Flight International

First up was Jenson Button - here courtesy of Honda and their HondaJet.

He's buying a couple of aircraft and also announced his intention to set up a charter business.

Next is former world champion Kimi Raikonnen, keeping the boys at Piaggio happy with an appearance at their stand to do a bit of autograph signing.

Unfortunately for the waiting press Kimi was running two hours late.

Apparently, there were no free slots at Geneva Airport for him to land so he flew into Zurich and drove down (presumably not in his Ferrari F1 car.

And last but not least was Bombardier's chap Lewis Hamilton, who was guest of honour at an intimate Bombardier dinner, helping to promote Bombardier's Year of Learjet campaign.

All this has led to discussion as to just why aviation and F1 are such good bed fellows. Maybe it's because the drivers are big users of biz jets to get round the circuit.

Maybe it's that the lifestyle of these rich thrill-seekers inevitably leads some of them into the piloting world. Or possibly it's just that aviation and racing driving simply attract the same kind of people who are into speed and technology wrapped up in a glam lifestyle.

Diaries at the ready.... on Sunday 29 June the Old Buckenham Airfield near Attleborough in Norfolk will host its 9th annual air show.

A special kind of scrutiny was applied to the European Aviation Safety Agency last week.

On 27 September the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) imported five of the top executives from EASA, seated them behind a long desk facing a packed hall of industry people, allowed them a few words each to update the audience on current issues they face, and then opened the session for about two hours of questions.

This doesn't normally happen to the senior executives in European agencies. So why EASA? And why did the agency's big five - executive director Patrick Goudou, communications head Daniel Holtgen, quality and standardisation director Francesco Banal, certification director Norbert Lohl and deputy head of flight standards Eric Sivel - agree to undergo this public grilling?

There seems to be a spate of incidents at the moment, none more spectacular than this crash from California over the weekend:

Ever wondered why we still can't jump into a car-like vehicle and someway down the highway flip a switch and convet to flight mode and take-off for a day visit to San Francisco or Rome, depending on whether your in Europe or the US?

Well NASA is trying to make personal air transport, as easy as driving a car, possible and part of that is its Centennial Challenge Personal Air Vehicle competition, the winners of which won $250,000 worth of prizes this week.

Click continue reading to see the videos.

Better late than never…
The US FAA today published a list of specials conditions that will be needed to certify the glass panel upgrade in the Symphony Aircraft Industries SA160 single-engine two-seater before it can grace the American skies.

Only problem is, Symphony went out of business on January 19th, in large part, because it had been told by the FAA a few months before, when the company applied for the certification, that the regulator didn’t have the resources to get started on the project right away…and in fact, that it wouldn’t even know which projects would get priority for a few more months, according to Symphony’s largest investor, who asked not to be identified.

By Murdo Morrison
The interior of 7X serial number three - I was on board the aircraft's first "public" flight last Friday from Merignac to Farnborough - only hints at the grandeur in which future occupants of the world's first fly-by-wire business jet will be transported non-stop from the likes of Dubai to New York.

The leather seats - hand-stitched at Dassault's completion centre in Little Rock, Arkansas - share the cabin with cages of test equipment. In size terms, the 11.9m-long and 2.34m-wide cabin is similar to its Global Express and Gulfstream 550 rivals: 19 passengers (and a crew of three) can fit comfortably. But, in reality, the cavernous interior will in most cases be used to provide luxurious living, sleeping and working space for smaller gatherings of the global economy's biggest hitters.

These big hitters, however, are growing in numbers. While ultra long range business jets are hardly a volume market - the 7X's pricetag is $41 million - Dassault Falcon boss John Rosanvallon believes there will be over 1,000 of the in the skies by 2013, 40% of which will be 7Xs. And this does not count the bigger airliner derivatives: the Airbus Corporate Jet and Boeing Business Jet.

The greens may not like it but the fact is these personal transports for the ultra-rich and ultra-powerful fuel the global economy and drive technological advancement in aerospace - often, as is the case with the 7X's digital flight controls - providing a stepping stone from military to civil aviation.

Back to the flight. With company test pilots Bill Kerherve and Jean Louis Dumas at the controls, we took off from Dassault's Merignac factory at Bordeaux airport at around 14:45 local time, climbing sharply to reach our cruising altitude of 28,000ft and speed of 300nm (0.73.M) within four minutes. The cabin was incredibly quiet - how much of that was due to the three 6,402lb-thrust Pratt & Whitney Canada PW307A engines and how much to noise insulation - is unclear. But even during take-off we could chat without raising our voices even slightly.

Sixty five minutes later, after a flight which took us over eastern Brittany and Cherbourg and into UK airspace near Portsmouth, we were inside the Tag Aviation terminal at Farnborough. The short hop was hardly typical of the sort of missions the 7X will be used for when it goes into service in early June, but it illustrated the comfort and performance of arguably the most exciting arrival on the business jet market for some years.

After depositing its handful of aviation journalists, 7X number three was shortly on its way back to Merignac, its take-off with the empty Farnborough air show site behind it extremely quiet. With seven of its siblings currently in completion at Little Rock, and another 30 on the assembly line at Merignac, aircraft three will remain as a demonstrator until October, before flying to Little Rock ahead of customer delivery at the end of the year.

By Helen Massy-Beresford

The answer is that they will all represent aircraft registered on the Isle of Man aircraft registry once it begins operating on 1 May.

As the Airbus restructuring saga rumbles on, the European press is full of reports that workers at Airbus's sites in Germany will be striking this Friday, in protest at what Power8 will mean for their jobs and factories. Airbus representatives insisted last week during a press visit to its Finkenwerder site that this is not the case - there will be no strike on Friday, but the German works council will hold an "information event" at which it will present its own proposal for restructuring to workers. This will not affect production, Airbus insists.

But the reports do highlight the increasing fears Airbus workers across Europe are harbouring about the future of their jobs, as EADS and Airbus seek to square national interest with production efficiency. And, in the UK, fears are growing that the UK may lose out on A350 XWB work because of its lack of composite expertise.

Meanwhile, last week in Hamburg, Reuters came up with the best story from the factory visit, after we were given the chance to see the equipment Airbus uses to test its aircraft lavatories. I wouldn't be surprised if this got to at least number two on Reuters' best-read list.

Forbes magazine's annual list of the world's billionaires gives plenty of support to the old chestnut that the way to become an aviation millionaire is to start out as a billionaire.

Turns out there are 793 dollar-billionaires that Forbes has managed to identify, so scanning the list is not a quick task - but I can't find anyone who made all that much of his or her pile out of aviation. There are a good few who have played around in it though, and some just starting.

Sir Richard Branson in Britain is the closest thing to an aviation billionaire I can find - and he isn't really one. But at 55 and, says Forbes, sitting on $1.8 billion, he has created about two and a half airlines with another one in the works. Plus he could be the first space tourism operator and has made the occasional balloon trip you'll recall.

Less well-known, but vastly richer, is Carlos Slim of Mexico who with $30 billion could no doubt afford to see his new low-cost airline Volaris go bust without losing much sleep.

But India's Vijay Mallya is taking more of a risk to his mere $1 billion with start-up Kingfisher Airlines and its order for Airbus A380s.

I think London City Airport must have contributed a fair proportion of Irishman Dermot Desmond's $1 billion - it's been a terrific business for him and makes far more sense than losing money in airlines.

Mind you, 70 year-old Carl Icahn, who one way or another has picked up $8.7 billion, showed with TWA that you don't actually have to have a successful airline to come out on top.

And in fact it's probably people like Paul Allen, who Forbes has in sixth place on its list with $22 billion, who is getting most satisfaction from his expenditure in aerospace by also exploring space on a private basis.

Last word from me goes to the man who, with $42 billion is number two on Forbes' list - Warren Buffett. The Sage of Omaha did not get into that position by indulging himself in aviation for its own sake, and his investments in FlightSafety and NetJets have got to be two of the canniest ever made in aviation. (Oh, and in the end he did succumb by shelling out on a business jet that he has admitted is essentially because he wants one.)

I'm sure there are others on the list - drop a comment below if you can find any and tell us what you think about investing in aviation.  

One of the big announcements here at NBAA yesterday was the naming of Embraer's new light jet and very light jet as the Phenom 300 and Phenom (See Flight Evening news on www.flightinternational.com). Now it gave the editors on Flight Evening News an easy headline - Phenom-enal - but where did the name come from? Embraer boss Mauricio Botelho says the name reflects the quality of the aircraft's design, but designating aircraft today is a tough challenge: you either go down the rather boring but safe number route (Embraer 170, Boeing 787, Gulfstream 550, Airbus A380...which normally relate to some aspect of the aircraft's size, sequence in terms of product lines etc) or you have to think of a name: Avanti, Javelin, Eclipse or whatever. It's harder in business aviation, because, like cars, you are trying to convey an image, a lifestyle choice with the moniker, and most of the obvious ones from the animal kingdom - Hawk, Falcon, Puma - are taken already. I used to work in the automotive sector and the classic attempts by the Japanese manufacturers in particular to give their models global, English-sounding names as they began to break into the world market in a big way in the 1970s and 1980s was a constant source of amusement. To some Japanese marketing director the Nissan Cedric van no doubt conveyed a macho, no-nonsense appeal to the builders' merchants and plumbers who were its target market. Today, things are much more sophisticated and the Japanese and everyone else (including Embraer) employ international brand consultants and market researchers to come up with this sort of stuff. Still, someone told me that in Vietnam, Phenom means something very different. Perhaps someone familiar with the language can help.

US business aviation service companies - for decades stay at home joes who were happy to make the most of the Continent's ample opportunities - suddenly seem to be waking up to the fact that business aviation is stirring in Europe too. Landmark Aviation is the latest. The now snappily-named former Garrett/Piedmont Hawthorne/Associated is one of the US's biggest fixed base operation and business aviation maintenance companies. After buying three FBOs in Canada, it now says it is looking seriously at a purchase in Europe, with France, Switzerland and the UK the most likely locations. It would have to be a fairly big acquisition though to justify appointing a senior management team in Europe, says vice chairman Dean Harton. Otherwise it would be impossible to run from the other side of the Atlantic. The rise of the European Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition in Geneva - the NBAA show's smaller sibling - over the past five years has shown US companies that Europe is not a fringe region for the adventurous, but evolving into one of the most promising growth markets for business aviation services.

Once again, Flight is here at the National Business Aviation Association show www.nbaa.org in Orlando, Florida, producing Flight Evening News, our innovative concept in bringing today's news to air show visitors today in the form of an evening tabloid newspaper. It's a frenetic and exhausting task: journalists' stories from the morning's press conferences and other nuggets of information which they pic up around the convention hall and static park are collated, laid out together with live pictures, and sent to press at lunchtime. Four hours and a whirl round the presses of Orlando's most efficient printer later, NBAA visitors have the newspaper in their hands, either when they leave the convention centre or static park, or picking it up in their hotel that evening. Our competitors' newspapers - carrying much the same stories - don't hit the halls until the next day. We shouldn't gloat but we like to use the slogan: "Today's news today…everything else is yesterday's news". You can read breaking news from NBAA - including Bombardier's new Challenger and a new name for the Hawker Horizon - on www.flightinternational.com over the next three days.

NASA needs a few successes. Its aeronautics research is in decline and disarray; the Space Shuttle is again grounded and the Space Station out on a limb; and its Apollo-esque "back to the Moon" vision is being greeted by as much scepticism and derision as shock and awe.

NASA had a success earlier this year, but it took place at Danville in rural Virginia and not many people noticed. The success was the public demonstration of the Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) - touted as a new mode of public transportation using small aircraft, like very light jets, to provide regular air-taxi service between thousands of small non-tower airports across the USA.

The Danville event was lauded by the Federal Aviation Administration as the first demonstration of technologies key to its next-generation air transport system - but what has happened to SATS since then? The answer is not a lot. The five-year project has ended, the NCAM consortium of state, academic and industry partners that worked with NASA is being disbanded, and the concept is fast disappearing into the bureaucratic maze that is the FAA.

SATS grew out of another NASA success, the Advanced General Aviation Technology Experiments (AGATE) project, which developed the avionics that have since revolutionised GA aircraft - the integrated flightdecks now available in almost every Cessna, Cirrus, Diamond or Piper light aircraft. Will SATS have a similar impact? For now it looks unlikely. AGATE involved only the aircraft. SATS involves the aircraft, the airport and the airspace system.

Supporters of SATS want someone - possibly one of the regional SATSlabs formed by forward-minded state aviation officials to work on the project - to pick up the ball and run with it; to set up a SATS "model airport" and prove over an extended period of time that the concept is usable, reliable, profitable and safe.

With all the frustration over scheduled airline travel these days, and with all the interest generated by the new breed of very light jets and all the entrepreneurial energy and equity being spent on developing air-taxi business models - surely there is some community of like-minded aircraft makers, service providers and airport owners out there that is prepared to take this idea one crucial step forward?

But don't look to NASA. It's mind is on more distant things.

Justin Wastnage / Stapleford

A spillage from a paint truck as it overturned leaving Staines was the joke on Thursday's breakfast show on London's Capital FM radio show, inspired by a real blockage to the city's ringroad highway, the M25.

Capital's aerial traffic reporters, the Flying Eye, were dispatched to investigate the real accident and were able to get from the Woolwich fly-over in the city's east end to the blockage in the Reigate exit in the south west in 12min by flying down the Thames. Select Air, the air taxi operator last year awarded the contract to fly the radio station for its travel slots is the only operator except the police and ambulance services to have a 'Whiskey' (W-class) licence, granting permission to fly anywhere in central London.

Select Air's chief pilot Colin Dobney took Flight International's senior reporter Justin Wastnage for a spin in the new Twin Star (pictured), while explaining the unique challenges the Flying Eye service requires. Hugh Broom, the station's travel correspondent coordinates activities at the Leicester Square headquarters of the station, from 06:00 when the radio's controversial Cockney presenter Johnny Vaughan starts his show. "The public texts, emails and calls us with news of accidents or blockages and we investigate them with the police and authorities before putting together a list of possible locations for the plane to fly over," he explains.

At 06:50 the voice of the Flying Eye, Louise Pepper receives her final brief from Broom and sets off from Select Air's base at Stapleford airport north east of London. The normal traffic build-ups start by 07:00, she explains, with the names QE2 Bridge, North Circular and Dartford Crossing familiar to all frustrated peak hour London drivers.

The aircraft flies at around 2,000ft (600m) for most of the flight, but can go as low as 1,000ft to get a close look at incidents, says Pepper. "You can see in five minutes all the surrounding roads and see where the gridlock starts, whether the police are there and judge when it's likely to clear," she says. Listeners stuck in the jam are reassured to hear the Flying Eye, as they feel part of a bigger event, she adds.

The Flying Eye deals directly with air traffic control centres to amend its repetitive flight plan. Unfortunately for ATC, the infamous traffic black spot the Blackwall Tunnel lies in the control area for London City Airport, so some cajoling is required to take a peek, and usually only one pass is allowed, Jacqui Dobney, the Flying Eye pilot. Otherwise few restrictions apply and the aircraft passes freely only a few hundred metres above some of London's best-known landmarks, although Buckingham Palace and Westminster are still off-limits, as is the stretch of the M25 close to Heathrow. "We'll never tell someone we were flying over the M4/M25 junction [near Heathrow] as it wouldn't be true, so we have to use ground-based information, except when the ATC computers went down and they let us have a buzz over just because we could," he says.

The aircraft comes down at 09:00 and is used for occasional charter during the day before taking off again at 17:00 for the Richard Bacon drive time show until 18:40. Pepper tried out the Twin Star just after Flight International and says the wide, open view of the diesel-cycle twin will allow much clearer views of the jams than peering over the wedge-like wing of the Seneca. The words: "queues on the clockwise section after junction 17 due to an earlier accident" and "only the outside lane open" will no doubt sound even more soothing as a result.

Basel, Switzerland

When you are used to the sardine-can economy class cabins of conventional airliners, stepping through the door of a VIP-configured Boeing 747-400 takes you aback. Jet Aviation's Basel completion centre is half way through converting a 747 from a giant bus designed to carry more than 400 passengers to a flying palace for a Middle Eastern royal family.

It is the second 747-400 the Swiss-based company has converted (the first was delivered four years ago) and, although the example sitting in the hangar looks like any aircraft in mid-completion - electrical components hanging from the ceiling and polythene and cardboard everywhere - you can already see the trappings of opulence in the cabin forward of the door and staircase, where the luxury carpet has been laid and a 2m-diameter hole made in the ceiling for a giant indented light. The technicians bustle about in the cabin in their socks, despite the fact that thick industrial polythene covers the deep, blue carpet.

I was in Basel to look around Jet Aviation's large business jet completion operation there. The company prides itself on the fact that it outsources very little - it has what it modestly calls a "woodshop" to make the cabinets and fittings, and upholstery is hand-stitched. Aircraft are painted with all the attention to detail of Michelangelo in the Sistene Chapel. Wages in Switzerland are among the highest in Europe, but Dietmar Gasper, manager of customer services, says it would not make sense to use companies in, say, the Czech Republic or Poland to do this very labour-intensive work. It's a customer-driven market, he says, with very fussy clients paying large amounts to have their every demand met at extremely short notice. You need constant, real-time quality control. Get it wrong - to the extent of some less than perfect stitching on a seat - and you lose not just that customer but very possibly others as well. "It's a niche market where word of mouth, rather than marketing, determines where your business comes from," he says. "It doesn't take much to establish a bad reputation."

Basel nestles in a corner of Switzerland, right on the border of France and Germany and the company draws in workers from all three countries and beyond. It's a cosmopolitan mix: colleagues greet eachother variously with "salut", "guten tag" and "hello". They tend to stay a long time as it's a highly-specialist business. The Jet Aviation site hugs the border with France. The frontier fence runs around its perimeter and the Basel-Mulhouse airport terminal next door is actually on French soil but with a dedicated road for Swiss passengers through to Swiss territory. Space is at a premium but Jet Aviation obviously has influence: when the company needed land for a new woodshop, the border fence was moved to enclose the only property available within Switzerland.