Recently in Business Aviation Category

Courtesy of the always entertaining "Sully" Sulako comes this cockpit video of his colleague flying their Citation into New York Newark through lots of clag and rain. The neat thing about it is that it is in the high-definition format now supported on Youtube. Lots of flightsim stuff around, but this is the real thing. So, as he suggests, blow it up to full screen and select 720p and enjoy. It's a nice example of challenging but routine line flying in the corporate world.

Putting these sort of ripples in the fuselage of the famously beefy Hawker 800 is not an easy thing to do (click for full size). So how was it done?

Following the Eclipse 500 VLJ incident reported earlier, the FAA has overnight issued an emergency AD on the type. It's a real 'emergency' emergency AD. You can't fly the aeroplane again until you've done the checks and made the amendments - and of course depending on what you find in the checks you may have a grounded aeroplane on your hands.

This sort of thing happens of course and the world gets over it. But in the embryonic VLJ world the regulatory sensitivity is huge. Good luck to all concerned.

Details have emerged, (as we journalists say about things that we didn't know about at the time) of a dire incident on the VLJ that everyone is watching - the Eclipse 500. (Not the one in this pic.)

It's got the NTSB understandably spooked as you can read at the link below.

Fortunately some highly professional piloting saved the occupants and aircraft.

Here's the scenario: double engine control failure during a windshear influenced final approach. FADEC reverts to last recorded power setting, which unfortunately is full power on both engines. Quite handy for the subsequent go-around, not so great for the desired landing. And then things get worse...

There is of course a major issue over the experience levels of at least some of the owner-pilots likely to end up flying this and other VLJs. The debate, I think it is fair to say, is likely to continue. 

Fans of aviation's hottest soap opera - Sully and Lisa - will recall we left our hero finely balanced between the prospect of outrageous success and miserable failure. In part two Sully plays the pilot's trump card - an actual aeroplane (something like this but probably not as nice) - but Lisa lives round aeroplanes, will she be impressed?

I wondered aloud after part one if Lisa would prove a pushover. Unfortunately a pushover proves to be at the heart of Sully's difficulties. But then there's a plot twist...

 

Sulako's Blog is still my favourite aviation blog. Sort of Ernest K Gann meets GQ Magazine meets Psychologies (which my wife reads, but whose website has infamously collapsed.)

And now meets Mills & Boon!

So will Sully and Lisa get together? (Well yes, obviously we know the ending.) But will Sully's full-on pilot's romancing style work out? Will Lisa prove a pushover? (Nope.) What is Sully's plan-B? (OK, plan-C?)

A legion of pilots awaits the outcome.

I'm not in the habit of buying aviation stock (tends to be a bit too close to home) but once in a while I cover a story and know I should be getting a piece of the action. One was the flotation in the mid-1990s of what was then Air London and became Air Partner. Actually if you'd bought the stock a year ago you'd be more than happy. But anyway this great financial story is highly informative about what's going on in air travel.