Despite acknowledging ATC instructions to line up and wait (LUAW), the flight crew of a Bombardier Learjet 60 took off without clearance at Boston Logan International Airport (KBOS) and thus caused a near-collision with a JetBlue Embraer E190, according to the NTSB final report published yesterday.

The incident, which caused no injuries or damage, occurred at 6:55 p.m. on February 27. Runways 04R and 09 are intersecting, and BOS tower had instructed the flight crew of the Learjet, being operated as a Part 91 positioning flight by charter operator Hop-A-Jet, to LUAW on Runway 09 while the JetBlue E190 had been cleared to land on Runway 04R.

The Learjet flight crew read back the controller’s instructions to LUAW, but they began the takeoff roll instead. After being alerted by the airport's surface-detection equipment, model X, the tower controller issued go-around instructions to the JetBlue crew, and they initiated the maneuver while over Runway 04R before reaching the intersection with Runway 09.

The closest proximity between the airplanes occurred when the E190 was about 30 feet agl during the landing flare, near the point where the runways intersected. As they entered the flare after crossing the threshold, the JetBlue pilots saw the Learjet cross 04R on Runway 09 but could not estimate how far away the airplane was.

Sometimes change can be overwhelming, especially sky-falling events. History can remind us of a few of these, including the 2001 dot-com bubble burst, the Great Recession in 2008, and the 2015 unspoken recession due to the oil price collapse and other global economic factors.

This one will go down as the 2023 industry balance shift. Of all the preceding events and others I did not list, this one could be the most desirable and sought-after phenomenon. This 2023 balance shift should bring harmony, reality, normalization, and growth to us all.

Starting in March 2020, we all got caught off guard by the pandemic. Ultimately, the business aircraft market grew with the unprecedented surge of first-time buyers entering the fray. Huge numbers of entrants brought demand that stretched the business aviation industry in all segments. Hangar space was frenzied, pilot training slots had lead times never seen before, and maintenance pre-buy and modernization slots were all but gone.

And let’s not forget the dwindling preowned business aircraft inventory and charter demand going through the roof.

So, with this rebalancing of 2023, there will be some bystanders who will not survive, consolidation of some providers, and adjustments from operators and customers. But we are a resilient, strong industry that was built to withstand many adversities—even when they occur all at once.

Embraer deliveries jumped by 47 percent in the second quarter, with both its executive jets and commercial aircraft shipments logging notable increases, the Brazilian manufacturer reported.

Deliveries for the quarter ended June 30 reached 62, 38 of which were executive jets and 24 commercial aircraft. This compares with a total of 47 delivered in the second quarter of 2022, including 30 executive jets and 17 commercial aircraft.

The increases threaded throughout Embraer’s product lines: Phenom deliveries were up by six units to 25, Praetors by two to 13, E175s by two to 12, and E195-E2s by five to 12. Phenom 300s accounted for the bulk of the light-jet second-quarter deliveries at 22, while the Praetors were nearly evenly split between the 500 (six shipments) and 600 (seven).

With the spike in deliveries, backlog ebbed—but only slightly—to $17.3 billion at the end of June. This compares with $17.4 billion at the end of March. During the most recent quarter, Embraer scored some significant deals, including from NetJets for up to 250 Praetor 500 jets. If all options are exercised, the deal would be valued at more than $5 billion with deliveries beginning in 2025.

The commercial side landed several deals as well, including its first for the E-Jet P2F (passenger-to-freighter) from China. Lanzhou Group ordered 20 of the model.

ForeFlight has rejoined the Apple Watch app arena with a new version of the app that runs on the device. The latest version of the ForeFlight Watch app is primarily focused on weather and airport information, unlike the earlier version, which had much more functionality.

In 2015, ForeFlight introduced the first version of its Watch app, and it could display ADS-B In weather in flight via a Stratus receiver connected to an iPhone. It also offered local and Zulu time, nearby flight conditions, flight instruments with navigation information, haptic notifications such as issuance of a route clearance, and timers. ForeFlight eventually stopped supporting its Watch app around late 2017 when Apple updated the Watch to OS 4.

Although less ambitious than the old Watch app, the new ForeFlight for the Apple Watch has some useful features, including the ability to add local weather and wind as a complication on the watch face. Tapping the complication pulls up the corresponding information and a list of favorite, recent, and nearby airports. When viewing local weather, hourly and 10-day forecasts are available. Clicking on the airport accesses its weather and a menu offering frequencies, weather, runways, and notams. In the weather section for that airport, users can view Metar, TAF, MOS, and daily/hourly weather and winds aloft.

After nearly three decades of developing avionics systems and flight deck displays for general aviation airplanes, Avidyne is branching out into the advanced air mobility (AAM) industry with what it claims is an entirely new approach through its open avionics platform called Quantum.

For the past five or six years, Avidyne has been in discussions with dozens of AAM start-ups looking to incorporate the company’s avionics technology into a variety of novel aircraft, such as eVTOL vehicles, hybrid-electric designs, and aircraft with autonomous flight capabilities.

“Obviously, there are a lot of different kinds of airplanes that people are trying to build, but there are also a lot of different ways in which they would like to equip them with avionics,” Avidyne president and CEO Dan Schwinn told AIN. So, Avidyne came up with a fully customizable avionics platform that it says can work with just about any type of aircraft. “I think you're going to see much more variety in terms of avionics on these aircraft,” Schwinn predicted.

Quantum is an open-architecture platform that aircraft manufacturers can use to build a custom avionics system with a combination of off-the-shelf components and brand-new systems that Avidyne can help develop. It comes with a full suite of customizable hardware, software, and artificial intelligence processors, plus access to Avidyne’s licensable intellectual property and engineering support services.