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Aviation History
2002
2002 - 3226.PDF
IN BRIE GE EXPANDS GE Commercial Equipment Financing (CEF) is to acquire a $448 million portfolio of corpo rate and general aviation finan cing contracts from Daimler- Chrysler subsidiary debis Financial Services. The deal covers part of the $800 million, 300-aircraft portfolio debis acquired from Raytheon Aircraft in 2000. The rest is up for sale, says debis. NIMBUS BUY IS OFF Nimbus Group has terminated a letter of intent to purchase Florida-based charter and frac tional operator Horizons Aviation - signed after Eclipse Aviation terminated Nimbus's 1,000-air- craft order for Eclipse 500 personal jets for failing to raise the deposit - but still plans to set up a nationwide air-taxi service. ACJ APPROVAL The Airbus Corporate Jetliner (ACJ) has received US approval for scheduled service and pri vate operation, paving the way for North American deliveries. BUSINESS & GENERAL AVIATION EXPANSION ANDREW DOYLE / SINGAPORE Transworld boosts medevac helicopter leasing business Company in negotiations with US leasing company to set up European joint venture Australia-based TransWorld Avia tion Group is aggressively expand ing its nascent European helicopter leasing business and aims to build up a portfolio of 30 medevac aircraft by the end of 2003. Paris-headquartered TransWorld Helicopter Leasing, a unit of the company's European fixed- wing leasing business, has already placed two pre-owned Eurocopter AS355Ns with French operator Aerosystemes Heliocean Helicop- teres for five years and an AS350 with Jet Systems for three years. The company is also finalising a deal to place four Agusta A109s in Italy. Group managing director Tony Griffin says the company is mov ing into the European government- funded medevac helicopter leasing market because it offers "more secure income" and reduces the company's reliance on the more cyclical fixed-wing business. The company specialises in tak ing over purchase contracts already negotiated by the operator. "There appears to be a good gap in the market," says Griffin. "Helicopters also hold a high resale value relative to fixed-wing air craft." He estimates the European market has the capacity to absorb up to 100 leased medevac heli copters a year, but only a handful of players are active in the market. "We are negotiating with one of the major US leasing companies with a view to expanding through a joint venture," says Griffin, declining to name the company. General Electric Capital Aviation Services and GATX, however, are known to be plotting a major expansion of their rotary-wing leasing businesses in Europe. Privately owned TransWorld Aviation Group has fixed-wing leasing units in Australia, Europe and Singapore, which offer aircraft on operating lease ranging from 40-seat turboprops to Airbus and Boeing narrowbodies. TransWorld subsidiary, Luxemburg-based Euro- jet Aircraft Leasing, focuses on regional jets. Griffin says heli copters should account for 20% of the group's annual leasing revenue by the end of 2003. The company has also set up TransAustralian Air Express, which operates a fleet of Boeing 727 freighters on scheduled and charter flights. DEVELOPMENT GUY NORRIS / PALM SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA Cirrus delays diesel-powered SR22 variant Cirrus Design has delayed plans to start delivering a diesel-powered variant of the SR22 from this year to mid-2003 as it focuses on more pressing priorities, such as the all- electric SR20. The company is dis cussing development alternatives with diesel engine maker SMA, which could include the EADS/Renault/Snecma joint ven ture leading the supplemental type-certification (STC) programme for the diesel-powered variant. SMA, which has completed assembly of the first SR305 engine for Cirrus's proposed SR21tdi pro ject, is developing the STC for the SR305-powered Cessna 182 and for EADS Socata. One option, says Cirrus, could be for SMA to do the STC on the SR21tdi. "Basically, we are now a lot more comfortable that SMA has not only a certificated engine, but also an engine ready to go into produc tion," says sales support director Ian Bentley. "But it is a little unreal istic to think of deliveries by year- end, maybe it will be more like six to eight months from now." Cirrus is fully occupied prepar ing to switch over production to the all-electric SR20 in January. As part of the switchover, it is devel oping more cost-effective produc tion techniques, including larger production batches to reduce overheads when changing assembly between the SR20 and Cirrus hopes to raise production rates to three a day in late 2003, when it expects economic recovery SR22. A total of 60 SR20s will be produced in the first batch of 2003, for example, compared with five or 10 previously. Cirrus is also developing more upgrades and improvements to the SR20/22, including ice protection, a datalink capability and a glass cockpit. "The SMA engine has to fit into the research and development schedule," says Bentley, who adds that the large order backlog also reduces the urgency. Six hundred Cirrus aircraft have been delivered and the backlog is "around 350", says president Alan Klapmeier. "We hit the two a day [production] rate in July/August and we will hold that, or even lower it slightly through December. We expect to review that and maybe move it up to three a day in late 2003 when we expect the eco nomic recovery to begin." The 170kW (230hp) SMA SR305 diesel is also being developed for the MX-9-230, a derivative of the Maule Air M-7 five-seat light aircraft. 30 5-11 NOVEMBER 2002 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL www.fliqhtinternational.com
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