Gulfstream Aerospace has delivered the 200th G280, a milestone reached some eight years after the super-midsize business jet entered service, the Savannah, Georgia-based aircraft manufacturer announced this week. The G280 rolled out in 2009 and then was certified by the FAA in 2012 and EASA in 2013.
“This is a tremendous milestone,” said Gulfstream president Mark Burns. “As when it entered the marketplace in 2012, the G280’s combination of performance, comfort, safety and efficiency put it atop the mid-cabin class.”
As of April, the in-service G280 fleet had accrued nearly 236,100 flight hours and completed more than 145,000 landings. The aircraft model has a dispatch reliability rate of 99.81 percent, according to Gulfstream.
Based on the IAI Galaxy (renamed the G200 after Gulfstream acquired Galaxy Aerospace in 2001), the 10-passenger G280 included a new wing, tail, Honeywell HTF7250G engines, and interior, as well as the Collins Aerospace Pro Line Fusion-based Gulfstream PlaneView280 flight deck. The G280, which has amassed 75 city-pair speed records to date, can fly 3,600 nm at Mach 0.80.
Meanwhile, it was reported early last year that Gulfstream and IAI had begun working on the next-generation variant of the G280 under a project dubbed P32.
Pioneering Bizav Parts Firm CRS Under New Ownership
Florida-based component provider CRS Jet Spares has new ownership and leadership who plan to inject new capital, as well as update and evolve its available inventory, build on partnerships, and integrate new technology into the nearly 38-year-old company founded by the late Armando Leighton Jr. Its new ownership includes primary owner Andrew Sherrill and CEO Milan Cvejic.
“The CRS team and its unwavering focus on providing solutions for each and every customer is what attracted us from an investment perspective,” said Cvejic. “Working with our team and surveying the industry, we’ve built a strategic plan that is both true to the tremendous history of the company and also very much forward-thinking.”
Cvejic is the founder of private investment firm The Sina Group and an expert in investment strategy, buyouts, business development, and mergers and acquisitions. Sherrill is the former CEO and chairman of Capsa Healthcare, which specializes in the manufacture of medical carts and cart technology. “I see many similarities in CRS and Capsa, as both had a great foundation and history with significant opportunity for market share growth—both organic and through acquisition,” said Sherrill.
CRS specializes in replacement and repaired parts supporting a range of business aircraft types, including Bombardier (Challenger, Learjet, and Global Express), Gulfstream, Falcon, Hawker, Beechjet, and Astra.
Organizers of the Farnborough International Airshow (FIA) are staging a virtual version of the usual in-person event, which had to be canceled this year due to the pandemic. FIA Connect will be held from July 20 to 24 and include a busy program of webinars and conference sessions.
To date, participating companies include Collins Aerospace, Rolls-Royce, Boeing, BAE Systems, Uber Elevate, Air bp, Pratt & Whitney, Cap Gemini, Ernst and Young, Deloitte, and DSTL. More firms are expected to be confirmed shortly for what is the first time a major international air show has been presented online.
FIA’s parent company, the UK aerospace and defense trade association ADS, will have a strong presence during the online event and its CEO, Paul Everitt, will be a keynote speaker at the opening ceremony on July 20. The group is organizing several Aerospace Growth Partnership webinars, addressing topics including the future of the aerospace industry, zero-emission aircraft, innovation in response to Covid-19, sustainable aviation, women in defense, the National Aerospace Technology Exploitation program, women in aviation and aerospace, and supply chain recovery plans.
“This is about supporting an industry that is in difficulty and we felt it needed a voice,” FIA chief executive Gareth Rogers told AIN. “We wanted people to come together from around the globe to talk through the issues they are facing.”
In an effort to align the support coverage and customer experience for both its TBM and Kodiak turboprop lines, Daher Aircraft is offering a new incentive to buyers of its 2020 model year Kodiak 100 utility single. The airframer announced that customers will receive free scheduled maintenance for the first two years of ownership.
“The Kodiak Care Maintenance coverage offers some of the industry’s best maintenance warranties, underscoring Daher’s commitment to worry-free ownership and creating loyalty across our aircraft product lines,” said Daher Aircraft senior v-p and Kodiak CEO Nicolas Chabbert, adding the rugged aircraft offers “state-of-the-art engineering, an all-glass cockpit suite, and unmatched short takeoff and landing performance.”
The company noted that through a partnership with AOPA, limited-time financing is available at less than $6,000 per month for the first year of ownership, which allows for the purchase of a 2020 model Kodiak 100 with a 20 percent down payment and zero percent interest during the first year.
Daher also pointed out that U.S. buyers can potentially benefit from special governmental economic recovery incentives for businesses such as tax refunds from as far back as 2015 and 100 percent bonus depreciation with the purchase of a business aircraft.
Textron Aviation Cutting More Jobs
Additional job cuts were underway at Textron Aviation today, with 80 salaried exempt employees affected. Most of those positions are located at the company’s Wichita headquarters, a spokeswoman confirmed to AIN.
“As Textron Aviation continues to adjust to the evolving global economic uncertainty and existing market conditions, the company has announced additional workforce reductions,” the airframer said in a statement to AIN. Today's job cuts don’t affect production workers, the statement noted.
Just last week, the manufacturer of Beechcraft and Cessna aircraft announced plans to eliminate 250 jobs companywide. Those job cuts came about two weeks after parent company Textron disclosed a restructuring in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that would affect 1,950 workers in three business units: aviation, industrial, and specialized vehicles. That restructuring, prompted by the economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, included the suspension in Montreal of the manufacture of commercial air transport simulators by Tru Simulation + Training.
Inflite Adds Bombardier Global Express Mx Support
Inflite The Jet Centre (IFJC) at London Stansted Airport has added line and base maintenance capabilities for Bombardier BD700-series aircraft under its Part 145 EASA repair station rating, the FBO and MRO announced this week. BD700-series aircraft that IFJC can now support include the Global Express, XRS, and Global 5000.
“This is another important strategic step for Inflite The Jet Centre, following our acquisition of Bombardier MRO specialist Excellence Aviation early in 2019,” said IFJC general manager Alan Barnes. “This latest accreditation expands the portfolio of aircraft types we can support and we look forward to working with, and supporting more Global Express operators in Europe and the Middle East.”
It also builds upon IFJC’s capabilities to support other Bombardier aircraft lines such as the Challenger, Barnes noted. “This equips us well to serve demands for maintenance support on Bombardier platforms in the region and at our London Stansted home,” he said.
DAS, Flite Combining Capabilities
West Star Aviation’s Dallas Aeronautical Services (DAS) and Flite Components businesses are joining efforts and capabilities to support a range of composite and aerostructure repairs. Flite Components will transition from its facility in Dallas to the DAS facility in Cedar Hill, Texas outside of Fort Worth. That transition is expected to be completed in December 2021.
In the meantime, though, both organizations will be able to direct work to either site to ensure customers’ requirements are fully met. The collaboration will enable DAS and Flite to build on their respective business bases by extending their collective support to their commercial, regional, and corporate aircraft customers.
“Having this great advantage of utilizing combined floor space and the sharing of talents will bring our companies into a very strong position to enhance turn times,” said Mike Ward, v-p of sales for DAS. “This will also be very beneficial to our customer base and allow us to streamline AOG events.” The companies will be able to point AOG events to the location that can turn the part the quickest, Ward explained.
Together DAS and Flite, which are both Part 145 repair stations, will become a “one-stop shop” for composite and aerostructure repairs, he added.
Swiss Researchers Develop Fast ‘Detect and Avoid’ Tech
University of Zurich researchers have developed technology that will enable drones to detect and avoid other fast-moving objects in as little as 3.5 milliseconds using special event cameras and newly developed algorithms. The reaction time makes the aircraft “nearly” as reliable as human pilots and is directed at beyond visual line of sight operations, according to researcher Davide Falanga.
In demonstrations, the system installed onboard a test aircraft was shown to successfully detect incoming objects “more than 90 percent of the time” in both indoor and outdoor tests. Traditional camera-based detect-and-avoid technology relies on computer analysis of all the pixels in a digital image, while event cameras use smart pixels that work independently of each other. This allows the onboard computer to dramatically speed computations by detecting changes in individual pixels such as light intensity, as opposed to having to wait for analysis of the entire image, thereby slashing vehicle reaction times by 30 to 40 milliseconds.
Researchers developed new algorithms to work with the event cameras that subtract drone movement from recorded camera events over a short burst of time. Related research was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation through the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) Robotics and published in the Science Robotics journal.
Count on AIN for Full Coverage of Farnborough International Airshow Connect
You can count on AIN for full coverage of FIA Connect 2020. Our team will publish a flip-through, digital Mid-Year Aerospace and Air Transport Report on July 23, and we will also have comprehensive real-time reporting of all the top news at AINonline and in special daily e-newsletters on July 20, 21, 22, and 23. If you are an exhibiting company that wants to share news or propose pre-show interviews and briefings please contact show editor Gregory Polek.
Supersedes but retains the requirements of EASA AD 2015-0097, which mandated repetitive inspections of certain part-numbered slider assembly pitch controls and replacement as necessary. Updated AD requires replacing affected parts with serviceable parts. Prompted by "unusual play" found on the slider pitch assembly controls during a scheduled 100-flight-hour inspection. Further investigation identified an excessive wear of the broaching of the slider assembly pitch control at the point of contact with the tail rotor shaft.
Requires revising the airplane maintenance manual to increase inspection frequency of the horizontal stabilizer trim actuator (HSTA) "no-back" operational check. Prompted by a finding that flight control electronic control units with certain serial numbers are susceptible to solder cracking, affecting the signals within the electronic unit. The combination of the solder crack and the latent failure of the horizontal stabilizer trim actuator "no-back" mechanism could result in uncontrolled HSTA operation.
AINalerts News Tips/Feedback: News tips may be sent anonymously, but feedback must include name and contact info (we will withhold name on request). We reserve the right to edit correspondence for length, clarity and grammar. Send feedback or news tips to AINalerts editor Chad Trautvetter.
AIN Alerts is a publication of Aviation International News, 214 Franklin Avenue, Midland Park, New Jersey. Copyright 2020. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is strictly prohibited.
