Aviation Safety Expert Tapped for NTSB

President Barack Obama will nominate veteran pilot and aviation safety expert Christopher A. Hart to be a member of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). Hart, who previously served on the board from 1990 to 1993, has been working at the FAA since 1995 to create processes to help identify and address potential safety issues before they cause mishaps. An attorney, Hart also has degrees in aerospace engineering and is an experienced pilot with a commercial certificate and multi-engine and instrument ratings. He previously served as a deputy assistant general counsel at the U.S. Department of Transportation and was a lawyer at the Air Transport Association. Hart replaces Steven R. Chealander who resigned this past February to take a senior executive position at Airbus.

Aussie Aircraft Parts Makers in U.S. market

Australia's aircraft parts manufacturing industry is set to gain easier access to the lucrative U.S. aviation market. The Civil Aviation Safety Authority has reached agreement with the FAA on extending an existing aviation 'treaty' level document to cover the manufacture of approved parts. This is a key step in opening up the U.S. aviation market to Australian manufactured aircraft parts. It paves the way for the presentation of the agreement to the Australian Parliament for final approval later this year. Once both Australia and the US have ratified the agreement the Federal Aviation Administration will accept Australian Parts Manufacture Approvals for replacement and certain modified aircraft parts. This will significantly reduce the cost and simplify the process of getting Australian parts into the large US market.

Australians Have No Fear

Australians are increasingly confident about the safety of aviation in Australia, a new national survey has found. A total of 78 per cent of Australians say they are completely confident or very confident about their safety when flying between Australian capital cities - up four per cent on the same survey done three years ago. Confidence in the safety of flights in regional Australia has also increased, with 64 per cent of people saying they are highly confident about their safety. The survey found 55 per cent of Australians believe flights between capital cities are safer than similar flights in other leading aviation nations, such as the United States. Only two per cent believe flights are less safe. The number of people who are concerned about air safety has remained very low, at five per cent - down one per cent on the 2005 survey.

CALSTAR Leads the Way

California Shock Trauma Air Rescue (CALSTAR) is operating the first helicopter that allows for enhanced abilities and increased safety using Instrument Flight Rules (IFR). The modification, according to Joseph Cook, CALSTAR's president and CEO, will no doubt save countless lives. With CALSTAR having served as the pioneer for this new technology, it is anticipated that many rescue helicopters throughout the world will be modified in a similar manner. Flight crews are still training on the modified helicopter routes and approaches but they be should be in use in the very near future. The new system will allow pilots to make significantly more landings in inclement weather. As an example, when making an approach to the Ukiah (CA) Municipal Airport, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) mandates that if pilots bring their aircraft down to an altitude of 1,107 feet above ground and still cannot see the landing site they must abort the landing. The new vertical guidance system will allow pilots to descend their aircraft to 364 feet to see the landing site. The system was developed by Hickok & Associates in Alabama--designer of the approaches and low altitude routes and Garmin International, designers of the aircraft avionics systems.

Frasca Selected for S76 FSTD

Frasca International, Urbana, IL and Era Training Center (ETC), Lake Charles, LA, have entered into an agreement leading to delivery of a Sikorsky S76 C++ Level 6 Helicopter Flight Simulator Training Device (FSTD). It will be an exact replica of the Sikorsky S76 C++ helicopter, featuring Frasca's latest technology including a TruVision Global visual system with an extensive, highly detailed database, electronic cockpit displays, flight test validation data, blade element modeling, automatic certification testing, exact cockpit replication, electric control loading and multi-channel sound simulation. This is the third Frasca FSTD ordered by ETC. The center currently uses Frasca-built EC135 and AS350B2 FSTDs that were delivered in 2008.

Raytheon Wins NextGen Research

NASA has selected a team led by Raytheon to develop enhancements to the system-wide modeling and simulation capability in the Airspace Concepts Evaluation System, or ACES. The plug and play models will help NASA, the FAA and other researchers better understand the tools and concepts needed to support the impacts of NextGen on the National Airspace System. Simulations will increase efficiency by evaluating and analyzing new concepts for future air traffic management operations. ACES is NASA's real-time computer simulation tool that analyzes local, regional and nationwide factors that contribute to the dynamics of aircraft operations from gate departures and flight paths to landings and gate arrivals. The result is a flexible environment for researchers to identify and test new NextGen air traffic management concepts. The total contract value of this competitively bid, cost-plus-fixed-fee award is $29.1 million.

No Fire Sale

A Transportation Research Board (TRB) report released June 26 indicates that airports would pay almost $4 billion in the first year to comply with National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) standards. AAAE has been opposing efforts by the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) to include a provision in the pending FAA reauthorization bill that could impose what airports consider to be unnecessary and excessive NFPA standards. The independent TRB report found that it would cost airports $2.9 billion to build almost 600 additional ARFF facilities and purchase more than 1,000 extra ARFF vehicles to comply with NFPA standards. Further, it would cost airports more than $1 billion per year to pay more than 11,000 additional fire fighters and to cover other annual operating expenses.

Additional Certification for ALERTS

Appareo Systems has received an additional Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) for the ALERTS Flight Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA) system. Transport Canada has granted the STC for the Eurocopter AS350 and has granted earlier STC's for Bell 206 and 407 aircraft. ALERTS has previously been granted STCs for the same aircraft types in the U.S. by the FAA. ALERTS - Aircraft Logging and Event Recording for Training and Safety - is a comprehensive FOQA and Flight Data Management (FDM) system designed for light and legacy aircraft where more traditional flight data recorders are too large and costly to be viable choices. As a comprehensive system, ALERTS makes an effective FOQA/FDM program available to operators of any size. The STC is a document that is granted by Transport Canada when the applicant has received approval to modify an aircraft from its original design. The STC applies to the airborne portion of the ALERTS System, the GAU 2000. The GAU 2000 is a lightweight unit that gathers flight data with an integrated GPS and a sophisticated inertial sensing suite. Requiring only aircraft power and ground and weighing roughly two pounds, the GAU 2000 can be mounted in nearly any type of aircraft. The gathered flight data is recorded to an SD memory card and an internal crash hardened memory and is later transferred to the software portion of ALERTS, which automatically analyzes the data for any events that are outside of standard operating procedures. These events are then forwarded to the system administrator for further action. Additionally, all recorded flight data is stored in a database that can generate detailed reports on any aspect of the fleet's performance, further improving safety, pilot training and efficiency.