U.S. with its Mystère 20 in the early 1960s when Pan Am founder Juan Trippe on Charles Lindbergh’s recommendation ordered 45 of the aircraft.

The longevity of Dassault aircraft is illustrated by the fact that one in nine of the Falcon 20s delivered in 1965 is still in operation. The company did very well early on in the U.S. and since then it has always represented its biggest operator base: 59 percent of its aircraft are in North America, and 20 percent in Europe; but for the 7X alone the BRIC countries and Africa represent 40 percent, with Western Europe at 32 percent and North America 28 percent.

The average 7X flies 370 hours a year with an average flight duration of 2.5 hours. There are 1,190 Falcon operators averaging 1.7 aircraft each. In the U.S. they tend to be single aircraft used by corporations. –I.S.

Above: St. Cloud Falcon Operational Support Center. Right: Dassault Aviation in April introduced a new iPad software app that allows access to flight documentation on or offline.

Above: There is an ‘Event’ button on the EASy flightdeck that the pilot pushes to trigger an immediate download to the Falcon Command Center in Paris. Below: FalconResponse has two Falcon 900s, one staged at Paris Le Bourget and the other soon to be based near New York. Dassault now produces the Falcon 7X, 2000 EASy, 900 EASy and 2000, with the 8X and 5X coming on line over the next two-to-three years. The OEM still supports approximately 150 legacy Falcons that are still operating: the models 10, 20, 50 and 900.



Extended hours on tap for London Biggin Hillby Ian Sheppard

London’s Biggin Hill Airport is on the verge of receiving final approval for longer open-ing hours, which should revo-lutionize the airport’s prospects for attracting overseas visitors. On the back of that increase in activity, it has a range of plans for developing its very large and undeveloped hill-top site.

The airfield already has three FBOs and a total of six MRO shops. Connections such as Sig-nature having FBOs at both Big-gin Hill and Teterboro, N.J., will help boost transatlantic traffic once the hours extend, believes Biggin Hill Airport business de-velopment director Robert Wal-ters. Meanwhile Rizon Jet’s luxu-rious and very large FBO facility at Biggin Hill (Booth X106) is also likely to see activity picking up to new levels–with the heli-copter shuttle to London Batter-sea Heliport being another ma-jor advantage the airport has. Operated by Castle Air using AgustaWestland 109s from Rizon’s facility, it can be used by

all visitors to the airport and in-volves a flying time of only six minutes. According to Walters this was a key factor in attract-ing at least two owners to base their aircraft at Biggin.

The opening hours should be extending to a window from 6.30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday to Saturday rather than the current 7.30 a.m. to 9.00 p.m. Monday to Friday (although an hour either way may be granted with prior permission). Hours on Sundays and holidays would be 8 a.m. to 10.30 p.m. (or possibly 11 p.m.) rather than the current 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. (which also applies on Saturdays as well at present).

“This could be fantastic for us,” said Walters. “We’re excited that we could get the U.S. arriv-als in at 6.30 in the morning and out later at night. It is installing improved taxiway lighting and “the project for the new Runway 03 GPS approach is fully under-way and we’re hoping it will be ready some time next year.” This will be a full PRNAV/LPV

approach (i.e. CAT 1 equivalent), and there will be GPS overlay procedure for Runway 21.

The smaller runway (11-29) may become a taxiway, in which case the airfield may establish an alternative grass runway for light aircraft, in case there is a strong cross-wind on the main runway. There are several FBO and maintenance facilities along 11-29 that need access to taxi to the main runway, and the air-port is planning for the expected increase in traffic.

Northolt’s Loss, Biggin’s GainAnother increase in traffic

could come from possible curbs on operations at RAF Northolt where attention was focused on the need for Civil Aviation Authority oversight by a recent High Court ruling. Walters says that one UK AOC holder has since carried out a full audit of Northolt and found that it does not meet its minimum safety

standards for civil operations, for the aircraft that they fly. He did not elaborate on this but believes there should be a “level playing field.” Airports such as Biggin Hill have had to reduce usable runway lengths and have other constraints while RAF Northolt has not had to do this, yet most of its traffic is now civil, and mainly business avia-tion and charter.

Walters says that the airport’s vision has three aspects: being a gateway to London, a home for base aircraft, and an air-craft servicing center. Parking aircraft is also cheaper than at other London airport, at approx-imately $6,000 rather than $23,000 for five days. At pres-ent there are 56 based jets and 200 GA aircraft/helicopters, said Walters. Meanwhile activity has

increased including a “51 percent uplift in aircraft over 20 tons.”

Plans are still underway for a 4-star hotel near the Rizon facility, an Aviation Training Academy, another large hangar for air-craft and a totally new terminal building, which could be built in around three years from now. For now the airport is about to carry out a major refurbishment of its existing facility based on feedback from customers, though the exist-ing structure and integral tower will remain for now. o

guaranteed maintenance pro-gram. This covers the aircraft but not the engine or APU, with a pay-as-you fly monthly fee, a flight hours fee and a fee based on number of landings.

The program, introduced in 2004, has 200 active contracts and half of the 7X fleet is sub-scribed. This year will see the incorporation of FalconSmart, a bundle of services including electronic flight bag updates covering performance calcula-tions and tools.

Frederic Leboeuf, who has been vice president of the Dassault Operational Support Department since mid-2013, commented, “I think we are the only OEM to have such a direc-torate, supporting the customer before, during an after the air-craft delivery.” Dassault tries to be close to its customers and to understand their specific oper-ational and environmental con-straints and challenges.

The airframer has worked hard recently on digitizing its manuals. “Training is a chal-lenge,” said Leboeuf, pointing out that both CAE and FlightSafety

are Falcon training providers now. At the center of this activ-ity is the Falcon Training Policy Manual, with this and the Crew Operational Document for Dassault EASy now being avail-able in digital form, along with quick reference handbooks.

The Falcon Operational Sup-port department has 30 peo-ple and is still growing. It acts to support operators in training and putting together the neces-sary flight operations documents for the new 5X and 8X aircraft. “We are delivering a modular training approach,” said David Sebaoun, Falcon 7X/8X pro-grams operations manager. “It will be a huge improvement in pilot training,” he said.

“We are able to train people on everything from a Falcon 10 to a Falcon 7X,” added Leboeuf. This includes even very old aircraft with few models still in operation.

At the FlightSafety Interna-tional/Dassault Aviation joint-venture training facility at Par-is Le Bourget Airport AIN had the opportunity to experience how Dassault’s pilot support team can train crews for unusual or tricky approaches where ad-ditional familiarity training is required for safety reasons. One example was La Môle (St Tro-pez) Airport, which Philippe

Micaud, chief pilot Falcon Op-erational Support, said “has a challenging VFR approach.”

Olivier Froment, captain, instructor and examiner, who is in charge of the 5X for the Operational Support group, said that since it became an autho-rized training organization in 2014 it had carried out TRI/TRE courses and base training courses. “The idea is to train the trainers,” he explained. “We will do this for the 8X and then the 5X as well.”

Froment said many opera-tors have asked for the depart-ment’s support to find the best way to operate its aircraft, especially since it managed to fly a 7X from Singapore to Zurich “to show a customer that a 7X could fly a 13-hour leg. “We told our custom-ers how they could manage fuel and plan. This is the kind of exper-tise we can provide.”

Two Falcon 8X FlightSafety Level D full-flight simulators are coming on line soon–the first one at Teterboro and the second at the Le Bourget cen-ter. They will be equipped with a Vital 1100 visual system, electric motion control and cueing while training will feature Matrix, FlightSafety’s integrated train-ing technology that includes desktop simulators and flight-deck simulators. o

Customer support a focus for FalconuContinued from preceding page

With longer operating hours, London Biggin Hill Airport director Robert Walters, right, expects more long-range aircraft such as this Gulfstream, above.

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Amac’s ACJ completion almost ready for serviceby Charles Alcock

Amac Aerospace is about to deliver an Airbus Corporate Jet (ACJ) completed over the past 12 months at its Basel, Switzerland, headquarters. The aircraft is expected to enter service in early June for an undisclosed customer based in the Far East.

The ACJ was delivered green in November 2013 and, after conducting standard pre-liminary maintenance, Amac (Booth H115) started by paint-ing the airframe. This was fin-ished by April 2014, at which point the engineering phase of the completion began.

The customer hired the Paris-based Alberto Pinto group to design the ACJ’s interior. The Amac team received the final design package three months after the completions contract was signed, at which point it analyzed it from an engineer-ing perspective and made any necessary adjustments, which it incorporated into the so-called X-ref document, which covers factors such as the positioning of all fixed structures and seat tracks, as well as water and elec-tricity supplies.

“The clearance process went very smoothly and we pro-duced two mock-ups to help the owner to see how the design would work,” explained Waleed Muhiddin, Amac’s vice presi-dent for strategic operations and business development.

At the front of the ACJ is the main entrance, a crew rest area and a bathroom. Beyond

a private hallway, there is a master bedroom with en-suite bathroom and storage space for clothing. The next section of the cabin is a main lounge, with a side-facing divan and separate seats facing each other, followed by a club seat-ing arrangement suitable for dining and a private lounge with two divans that can drop down to make beds. At the rear there is more storage space and another lavatory.

Custom Control Concepts (Booth C017) is the main sup-plier for the aircraft’s inflight entertainment and communica-tions systems. These include wireless audio-visual on-demand streaming capability that can be controlled from personal elec-tronic devices, along with three 42-inch monitors.

Carbon Fiber DecorThe ACJ’s owner specified

a preference for using carbon fiber for all interior surfaces and structures, and Amac’s research and development team experimented to work out how to make the most efficient use of the material. All the seats have carbon fiber shells around them.

The design features a lot of neutral earth-tone colors and feng shui elements. The walls were finished with fab-rics and the seats, which can fold out flat, and have specially-stitched leathers with quilted top surfaces. The sidewalls are

decorated with handcrafted marquetry prepared in Amac’s own specialist workshops.

Throughout the cabin there is extensive use of metallic com-posite surfaces with black patina polishes. Varying textures enrich the overall appearance through the use of different leather fin-ishes and rib-weave plastics.

“Our vendors have to be able to guarantee their materi-als, and that can be a problem for small pro ducers as an in-terior should last around 10 years,” explained Mu hid - din. “Every aircraft we complete joins an elite group finished to our high standards.”

The aircraft’s high ceiling reduced the amount of space available for air conditioning ducts so Amac engineers had to work around this limitation. The cabin is fitted with CTT’s humidification system. Cabin noise levels have been reduced to around 52- to 54-dB.

Meanwhile, Amac is in the final stages of completing a VIP Boeing 747 and it received its third 777 at the end of 2014–which will be completed for an undisclosed African customer–and another ACJ is also in the works.

The company is building fourth 78,363-sq-ft hangar in Basel which, when it opens towards the end of this year, will mainly be used for mainte-nance work. The expansion will increase total hangar space at the site by nearly 35 percent.

Amac holds more than 20 maintenance approvals from authorities around the world. Once it has completed a recruit-ment drive around the addition of the fourth hangar, the group

expects to take total employment numbers beyond 800 people.

Often cabin refurbishment and upgrade work is combined with maintenance. For exam-ple, last month a Boeing BBJ3, owned by an undisclosed Middle East customer, arrived in Basel to undergo a partial cabin reconfiguration, includ-ing STC-level changes and new seating. At the same time, Amac conducted a C-check on the aircraft to reduce over-all downtime.

For another undisclosed Asian customer, Amac has been contracted to refurbish and upgrade an ACJ319. This will involve new carpets and a major modernization of the inflight entertainment and communi-cations system. Similar work started on a 777-200 last month.

Turkey Takes OffLast year, Amac’s facility

in Istanbul, Turkey, became a Dassault Falcon authorized ser-vice center. The site’s main activ-ity is the company’s joint venture

with Pilatus to sell and support its PC-12 single turboprop and new PC-24 light jet in the neigh-boring Middle East market.

In March, the Turkish civil aviation authority approved the facility to conduct line maintenance up to A-check levels for the Falcon 7X. Amac is looking to get European and U.S. Part 145 approval for the model by the fourth quar-ter of 2015.

The Istanbul site already has EASA clearance to do C-checks on Falcon 900s and 2000s, and recently added Cayman Island approval to its portfolio.

Last week, Rockwell Collins appointed Amac’s Turkey operation as an authorized dealer for its avionics prod-ucts. In March, Honeywell also brought the facility into its dealer network. o

Carbon fiber figures prominently in the interior design of this ACJ319 by Amac Aerospace. Completed for an undisclosed Far East customer, the airplane will enter service early next month.

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AIN FBO Survey: European FBOs dominate the top slots, including a trio of Swiss sites, while Le Bourget excels

AIN has been conducting FBO surveys since 1981, asking business aircraft operators about the service they receive and publishing reports of the results from these surveys. The first reports were limited to North America, but along the way, FBOs from around the world were addressed in a dedicated International survey. The 2015 International FBO survey report covers fixed-base operations in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Here at EBACE, we’re focusing on the European aspect of the report. As it does with all its FBO surveys, AIN polled qualified subscribers; pilots, flight attendants and dispatchers–the people who use or make arrangements with FBOs. They include readers in North America and the rest of the world.

The report starts with a comprehensive summary narrative of the overall FBO landscape, and then includes individual snapshot looks at the top-rated FBOs, as defined by AIN readers around the world.

For FBOs in Europe, geopolitics has played the lead role in the up-and-down drama of the ongoing global economic recovery. At the center of the plot is the situation in Russia, which had been a vibrant growth area, but over the past year has experienced an 8 percent reduc-tion in its European-destination traf-fic, according to statistics provided by Eurocontrol. That decline is attributed in part to disagreement over the han-dling of the crisis in Ukraine–which,

itself, saw a 40 percent plunge in busi-ness aviation flights.

“The ones that will feel it the most in the business aviation world will be the charter operators that used to have a nice healthy business going back and forth between someplace in Europe and Russia–and the FBOs,” said business avi-ation analyst Brian Foley, president of consultancy Brian Foley and Associates. “Those were pretty long trips in pretty big airplanes that needed a lot of services.” In contrast with the business plan at North American FBOs, most European FBOs’

profits are tied not to fuel sales but rather to à la carte aircraft services, and a declin-ing volume of aircraft takes a toll on each location’s bottom line.

Overall, European business aviation traffic declined by half a percentage point over the past year, according to Eurocon-trol, despite Ukraine’s precipitous drop-off, as operators give the nation a wide berth following the downing of a jetliner last summer. Among Europe’s top 50 business aviation airports, 26 saw depar-tures decline year-over-year and 24 saw gains, according to data compiled by

industry information provider WingX Advance. Indeed, even in a sample size as small as the top five airports, Le Bourget and London Luton saw slight gains in traffic, while Geneva and Mos-cow Vnukovo saw declines. The airport at Nice Cote d’Azur remained virtually static last year.

Several factors are causing fluctua-tions in traffic levels at Italian airports, according to Carlo Panerai, president of Florence-based FBO and charter com-pany Delta Aerotaxi and founder of the ItalyFBO group. “We have seen an 18- to 20-percent reduction in the number of Russian aircraft, but at the same time traf-fic from the U.S. is surging back,” he told AIN. He indicated that intra-European

TAG Aviation, Farnborough

Data compiled by David Leach; narrative by Curt Epstein

FBO SURVEY2015 • Europe, Middle East, Asia, Africa

Top Rated FBOs in Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific

FBO AirportAirport Code

Line Service

Passenger Amenities

Pilot Amenities Facilities CSRs

Overall Average

TAG Farnborough Farnborough EGLF 8.7 9.3 9.1 9.4 8.9 9.1

Universal Aviation London Stansted EGSS 9.4 8.8 8.9 8.5 9.2 9.0

ExecuJet Europe Zurich LSZH 8.8 9.0 8.8 8.9 9.1 8.9

Aviapartner Nice Cote D’Azur Int’l LFMN 9.0 8.7 8.4 8.6 9.0 8.7

Jet Aviation Geneva International LSGG 8.5 8.8 8.5 8.9 8.9 8.7

TAG Aviation Geneva International LSGG 8.4 8.8 8.5 8.4 8.6 8.6

Dassault Falcon Service Paris Le Bourget LFPB 8.8 8.0 7.8 8.3 8.4 8.3

Hong Kong Business Aviation Centre Hong Kong Int’l VHHH 8.3 8.4 8.0 8.3 8.6 8.3

Landmark Aviation Paris Le Bourget LFPB 8.5 8.1 8.0 8.4 8.5 8.3

Swissport Executive Nice Cote D’Azur Int’l LFMN 8.6 8.1 8.2 7.8 8.7 8.3

Universal Aviation Paris Le Bourget LFPB 8.9 8.0 7.9 7.9 8.8 8.3

Harrods Aviation London Luton EGGW 7.9 8.4 8.0 8.1 8.4 8.2

Signature Flight Support Paris Le Bourget LFPB 8.3 8.4 7.5 7.8 8.4 8.1

Hawker Pacific Flight Centre Sydney Kingsford Smith YSSY 8.4 7.9 8.0 7.4 8.5 8.0

Landmark Aviation Nice Cote D’Azur Int’l LFMN 7.6 7.9 8.2 8.0 8.4 8.0

Jet Aviation Zurich LSZH 7.5 7.8 7.5 7.5 7.7 7.6

Jetex Paris FBO Paris Le Bourget LFPB 7.8 7.9 7.6 7.2 7.5 7.6

Signature Flight Support London Luton EGGW 8.2 7.6 7.1 7.0 7.8 7.6

VIPPort Vnukovo-3 Moscow/Vnukovo UUWW 6.1 7.1 5.1 5.8 5.6 6.0

* Ties are listed alphabetically by FBO names.


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traffic levels have remained about the same overall.

U.S.-based business avia-tion is one of the emerging play-ers enjoying a comeback role, and it’s affecting the European FBO scene. According to Rich-ard Aboulafia, vice president for analysis at Teal Group, world-wide business aviation traffic at present represents a nearly com-plete reversal from 2008, the start of the global economic down-turn. Back then, hope for indus-try recovery lay in large-cabin jets and emerging markets such as the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China). This year, a North American-based recovery is fueling the industry, while each of the BRIC nations is experienc-ing conditions that hamper busi-ness aviation growth.

Still, while the U.S. business jet fleet saw approximately the same number of operations last year (4,285,910) as in 2003 (4,235,910), overall “interna-tional” operations over that span accelerated by 37 percent, to a record 708,872 last year.

BRIC Growth SlowsThe recent downturn in oil

prices might be having some

effect on that, in Brazil, Russia and China. According to analy-sis by Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Research, one-fifth of the large-cabin business jet fleet worldwide may have been funded by the oil indus-try, with approximately half of the in-service fleet based outside the U.S. “In my view, utilization of big-cabin jets is just going to come down,” noted Foley, “par-ticularly internationally, because that’s where all the activity was–in emerging markets going after these natural resources.”

That said, FBO operators in Brazil–home to the world’s second largest fleet of business aircraft–saw last summer’s host-ing of the world’s largest sport-ing event as an opportunity to attract new customers. “The last year was atypical, thanks to FIFA World Cup,” said Cynthia de Oliveira, managing director of operations for Lider Aviação, the country’s largest business aviation services provider. “We noticed in general a decrease of 10 percent on domestic flights and an increase of 17 percent on international flights.”

Overall during the tour-nament, 2,839 aircraft from

domestic locations were granted 21,537 slots; and 635 foreign air-craft were granted 1,518 slots, a tally that is not likely to be exceeded until next year’s Sum-mer Olympic Games. Yet infra-structure–and other–challenges remain. “Look at Brazil and its problems right now. [They are] oil-related,” Foley told AIN. “As such I would expect FBOs in that country to be feeling the effects already, and it will cer-tainly continue this year.”

By contrast, Foley expects traffic at Mexican FBOs to climb, as a result of their prox-imity to the U.S. “Even though Mexico has a strong oil com-ponent, it’s also a fact that the U.S. is Mexico’s strongest trad-ing partner and as such it will be drawing on the coat tails of the U.S. and have a pretty good go at it this year.”

The Picture for China and Africa

For the remainder of the world, the picture varies depending on the source, as trip-support providers such as Universal Weather & Avia-tion and UAS note different regional strengths. “Traffic in

the Americas is steady; Europe is steady, but travel to Africa and the Middle East is slightly elevated,” noted UAS execu-tive vice president Jay Husary. “The biggest growth, however, is clearly in Southeast Asia.” While Asia is starting from a much lower level of activ-ity, according to WingX all 10 of the busiest business avia-tion destinations logged gains in their international traffic, led in volume by Hong Kong International, up 17.8 percent year-over-year along with a 26-percent rise in fuel uptake.

While Universal reported handling 10 percent more flights to China, political concerns there have curtailed domestic use of private aircraft over the past year. “We’re seeing a bit of a quieting down with China at the moment,” said Jonathan How-ells, Universal’s senior vice pres-ident, international. “There are some campaigns from the Chi-nese government at the moment that make ownership of busi-ness aircraft a bit challenging for some owners.” The country is still seeing growth in its FBO infrastructure, with Deer Jet, the country’s largest private aviation

company, adding several loca-tions over the past year.

For Universal, it is Africa that is seeing strength. “We’ve seen at least 10 percent more traffic,” Howells told AIN. “A lot of the oil companies were driving that; obviously…the price of oil will really have impacted some of that traffic, but Africa has been a posi-tive growth area.” Howells added that ground handling on the con-tinent remains a challenge.

“Customers based in the U.S. are often surprised by how lit-tle FBO infrastructure exists in developing countries,” said UAS’s Husary. “However, we keep seeing new, bigger and more beautiful FBOs being built around the globe, a trend that will continue.”

While no Middle Eastern FBOs received enough evalua-tions for consideration in this year’s survey, traffic to the region remained steady, with Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport seeing the most international departures (nearly 3,000, according to WingX). Dubai International Airport’s approximately 800 departures to Europe and North America last year represented a gain of 130 percent over 2013 numbers. o

TAG FarnboroughLondon, UK

9.1TAG Farnborough once again landed

on the top of the hill in this year’s inter-national FBO survey and is the only inter-national FBO to receive an overall score higher than nine, achieving a rating of 9.1, as it has the last two years. Given that TAG owns the dedicated business aviation airport, its FBO is the only service pro-vider there, and the facility handled nearly 25,000 aircraft movements last year, a gain of 5.6 percent, according to airport CEO Brandon O’Reilly. His numbers suggest that TAG Farnborough is serving more

than a third of the entire London business aviation market. This year has gotten off to a fast start at Farnborough as well, with 42 percent more bizliner movements than in the first two months of last year, con-tinuing a trend O’Reilly has noted over the past few years; visits by ultra-long-range business jets are up by 9 percent.

The location is home to 45 aircraft, sheltered in two hangars providing 240,000 sq ft of space.

TAG Farnborough earned top scores this year in both the passenger and crew amenity categories, offering con-cierge service, direct ramp access for customer vehicles, crew lounge with snooze rooms, conference rooms and an onsite hotel. Recently introduced is “drive-through” immigration clearance for those flights that are not met upon

landing by a Border Force agent. The location also earned a 9.4 for

its facilities, the highest category score awarded by our readers this year. In an effort to dedicate even more space within the terminal to customers, over the past year the location’s adminis-trative staff moved to a new location within the Farnborough Business Park. The reclaimed 12,000 sq ft of space will be used for upgrades such as addi-tional lounge space and a crew gym-nasium. The company is also in the process of introducing a “fast track” airport entrance for the exclusive use of passengers and crew. “The ongoing investment underpins our commitment to enhance facilities and services, main-taining our position as Europe’s leading business aviation airport,” O’Reilly told AIN. Since taking over control of the airfield from the UK’s Department of Defense more than a decade ago, TAG has invested in excess of $150 million in infrastructure at Farnborough.

Universal AviationLondon Stansted, UK

9.0Universal Aviation’s location at Lon-

don Stansted has seen 10 percent more business over the past year, a boost the company attributes in part to its around-the-clock operations. “The main thing we tend to find that’s driving business at Stansted is that it is a 24/7 airport,” noted Jonathan Howells, Universal’s executive vice president for international opera-tions. “The only other 24/7 airport in the London area is Luton, and we’re hearing from a lot of our customers that they’re finding Luton quite congested.”

Universal has been in operation at Stansted for more than 30 years, and its 10,712 sq-ft standalone facility underwent an extensive refurbishment in 2013. The

FBO SURVEY RULES AND METHODOLOGY

AIN polled qualified subscribers; pilots, flight attendants and dispatchers–the people who use or make arrangements with FBOs. They include readers in North America and the rest of the world. More and more FBOs continue to be added each year and the survey now offers our respondents a comprehensive list of more than 4,500 FBOs worldwide. Via e-mail and announcements in AIN’s e-newsletters, qualified subscribers to participate in the survey. Each invitee receives a discrete code to enter the survey website, to prevent

individuals from filling out the questionnaire more than once.The questionnaire asks readers to evaluate FBOs they visited

the previous year in five categories: line service; passenger amenities; pilot amenities; facilities; and customer service representatives (CSRs). For each of these categories, the participant is asked to assign a number from 1 to 10, one being the lowest and 10 being the highest.

To arrive at the averages for the categories, each FBO’s ratings in each of the five categories are added separately and the resulting five sums are then divided by the total number of responses received for each respective category.

An FBO’s overall average is calculated by adding all the individual category ratings received by that FBO and dividing the resulting sum by the total number of all category ratings received by the FBO. In other words, if a particular FBO was evaluated by 50 people (and assuming that all these 50 evaluators gave that FBO a rating in each of the five categories), then the FBO would receive a total of 250 category ratings. These 250 category ratings are added together and then the sum is divided by 250 to arrive at the overall average for this FBO. The top-ranked FBOs are featured below in the order of their their overall ratings: –D.L.

Top-ranked FBOs


FBO SURVEY2015 • Europe, Middle East, Asia, Africa

Continued from page 82

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company has no immediate plans to expand on those recent improvements. “You can build a Taj Mahal,” Howells told AIN. “The challenge is that a lot of our custom-ers really don’t spend very much time in our facility at all. They want to get from aircraft to car as quickly as possible, and the same in reverse.” Toward that end, passenger vehi-cles can meet arriving aircraft rampside, and be escorted through a secure gate.

This past year the location doubled its ramp space to approximately 40,000 sq ft. Line service staff at Stansted undergo both NATA Safety 1st line service training as well as in-house training to Universal’s ground handling operations manual. That attention to safety clearly was noticed by AIN’s readership, which awarded the loca-tion a 9.4 in line service, the highest indi-vidual category score among international FBOs this year. (TAG Aviation received a 9.4 for facilities.) The location, which is also home to Universal’s European opera-tions center, garnered the highest individual score for customer service representatives. Through its Air Culinaire subsidiary, Uni-versal provides private aviation catering to all the area airports from a kitchen at the Stansted facility.

The Universal FBO is one of five ser-vice providers at Stansted.

ExecuJet EuropeZurich, Switzerland

8.9ExecuJet operates 19 FBOs around

the world, and AIN’s readers gave the highest rating to its facility at Zurich International Airport, which advanced by 1.4 points since the last survey. The company has had a presence there since 2003, when it took over the former Signa-ture Flight Support/Zimex facility. The 5,000-sq-ft terminal features passenger and pilot lounges, crew briefing rooms, its own security staff and onsite customs and immigration service. The location’s 20,000-sq-ft hangar can shelter three large business jets such as a Falcon 7X simultaneously, along with two midsize jets. Aircraft parking is available directly in front of the FBO.

According to Mark Abbott, the com-pany’s group FBO director, traffic at the location grew by better than 5 per-cent over the past year, fueled in part by the annual boost from the World Eco-nomic Forum held in nearby Davos.

ExecuJet Europe, Zurich

ABOVE & BEYOND

AIN’s survey asked respondents to identify specific employees or teams who routinely go above and beyond when it comes to customer service. The four people below were listed repeatedly. View the full list at ainonline.com/above-and-beyond-fbo-2015.

Person FBO Airport Code

Dick Smart Platinum Business Aviation Centre YBCG

Entire Staff Signature Flight Support EDDM

Roj Kulnaratana MJets FBO VTBD

Fabrice Malingre Landmark Aviation LFPB

TOP AIRPORTS FOR DEPARTURES AND FUEL UPLIFT

Airport Departures Percentchange

Fuel uplift (U.S. gallons)

Percent change

Teterboro, Teterboro, N.J. 66,700 4.9% 36,828,000 6.5%

Love Field, Dallas 30,800 6.2% 9,973,000 4.4%

Westchester County, White Plains, N.Y. 30,300 1.7% 14,419,000 3.8%

William Hobby, Houston 29,700 5.0% 9,642,000 6.8%

Dulles Int’l, Washington, D.C. 25,800 -2.7% 10,527,000 0.9%

Palm Beach Int’l, West Palm Beach, Fla. 25,800 3.8% 11,730,000 3.5%

McCarran Int’l, Las Vegas 25,000 3.3% 10,180,000 2.9%

Centennial, Denver 24,400 8.8% 7,716,000 13.4%

De-Kalb Peachtree, Atlanta 23,100 4.6% 5,627,000 4.6%

Van Nuys, Van Nuys, Calif. 21,300 14.3% 10,917,000 17.3%

Le Bourget, Paris, France 25,800 1.7% 14,299,000 0.6%

Geneva, Geneva, Switzeralnd 17,600 -3.5% 8,392,000 -6.1%

Nice Cote d’Azur, Nice, France 15,800 0.4% 9,522,000 3.1%

Luton, England 13,900 6.3% 13,285,000 9.5%

Vnukovo, Moscow, Russia 12,400 -2.6% 13,397,000 -2.6%

Zurich, Switzerland 11,100 -1.5% 5,399,000 10.1%

Farnborough, England 11,400 7.8% 8,240,000 7.5%

Linate Int’l, Milan, Italy 10,000 1.1% 3,580,000 8.1%

Ciampino-G.B. Pastine Int’l, Plena, Italy 8,800 -1.6% 3,787,000 1.3%

Vienna Schwechat, Austria 7,800 0.4% 2,937,000 3.1%

Lynden Pindling Int’l, Nassau, Bahamas 7,500 6.3% 3,240,700 14.1%

Marsh Harbour Int’l, Abaco, Bahamas 2,500 15.6% 652,400 28.7%

Providenciales Int’l, Turks and Caicos 2,400 13.3% 1,580,100 21.4%

Simon Bolivar Int’l, Caracas, Venezuela 2,200 -8.4% 2,040,900 10.3%

Los Cabos Int’l, Los Cabos, Mexico 2,200 -14.9% 1,478,100 -14.1%

L.F. Wade Int’l, Bermuda 2,100 6.8% 1,681,900 17.5%

Princess Juliana Int’l, Saint Maarten 2,100 6.8% 2,466,000 6.7%

Luis Munoz Martin Int’l, San Juan, Puerto Rico 1,700 10.4% 1,130,900 4.3%

Adolfo Lopez Mateos Int’l, Toluca, Mexico 1,600 12.8% 1,630,400 106%

Luis Ribas Dominicci, San Juan, Puerto Rico 1,500 6.5% 415,000 9.9%

Ben Gurion, Tel Aviv, Israel 2,800 9.3% 1,005,000 21.3%

Beirut Rafic Hariri Int’l, Beirut, Lebanon 2,000 3.6% 484,000 4.6%

King Khalid Int’l, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia 1,300 16.3% 1,081,000 15.6%

King Abdul Aziz Int’l, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia 1,300 -3.9% 540,000 0.9%

Dubai Int’l, Dubai, United Arab Emirates 800 130.1% 1,090,000 128.4%

Al Maktoum Int’l, Dubai, United Arab Emirates 700 -13.3% 554,000 -17.0%

Nevatim AB Be’er Sheva, Israel 700 -42.2% 245,000 -21.3%

Abu Dhabi Bateen, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates 600 -18.5% 468,000 -30.4%

Hamad Int’l, Doha, Qatar 500 16.3% 1,108,000 15.4%

Marka Int’l, Amman, Jordan 500 4.2% 156,000 0.7%

Capital, Beijing, China 300 1.1% 1,246,800 7.0%

Hong Kong Int’l, Hong Kong 200 17.8% 1,186,700 26.0%

Haneda Int’l, Tokyo, Japan 200 7.0% 995,100 4.5%

Indira Gandhi Int’l, New Delhi, India 200 5.7% 596,100 -9.5%

Ibrahim Nasir Int’l, Maldives 100 39.4% 671,700 60.1%

Chhatrapati Shivaji Int’l, Mumbai, India 100 10.5% 518,900 18.2%

Pudong Int’l, Shanghai, China 100 8.2% 500,400 17.4%

Narita Int’l, Tokyo, Japan 100 6.1% 376,900 12.7%

Kansai Int’l, Osaka, Japan 100 22.4% 314,400 34.1%

Gimpo Int’l, Seoul South Korea 100 21.6% 291,800 27.1%

Source: WingX Advance

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Universal Aviation, Stansted


Continued from page 84FBO SURVEY2015 • Europe, Middle East, Asia, Africa


During the event the ExecuJet staff handled more than 400 movements at Zurich and nearby Dübendorf military airfield, which was pressed into service to compensate for parking limitations at Zurich. One of three FBOs on the field, the Shell-branded ExecuJet facility oper-ates a trio of 20,000-liter jet-A refuelers dedicated to serving its customers. The location is normally open from 5 a.m. until 10:45 p.m. every day, as the airport closes at night.

Nicole Gut, the company’s director of European FBOs, noted that budget-conscious customers are becoming more evident. “The FBO business has become very price driven and the client is ask-ing for more service at less cost,” she told AIN. “This seems to be a trend in all our European locations.”

All of the company’s FBOs are in the process of complying with the Interna-tional Standard for Business Aviation Handlers (IS-BAH), Gut added, with Zurich and Berlin expected to achieve cer-tification before the end of next month.

Aviapartner Executive Nice Cote d’Azur, France

8.7Travelers to Europe’s third-busiest busi-

ness aviation airport, Nice Cote d’Azur, are virtually assured of being well taken care of, as all three of its FBOs earned recognition in this year’s international FBO survey. High-est scoring among them in this year’s voting was Aviapartner Executive, which shares an airport-provided general aviation terminal with its two competitors. With those con-straints, Aviapartner distinguished itself in the two survey categories that are exclusive of its facility’s physical structure: its line ser-vice and customer service representatives, earning 9.0 scores in each.

According to Pascal Matha, the facil-ity’s executive manager, the company, which operates the largest FBO network in France with nine locations, recently instituted new CSR training at Nice. Per-sonalized service from its multicultural, multilingual team (58 full-time staff in the peak summer months) is available in French, English, Russian, Arabic, Ger-man, Italian and Portuguese. Its CSRs are supported by key account manag-ers for the Russian and Middle Eastern markets who can adapt to and anticipate customer requests, such as helicopter reservations. Customs and immigration service is available at the 4,000-sq-ft ter-minal, more than one third of which is devoted to an executive passenger lounge (with a children’s corner offering pleasant diversions), and a smaller, more private lounge. Crew needs are well accounted for as well, with three separate lounges/work areas, including a quiet sleep room.

The location’s line service staff han-dles approximately 5,000 arrivals a year, and according to Matha the company is the only handler at Nice with the ramp

equipment to handle any type of aircraft. The FBO, which is open 24/7, recently upgraded its airside transportation fleet to all new Mercedes vehicles, and last month saw the arrival of a new dedi-cated 9,500-gallon jet-A refueling truck. The location is home to four private jets, based in a separate private hangar.

Jet Aviation Geneva, Switzerland

8.7One of two Geneva FBOs to score

in the top rankings, Jet Aviation con-ducted a major refurbishment and expansion of its facility here in 2013. The company says it is continually working to enhance the experience for

its customers, with further improve-ments planned for the crew lounge, adding more work space and expand-ing it to face the tarmac. The terminal currently offers three private passenger lounges and a bathroom/shower facil-ity for passengers, while crews have a dedicated lounge with separate snooze room and massage chairs, along with a private bathroom with showers.

A presence at the airport for more than 45 years, Jet Aviation handled approximately 8,000 movements last year, more than the previous year’s tally despite the overall decline in business aviation traffic to Geneva, said general manager Joao Martins. So far this year, Martins describes traffic as consistent with 2014, but he concedes the com-pany has had to offer a lot of promo-tions to maintain that pace. There are 65 parking positions at Geneva but the actual number of aircraft that can be

accommodated depends on the size of the aircraft. The company noted that parking restrictions and prior permis-sion required (PPR) for landing remain issues there for users.

The FBO can handle virtually any air-craft up to and including a 747, and has more than 44,000 sq ft of hangar space. “We see a trend with customers moving to larger aircraft,” said Martins. “They are also asking for more services and higher service standards.”

The FBO has 20 employees and is staffed from 5:30 a.m. until 10:30 p.m. Its Part 145 service station is autho-rized to work on most Gulfstreams, the BBJ, Global Express, Hawkers, Falcon 50/900/2000 series, Citation 550/560/XL/XLS and the Nextant 400XTi, and pro-vides 24/7 AOG service.

TAG AviationGeneva, Switzerland

8.6 TAG Aviation’s location right here in

Geneva improved on its score from last year’s survey, as the company completed refurbishment of the facility in Novem-ber. Along with the addition of 2,700 sq ft of space, the FBO now features two sep-arate entrances for passengers and crew, which provides a smooth and discrete travel experience through the 6,575-sq-ft terminal, according to Franck Madignier, president of TAG Aviation Engineering and FBO Services.

The newly redesigned building has three passenger lounges, a pilot lounge with snooze room, 12-seat A/V-equipped conference room and a crew kitchen. Among its amenities are concierge service for ground transportation and accom-modations, along with onsite Swiss and French customs and immigration. EASA and FAA Part 145 maintenance is avail-able from the 65,000-sq-ft hangar. The FBO is home to approximately 20 air-craft ranging from Citations to a Global and claims more than half of the busi-ness aviation traffic among the four ser-vice providers at the airport, a share that worked out to more than 18,000 move-ments last year.

“Despite the reconfiguration phase of our facility, we have been able to keep the same market but have faced a slight decrease in traffic, partly because of slots and parking restraints,” noted Madig-nier, who added the company is part of a working group at the airport attempt-ing to improve access there for business aircraft.

Madignier noted that the location is seeing a greater percentage of large-cabin aircraft of late. Many of these arrive from destinations in Europe, and the numbers are up from Asia, the Middle East and the Commonwealth of Independent States, he said. To accommodate them, the facility has 10 acres of ramp parking.

FBOs Showing the Largest Increase in Overall Average from 2014 to 2015

FBO AirportAirport Code

Overall Average 2015

Overall Average 2014

Change 2015-2014

ExecuJet Europe Zurich LSZH 8.9 7.5 1.4

Swissport Executive Nice Cote D’Azur Int’l LFMN 8.3 7.4 0.9

Signature Flight Support Paris Le Bourget LFPB 8.1 7.5 0.6

Hong Kong Business Aviation Centre Hong Kong Int’l VHHH 8.3 7.9 0.4

Dassault Falcon Service Paris Le Bourget LFPB 8.3 8.0 0.3

Landmark Aviation Paris Le Bourget LFPB 8.3 8.0 0.3

* Ties listed alphabetically by FBO

Other Frequented FBOs in the Eastern HemisphereFBO Airport Airport Code City

Abelag Aviation Brussels National EBBR Brussels

Business Flight Center Helsinki-Vantaa EFHK Helsinki

Cannes Airport Handling Cannes-Mandelieu LFMD Cannes

Capital Jet/CJet Beijing Capital International ZBAA Beijing

Corporate Air Service (Delta Aerotaxi) Florence Airport, Peretola LIRQ Florence

ExecuJet Middle East Al Maktoum International OMDW Dubai

ExecuJet Middle East Dubai International OMDB Dubai

Grafair Jet Center Stockholm City/Bromma ESSB Stockholm

Jet Aviation Dubai International OMDB Dubai

Jet Aviation Dusseldorf International EDDL Dusseldorf

KLM Jet Centre Amsterdam Schiphol EHAM Amsterdam

MJets FBO Don Mueang International VTBD Bangkok

Signature Flight Support Munich EDDM Munich

Universal Aviation Shannon EINN Shannon

Universal Aviation Sydney Kingsford Smith YSSY Sydney

* These FBOs, listed alphabetically by name, received nearly enough responses to qualify their ratings for this report.

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Dassault Falcon ServiceParis Le Bourget, France

8.3With seven (soon to be

eight) service providers oper-ating at Paris’s dedicated business aviation airport, the competition is certainly fierce, as four locations there earned scores of 8.1 or higher in this year’s AIN International FBO Survey, but with nearly a half century of operations at Le Bourget, Dassault Falcon Ser-vice (DFS) trumps them all in terms of seniority.

Starting from the early days of the company’s business jets, the facility has grown to include a 16,000-sq-ft terminal with a passenger lounge offering a panoramic view of the apron and direct access to the loca-tion’s four acres of ramp space. Recently added was a separate entrance for the FBO’s cus-tomers, along with a secure car parking area for passen-gers and crew. This year, the company plans to renovate its crew lounge, adding showers and a snooze room. Accord-ing to Bertrand d’Yvoire, head of Dassault’s airline and FBO operations, “Our refurbish-ment project will modernize our FBO and make it more efficient, while keeping the clas-sical touch that is highly appre-ciated by our customers.”

Over the past year traffic at the airport was flat com-pared with 2013, but the FBO maintained its market share of approximately 10 percent (6,000 movements) of the airport’s annual traffic. Like most of the highly rated inter-national FBOs, the location is seeing more large-cabin air-craft. “It should continue in this direction in the context of globalization and the higher performance of new business jets,” noted d’Yvoire. The air-port is open for takeoffs from 6 a.m. until 10:15 p.m., but landings are permitted around the clock. DFS is staffed from 6 a.m. until midnight, with call-out available after hours.

The location has 65,000 sq ft of hangar space and is home to 11 aircraft, seven of them Fal-cons available for charter. Its maintenance center is one of the world’s largest dedicated Falcon repair facilities, employ-ing 40 technicians, and can per-form virtually any maintenance on any Dassault aircraft.

Hong Kong Business Aviation Centre Hong Kong International Airport, Hong Kong

8.3The only Asian FBO to rank

among the top international locations in this year’s survey, Hong Kong Business Aviation Centre (HKBAC) is the sole FBO on Hong Kong Interna-tional Airport, and its score from AIN readers climbed to 8.3 this year from 7.9 last year. The FBO’s business and services have been growing in tandem with the growth of Hong Kong itself since the facility opened in 1998, according to general man-ager Madonna Fung. Last year the FBO recorded double-digit growth in flight movements, and that level of activity has contin-ued thus far into this year.

HKBAC is open 24/7 and was the first FBO in Asia to offer one-stop dedicated onsite customs, immigration and quarantine services. The approximately 67,000-sq-ft facility near the airport’s south runway includes executive lounges, conference facilities, concierge and catering services as well as a newly expanded crew lounge and flight planning center where crewmembers can prepare, hold meetings and rest.

As it heeds the ever-increas-ing importance of superior cus-tomer service, the company cites its comprehensively trained staff as its biggest asset, espe-cially when it comes to flexibil-ity. “What makes our services unusual is that we entertain requests for ad hoc arrange-ments on short notice,” Fung told AIN. “We also file flight plans for customers and pro-vide coordinated one-stop ser-vices such as maintenance and special catering arrangements.” Among the administrative ser-vices provided are arranging Chinese visas and landing per-mit applications.

The facility is home to more than 80 aircraft, and its three hangars encompassing more than 100,000 sq ft can shelter aircraft up to ACJs. For aircraft parking, HKBAC’s apron cov-ers 12 acres, and the company is currently concluding discussions with the airport authority to add even more capacity. Among the

further improvements is the addition of fuel hydrants on the apron, which are awaiting final approval from the airport’s fire services department. Accord-ing to Fung, “the new hydrants will facilitate a timely customer-demand-centric into-plane ser-vice to accommodate dynamic business trip needs.”

Landmark AviationParis Le Bourget, France

8.3Last year was a busy year at Le

Bourget for Landmark Aviation. The Houston-based service pro-vider moved from the terminal it had occupied since 2006 into a brand-new building in June. Located on the main avenue of the airport, the $4.1 million facil-ity, just south of Landmark’s for-mer structure and nearly triple its size, offers more privacy for cus-tomers, including a conference rooms, larger passenger lounges, snooze room in the pilots’ lounge and a prayer room. Unlike in the old 3,700-sq-ft terminal (which will be retained to provide cli-ent office space), passenger and baggage screening services in the new terminal will be discrete and unobtrusive.

Last year the location saw a 10-percent upswing in move-ments over 2013, a trend it expects will continue through this year, according to general manager Denis Bourgois. Land-mark Le Bourget has a staff of 45 and is open every day from 5 a.m. until 11 p.m. with on-request fueling service available 24 hours a day. The company manages Esso’s fuel farm and tanker trucks and fuels a large portion of aircraft at the airport.

Bourgois added, “The indus-try is starting to focus more and more on security, safety and customer service.” Land-mark’s European locations par-ticipate in NATA Safety 1st line

service training. The location offers nearly

five acres of ramp parking. One thing retained from the earlier facility is its 43,000-sq-ft heated hangar, which can shelter large-cabin business jets. Like most of the FBOs at Le Bourget, Land-mark offers on-demand customs and immigration formalities.

Swissport Nice Cote d’Azur Interna-tional Airport, France

8.3Swissport has been providing

FBO services through its Swissport Executive Aviation brand since 2001, and its facility at Nice Cote d’Azur Airport (LFMN), oper-ated as a joint venture with Uni-versal Weather and Aviation, was the company’s first private aviation location, followed later by a wholly owned facility in Cork, Ireland. The company also operates Privat-Port FBOs here in Geneva, and also at Zurich and Munich under a joint venture with PrivatAir.

One of three business aviation service providers at LFMN, Swis-sport claims approximately one third of the traffic, which totaled nearly 11,000 movements, accord-ing to recently named FBO direc-tor Rochdi Touri. The compact facility, at approximately 4,000 sq ft, is the same size as its competitors and contains a passenger lounge with a tarmac view, an operations center, six-seat A/V-equipped con-ference room and pilots’ lounge. A crew snooze room is planned. The facility is open 24/7.

None of the FBOs at LFMN has its own dedicated ramp or aircraft parking area, with spaces first-come first-served among the three providers. Likewise, none of the providers has their own hangars. “The airport allocates several parking spaces for gen-eral aviation, and then when it starts to get too busy, they allo-cate commercial aircraft park-ing,” said deputy FBO director Rafaël Fromentin. “Today’s air-craft are becoming larger and larger so it can be problematic at times,” he added, noting peak periods of airport activity such as during the Monaco Formula One race. During the peak sum-mer season, the facility’s staff nearly doubles to 62 employees from 34. The company noted a strong start to this year fueled in part by a resurgence of U.S. traf-fic, and it expects to see a solid year despite the continuing crisis in Ukraine, which is limiting pri-vate flights from the region.

Hong Kong Business Aviation Centre Continued on page 92 u

TAG Aviation, Geneva

Dassault Falcon Service, Le Bourget


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Universal AviationParis Le Bourget, France

8.3To celebrate 25 years at Le

Bourget, Universal Aviation completed a $250,000 refur-bishment of its 5,400-sq-ft facil-ity last year, staging an official ribbon cutting in April. “We recognize the strategic impor-tance Paris serves as a desti-nation for business aviation operators and also the many ground support options they have at Le Bourget,” said Jon-athan Howells, the company’s senior vice president for inter-national operations.

“As part of our ongoing program to further enhance our clients’ experience on the ground at all of our locations, we have updated our historic FBO at Le Bourget with fea-tures and amenities our clients told us they wanted.”

Those improvements included renovated crew and passenger lounges, a business center, client meeting rooms and private passenger-screen-ing facilities. Reflecting the many cultures and nationali-ties that converge on Paris, the FBO offers 1,947 digital news-paper titles in 57 languages from 97 countries. A prayer room is also available.

The location, which is open from 8:30 a.m. until 8:30 p.m. (after hours by callout), also added 130,000 sq ft of ramp parking space over the past year, bringing its total to more than seven acres. Universal’s 32,000-sq-ft heated hangar can accommodate a pair of BBJs simultaneously, and it offers rampside customs and immi-gration clearance as well as UVair contract fuel. Like all of the company’s 13 FBOs, it participates in NATA Safety 1st line service training as well

as Universal’s own proprietary safety training program.

Universal’s catering subsid-iary, Air Culinaire, operates its regional kitchen at Le Bourget, and representatives can meet arriving flights to arrange orders from an extensive menu, including special requests, with the crews.

Harrods AviationLondon Luton, UK

8.2Sharing the same name as

the legendary London depart-ment store is no coincidence for Harrods Aviation, which has been part of the same company for the past 20 years. It operates FBOs at both London Luton and London Stansted and, according to sales and market-ing director Will Holroyd, takes some cues from its famous retail sibling. “Our FBOs, as you would expect from Harrods, provide the highest level of cus-tomer amenities,” he told AIN. At its Luton base, the com-pany just concluded a year-long $600,000 interior redesign and upgrade. As part of the reno-vation, the lounges were refur-bished with new furnishings and fittings, while the passenger screening areas were relocated from their original position in the passenger lounge to a more discreet location to enhance the privacy of arriving and depart-ing passengers. New guest and baggage screening equipment was also added to ensure a swift departure on commercial flights.

The company saw a slight uptick in business aviation traf-fic at Luton year-over-year and is maintaining its market share of approximately 40 percent of that business, according to Hol-royd, who noted the larger size of aircraft frequenting the facil-ity. “To meet the demand to han-dle larger aircraft and [their higher

passenger count], we have pur-chased a new airside mobile bag-gage screening vehicle,” he said. Though the facility has 59,000 sq ft of hangar space–enough to accommodate aircraft up to a 757–and five acres of parking, Holroyd acknowledges that the influx of larger aircraft comes at a cost. “There is not unlimited space at Luton, and with larger aircraft parking for longer periods on the ramp, the number of aircraft we are physically able to handle drops,” he said. “In years to come, and as locations like Luton remain as popular as ever for their prox-imity to London, aircraft opera-tors will have to look elsewhere.”

As Air Elite Global Network members, Harrods Aviation’s entire staff, numbering more than 250 at the two locations, attended Ritz-Carlton customer service training over the past year.

Signature Flight SupportParis Le Bourget, France

8.1The fourth FBO at Europe’s

most active business aviation hub to earn recognition by AIN’s read-ers this year, Signature Flight Support is one of the largest hang-arage providers at Le Bourget with more than 145,000 sq ft of storage spread over nine heated structures that can accommodate aircraft up to a Global. The location has nearly 10 acres of dedicated apron parking, along with another four acres available to accommodate jetliners up to 747s, along with the ground handling equipment to ser-vice them. Signature also owns a de-icing truck, making it indepen-dent in winter weather. Its terminal is open from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m. (call-out service available) and offers 24/7 rampside customs and immigration clearance.

Courtesy car service whisks customers from the ramp directly to the customized security area for passenger and baggage screening, en route to the passenger lounges, which feature en suite bathrooms and shower facilities. The air-con-ditioned terminal has an executive bar area, A/V-equipped confer-ence rooms with seating for up to 30 people, a private prayer room,

individual crew snooze rooms and pilots’ work lounge with large-screen television and cable pro-gramming. Dedicated car parking is available for customers and crew. There is also a separate limousine drivers’ lounge and onsite catering. Fuel is available on request from Exxon, Shell or Total.

Hawker Pacific Flight CentreSydney Kingsford Smith International, Australia

8.0Proof that FBO facilities

don’t have to be large to gain recognition is Hawker Pacific’s FBO at Sydney Kingsford Smith International Airport in Austra-lia. While the company has had a maintenance presence at the air-port for the past three decades, its FBO–at 12 years old–is the old-est among the company’s seven bases scattered through Aus-tralasia, and has a staff of just five full-time and 10 part-time workers. Hawker Pacific recently refreshed the terminal’s interior.

Though the company has long wanted to replace its 30-year-old structure, it has been hamstrung by the privatized air-port authority’s ever-fluctuating 20-Year Master Plan. “Every five years at least we get told that we’re going to be relocated over to another part of the air-port and we’re going to have to build a new facility and so on,” said Graham Owen, the compa-ny’s vice president of flight ser-vices for Australia. “We haven’t been able to invest in the current facility because we always sort of think we have a five-year horizon when we’re going to be moved out, so it’s been a bit difficult.”

Domestic operations have been fairly flat over the past year, according to Owen, who added that as the FBO business in Aus-tralia is still relatively young, only recently are most domestic oper-ators beginning to accept using an FBO rather than self-han-dle. International traffic, on the other hand, has risen by more than 15 percent over the past few years, with last year’s G20 Sum-mit in Brisbane providing a wel-come boost. Onsite customs and

immigration clearance is avail-able. Recently, the company was awarded a government aircraft-handling contract at all four of its bases in Australia. The loca-tion has an 11,000-sq-ft hangar that can accommodate the pair of Challenger 604s and a Cita-tion III that are based there. The location can handle any aircraft up to and including a private 747. “Because fuel is not a major earner for Australian FBOs, the key differentiator is customer service,” said Owen. Indeed, the location’s highest score was for its CSR staff.

Landmark AviationNice Cote d’Azur, France

8.0The third service provider

at Nice Cote d’Azur Airport (LFMN) is Landmark Avia-tion, which has had a presence at the French Riviera gateway since 2008. Like its competitors, the company occupies one third of the airport-provided general aviation terminal. While com-pact, the location offers every-thing required of an FBO, including pilots’ lounge, flight planning and passenger lounge, yet in an effort to allocate more space to enhance its customers’ experience, Landmark over the past year relocated some of its accounting staff to a remote facility. The company says it is working with the airport on an expansion plan to make more space for passengers and crew.

With no hangar space and a common-use ramp, service pro-viders at the airport exist mainly for transient traffic, and Land-mark claims approximately 40 percent of it at Nice. “We handled 6,553 aircraft last year, which was up 7.6 percent from 2013,” said Cy Farmer, the company’s vice president for international oper-ations, indicating an increase in market share, as business for the airport overall was rather flat year-over-year. According to industry data provider WingX Advance, LFMN saw an uptick of 3.1 percent in fuel uplift last year, for a total of 9.5 million gallons of jet-A, and for the past several years Landmark has oper-ated its own pair of refuelers at the airport, which gives it more control over service quality and wait time.

The facility had been a joint venture with MAP Handling Executive, but now Landmark owns 100 percent of the FBO. o


Harrods Aviation, Luton

Universal Aviation, Le Bourget


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Daher exec cites record, in push for SET-IMCby Thierry Dubois

Daher (Static Display X114) is hoping for a fast, positive conclu-sion of the industry’s prolonged effort to have single-engine IFR commercial flights approved at the European level. The com-pany has also announced a new aerostructure contract with Gulfstream for the G500/600.

For single-engine commercial service, Daher wants to leverage the experience gathered by France-based Voldirect. Since 2013, the operator has been allowed by the French DGAC to operate one TBM 850 for passenger trans-port, without any operational issue, Nicolas Chabbert, senior vice president of Daher’s airplane business unit, said at EBACE yes-terday. Voldirect has logged 600 hours with the aircraft and is con-sidering buying another TBM.

“We are expanding the realm of general aviation to levels that are affordable to smaller com-panies, we do not compete with bigger guys,” Chabbert said. For example, there is no way a twin could be operated economically to Ouessant, a small island off Brittany’s coast, he asserted.

The first working group on single-engine commercial opera-tions dates back to 1993. EASA executive director Patrick Ky is supportive, but the devil is in the details since all member states have to agree, Chabbert said. After EASA publishes an opin-ion on the NPA018 EU-OPS, it will be submitted to the Euro-pean Commission within six to nine months. Chabbert thus expects a revised EU-OPS regu-lation in 2016.

For the Gulfstream G500/600, Chabbert said Daher just inked a contract to supply the wing-to-body fairing. The composite structure contributes to the aero-dynamics of the new large-cabin jets. On the same program, Daher was already supplying the main landing gear doors.

Speaking about Daher’s presence in North America, Chabbert confirmed the firm needs a factory in the U.S. for composite and metal work. Daher already has a compos-ite factory in Nogales, Mexico. In Pompano Beach, Florida, where Daher recently inaugu-rated its new North American headquarters and service facil-ity, the “help wanted” sign is on.

The current fleet of 68 TBM 900s has logged a combined 10,000 flight hours. Since the program was revealed last year, Daher has received orders for 98 of the single-engine turboprops.

Daher announced here at the show yesterday that on Sunday it had delivered the first TBM900 to go to Spain. o


together for the first time at EBACE, break paradigms in business aviation, offering premium comfort with a standup cabin, flat floor and outstanding performance,” said Embraer Executive Jets president and CEO Marco Túlio Pellegrini.

“The Legacy 450 has the largest cabin in its class and is the first jet in its cat-egory to replace conventional controls with digital full fly-by-wire technol-ogy,” he added. “This aircraft is a flaw-less combination of technology and design, which defies every definition of a mid-light jet.”

Meanwhile, the Legacy 450 program is on schedule, with its entry into service expected in the fourth quarter. Accord-ing to Pellegrini, the twinjet is performing very similarly to its larger sibling, the Leg-acy 500, which was certified last year and shares more than 90-percent commonality with the Legacy 450. o

other adjustments that are ongoing in the European industry. Noting the changes that have occurred over the past five years, Gamba said, “It is fascinating to see how the sector is adapting to this new era…this new reality.”

Industry leaders want to make sure that the changes are understood so busi-ness aviation can anticipate and mitigate their effects. As part of that effort, EBAA inked a contract with consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton to study the scope of the industry and its impact on the economy, said Gamba. He is hoping this study will be complete by year-end.

This data is key as European politicians and regulators make decisions that could affect the industry long-term, according to Gamba. As examples, he pointed to

European Commission efforts to improve the competitiveness of the aviation sector in the European Union, as well as an in-development white paper that will outline strategic vision for the transportation sec-tor. “We want to make sure business avia-tion is accounted for [in these efforts],” he said. He also cited the European Aviation

Safety Agency’s work to revise the Basic Regulation as another area where busi-ness aviation needs to have a voice.

Eying future mandates anticipated around “just culture,” Gamba said the association is signing an agreement this week during EBACE with UK-based firm Vistair for a web-based reporting plat-form for safety incidences involving busi-ness aircraft. Also this week in Geneva, EBAA will focus on the expected short-age of skilled workers in the industry.

General Aviation Manufacturers Association president and CEO Pete Bunce, meanwhile, stressed the need for the industry to work collectively with regulators in Europe, the U.S. and other countries to improved the aircraft certifi-cation process and leverage resources.

Nicholas Chabbert, senior vice pres-ident of the Daher’s airplane business unit, echoed the sentiment of speaking with “one voice.” He also praised the new direction that EASA is taking with avia-tion regulation. o

EBAA sets roots in GenevauContinued from page 1

Jet Aviation expands maintenance capability

New approvals and new facili-ties announced at EBACE under-line the expansion of services offered by Jet Aviation’s global FBO, modification and mainte-nance network. EASA recently granted approval for the compa-ny’s Vienna MRO facility to pro-vide base maintenance support for the Bombardier Challenger 300, and line maintenance for the Global 5000. These approvals add to those for line maintenance work for the Learjet, line and base work for the Cessna Cita-tion series, and AOG services.

Jet Aviation (Booth A050) opened its new 43,000-sq-ft facility at Vienna International last September. “Vienna is an important business aviation hub in Europe,” said the facil-ity’s managing director, Den-nis Kohr. “We will continue pressing forward with new ser-vice offerings that benefit our clients.” The Vienna facility has plans to add more aircraft types to its service offering in the near future.

Moscow OperationsEASA approval has also

been received authorizing Jet Aviation’s Moscow-Vnukovo MRO site to provide line main-tenance for Dassault Falcon 900EX EASy aircraft. Jet Avi-ation’s Moscow shop is located next to the FBO at Vnukovo 3, specializing in longer-range air-craft. It holds approvals for line maintenance, defect rectifica-tion and AOG services for Bom-bardier, Embraer, Gulfstream

and Hawker aircraft. AOG operations throughout Russia are an important element of the site’s work.

In the Middle East, Jet Avi-ation Saudi Arabia has added a NiCd battery shop to its FBO at Jeddah. Able to check, charge and overhaul most bat-tery models, the workshop has removed the need for out-sourcing this work. The Jeddah FBO/MRO facility has been in operation since 1979, offering a range of maintenance ser-vices. The company also has had a major maintenance/FBO facility at Riyadh since 1983, and opened an FBO at Medina in 2012.

In Europe Jet Aviation’s Geneva facility, which will cel-ebrate its 50th anniversary in 2019, has recently completed a cabin management system upgrade for a Bombardier Global Express. The original CMS in the 14-year old air-craft has been replaced with a Honeywell Ovation sys-tem with audio/video, JetMap HD and WiFi. The modern-ization also included changes to the water, lighting and air conditioning systems. Cabin management can now be con-trolled through touch-screen units in the side ledges, seats and galleys, and by five hand-held devices. –T.D.

Daher is still looking at establishing a factory in the U.S., in addition to its U.S. headquarters and service facility in Pompano Beach, Florida (shown).

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Avionics Flight Planning Operators EBACE Debuts Customer Support

King Airs Get Fusion InfusionBeechcraft King Air buyers can now opt for Rockwell Collins Pro Line Fusion touchscreen avionics. AIN senior editor Matt Thurber got a chance to fly with the system. Page 10

Nexus Opens New Vienna Center Adding to its existing facility in Monaco, flight support specialist Nexus opened another European customer service center in Vienna last month. It will focus on Central and Eastern Europe as well as Russia. Page 21

Formula 1 Legend Orders Global 7000Auto racing icon Niki Lauda, a brand ambassador for Bombardier Business Jets, has ordered a Global 7000 ultra-long-range aircraft. He expects to take delivery in late 2018. Page 24

HondaJet Makes Premier AppearanceWith provisional U.S. certification in hand, Honda Aircraft turns to Europe, with the first appearance of its HondaJet here at EBACE. Its over-the-wing engine mount affords more cabin space. Page 63

Dassault Falcon Ramps Up ServiceDassault continues improving the customer service network for its Falcon business jets. New features include a pair of Falcon 900s dedicated to delivering parts for AOG aircraft. Page 77

Legacy 450uContinued from page 1

EBAA CEO Fabio Gamba

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The big day is finally here. After months of prep-

aration, Europe’s premier business aviation trade

show opens its doors this morning at Geneva’s

Palexpo convention center. Unusual for a show of

this size, EBACE is fortunate to have its static air-

craft display on the ramp at Geneva International

Airport, directly adjacent to the indoor exhibit halls.

EBACE kicks off this morning with the open-

ing session at 9:00 a.m. The hour-long pro-

gram includes addresses by key members of the

European business aviation community as well as

government and regulatory luminaries. At 10:00

a.m., the exhibit halls and static display open.

Three information and exchange sessions are

scheduled for today, starting at 2 p.m. with a com-

prehensive look at the current status of blending

unmanned air vehicles into European airspace.

At 3:30 p.m., AIN editor-in-chief Charles Alcock

moderates a panel of experts discussing the state of

the industry. Finally, at 5 p.m., Women in Aviation

will hold a networking event at the Inspiration

Zone (Booth G017).

Today at EBACE 2015 Tuesday, 19 May 2015EBACE Attendee, Exhibitor and Press RegistrationLocation: Geneva Palexpo & Geneva International Airport, Palexpo Hall 4

08:00 - 18:00EBACE Press Headquarters OpenLocation: Geneva Palexpo & Geneva International Airport, Room X

08:30 - 09:00Opening General Session Continental BreakfastLocation: Geneva Palexpo, Room W Foyer (Hall 3)

09:00 - 10:00EBACE Opening General SessionLocation: Geneva Palexpo, Room W (Hall 3) Presented by: Marjeta Jager, Transport, European Commission; Patrick Ky, EASA; and François Longchamp, Président du Conseil d’État de la République et Canton de Genève

10:00 - 18:00Exhibit Halls & Static DisplayLocation: Geneva Palexpo & Geneva International Airport

14:00 - 15:00Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS)Location: Geneva Palexpo & Geneva International Airport, Inspiration Zone Booth G017 Moderated by: Peter Van Blyenburgh, Unmanned Vehicle Systems International

Presented by: Denis Koehl, SESAR Joint Undertaking; Paul Lange, Law Offices of Paul Lange; Jean-Louis Roch, Thales; Eric Sivel, EASA; and Baptiste Tripard, SenseFly

15:30 - 16:45State of the IndustryLocation: Geneva Palexpo & Geneva International Airport, Palexpo, Hall 3 (Room Q) Moderated by: Charles Alcock, AIN Online Presented by: Richard Aboulafia, TEAL Group; Pete Bunce, General Aviation Manufacturers Association; Jean-Christophe Gallagher, Bombardier Business Aircraft; Claire Leleu, EUROCONTROL; Jay Mesinger, J. Mesinger Corporate Jet Sales; Ian Moore, VistaJet; and Charles Schlumberger, World Bank

17:00 - 18:00Women in Aviation Networking EventLocation: Geneva Palexpo & Geneva International Airport, Inspiration Zone Booth G017 Moderated by: Karin Muller, WCA; Lisa Piccione; and Martine Wellens, EBAA Presented by: Maria DiPasquantonio, FAA; Giulia Mauri, Verhaegen Walravens; Aoife O’Sullivan, Kennedys; and Christina Vicini, Vicini Strategy Tables of Discussion: Careers in government/regulatory, Governance, Finance, Management and Careers

AINtv is here at EBACE, bringing all the dynamic images, sights and sounds to those unable to visit here in Geneva. And for those fortunate enough to be here, it’s a great way to review the day’s top events. As we have done at most other major avi-ation industry venues, AIN editors and reporters bring the news to life, joined by industry special-ists and representatives from trade groups and associations. Log on to www.aintv.com for all the news and events from Europe’s premier business aviation event.

Meeting Rooms

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Convention News®

EBACEis located in Hall 3, meeting room Salle T.

+44 (0) 7759.455.770 email: [email protected]

Shuttle bus service to Palexpo will be provided from some EBACE2015 hotels while other hotels will have shuttle service from the hotel to the public train station in downtown Geneva, where attendees are encouraged to take the train to Palexpo. The remaining EBACE2015 hotels, located close to either the downtown train station (Gare Cornavin) or Palexpo, will have no EBACE shuttle service.

Shuttle Bus and Train Hours of Service:Tuesday, 19 May

07:30 – 19:00

Wednesday, 20 May07:30 – 19:00

Thursday, 21 May07:30 – 17:00

EBACE Convention News 05-19-15

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Transcript of EBACE Convention News 05-19-15