News

And the big get bigger. NetJets, widely considered the largest fractional-ownership operation in the world, is buying another 40 aircraft from the Raytheon Aircraft Company — a mix of 20 Hawker 800XP mid-size jets and 20 Hawker 400XP light jets — in a deal announced Monday. Total value of the contract will exceed $300 million, […]

Its been a good month for Bombardier Aerospace. On June 22, the company announced that Transport Canada had awarded the certification papers for Bombardier’s Learjet 40, six months after the light jet entered corporate service last January. Earlier, on June 17, Bombardier received FAA approval to install the Honeywell TFE731-20BR engine in the Learjet 45 […]

It’s been a while — the 1980s, to be exact — since any major action by Congress or the IRS to address what some perceive as abuses of business aircraft by the businesspeople who ride in the back. Our third example harks back to Reagan-era tax-reform legislation, which gave the industry terms like “personal use” […]

Vern Raburn apparently knew what he was doing when he chose Albuquerque, N.M., as the site for his then-new company, Eclipse Aviation, giving rise to our second example. Still in the process of getting its first aircraft through the FAA’s certification process, Eclipse recently was the beneficiary of substantial largesse from the city it calls […]

Face facts: Taxes are both the bane and benefit of purchasing and operating a business aircraft, no matter its size. Whether levied at the federal, state or local levels — or figured into the cost of operation through existing excise taxes — taxes are as much a factor in a company’s decision to operate its […]

…the next issue of AVweb‘s BizAVflash will be e-mailed to you on June 30.

Ah, the large print giveth and the small print taketh away. Imagine our excitement when we spied Gulfstream’s latest press release, which announced a series of price reductions. Could AVweb finally afford one of the Savannah, Ga.-based company’s uber-jets? But it was not to be: The price reductions — up to 48 percent — only […]

Jan. 20, 2005, is not that far away, only a few months. It will start like pretty much any other day, but by midnight of that Thursday, much of what business aviation operators in the U.S. have come to know may have been turned on its head. No, this has nothing to do with one […]

At long last, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has acted to clarify the way in which it applies the so-called “Twelve-Five” standard security program for aircraft weighing 12,500 pounds or more to aircraft weighing exactly 12,500 pounds: It won’t. Since enactment of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act (ATSA) in late 2001, non-scheduled commercial operators […]

Even though Cessna and Raytheon are celebrating, all is not well in bizav land. Miami, Fla.-based Safire Aircraft Company announced on June 10 that it had “temporarily suspended most operations while it secures additional funding.” In a prepared statement, the company said it is “actively pursuing a very promising financing opportunity” but that, although it […]