Boutique Air, a San Francisco-based Part 135 commuter airline and active participant in the Essential Air Service (EAS) market, is in the midst of an FAA investigation into its training and pilot development program (PDP). While there has been no official public acknowledgment of the investigation from Boutique, in late 2021 a letter from CEO Shawn Simpson addressed to the “United States FAA” was posted in numerous online venues.
In the letter, dated November 4, Simpson referenced an October notification from the FAA’s Fargo Flight Standards District Office (FSDO) informing the company “…that 100 percent of our First Officers should no longer be flying in our aircraft because their position as Second in Command [SIC], is not valid and therefore we must stop immediately using these pilots in this role.” He further stated that in a phone conversation with FSDO staff on October 27, he was informed, “that ‘none’ of the time that our First Officers have accumulated at the company will count as real flight time.”
When a Challenger 600 operated by Platinum Jet Management overran the runway during an aborted takeoff at Teterboro Airport in February 2007, crossed a busy highway, and crashed into a warehouse, there was a collective sigh of relief when all eight passengers and the crew emerged with non-life-threatening injuries.
Now that the wreckage has been hauled away, the airport boundary fence repaired and the NTSB has begun its investigation, the mystery of who, what, and why is just beginning.
In the post-Covid pandemic environment, private aviation has surged as those with the means to avoid the airlines—with their close personal contact and still-diminished schedules—have done so. While that has led to record traffic for most FBOs, factors such as rising fuel prices, inflation, and a tight labor market have put pressure on their payrolls and margins. These factors also have stressed the ability of companies to maintain staffing amid increasing work tempos.
Disruptions from Covid and the geopolitical fallout from the Russian invasion of Ukraine sent the retail price of jet-A soaring to record heights earlier this year, hitting more than $14 per gallon in the northeast in April. Brent crude reached a peak on March 8 of $127.98 per barrel, an 87.5 percent increase from the previous year, according to Oil Price Information Service (OPIS).
In AIN sister publication Business Jet Traveler's 2022 Readers’ Choice survey, editors asked subscribers for their opinions about business aircraft manufacturers and also about the airplanes and helicopters they'd most like to own.
According to the results, Gulfstream Aerospace topped the list of business jet OEMs, with Pilatus Aircraft and Airbus Helicopters being the most preferred provider of turboprops and turbine helicopters, respectively. Preferred aircraft included the Pilatus PC-12, Beechcraft King Airs, Embraer Phenoms, Cessna Citation Latitude, Bombardier Challenger 350, Gulfstream G500 and G650/650ER, Boeing BBJ, and Bell 505.
Boeing continues to insist it won’t let what it calls an arbitrary deadline to complete certification of the 737 Max 7 and Max 10 influence the timing of its paperwork exercise with the FAA, despite the real possibility of a compromise in commonality between those airplanes and the Max 8, Max 9, and 737NG. At issue remains a legislative requirement that would require Boeing to install a new engine indicating and crew alerting system (EICAS) in the Max 7 and Max 10 if it does not meet the year-end deadline, an eventuality that appears ever more likely, particularly in the larger of the two airplanes.
In a September 19 letter sent to Boeing vice president of Max return to service Mike Fleming, FAA Aircraft Certification Service director of aviation safety Lirio Liu noted that the agency had accepted only 10 percent of the required system safety assessments (SSAs) for the Max 7 while 70 percent remained in various stages of review and revision. “Most concerning” to Liu, however, Boeing hadn’t yet submitted six outstanding SSAs.
Autonomous eVTOL developer Wisk Aero this week publicly revealed its new sixth-generation aircraft. The company's unpiloted Generation 6 aircraft is designed to carry passengers up to 90 miles, flying at a cruise speed of 120 knots and an altitude between 2,500 feet and 4,000 feet.
The aircraft features 12 propellers, six of which can tilt, that allow the aircraft to take off and land vertically. During cruise, the aircraft transitions to wingborne horizontal flight. Wisk said its batteries will take just 15 minutes to fully recharge.
Europe's air navigation service providers (ANSPs) performed well in terms of air traffic management safety last year, but they did not meet their environmental targets even in a period of low traffic volumes compared with 2019 levels and a revised target framework. Their environmental performance gives cause for “concern,” a report from the independent Performance Review Body (PRB) of the Single European Sky (SES) noted.
A new methodology that ranks the environmental performance of the SES member states—the European Union (EU) plus Norway and Switzerland—and their ANSPs in a traffic light system, reveals that only nine member states rank in the “green” zone and 10 in the “red” zone, while a further nine fall in the middle or “amber” zone, highlighting a “need to improve environmental performance,” remarked PRB chair Regula Dettling-Ott.
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