U.S. Air Force Acquiring Global 6000s for Battlefield Ops

The U.S. Air Force has awarded a $464.8 million contract to Learjet Inc., a Wichita subsidiary of Bombardier’s specialized aircraft division, for the purchase and modification of six Global 6000s as Battlefield Airborne Communications Node (BACN) aircraft. Designated as the E-11A and assigned to Air Combat Command, the modified large-cabin business jet model serves as a high-altitude, loitering communications node to air and ground forces, providing them with the ability to communicate by voice as well as share data, video, and images.

Bombardier’s Global Express served as an earlier version of the E-11A with four copies in the Air Force's inventory beginning in 2007. This new contract, announced yesterday by the Department of Defense, calls for deliveries to occur over the next five years, through May 2026.

Procurement funds in the amount of $70 million have already been made available for an initial delivery order, according to the Air Force.

United Airlines Throws Weight Behind Boom Supersonic

United Airlines today announced a commercial agreement with Boom Supersonic to order 15 Overture supersonic jets “once Overture meets United's demanding safety, operating, and sustainability requirements.” The agreement also specifies options on another 35 airplanes.

Boom plans to fly a demonstrator of its supersonic concept sometime this year as it looks toward a rollout of a full-scale example in 2025 and entry into service in 2029. Powered by three General Electric J85-15 turbojets, the composite-bodied XB-1 will fly up to Mach 2.2 ahead of the planned introduction of the 65- to 88-seat Overture. Boom staged an online rollout ceremony for its one-third-scale XB-1 demonstrator in October and in March announced a “strategic investment” from American Express Ventures.

Boom said it plans to start building the Overture at a new, still unidentified factory location in 2022. If successful, the Overture will fly from Tokyo to Seattle in four and a half hours, New York to London in three and a half hours, and Montreal to Paris in four hours.

Investigator: SOP Noncompliance Triples Crew Error Rate

David Lawrence, an NTSB senior accident investigator, used a case study of a recent accident during a Business Aviation Safety Summit session this morning to illustrate why the agency has urged the adoption of flight data monitoring (FDM) and safety management systems (SMS) for operators.

The example he chose was the May 15, 2017 crash of a Learjet 35A on approach to Teterboro Airport that claimed the lives of the pilot and copilot. The twinjet was on a positioning flight from Philadelphia to Teterboro, and Lawrence cited a litany of mistakes from the crew, including ignoring checklists, filing an improper flight plan, disregarding standard operating procedures, failure to follow ATC instructions, and poor airmanship.

A review of the ATC log showed the crew ignored instructions to circle to Runway 1; a last-minute attempt to correct the approach caused a fatal unrecoverable stall.

Post-accident investigation revealed the operator had no SMS or any formal safety structure, and no way of ascertaining if its crews were following SOPs, which is a reoccurring problem among Part 135 operators, according to Lawrence. He noted that pilots who deviate from SOPs are three times more likely to commit errors and that half of all CFIT accidents involve failure to adhere to them.

Ali Bahrami To Depart FAA on June 30

FAA associate administrator for Aviation Safety Ali Bahrami, who steered the agency’s efforts through the Boeing Max crash reviews, is stepping down at the end of this month. Bahrami has cumulatively spent nearly 28 years with the agency in various positions, including as an FAA engineer and manager of the Transport Airplane Directorate. He left the agency in July 2013 to take a role as v-p for civil aviation at the Aerospace Industries Association, rejoining the agency in July 2017 in his current capacity. His career spans more than four decades, including a 10-year stint with Douglas Aircraft.

“Under Bahrami’s guidance, the FAA Aviation Safety organization became more agile, consistent, and better positioned for the future through strategic planning and collaborative engagements to advance integration of new and emerging technologies,” said NATA v-p of regulatory affairs and former long-time FAA official John McGraw. “Bahrami stood by flexibility, innovation, proactive methods, and collaboration between government and industry as keys to success for continuous safety improvement.”

However, his return to the agency has been marked by intense scrutiny in the wake of the October 2018 and March 2019 Max crashes. The families of the victims of these crashes in recent months have called upon Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to fire Bahrami, along with other FAA senior officials such as Administrator Steve Dickson.

Take The Stress Out Of Turbulence With Bombardier’s Smooth Flĕx Wing

One of the most important aspects of a wing’s design that yields the greatest effect on ride quality is wing loading, which is the relationship between the weight of the aircraft and the size of its wing.

NTSB Finds Spatial Disorientation on Bahamas Crash

The NTSB said that the probable cause of the fatal July 2019 Leonardo AW139 helicopter accident in the Bahamas that killed seven was nighttime spatial disorientation with lack of night flying experience and inadequate crew resource management as contributory factors. The accident killed the two-person crew and all five passengers, including American coal billionaire Chris Cline, the aircraft’s owner.

The helicopter crashed at 1:53 a.m. local time in what was described as black-hole conditions shortly after takeoff from Cline’s private island of Big Grand Cay for a 117-nm flight to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The flight was not reported missing for 14 hours and the wreckage was subsequently recovered in 16 feet of water less than two miles from shore. 

The NTSB report paints a complex mosaic of poor risk and cockpit resource management, unfamiliarity with aircraft systems, and a flight that was largely out of control from the moment it lifted off until it crashed 68 seconds later, with significant fluctuations in altitude, airspeed, pitch, and bank angle and the PIC struggling to get the aircraft under control while not knowing if he was going up or down.

Less than 20 seconds before impact, against nearly constant EGPWS aural warnings, the SIC remarked that the crew’s plight was “exactly what happened” during a fatal UK accident caused by somatogravic illusion and resulting spatial disorientation.  

Baker Aviation Adds To Charter Fleet as Demand Rises

Baker Aviation is adding two Citation Xs and a Beechcraft King Air 350 that will bring its charter fleet to 14 aircraft, president Stan Baker III told AIN today. Two of the airplanes are in its managed aircraft program, while one of the Citation Xs is company-owned. “We’re trying to build the fleet so it has commonality,” Baker explained. “King Air 350s, Citation Xs, things like that where we can be a little more versatile with our crewing. It doesn’t help to have 10 different types of aircraft.”

The addition of aircraft is a reflection of Baker’s charter business, which started out robustly in the first two months of 2020, then went largely dormant for the next couple of months because of the Covid-19 pandemic, only to bounce back beginning last June. “What we really saw come back first was the super-mid category, which is the Citation X,” Baker said.

He said demand for light jet and turboprop flying rebounded in this year’s first quarter. “So far, if you look at a snapshot of July last year to where we are right now, we’ve set several months of record sales in charter, like big-time records,” Baker added. “We’re talking 20, 30 percent more than we’d ever seen in those months prior.”

Bombardier’s Nureddin Discusses Transformation Lessons

Bombardier v-p of customer support Andy Nureddin emphasized the importance of maintaining open communications and keeping employees at the center when going through a business transformation such as the one his company just undertook while it moved into a pure-play business aviation entity.

“It was quite a ride in the last five years,” Nureddin said on Tuesday during the opening session of the Flight Safety Foundation/NBAA Business Aviation Safety Seminar. “We’ve had a lot to contend with for sure.” While a big step, “the constant in all of that was the roots of the company were solidly in business aviation."

Bombardier also was able to bring along lessons learned from the experiences and expertise of the various business lines, he said. The transformation came at a good time for the business aviation business, which was on the back end of substantial investments in programs such as the Global 7500 and was already shifting its energies into the aftermarket, he added.

As for managing this change, he stressed leaders need to keep employees at the heart of a transformational effort. “You’re not going to transform any business unless those individuals of that group are either leading or square in the middle of that transformation…Do not think you can transform by memo.” He called the sharing of information essential to ensuring everyone is on the same page.

VAST Seeks To Harmonize Helicopter Safety Sharing

The Vertical Aviation Safety Team (VAST) has been formed by the international helicopter community, its regional safety organizations, and related stakeholders. VAST aims to build on industry best practices and the latest international standards. The International Helicopter Safety Team and, later, the International Helicopter Safety Foundation, previously represented these global helicopter safety stakeholders.  

Under VAST, regional safety teams will continue their work, while VAST engages with them and other safety stakeholders to more efficiently integrate, harmonize, distribute, and promote the resulting safety data, programs, and recommendations worldwide. Several VAST working groups will oversee the organization’s efforts in areas such as technology, regulations, and safety promotion.

VAST’s operations are overseen by two advisers: James Viola, president and CEO of Helicopter Association International, and Miguel Marin, chief of operational safety at the International Civil Aviation Organization. “VAST will bring together safety advocates from around the world to collaborate on finding the most effective safety initiatives and then sharing them with the VTOL community,” said Viola.