Blade India is expanding its service there with five new leased Airbus Helicopters H125 singles provided to its operators there. Blade India launched in 2019 and is the joint venture of Blade UAM Inc. US and Hunch Ventures Group India.
“It is extremely gratifying that we are able to deliver on the promise we made earlier this year with the signature of an MoU with Blade India. Helicopter operations in urban environments are an essential building block for the development of new services such as emergency medical services, tourism, and air taxis for efficient mobility. In addition, they provide the foundational elements such as heliports and operational routes, paving the way for future urban air mobility operations,” said Sunny Guglani, the head of Airbus Helicopters for India and South Asia.
Blade India currently provides service from Mumbai to Pune and Shirdi, as well as charter destinations. It is negotiating with state governments and tourism boards to introduce short-haul services to more locations in India. In May, Blade India launched Blade Care for medical evacuations and essential travel. Urban population in India’s urban population has grown from 217 million in 1991 to 517 million in 2020 and is forecasted to be 700 million by 2050. Recognizing this, in 2016 India’s Ministry of Civil Aviation launched a Regional Connectivity Scheme to make regional airline and helicopter service more accessible.
AINsight: Circling Can Be a Very Risky Approach
Pilots continue to demonstrate widespread confusion on the key elements of flying a circling approach, according to a recent Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) survey that found they often misunderstand basic terms and procedures for this procedure. A lack of understanding of these crucial factors when maneuvering an aircraft close to the ground in marginal weather conditions can lead to tragedy.
Basic terms such as circling approach, visual approach, circle to land, and visual maneuvering often are misunderstood by pilots. Likewise, there is a general lack of understanding regarding flying a circling approach procedure. These procedures are inherently riskier than a straight-in approach and should be flown only as a last resort. In fact, straight-in approaches are 25 times safer than a circling approach; adding vertical guidance (ILS or VNAV) increases the safety margin by another eight times.
Planning for a circling approach requires an extensive briefing to include aircraft configuration at specific points, level of automation to be used, a clear understanding of when the circling maneuver begins, and at what point it is safe to descend from the MDA(H). It also requires an exacting explanation of how to initiate the go-around from various points on the approach or during the circling segment of the approach.
Indiana-based aviation services providers Jet Access and Eagle Creek Aviation have agreed to merge. Whether Eagle Creek’s First Wing Charter will retain its name is still under discussion. The merger will give Jet Access more than 50 jets under management, making it the 12th-largest Part 135 operator in the U.S.
Jet Access also operates 10 FBOs, mainly in the Midwest, and it has yet to be determined whether Eagle Creek’s FBO at Indianapolis’s Eagle Creek Airpark, as well as its two First Wing Jet Centers at Indianapolis Executive and Frankfort Municipal airports, will rebrand under the Jet Access name.
The integrated company will employ nearly 400 people, including 110 pilots and 75 maintenance technicians, and provide a wide range of services including aircraft MRO, rental, and sales; avionics sales, installation, and repair; flight training; and airport management.
“The combination of our two companies, and more importantly the incredibly talented people that make them great, will create enormous opportunity within the marketplace to innovate, create jobs, and bring value to our current and future customers, all while making Indianapolis a national private aviation hub,” said Jet Access president and CEO Quinn Ricker.
While Textron still clearly harbors strong ambitions in the electric aviation and wider advanced air mobility sector, the U.S. aerospace group has all but confirmed that its Bell business’s long-awaited Nexus eVTOL aircraft will not be its first product in this market, at least not in its current iteration. In a November 24 interview with AIN, Rob Scholl, the senior Textron executive appointed nine months ago to lead its eAviation team, acknowledged that Nexus is not an active program and said that the company will not confirm plans to bring a passenger-carrying eVTOL model to market until it confirms a business case for doing so.
“Nexus has been in the works for five years and it has been a useful exercise to test the [all-electric] technology and market feedback,” Scholl explained. “Bell has continued to evolve designs internally and develop the technologies, and we have a good view of these in terms of the technology roadmap. We will continue to invest [in this area] as it makes sense, but we still have to see further development of the battery technology and the economic case.”
Bell unveiled the Nexus eVTOL concept in early 2018 and the company was subsequently named by Uber as a partner in its Elevate urban air mobility plans. However, since around early 2020, the company has had little to say publicly about progress with the project.
This story is from FutureFlight.aero, a news and information resource developed by AIN to provide objective, independent coverage and analysis of cutting-edge aviation technology, including electric aircraft developments and advanced air mobility.
Collins Aerospace and Seeing Machines have partnered to develop new fatigue-management solutions that detect pilot fatigue by measuring pilots’ eyes. Called the Pilot Support System (PSS), the new product aims to improve upon traditional—and burdensome—self-evaluation and reporting.
To develop the PSS, Collins is using Seeing Machines’ eye-tracking optics, embedded processing, and human factors and algorithm expertise. The pupil-tracking system algorithms can help “sense a pilot’s level of fatigue and alertness, visible in a pilot’s eyes, to better understand the impact of their workload,” according to Collins.
“As the aviation industry looks to the future of intelligent aircraft design, understanding the cognitive state of the pilot and crew is paramount,” said Christophe Blanc, v-p and general manager, business regional avionics for Collins Aerospace. “Pilot workload and wellbeing are key focus areas of our avionics design, and this collaboration will allow us to further support the pilots and their needs.”
Collins plans to offer the PSS to aircraft manufacturers and operators for forward-fit and aftermarket installations, once the technology becomes available for commercial implementation.
Answering the demand of “a valued customer,” Airbus Corporate Helicopters has delivered an ACH145 light twin with a “fully vegan” interior, the manufacturer said at the Dubai Airshow. That customer, German construction entrepreneur Urs Brunner, is married to ethical fashion pioneer Daniela Brunner, founder of Giulia & Romeo, which uses no animal products in its offerings and donates all its profits to promote animal welfare. Daniela insisted their new helicopter be consistent with those values.
In place of the leather elements that ACH terms “essential to its luxury feel,” the design team used Ultrafabrics' Ultraleather, a synthetic that “captures the visual and tactile leather experience with comparable durability,” the European consortium said. Items that had to be specially designed and fabricated in the replacement materials include the six passenger seats, a central storage cabinet, a rear partition, and cockpit control cuffs.
“The material we used is certified for aviation use and is hard-wearing, but it can only be stretched in one direction, which means it is a challenge to work with, particularly on the seats,” said Frederic Lemos, head of ACH. “This is where the craftsmanship of our hands-on team became crucial, and I am delighted to say that we found a practical way to meet our customer’s desires, which also looks superb.”
A Dassault Falcon 2000, one of nine business jets seized in 2012 on charges of evading import tax, goes to auction December 15 under order of Brazil’s Federal Revenue agency. The minimum bid of R$2.275 million (about $408,000) is less than half the sum that courts have ordered tax authorities to pay for hangarage fees and a far cry from its R$7.5 million value when seized.
Auction catalog photos show gleaming woodwork and a gold-plated lavatory sink, but also a return-to-service estimate of R$6.31 million, “almost 50 percent more than fair market value.” Highlighted cautions include that the logs are missing and that four tires are flat. The aircraft’s best value is as parts, said the appraiser, and once auctioned, it becomes legal in Brazil. A long series of qualifications and documents are needed to bid; for example, only a Brazilian corporation can resell the aircraft, in whole or in parts.
The tax charges were never clear-cut, turning on such issues as whether an aircraft is “used” only when it is flown or when it is merely parked, and on personal versus business use. The auction had been delayed by appeals by the lender and the owner.
The auction site details how bids may be placed and viewing scheduled, now through December 14.
Two helicopter OEMs recently announced new developments with regard to financial assistance for flight training.
Bell Textron's Bell Training Academy has expanded its flight school offerings that qualify for reimbursement from the U.S. Veterans Administration under the GI Bill. Veterans who meet qualifications can have all or part of their flight training costs covered. Since 1944, the GI Bill has helped qualifying veterans with reimbursement for the costs of school or training.
Approved GI Bill courses at the academy currently include those for the Bell 206, 505, 407 and 429, as well as courses for pilot initial transition, pilot initial night vision goggles (NVG), pilot refresher NVG, flight instructor NVG, ground course NVG, and an airline transport pilot (ATP) rating course. Bell offers pilot, technical, and specialized training to 140,000 customers from more than 135 countries and has provided more than 230,000 total flight instruction hours.
Separately, MD Helicopters announced that it has awarded its annual 2021 MD 500 Transition Training Scholarship to Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Prescott campus student Brandon Hutchins. The scholarship is valued at $12,000. Over the scholarship’s 10-year history, MD Helicopters has awarded more than $200,000 in training opportunities to 12 students. Recipients attend a week-long, one-on-one training course held at MD Helicopters’ headquarters and production facility in Mesa, Arizona.
Photo of the Week
Birds of prey. AIN photographer David McIntosh caught this colorful display of the Royal Saudi Air Force Aerobatic team flying BAe Hawk Mk65 trainers on the opening day of the 2021 Dubai Airshow this month. In addition to the flight display that ran throughout the five-day event at the Al Maktoum International Airport, the Dubai Airshow attracted 1,200 exhibitors, 160-plus aircraft on display, and representation from 145 countries.
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