Textron Aviation today revealed that the Beechcraft Denali's certification and entry into service will be further delayed and are now scheduled for early 2025, following the planned certification of the aircraft’s GE Catalyst engine in late 2024. The Wichita airframer also announced that it has selected Garmin’s emergency Autoland as a standard feature for the $4.8 million turboprop single.
“Autoland is a great addition based on customer feedback,” said Textron Aviation senior v-p of global sales and flight operations Lannie O’Bannion. “We’re adding peace of mind to the Garmin G3000 cockpit with Autoland.”
At NBAA-BACE in October, Textron Aviation said Denali certification would take place in the second half of 2024. After its first flight on Nov. 21, 2021, certification was pegged for 2023. Textron Aviation unveiled the Denali at EAA AirVenture in July 2016 and at the time planned for first flight in 2018.
The Denali is a clean-sheet design, as is its GE Aerospace Avio Aero Catalyst engine. Delivering 1,300 shp, the Catalyst is Fadec-controlled using a single power and propeller control.
GE Aviation chief engineer and general manager Christopher Lorence explained the reasons for the certification delays, including new requirements for icing and super-cooled droplet testing and larger bird tests. “It’s taking a lot of capacity to do [this],” he said. “We’re almost three-quarters of the way through the test plan.”
L3Harris completed the first flight of the EC-37B Compass Call Rehost aircraft in a fully missionized configuration on May 4. The outfitted special-mission aircraft completed a four-hour flight from the company’s integration and modification center in Waco, Texas. An EC-37B had earlier made test flights in its modified aerodynamic form but without the mission equipment installed.
Based on the Gulfstream G550, the EC-37B is adopting the U.S. Air Force’s electronic attack role from the Lockheed EC-130H, which has been in service since the early 1980s. Known as Compass Call, the role involves disrupting enemy command and control communications, as well as targeting radar and navigation systems.
L3Harris is the lead systems integrator of the Compass Call Rehost team, which also involves Gulfstream and BAE Systems. Initially, the team is transferring much of the existing Baseline 3 equipment from the Hercules to the Gulfstream. Five such aircraft are being modified, with the aim of having them in service with the 355th Electronic Combat Group at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona by year-end.
Subsequent aircraft will have a new Baseline 4 system, with software-defined components in an open system architecture that allows rapid updating and adaptation. In addition to the U.S. Air Force, which may acquire 10 to 14 EC-37Bs, Italy has also hinted that it might acquire two or three.
EASA has published what it claims are the world’s first proposed noise certification standards for eVTOLs. The proposals, known as the Environmental Protection Technical Specifications (EPTS), are applicable to eVTOL vehicles powered by multiple vertical, non-tilting, evenly distributed rotors.
According to EASA, the proposed specifications are intended to fill a regulatory gap and use the internationally harmonized noise certification standards for heavy helicopters as a starting point while it “collects more noise data from specific eVTOL designs through certification projects.” In addition, a hover noise level has been developed to aid in the assessment of flight operations in the vicinity of vertiports.
The proposed noise-measuring procedures and analyses are adapted to the characteristics of eVTOLs where necessary. For example, as eVTOLs are expected to be quieter than today’s conventional VTOL aircraft in certain phases of flight, there is a need to allow them to fly closer to the microphone in those phases to maintain an accurate signal-to-noise reading.
Because eVTOL vehicles do not emit nitric oxides, carbon monoxide, unburned hydrocarbons, visible smoke, or non-volatile particulate matter, no specifications for engine emissions are proposed within these EPTS. Similarly, EASA does not propose any CO2 emissions or efficiency specifications for these designs at this stage. Comments on the proposal are due by June 15.
As it looks forward to “a year of growth,” Neste, the world’s largest producer of renewable fuels, saw a strong first quarter, according to its latest earnings report. Company president and CEO Matti Lehmus noted Neste’s earnings for the quarter were €830 million ($860 million), up approximately 44 percent year-over-year, while the comparable sales margin for its renewable products was at a very high level per tonne.
According to Lehmus, the sales volume for renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) of 660,000 tons was clearly lower than in the first quarter last year, curtailed by a fire at the Rotterdam refinery in the Netherlands in late 2022. However, its Singapore facility expansion began production last month and, as the repairs to the Rotterdam location are completed, “we are increasing our SAF capabilities both in Singapore and Rotterdam, targeting the optionality to produce annually up to 1.5 megatonnes of SAF in 2024,” said Lehmus.
In addition, the company said its 50/50 joint operation with Marathon in Martinez, California, started up its first phase in February. As a result, Neste expects its second-quarter renewable diesel and SAF sales volume to be 30 to 50 percent higher quarter-over-quarter.
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Software as a service provider Bluetail will launch its second-generation digital business aviation records platform Mach 2 Search at the end of this month, offering major improvements over its predecessor.
“When we introduced our Mach Search engine in 2021, it set the standard as the first machine learning search engine purpose-built to meet the specific needs of aircraft owners and operators,” said company co-founder and CEO Roberto Guerrieri. “The many improvements we’ve built into Mach 2 are the results of what we’ve learned and what our customers and partners have asked for over these past two years.”
Bluetail’s engineers incorporated a series of enhancements into the search algorithms, enabling optimized queries, machine learning, and auto-filters to provide answers to complex questions 10 times faster. The system can even learn to recognize the handwriting and signatures of A&P technicians and inspectors.
“While the technology behind Mach 2 is proprietary, the real differentiator is just how much it can do to help our customers achieve faster turns on each maintenance, compliance, or conformity event,” added Greg Baynham, Bluetail’s v-p of development and delivery. “Mach 2 auto-recognizes all major filters, so maintenance personnel just have to click on the link to view, search, or share logbooks, forms, ATA codes, filenames, dates, or whatever the job requires.”
Citing a recent uptick in the number of the most serious runway incursions, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has scheduled a roundtable discussion on those events and the dangers they pose. NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy will host the May 23 in-person roundtable, which will bring together industry, labor, and government safety experts to probe the current issues and develop possible solutions and next steps.
The Safety Board noted that the number of runway incursions, which are defined as “the incorrect presence of an aircraft, vehicle, or person on a runway,” have actually remained stable over the past decade. However, the most serious types of incursions have been increasing, and the NTSB has opened six investigations on such events since the beginning of the year. These events have gained national attention and led to an FAA Safety Summit in March.
“I look forward to hosting a candid assessment of what’s been done to prevent runway incursions in the years since our last event on the topic—and to spur meaningful, immediate action on the areas where we’re stalled,” Homendy said.
The roundtable will be held at the NTSB Boardroom and Conference Center in Washington, D.C., from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. While it will not be webcast live, the roundtable will be recorded and made available on the NTSB YouTube channel.
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s required drug-testing program has been amended to include oral fluid testing. According to the DOT, “This additional methodology for drug testing will give employers a choice that will help combat employee cheating on urine drug tests and provide a less-intrusive means of achieving the safety goals of the program.”
This rule also amends the drug-testing requirements of covered personnel who are certified by the FAA and the other transportation agencies operating under the DOT to ensure consistency with the new amendments. The rule includes other minor provisions to update the regulations and make technical changes and corrections.
In addition to the amendments themselves, the 58-page final rule document also discusses the DOT’s conclusions to the 417 commenters who responded to last year’s notice of proposed rulemaking on oral fluid testing, most of whom provided “literally thousands of meaningful points,” said the DOT.
What mattered most to the DOT was not a count of how many comments favored or opposed a particular proposal, “except in a general way.” Instead, the agency’s central concern was with “substantive” comments. Nevertheless, “We attempted to meaningfully address all comments, including the questions and concerns expressed.” The new rules take effect on June 1.
Qatar’s Amiri Flight sought to distinguish itself from Gulf rivals by sending two widebody head-of-state aircraft instead of one to the coronation of King Charles III, which took place at Westminster Abbey in London on Saturday.
A video by RVA Aviation posted on YouTube on Friday showed a procession of government aircraft landing at London Stansted Airport in preparation for the festivities, including more modest aircraft bearing the delegations of the Emirati, Kuwaiti, Kazakh, Thai, Ghanaian, and other heads of state.
Qatar may have decided that the size of its delegation was too large for a single aircraft. In the event, both an Airbus A340-300 and a Boeing BBJ 747-8 ferried the Qatari delegation to the UK.
According to aviation database PlaneSpotters, Amiri Flight has three A340 variants, all at least 19 years old, while no information was available on the B747-8, of which AIN understands Amiri Flight also has three.
Speaking at Corporate Jet Investor Dubai 2023 on Wednesday, Boeing BBJ director of marketing Alex Fecteau noted that there are 44 head-of-state widebody aircraft in the Middle East, far more than in other parts of the world. Some 32 are Boeing aircraft, with the other 12 constructed by other aircraft manufacturers.
Aviation Safety Question of the Week
Provided by
True or False: Effective flight path monitoring is assured by the natural ability of pilots to multitask.
A. True
B. False
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