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Aviation History
2000
2000 - 1268.PDF
asnzMAL Ammmm Keystone copped for S-76 work SIKORSKY HAS selected Keystone Helicopter to under take completion work on S-76s following the closure of the manu facturer's delivery- centre at West Palm Beach, Florida. The final S-76 to be completed at West Palm Beach was delivered last month to Finnish commercial airline operator Copter Action. There will be a hiatus until deliver ies of Keystone-completed aircraft begin in the third quarter, with an S-76 for a US corporate customer. The Florida delivery centre has been closed as part of an overall restructuring of Sikorsky's com mercial helicopter programmes to improve competitiveness. The S-76 will continue to be produced at Sikorsky's plant at Stratford, Connecticut, where aircraft will receive an airworthiness certificate in a standard configuration before deliver ' to Keystone's facility in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Keystone outfitted six S-76s last year, mainly for emergency med ical service operations. Flic new agreement establishes the compa ny as the preferred completion centre for all S-76s, including air craft for utility, corporate and multi-mission applications. Key stone will expand its completion centre, which also outfits Bell, Agusta and Eurocopter aircraft, to accommodate the additional S-76 work. Sikorsky produces the air craft at a rate of about one a month. FlightSafety International has no plans to move its S-76 customer training programme from West Palm Beach. Q NEWS IN BRIEF • CHARTER GENESIS Corporate charter operator AeroGenesis has begun a twice-weekly public charter service between Illinois' state capital Lansing and Chicago's downtown Meigs Field airfield, using a seven- passenger Raytheon Beech King Air. Seats on the busi ness aircraft are being sold through a travel agency. Online fractional sells out shares in first Hawker Jet Transjet.com hopes to add a Bombardier 601 to its fleet soon KATE SARSFIELD/LONDON TR\NSJET.COM, believed to be the world's first online fractional ownership provider, has sold all the shares in its first busi ness jet, a British Aerospace Hawker 125-600. The company is acquiring a second Hawker and a Bombardier Challenger 601, which it expects to sell out quickiv. Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based Transjet.com, which started opera tions at the end of February, using nearby Binnini Island Air for char ter back-up, signed an agreement with GE Capital to finance the business aircraft fleet. Garrett Krause, president and chief execu tive of3wVentures.com, the frac tional operator's owner, says: "We seal pre-commitments for each business jet. GE provides finance capital to get the aircraft in the air." Plans call for up to 40 city bases in the USA, each with up to two aircraft, and a London-based European service. "Our next step will be to add Los Angeles [125- 600] and New York [Challenger 6011 to our operating base by the end of the year. More bases will be added as the demand increases," adds Krause. The launch of Transjet.com's Bombardier Learjet 36-based air ambulance operation has been put on hold while 3wVentures.com, a California-based internet funding subsidiary of venture capitalist Web Capital, of Florida, focuses on the fractional programme. "We have leased out the aircraft for six months, but we plan to begin a Los Angeles-based online air ambu lance operation before the end of the year." Meanwhile, online business air craft charter company Indigo, which began operations in early March selling seats on business jet flights between Chicago Midway and Teterboro, Xew York, has closed a deal on a second Dassault Falcon 20. A third aircraft is to be acquired by the end of die month. Flightserv.com's Private Seats online business aircraft operation is to begin on 17 April, between New York and Atlanta. J Italian force to replace Nardis ITALY'S paramilitary police force, Guardia di Finanza, has begun to retire its Nardi NH500 single-engined helicopters from frontline service and is eyeing pos sible replacement aircraft. The Guardia di Finanza says the NH-500s are more than 20 years old and have been extensively deployed in coast surveillance and anti-smuggling operations. The Guardia di Finanza operates 61 NH500s, which are deployed for short-range coastal missions, and twin-engined Agusta 109s as well as Agusta Bell 412s and fixed-wing aircraft for long-range patrol and surveillance missions. The Guardia di Finanza isseekingaround 40 new single-engined machines. Proposals have reportedly been received from Agusta and MD Helicopters for their Al 19 Koalas ami A1 D-500s, respectively. 3 Police buy Explorers UK-BASED MD Helicopters' distributor and emergency services provider Police Aviation Sen ices has clinched an order for three MD Explorers from emer gency services operators in the UK. The twin engined, NOTAR- equipped aircraft will be handed over to the Lincolnshire and Not tinghamshire air ambulance trust, as well as the Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire police forces later diis year and in early 2001. • 24 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 18 - 24 April 2000
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