November 3, 2010

By The AVweb Editorial Staff

View Trade-A-Plane's New Edition at No Cost on Your Mobile Device! Just enter Trade-A-Plane.com/mobile. Search for aircraft (hourly updates). Find companies, products, and services. Locate dealers/brokers. Call or e-mail sellers, and click directly to their web sites. With our web and mobile editions, you can view all of our ads at no cost, all the time! Call (800) 337-5263, or visit us online. AVflash! Flying the Friendlier Skies back to top  Sponsor Announcement Russia Liberalizes Airspace Russia has restructured its airspace in a move that's bound to foster more GA activity in the country. Gone is the requirement to submit a detailed flight plan at least 24 hours in advance. Flight notification can now be done an hour in advance online. The changes were announced in April and went into effect Monday. According to TASS the new rules and airspace designations "are designed to meet the standards and recommended practices of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO)." Perhaps the biggest change is the creation of uncontrolled airspace. The country has divided airspace into A, C and G zones. Class A airspace is 8,100 meters (26,575 feet) and higher and all flights are IFR and under ATC control. Class C is controlled airspace for both IFR and VFR flights up to 8,100 meters and Class G is uncontrolled but the one-hour notification is required and is open to all aircraft, including light planes and helicopters. Its ceiling varies from 300 meters to 4,500 meters. The Russian version of flight services will supply NOTAMs and weather. The government is also pledging to reduce the amount of closed and restricted airspace, but the airspace over Moscow is expected to remain restricted. Sporty's SP-400: "Better Than Some Panel-Mounted Gear" That's what The Aviation Consumer said in their latest review of portable aviation radios. And: "Sporty's SP-400 shines ... . Its performance is clearly exceptional." It's the ultimate backup radio, with full ILS display, flip-flop COM, and much more. Call 1 (800) SPORTYS for more info or find out more (and watch the video demo) online. Accountability Begins at Home back to top  GAO: FAA Delays Hurt Aviation Industry The FAA needs to a better job of issuing certifications and approvals, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a recent report. A lack of efficiency and consistency in how the FAA interprets its own rules adversely affects the aviation industry, causing delays and higher costs, the analysts found. To improve its performance, the GAO says, FAA should develop a process to track how long it takes to act on requests for certification or approval and the causes of each delay, then use that data to assess the extent of delays and figure out how to better allocate resources to reduce wait times. Also, the GAO says, the FAA should use that data to create a system of measurable performance goals and track performance toward those goals. The report examines how the FAA issues approvals for new aircraft, parts and equipment suppliers, as well as pilots and operators who use the national airspace system. Ten of the 13 industry group and company officials interviewed by GAO for its study said their organization had experienced variation in FAA certification and approval decisions that had adverse affects on their efforts. A summary of the report as well as a PDF of the full analysis (40 pages) is available online. Calm, Cool & Protected Get the protection you need at a time when you need it more than ever, with Avemco® Insurance Company. Their financial strength — and one of the most stable track records in the industry — has earned them an A+ (Superior) rating from A.M. Best every year since 1977. Get protected! What You Won't See at Next Week's AOPA Summit back to top  Cessna Turboprop Not Ready For AOPA Cessna says its single-engine turboprop is not ready for prime time and will not be shown at AOPA Summit in Long Beach next week. It had been widely speculated that the company would unveil the project at the show but Bob Stangarone, Cessna's VP of Corporate Communications, said the company is a long way from that. "What we're flying is neither a prototype nor proof of concept aircraft. It's a technology demonstrator to help us determine how we could best fill the gap between the Corvalis and the Citation Mustang," Stangarone told AVweb. "Any new aircraft introduction would be some time away." Speculation about the new aircraft peaked at the National Business Aviation Association convention two weeks ago and documents we published last week courtesy of Plane Fax have triggered a flood of tips that fit Stangarone's characterization. One reader told us the PT6A-135A engine that powers the test bed is a lower-power (500-horsepower) version of the ubiquitous turbine, which is normally rated at 750 horsepower. Another, who worked at Columbia Aircraft before Cessna bought it, says the type certificate of the test airplane is the same as that of the Columbia (now Corvalis) line and is therefore a derivative of that design. Get More Rewards Faster with WingPoints®! Reward yourself when you refuel with WingPoints from Phillips 66® Aviation. Start earning points immediately, and earn double points when you use WingPoints with any Phillips 66 Aviation branded card. Get your card today! Air Charter Comes to Taiwain back to top  Taiwan Charter Eyes China Market The first business jet to be registered in Taiwan is a G550 and its owner hopes increased commerce between Taiwan and China will lead to the creation of a brisk charter business between the two countries. Win Air held a grand opening for its new charter and jet management service in Taipei last week and owner Terry Gou told Focus Taiwan it's the first business of its kind in Taiwan. Win Air already had two U.S.-registered Gulfstreams in operation before it put Taiwanese marks on its newest aircraft. The company flies primarily to Europe and the U.S. right now but Gou is hoping a change in regulations will lead to exponential growth of his business to 20 aircraft. A landmark transportation agreement between China and Taiwan in 2008 allowed, for the first time, private air travel between the two. However, charter operations are not allowed. Gou said that if that changes he envisions up to 40 percent of his business will be across the strait to China. Meanwhile, Taiwan is embracing business aviation and is planning to call bids for a business aviation center at Taipei Airport, which could open next year. See What You've Been Missing! Active-Surveillance Traffic Now Available Starting at $8,490 Avidyne announces new full-featured TAS605 and TAS615 models, along with the lowest price available for dual-antenna, active traffic with our TAS600. All TAS600 Series systems provide timely audible and visual alerts with the precise location of conflicting traffic. Patented Top & Bottom directional antennas detect other aircraft sooner and more accurately. Avidyne's TAS600 Series are the smallest, lightest, best performing, and most affordable active TAS systems available. Click here to learn more about the TAS600 Traffic Systems. New Icing Options for Caravan Owners back to top  Caravan TKS Retrofits Underway TKS glycol-based anti-icing retrofits are now available for Cessna Caravans through CAV Aerospace in Salina, Kan. Cessna announced the availability of the TKS system on new cargo-pod-equipped Caravans in 2008. In the meantime, CAV has been developing the retrofit, which was adopted by FedEx Express for its fleet of 250 Caravans. It was announced two weeks ago that Yingling Aviation, of Wichita, will install the CAV system on the FedEx Express Caravans. CAV is turning its attention to the remaining 1,200 aircraft in the fleet and the first one to undergo retrofit is certainly no stranger to flying in icing conditions. Superior Airways, of Red Lake, Ontario, Canada, operates charter services in the rugged bush country of northwestern Ontario. Red Lake is where the road ends in that part of the world and dozens of First Nations settlements in the area depend on air transport for most of the year. The weather can be truly awful. Superior's Caravan had been fitted with deicing boots but the company asked CAV to strip them off and install the fluid system. Find Out Why Leading Flight Training Schools Fly Diamond! Diamond offers the only complete modern fleet of technically-advanced training aircraft, along with model-specific flight training devices and a safety record that is second to none. With bonus depreciation incentives, now is the time to find out why leading flight training schools around the globe fly Diamond Aircraft. Who's Where back to top  Miller Promoted at BBA BBA Aviation Mary Miller is now VP of Industry and Government Affairs for BBA Aviation's U.S. operations. She was formerly VP of Customer Relations for Signature Flight Support, a BBA company. 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. Try an eBook at No Charge — The Concise Guide to Safe Flying This demonstration eBook is provided to offer you an opportunity to try this technology for yourself and determine if this method of buying books is right for you and compatible with your computers. As an Adobe .PDF file, this sample book offers a wide array of functions including highlighting, personal book-marking, copy & paste, and printing. You will also notice this book (as with all our eBooks) is extensively pre-bookmarked by us to get you started navigating through its pages. Book or eBook / no cost Call (800) 780-4115 for more information or click here for your complimentary eBook. Opinion & Commentary back to top  AVweb Insider Blog: FedEx and UPS — New Terrorism Targets? Could be, but it seems to AVweb's Paul Bertorelli that the first step to keep their airplanes from being blown up is to have a peek inside packages coming from Yemen, the world capital of terrorist bomb-making. On the day explosives were recovered last week, the two companies shipped a total of thirteen packages out the country. Hard to imagine the clerks were too busy to wonder why a printer was being shipped from Yemen to the U.S. when you could buy a new one for less than the shipping cost. Of such stuff is knuckleheaded airline security made. Read more and join the conversation on the AVweb Insider blog. AVweb Insider Blog: A Near Mid-Air — Blinded by the Sight On the AVweb Insider blog, Paul Bertorelli devolves to the philosophical in describing nearly swapping paint with a Cherokee on Sunday. Soiling your underwear will do that to you. But it does bring to mind something we've all experienced: Looking without seeing and seeing without comprehending. Read more and join the conversation. AVweb Insider Blog: Glass Panel Redundancy Ever wish you could ride along with Aviation Consumer editor Paul Bertorelli and Kitplanes editor Marc Cook on one of their story-finding expeditions and join in the heated discussion of a hot button aviation topic like — oh, say — whether it's acceptable to fly IFR without iron gyros to back up the data from your trusty G3X? If you insist on getting into the middle of this, don't miss Marc's commentary on why he's comfortable with his glass panel's built-in redundancy. Looking for Low-Cost, Yet Effective, Marketing Options? Let AVweb assist your company in creating effective direct-response marketing campaigns to generate leads. No other digital aviation news media reaches more qualified subscribers more often. Text messages in newsletters combined with online banners reach over 255,000 readers monthly and deliver more new users to sponsor sites weekly than most print publications do monthly. Click now for details. AVweb Media: Look, Listen, Laugh and Learn back to top  Video: iPad vs. Garmin's 696 Original, Exclusive Videos from AVweb | Reader-Submitted & Viral Videos With Foreflight or WingX loaded, the iPad aces the plate reader function, hands down. But how about for all-purpose cockpit navigation? Looks to us like the 696's robust GPS wins that round. But there could be an interesting and less expensive compromise, as this video reveals. Don't see a video screen? Try disabling ad blockers and refreshing this page. If that doesn't work, click here to download the video directly. Help Us Celebrate AVweb's 15th Anniversary back to top  15 Years and Now 15 Grand Giveaways ... It's Your Chance to Win 100,000 Air BP Bravo Rewards Points Now's your chance to win 100,000 Air BP Bravo Rewards Points — there are more than 45 million reward options available through the Bravo program — as we celebrate our 15th Anniversary! All you have to do is click here to enter your name and e-mail address. (You only have to enter once, and you'll be entered in our prize drawings for the entire year — so if you've already entered, you're all set.) And no, we're not going to rent or sell your name, ever. Tell your friends, and invite them to sign up for AVweb so they can qualify for our 15 Grand Giveaways prize drawings, too. (We won't spam them, either — but we hope they will sign up for our newsletters.) Deadline for entries is 11:59pm Zulu time Friday, November 5. Click here to read the contest rules and enter. Names Behind the News back to top  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 Click here to send a letter to the editor. (Please let us know if your letter is not intended for publication.) Comments or questions about the news should be sent here. Have a product or service to advertise on AVweb? A question on marketing? Send it to AVweb's sales team. If you're having trouble reading this newsletter in its HTML-rich format (or if you'd prefer a lighter, simpler format for your PDA or handheld device), there's also a text-only version of AVwebBiz. For complete instructions on making the switch, click here. Aviate. Navigate. Communicate.