The roster of Bombardier’s special mission aircraft is set to grow with two orders from Nordic nations, both signed yesterday. Finland’s coast guard has selected the Challenger 650 for its MVX airborne surveillance requirement, while Sweden has exercised an option to purchase a third Global 6000-based S 106 GlobalEye airborne early warning (AEW) platform.

Sierra Nevada will supply Finland’s aircraft following the signing of a $170 million deal. The U.S. company will outfit the two large-cabin Challengers to meet the coast guard’s requirements, based on the company’s Rapcon-X aerial intelligence-gathering solutions.

To be operated on the civil register as OH-MVX and OH-MVY, the Challenger 650s will replace two Dornier Do-228 turboprop twins. Following outfitting at Hagerstown, Maryland, they are due to enter service in 2026 and 2027. The primary roles will be border and maritime surveillance, both of which have assumed greater importance given new NATO member Finland’s long border with Russia and its Baltic coastline.

Neighboring Sweden already has two S 106s on order, the first of which is currently in modification. It is expected to enter service with the Swedish air force F-16 wing at Uppsala in 2027. Saab buys the Global 6000 “green” from Bombardier before modifying them for the AEW role, including the addition of the Erieye ER radar in a large dorsal “ski-box” fairing. A fourth aircraft remains on option.

Professional pilots are highly trained in the many technical aspects of flight. This includes manual handling skills, the effective use of automation, and a heavy dose of academics on topics such as aircraft systems, navigation, aerodynamics, and performance, as well as weather.

In addition, over the past few decades “soft” skills have been introduced to include crew resource management (CRM) and threat and error management (TEM) to improve decision making and communications on the flight deck.

One topic that isn’t taught in the “schoolhouse” is how to communicate with your boss; in business aviation this may be a senior manager, a C-level executive, or a high-net-worth individual. Whether you’re a flight department manager or pilot, it’s likely that you’ll have to interact with your boss (or even their boss) many times throughout your career.

When it comes to aviation safety, these conversations may be related to funding a safety initiative or addressing an operational limitation such as an acceptable runway length. Here's how to do it.

A real estate property at Florida’s Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (KFXE) is now available due to a bankruptcy sale. Known as the FXE Gateway Complex, the two-parcel, nearly 11-acre, lien-free facility includes a 20,150-sq-ft office building with an attached 18,000-sq-ft private hangar that can accommodate aircraft up to a large-cabin business jet, and features a two bedroom/two bathroom apartment overlooking the runway.

Handled by commercial real estate firm Avison Young, the sale was prompted by the court judgment against a Florida businessman requiring him to pay more than $27 million for Medicare fraud.

“With only a handful of privately-owned, direct access properties at the Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport, the FXE Gateway Complex represents a rare and unique opportunity to own a luxury class A office building that allows executives to move from the boardroom to the sky in minutes,” said John Crotty, a principal with the company that was appointed to manage the sale based on its experience with bankruptcy proceedings. “The office component has been completely rebuilt with a high-end finish level rarely seen in Fort Lauderdale, and suitable for the most prestigious high-net-worth jetsetters.”

Also among the assets to be liquidated in the proceedings is a 1997 Gulfstream V.

Gogo Business Aviation customers have completed more than 1,000 Avance air-to-ground system software updates using Gogo’s over-the-air (OTA) feature. The OTA upgrades replace the cumbersome process of using a USB device to update each system manually and cut upgrade time by 83 percent, according to Gogo.

"OTA addresses the largest problem we've heard from our fleet customers: updating aircraft positioned around the world,” said Sanjeev Nagpal, senior v-p of product management for Gogo. “OTA eliminates this logistical issue and makes access to our most up-to-date and value-add features easier than ever.”

Aircraft with Gogo Avance L5 systems installed can also take advantage of upgrade paths to new products such as Gogo 5G in North America and Gogo Galileo low-earth-orbit satcom on the Eutelsat OneWeb network. Gogo Avance L5 systems equipped with MB13 antennas will just need swapping of a system box for connection to the 5G system. Galileo systems will require the installation of a fuselage-mounted HDX electronically steered antenna. 

Gogo plans to expand OTA capability to enable antenna software updates as it prepares to launch Gogo 5G and Galileo services later this year.

While aviation remains an extremely safe mode of transportation, there still remains room for improvement, particularly on the business aviation side, according to Andrew Schmertz, CEO and co-founder of  charter operator Hopscotch Air and chair of NATA’s charter committee. “The fact is we are still having accidents in this industry,” he said while moderating a panel at the NATA Air Charter Summit earlier this week in Oklahoma City. “We have an exemplary safety record but it’s falling short of our [Part] 121 brethren.”

Brice Banning, a senior accident investigator with the NTSB, said the leading accident cause for Part 135 operations from 2008 to 2022 is loss of control in flight, followed by powerplant system component failure and abnormal runway contact. “When we narrowed the data down to 2017 to 2022…the data [suggests] that the same defining events are showing up.”

While some of these events are reported to the NTSB, many are not. Stephan Burgess, emergency operations center manager with crisis management company Fireside Partners, said his company still responds to two to four runway excursions a month. “If you dip a tire into the mud and try to throttle it out and get stuck, that's maybe not reportable, but those things are happening all the time,” he told attendees, adding the trend has increased post-Covid.