Industry News

Briefings ...

american and delta—will begin direct air service into the Santa Fe Municipal Airport starting in late 2007.

atlantic aviation—opens its new Business Aviation Center at Pittsburgh International Airport, featuring a 30,000 sq. ft. hangar and a 7,250 sq. ft. Flex-Office/Charter Terminal.

cutter aviation—based in Phoenix, opens its new multi-million dollar corporate hangar development at PHX. FBO encompasses 50,500 square feet in three units. Cutter has operations at eight airports in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Texas.

chicago/rockford int’l airport—reports it didn’t subsidize United Airlines’ route from Rockford to Denver in July, the first time the route made more money than the airline was guaranteed. In the route’s first year of service, the airport paid United $2.3 million in subsidies. In the five months since, the airport paid about $360,000.

chevron global aviation— awards ServiceElements a long-term commitment to provide service strategy and culture enhancement workshops and seminars for employees of Chevron and Texaco branded fixed based operators (FBOs).

creative host services— and Piedmont-Triad International Airport celebrate the grand opening of the airport’s multimillion dollar food court featuring national brands, including the first introduction of the Dunkin Donuts brand.

dayjet corp.—of Delray Beach, FL announces that it has closed debt facilities totaling $140 million for the acquisition of its fleet of Eclipse 500™ very light jets (VLJs). DayJet has raised more than $200 million to date.

denton (tx) airport—officially opens a new parallel taxiway, at a cost of approximately $3.4 million.

denver int’l airport—proposes a $31 million plan to ramp up snow removal at DIA and keep runways open during storms like last winter’s, which shut down operations for 45 hours. Plan calls for adding more equipment and operators, using snow melters on main ramp areas, and narrowing the priority surface areas, which include runways, high speed taxiways and connectors.

dfw int’l airport—announces Cathay Pacific Cargo will add three additional weekly frequencies, bringing its freighter service to daily.

dhs—Department of Homeland Security is changing the way aviation security is handled, to allow it to take over the role of checking passenger information from airlines. DHS will assume responsibility from airlines for matching watch lists against passenger lists. DHS sources say the airlines have not been doing the job consistently or effectively.

dubae aerospace enterprise—a global aerospace manufacturing and services corporation, announces the acquisition of aviation service providers Standard Aero and Landmark Aviation from The Carlyle Group. DAE will merge the companies as a business enterprise within its DAE Engineering subsidiary. Transaction is valued at $1.9 billion. As part of the acquisition, DAE will divest the Landmark Aviation Airport Services business, which includes 33 fixed base operations.

eaa—Experimental Aircraft Assn. reports numbers from this year’s Air Venture: 560,000 attendees; more than 10,000 aircraft; 2,647 showplanes: 784 exhibitors.

FAA—Federal Aviation Administration issues a notice (Docket FAA-2006-25755) proposing to modify the existing order that temporarily limits flights at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, pending issuance of a final regulation to manage congestion at the airport. FAA is seeking comments by September 6.

• FAA gives a $585,000 grant to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, a Bay Area (CA) regional government agency, to study ways to avoid airport gridlock at regional airports.
• FAA is modifying the Washington, D.C. Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) with a new, circular 30-nautical mile radius restricted area, effective August 30. New ADIZ will free 33 airports and helipads from the confines of the existing ADIZ.
• Agency reportedly will soon issue an Airworthiness Directive that requires turbine wheel inspection on Kelly Aerospace turbochargers installed on Cirrus SR22 aircraft.