Business and GA: September 2005 Archives

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.