AINAlerts will not be published on December 25 in recognition of the Christmas holiday. Our next edition will be published on December 26. In addition to safety, which is important all year long, this issue focuses on some of the many ways the industry gives back. AIN wishes you all the best during this holiday season.

Spirit AeroSystems Volunteers Collect Toys

More than 100 Spirit AeroSystems employees in Wichita mounted their Harley-Davidsons and other motorcycles this month and rode through the company’s historic Plant 2 collecting toys and cash for the Salvation Army.

“Our employees are really engaged, and they like to support the communities we’re in,” said Spirit spokeswoman Keturah Austin of the December 7 toy drive. It was the second consecutive year for the toy run, which Austin said collected $2,800 and two vanloads of toys that the Salvation Army will distribute to needy children for the holidays. This year’s event drew twice as many participants as last year's, she said. 

Austin said the idea for the toy run came from Vic McMullen, Spirit senior vice president of Wichita and Oklahoma operations. “This year they went all over campus so they were collecting from other buildings, too,” she said. In all, Spirit bikers travelled one mile, including through Plant 2 where Boeing assembled the B-29 bomber during World War II and where Spirit now assembles the Boeing 737 fuselage.

In addition to manufacturing and assembling aerostructures for Boeing and Airbus, Spirit manufactures the nacelles for the Rolls-Royce BR725 engines used on the Gulfstream G650.

CAN Tops 57,000 Flights This Year, Raises $300,000

The Corporate Angel Network (CAN) concluded its 37th year in service this month with the celebration of topping its 57,000th flight, the raising of nearly $300,000 from its annual NBAA charity event, and an expansion of its partnership with NetJets.

A charitable organization that arranges free flights for cancer patients aboard business jets, CAN reached the 57,000 mark in September, less than 18 months after it commemorated the 50,000th flight in April 2016. That number approached 58,000 by the end of this year, and in 2018 alone, the number of flights will reach 3,000. The thousands of flights now flown each year come with the support of more than 500 corporations, including half of the Fortune 100.

Also supporting that organization is NBAA, which annually hosts an event to raise funds for the charity. This year’s Angel Cocktail Reception event was held on October 17 in Orlando in conjunction with the 2018 NBAA-BACE. A centerpiece of the event is a live auction conducted by renowned auctioneer “Spanky” Assiter, who orchestrated bidding on items such as an exclusive Super Bowl package, trips to exotic destinations, and other aviation experiences. One such experience included a P-51 Mustang orientation ride.

Earlier in the year, NetJets, which has supported CAN since 1997, expanded its participation, providing opportunities that would potentially double the number of its participating flights. 

Disabled Aviators Spotlight Inclusion

Dubai Airports, ExecuJet, and Lions Clubs International welcomed during this month's MEBAA show a pair of disabled aviators circumnavigating the earth to promote the inclusion of people with disabilities in society.

Under the banner of the Handiflight association, pilots Mike Lomberg and Guillaume Feral, who both use wheelchairs, are flying some 50,000 miles (80,000 km) over nine months in their two Flight Design CTLS single-engine aircraft, crossing 40 countries and six continents. The two pilots, who began their journey in Geneva last month, stopped at MEBAA to connect with local officials and the media and will also attend the Lions Club International’s Constitutional Area Forum in Dubai, which is bringing together 3,000 delegates from Africa, the Middle East, and Asian sub-continent.

In addition to raising awareness about the importance of inclusiveness, the Handiflight Around the World project, organized by Lions Club International, aims to raise funds for the non-profit Humanity and Inclusion. 

“Dubai Airports is an enthusiastic advocate for the rights and inclusion of people of determination in society,” said Essa Al Shamsi, v-p of terminal operations at Dubai Airport. “We are proud to be associated with this worthy cause and salute these pilots for their skill and commitment to this important mission.”

Handiflight’s all-volunteer support staff are former members of the Solar Impulse project, which successfully circumnavigated the Earth with a solar-powered aircraft.

Aircraft Operators Chip In To Save Sea Turtles

While this season has been one of the worst in terms of sea turtle strandings on New England beaches, business and general aviation operators have once again come to the aid of the endangered reptiles, transporting more than 250 of them from Boston to southern marine creature rehabilitation centers where they will receive care and eventually be released back into the wild.

The turtles get swept north in the warm waters of the Gulf Stream and find themselves trapped around the Cape Cod region when the temperatures dip. The “cold-stunned” creatures become lethargic and wash up on beaches where they would soon die unless quickly collected by volunteers.

The New England Aquarium, which can accommodate fewer than 100, quickly becomes overwhelmed, requiring them to be stabilized and transported to other facilities. The industry charity Turtles Fly Too arranges for them to be picked up from one of several Boston-area airports by pilots heading south, and among the aircraft volunteered this year were a Bombardier Challenger 604, as well as Pilatus PC-12s and Daher TBMs.

On one recent occasion, a GA pilot, already carrying a full load of the securely packed turtles to a Long Island facility, offered to make an immediate return trip to pick up another load. Shoreline Aviation, the FBO at Marshfield Municipal Airport, which provides its heated hangar for loading the creatures, offered him free fuel for the trip.

GA Airports, FBOs Give Back in 2018

While the first duty of business aviation airports and their FBOs is to their customers, they also strive to be a part of their local communities and give back to them through involvement. During the holiday season, many locations hosted Toys for Tots drives in partnership with the U.S. Marine Corps.

Among these was Florida's Boca Raton Airport. In its second year of participation, the airport—with the support of its two FBOs (Signature Flight Support and Atlantic Aviation), two maintenance providers, one charter operator, and a local hotel—handily eclipsed last year’s total of more than 1,000 toys for underprivileged children. This followed a school supply drive there in July.

Earlier this year, California’s Sonoma Jet Center, one of two FBOs at Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport, established a fire relief fund to benefit its airport colleagues who lost their homes and possessions during the wildfires that ravaged that part of the state. The company also hosted an event that helped raise more than $500,000 to provide emergency and long-term relief to fire victims in the surrounding community. 

Also in California, Threshold Aviation Group, which operates an FBO and MRO at California’s Chino Airport, hosted a blood drive on December 21 in partnership with Lifestream to allow people to give the greatest gifts of all, hope and life, with all donors receiving a pair of movie tickets.

Drone Flies Human Kidney

Off-the-shelf commercial drones can successfully be used for human organ transport. That’s the conclusion of a new study by University of Maryland researchers published recently in the IEEE Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine. The researchers used a DJI M600 six-rotor UAS to fly a human kidney on a simulated inner-city, hospital-to-hospital transfer; a three-mile maximum route over the course of 14 test missions. Maximum speed was 42 mph.

The drone was fitted with a special organ transport case equipped with a wireless biosensor combined with an organ GPS. Temperature of the organ remained stable during flight, the drone flight offered less vibration (less than 0.5 g) than fixed-wing transport, and biopsies of the kidney taken before and after the flights revealed no damage.

The study concluded, “Organ transportation may be an ideal use-case for drones. With the development of faster, larger drones, long-distance drone organ shipment may result in substantially reduced cold ischemia times, subsequently improved organ quality, and thousands of lives saved” and that organs could be moved faster and less expensively with drones than with manned, fixed-wing charter flights, the current practice in many cases. 

Textron Aviation’s Graham In Line For NTSB Seat

The White House is selecting Michael Graham, a long-time employee at Textron Aviation with a deep background in aviation safety, to become the newest member of the National Transportation Safety Board. If confirmed, Graham would fill out the remainder of a five-year term that expires Dec. 31, 2020, succeeding Earl Weener who has served on the Board since 2010.

Currently chairman of the Air Charter Safety Foundation (ACSF), Graham would bring a broad knowledge of safety management systems (SMS), operations, and security to his new role.

He has spent more than 20 years with Textron Aviation, currently as the director of flight operations safety, security, and standardization. In that role, he steers Textron Aviation’s SMS and security and oversees air safety investigations. Graham has remained active in the aviation community, not only as chairman of ACSF but also as leader of the NBAA Safety Committee’s Single Pilot Safety Working Group and as a member of the General Aviation Information Analysis Team of the Aviation Safety Information Analysis & Sharing program. An ATP-rated pilot with 10,000 flight hours and type ratings in six different Citations, Graham began his aviation career as a U.S. naval aviator.

Joshua Herbert with Magellan Jets would succeed Graham as chairman of the ACSF if Graham is confirmed. Herbert is currently ACSF vice chairman.

InFo Clarifies Climb Gradient Requirements

Information for Operators 18014 provides definitive guidance to pilots of Part 25 turbine-powered airplanes to assist them in determining compliance with the IFR all-engines-operating climb gradient requirements published on standard instrument departures, obstacle departure procedures, diverse vector areas, and missed approach procedures. 

This InFo was published as the result of NBAA and operators making it known to the FAA that some confusion exists in regards to compliance with climb gradients on IFR departure procedures and missed approach procedures. “In some instances, this confusion has led to excessive weight penalties to the departure performance capabilities of the aircraft,” according to the agency. “More importantly, some operators may not be accounting for all obstacles in the planned departure path when accomplishing the flight planning required.”

The FAA said a climb gradient published on these procedures is a “sloping surface (plane) that originates at the departure end of the runway.” Airplanes must remain above this surface until reaching the stated height on the procedure. But, “it is not a climb gradient that must be exceeded at all points during the climb.”

The FAA has produced four training videos illustrating proper application of aircraft departure and approach performance requirements. In addition, a companion notice to InFo 18014 was published for FAA aviation safety inspectors and training center program managers.

Tales from the Flight Deck: Familiar Departure, Busted Altitude

After an unanticipated en route stop-over throws a curve to an experienced crew, they fall victim to an error of omission that could have been disastrous. Leaving Denver International Airport for their homeward leg, they trip up on what has become an alarmingly common problem: pilots not briefing for altitude restrictions on standard instrument departures, or SIDs. Fortunately, an alert controller catches the error in time to avoid an imminent traffic conflict. The Gulfstream pilot in this episode owned up to his mistake. This is a larger systemic problem than you might think, a team of aviation experts concurs.