Encouraged that it is on track of meeting its 2025 financial targets, Bombardier believes it will have the flexibility at that time to ramp up investments on potential new products, president and CEO Éric Martel said this morning during the company’s virtual 2022 Investment Day. Noting progress made over the past year regarding its financial goals, Martel said the company has cut its production costs of the flagship aircraft by 40 percent between the first and 50th delivery and is achieving another 20 percent reduction in costs from the 50th and the soon-to-be delivered 100th model.
Bombardier also saw a jump in its aftermarket business to $1.24 billion last year, reduced debt by $3 billion, and identified $250 million of cost reductions. As a result, this is building in flexibility for future investments, along with further debt reduction, Martel said.
“We must keep evolving. We're taking the time to evaluate our next moves carefully,” he noted, saying these investments will be influenced by sustainability, available new technologies, and use of those already developed for the Global 7500.
As for timing, the market will dictate that, he said, but added, “By 2025, we will have that flexibility. We're in a good place. If we need to, we will have the flexibility and capability to respond to our competitor and be able to offer what our customer will look for.”
Dassault Aviation is opening a company-owned Falcon service center at Long Island MacArthur Airport (KISP) in Islip, New York, the French airframer announced yesterday. The service center will initially operate from a leased hangar at KISP that can house up to six Falcons and will provide scheduled maintenance, AOG support, and pre-purchase evaluations.
Located within an hour's flight time from 20 percent of the U.S. Falcon fleet, the service center is easily accessible to technical staff and parts supply at Dassault Falcon Jet’s Teterboro, New Jersey headquarters.
The new service center is part of what Dassault calls a regional realignment of resources following the company’s recent closure of one of its U.S. locations in Wilmington, Delaware. Dassault said upgrading the Wilmington center to support its new Falcon 6X and 10X business jets “was not deemed feasible.”
In addition to KISP, Dassault has also been adding service capacity to other U.S. sites, including its Little Rock, Arkansas completions center and service centers in St. Louis, Missouri; Stuart, Florida; and Reno, Nevada. In Reno, the company has added another maintenance bay, improved customer amenities, and established more efficient work areas. It has also appointed Heather Mirra as general manager of the Reno service center. She was most recently the company's director of network supply chain, planning, and scheduling.
Michimasa Fujino, who led the design and development of the HondaJet and launch of Honda Aircraft as an entirely new business jet manufacturer, will retire on March 31. Honda Motor Company’s policy requires that certain executives retire upon reaching age 62, and, according to Honda Aircraft, “Mr. Fujino has reached executive retirement age under Honda Motor’s policy.”
Taking over the role from Fujino is Hideto Yamasaki, who will become president and director on April 1. However, Fujino will continue in a role as advisor to Honda Aircraft.
"Since I was appointed for the aircraft development project at Honda in 1986 to 1997,” Fujino said in a statement provided to AIN, “I wanted to design and commercialize an aircraft that could bring new value to the aviation industry—a technologically advanced, fast, efficient, comfortable, and easy-to-fly business jet.
“This led me to come up with several technologies, including the OTWEM (over-the-wing engine mount), NLF (natural laminar flow technology on wing and nose), composite fuselage, and an advanced cockpit, which allowed us to offer customers something radically new.
“It was a tremendous experience for me to be part of Honda for over 38 years and to lead Honda’s aviation project for over 36 years, and I truly appreciate all support from HACI team members and industry leaders, which have made the HondaJet possible today.”
Ukraine’s national airspace was rapidly closed down overnight in response to the Russian invasion of its neighbor. Early today, EASA issued an urgent bulletin covering the flight information regions (FIRs) around the cities and districts of Kyiv, Lviv, Dnipropetrovsk, Simferopol, and Odesa.
The agency warned operators to immediately adhere to all airspace closures and warnings, including a notam issued by Russian officials closing part of the southern Rostov FIR, close to the border between the countries. It advised that, as a further safety precaution, pilots should also avoid using any airspace within 100 nm of Ukraine’s border with both Russia and its close ally, Belarus, which has closed part of its national airspace along with Moldova, which borders Ukraine on its southwest side.
EBAA said that based on information received from both EASA and Eurocontrol, aircraft operators should consider the region as an active conflict zone until further notice. Last evening, the SafeAirspace conflict zone and risk database run by OpsGroup categorized the whole of Ukrainian airspace as “Level 1–Do Not Fly.”
Beyond immediate operational concerns, the aviation and aerospace industries will now be awaiting further announcements about sanctions with acute interest. It remains to be seen whether sales of aircraft parts and systems to Russia could be banned, and what the country’s diplomatic isolation might mean for exports of key materials such as titanium.
FAA Administrator Steve Dickson unveiled a new government-industry initiative called Eagle yesterday at the GAMA annual state-of-the-industry briefing. Eagle stands for “eliminate aviation gasoline lead emissions” and, Dickson said, “the intent of the program is to safely eliminate leaded aviation fuel by the end of 2030 without impacting the safe and efficient operation of the piston-engine fleet.”
He admitted, “This isn’t a new issue, it’s something that industry has been grappling with for a number of years now.”
Although Dickson outlined an action plan that includes “four pillars of work to be completed over the next eight years,” he failed to acknowledge existing unleaded aviation fuels that are already approved by the FAA. These include Swift Fuels’ UL94, which meets the needs of many aircraft powered by low-compression engines (those that used to run on 80-octane fuel), and GAMI's G100UL, which has been tested and meets the more stringent requirements of high-compression aircraft engines.
According to GAMI, which has been working on G100UL for more than 12 years, the new fuel not only meets the octane requirements of any aircraft piston engine but is also fully fungible. This means that it can be mixed with 100LL, stored and transported in existing fuel tanks, trucks, and pipelines, and requires no modifications to aircraft or transportation infrastructure.
The U.S. Army has been flying a special-mission Bombardier Challenger 650 as part of the NATO surveillance effort monitoring the build-up and subsequent operations of Russian forces in and around Ukraine. Known as the Leidos Special Mission Aircraft (LSMA), the Challenger technology demonstrator is outfitted with the Aerial Reconnaissance and Targeting Exploitation Multi-Mission Intelligence System (ARTEMIS).
U.S. Army aerial surveillance assets involved include Beechcraft RC-12K (King Air 200) Guardrail aircraft flying from Siauliai in Lithuania, and the ARTEMIS Challenger, which is currently operating from Constanta International Airport in Romania. ARTEMIS has been operating in Europe for several months and has flown numerous missions this month.
The aircraft’s routing—as seen on civilian flight-tracking websites—has taken it north into Polish airspace, from where its sensors can peer into western Ukraine and Belarus. This route was flown again earlier today, the first day of the major Russian attack on Ukraine.
Leidos began development of the LSMA in 2019 as a technology demonstrator for a potential candidate to replace the U.S. Army’s RC-12 Guardrail fleet, with the move to a business jet platform offering significantly increased range, operating altitude, onboard power, and payload capacity. ARTEMIS is a plug-and-play mission suite that can be rapidly reconfigured to meet mission requirements. The aircraft is believed to be fitted with electronic intelligence sensors and a side-looking radar that can track ground vehicles.
More than 50 business aviation leaders gathered this week for a first-of-its-kind event co-hosted by the National Air Transportation Association (NATA) and Air Charter Safety Foundation (ASCF) to have an open conversation about the most pressing safety issues confronting the industry and develop recommendations on addressing them. The participants view the event as “the beginning of a process” in which they can collaboratively develop key performance indicators, best practices, and industry standards, and share them throughout the industry.
“We wanted to bring the collective group of subject matter experts and safety practitioners together and talk about how the industry is changing and in that process of change, what opportunities there are for us to a collectively work on,” said Keith DeBerry, senior v-p of safety and education for NATA. “We're going to continue to leverage on this event and spread the word throughout the aviation community over the next year or so through carefully crafted boutique events in various parts of the U.S. We started a conversation that will have a long-lasting impact on business aviation going forward.”
The forum, which drew safety professionals from across the various segments of the industry, differed from other safety events in that it was more of a round-table, workshop environment rather than a venue for safety presentations, added Todd Weeber, COO of Magellan Jets and ACSF vice-chair.
Leonardo’s AW09 “is at the center” of the company’s efforts to assess hybrid propulsion for helicopters, with full-scale bench testing scheduled for 2023 and first flight of a hybrid AW09 prototype slated for “a couple of years later,” a spokesman told AIN. The company has already completed a feasibility analysis, defined system architecture, and begun the development of different subsystems with selected technology partners.
Meanwhile, flight testing continues on the turbine-powered AW09 prototype, which has a single Honeywell HTS900 turboshaft engine. To date, the AW09 prototypes have logged some 500 flight hours.
Following Leonardo's acquisition of Kopter Group for $185 million in 2020, the company acquired the single turbine helicopter program—formerly known as the Kopter SKYe SH09—bringing substantial engineering, production, and marketing resources to the project. Last year, it revamped the prototype’s design with an elongated mast, updated flight controls, Garmin G3000H avionics, revised upper cowlings for improved aerodynamics, and a new main rotor hub and blades.
The new rotor blades are scheduled to undergo flight trials beginning in March on test aircraft PS4, followed later this year by PS5. A Leonardo spokesman told AIN that “these two prototypes are the main workhorses for the certification flight-test campaign and will be complemented by [an earlier flight test aircraft] P3 for those test topics for which the aircraft is considered representative of the type design.”
Boeing's 777X widebody last week made its Singapore Airshow debut. One of the big twin's most distinguishing design features—a pair of 12-foot-long folding wingtips—will allow regulators to classify the 777X as Code E, meaning the airliner will fit into the same size parking space that the 777-300ER now uses.
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