News

Gulfstream Aerospace late last month said development of its G450 business jet is “on schedule and on budget,” one year after its first flight. The company added that its own flight test was complete and that tests leading to FAA certification — scheduled for the third quarter of 2004 — were well underway. Customer deliveries […]

A new three-year contract between Dassault Falcon Jet — Wilmington (Del.) and a local unit of the United Auto Workers labor union was ratified late last month, enabling both the company and its employees to get back to work. The settlement of a dispute resulting in the new contract ends a strike at the facility […]

Pratt & Whitney Canada Corp. (P&WC) completed on May 4 the first run of its new PW610F turbine engine selected by Eclipse Aviation Corp. to power the twin-engine Eclipse 500 Very Light Jet (VLJ). The smallest member of P&WC’s PW600 engine series achieved rated takeoff thrust (900 pounds) after only five hours of the test […]

Meanwhile, Raytheon Aircraft announced late last month that the fourth example of the forthcoming Hawker Horizon entered the company’s certification test program. The latest Hawker Horizon flew for 90 minutes during the initial hop. At the controls were senior test pilot Tim Miller, co-pilot Ken Sasine and flight test engineer Amin Gulamhussein. The three conducted […]

Raytheon Aircraft Services (RAS) last week announced it has obtained an FAA Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) providing a Reduced Vertical Separation Minimum (RVSM) solution for the Beechjet 400 and the MU-300 aircraft. The Raytheon STC upgrades existing height-keeping equipment to digital altimeters with data-acquisition units to meet RVSM requirements. Aircraft flying above 29,000 feet must […]

In our last edition of AVweb‘s BizAVflash, we told you about the then-upcoming meeting between the Transportation Security Administration’s acting head, David M. Stone, and the various organizations comprising the General Aviation Coalition. That meeting, held last Friday, was the latest in a series of more-or-less regular meetings between the security agency and industry. As […]

It’s the latest prognostication that business aviation — and business aircraft manufacturers in particular — are poised for greatness. “It” is a forecast from a Washington-based think tank/consulting firm, the Teal Group, which predicts substantial growth in demand for business aircraft through the next decade. But that’s nothing new. Everyone from individual manufacturers, to the […]

…the next issue of AVweb’s BizAVflash will be e-mailed to you on May 12.

David M. Stone, the TSA’s acting administrator, plans to meet May 7 with the General Aviation Coalition (GAC), a loosely defined collection of all the GA trade associations from the largest to the smallest. The meeting, the latest in a series of ongoing dialogues between the agency and the “problem child” GA community, probably won’t […]

What goes down, can come up, according to Cessna. Earlier this year, the manufacturer revised its sales projection downward after fractional operator NetJets aborted a large order for the companys Citations. Now, however, Cessna says new orders it has received so far in 2004 will allow it to recoup those losses, and then some. Instead […]