BUSINESS AIRCRAFT ACTIVITY STEADILY RISING
Figures released Monday by Aviation Research Group U.S. (ARGUS) indicates steady recovery of business aircraft activity. The most recent data compiled by the company shows a 2.7 percent overall increase in business aircraft activity that put the number of operations in September at slightly less than 200,000 and just a few more than during the same period last year. The tale of the tape, however, is where those increases come from. More...

CHINA'S "BIG PLANE" PROMOTED
China has taken the wraps off its design for what it calls its "big plane," a twin-engine single-aisle airliner that will seat up to 190 people. A large-scale model of the C919 is on prominent display at the Beijing Expo airshow this week and seems as much a political statement as a business initiative. "To develop the large-scale airliner is a strategic decision of the Chinese government and one of the major programs for building up an innovation-oriented country," Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang told a Chinese publication last month. Whether it will, as hoped by the Chinese, represent serious competition for Boeing and Airbus in a segment of the market virtually owned by them is a matter of conjecture. More...

INDUSTRY MEETINGS COORDINATED
NBAA and NATA are joining forces to hold two conferences in the same venue that will appeal to the same audience and shave costs for all concerned. For years, NBAA has held its annual Schedulers and Dispatchers Conference during the winter, while NATA has booked space for its annual FBO Leadership Conference. This coming January, attendees can take in both meetings in a single trip. The NBAA session will be held Jan. 25-26 in San Antonio and the NATA meetings will run from Jan. 27-29. The events are being run separately by their sponsors and participants must register for them independently, but the back-to-back format might make it affordable and efficient to attend both. More...

STRATOS FINDS FIRST CUSTOMER, WILL BRING CABIN MOCK-UP TO NBAA
Stratos Aircraft, of Bend, Ore., announced this week it has received the first deposit for a Stratos 714 Very Light Personal Jet. The company also said it will display its full-scale cabin mock-up at next week's NBAA Annual Meeting & Convention in Orlando, Fla., for the first time at that event. "The need for speed, performance and value drew me to Stratos," said Verson Pandian, the first buyer to take advantage of the Stratos fully refundable deposit program. Pandian is the owner of Cascade Air Charter, in Bend, and plans to use the jet in his business. "Knowing that I am not at risk with my deposit made me feel like the Stratos team really understands my perspective," he said. The Stratos single-engine jet will fly 1,500 nm at 400 knots carrying four people plus baggage, the company says. "We are excited to bring the 714 mock-up to this year's NBAA convention, especially since there is a focus on the light business aircraft owner," said Stratos Chairman Michael Lemaire. "We look forward to a great show." More...

CAN WICHITA WEATHER THE STORM?
Wichita, Kan., has been the hub of the U.S. aircraft manufacturing industry since the 1920s, when the companies that would become Hawker Beechcraft, Cessna, and Boeing all had their roots there. But the current downturn has hit the city hard, with about a quarter of the aviation workforce laid off. According to a story in Monday's Wall Street Journal, the city may never recover those jobs. Many manufacturers had started work on new production facilities in China, Mexico, and elsewhere to increase capacity during the boom times, and when orders do start to pick up again, the work might go there, rather than back to Kansas. Company officials told the WSJ it's unlikely that they would expand their Wichita operations beyond today's level. Any future growth would probably happen abroad. "We're going out and trying to recruit new businesses here to diversify what we have," Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer told the WSJ. But some of those new businesses might still be in the aviation sector, he added. More...

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EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: FLYING THE ZEPPELIN NT WITH AIRSHIP VENTURES
Pilots who signed up for sightseeing flights over San Francisco in the new Zeppelin NT kept asking the crew if they could take a turn in the front seat. Tired of having to say no, the company created a special day-long program just for pilots. AVweb's Mary Grady tried it out during a session in Long Beach last month, and here is her report. More...

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: GARMIN'S NEW TRAFFIC PRODUCTS
At Oshkosh this year, Garmin announced the new GT-series traffic awareness and collision avoidance products. These devices are priced according to capability and aircraft mission. In this video, we take a quick look at all three systems. More...

AVWEB INSIDER BLOG: MORE THOUGHTS ON VLJ PRICE FANTASIES
With its 600-series small turbofan, Pratt & Whitney probably made the technological breakthrough on cost that it said it would. So why didn't it break open the market? In the latest installment of our AVweb Insider blog, Paul Bertorelli argues that it's probably because the airframes themselves remain complex and expensive to certify. Cheap engines don't equate to cheap airplanes. More...

AVIATION CONSUMER'S FLIGHT-PLANNING SOFTWARE SURVEY
Do you use software for flight planning? Aviation Consumer magazine wants to know what computer tool you prefer, be it a package you paid for, downloaded for free, or just use on the web. Even if you just glance at the METARs on ADDS and figure you'll stop for gas somewhere on the way, we'd appreciate you taking a couple of minutes to answer at least some of these questions. Hey, you might even discover flight-planning options in the survey questions you never knew existed. Click here to participate. More...

AVWEB'S NEWSTIPS ADDRESS ...
Our best stories start with you. If you've heard something 200,000 pilots might want to know about, tell us. Submit news tips via email to newstips@avweb.com. What have you heard? More...

WHO'S WHERE? YOU TELL US
Get a promotion or a new job? Your colleagues want to know about it, and AVwebBiz can get the word out. Drop us a line about the staff appointment, with a nice recent photo, and we'll do our best to include it in our new section, "Who's Where." The items will be permanently archived on AVweb for future reference, too. More...

MEET THE AVWEBBIZ TEAM

AVwebBiz is a weekly summary of the latest business aviation news, articles, products, features, and events featured on AVweb, the internet's aviation magazine and news service.

The AVwebBiz team is:

Publisher
Timothy Cole

Editorial Director, Aviation Publications
Paul Bertorelli

Editor-in-Chief
Russ Niles

Contributing Editors
Mary Grady
Glenn Pew

Features Editor
Kevin Lane-Cummings

Webmaster
Scott Simmons

Contributors
Jeff van West

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