Industry News

For aviation insurers, its the best of times and the worst of times. In many traditional parts of the aircraft insurance market, an overabundance of capital and new insurers is forcing premiums-especially those for corporate airplanes-down to new lows. At the same time, buyers are snapping up new airplanes of all sizes faster than manufacturers can build them. And the two new market areas of the decade, Very Light Jets and Light Sport Aircraft, are beginning to take off.In some ways, Light Sport Airplanes are an insurers dream. If the glass-half-full guys are even remotely right, there will be shoals of them. And from an underwriters viewpoint, theyre attractive because they have what insurers call “low severity.” Severity is essentially the average cost of an accident.

I think your comments about EFIS in the September 2007 issue (First Word, page 2) miss the point. The current EFIS design as replicated across many vendors products provides a consistent human/computer/airplane interface in much the same way that a six pack of steam gauges provided a consistent interface that allowed a pilot to go from one airplane to another without a lot of retraining. Right now, the pilots of light aircraft are in the process of retraining from steam to EFIS, so now we have to know how to fly two rather different systems of displaying the same information. If every vendor had a different representation of the data, then who knows how many systems we would have to learn? When mistakes can lead to safety issues, some degree of standardization is actually a good thing.

Ill concede that selling airplanes costing more than a half million bucks isn’t exactly a picnic in the current market. There’s plenty of wealth out there to support such purchases, but the competition is fierce, especially between Cirrus, Columbia and Mooney, all of whom ply the high-performance single market with impressive airplanes that really are the best the industry has thus far produced.

Columbia claims its turbocharged 400 is the fastest piston single, but Aviation Consumer trials reveal that the Mooney Acclaim may actually be faster. Either way, both companies are using what we consider to be misleading marketing claims.

Buyers who shop a new Mooney Acclaim will inevitably at least consider the Cirrus SR22 and Columbia, too. My perspective is as a CFII-my business is training pilots in technologically advanced aircraft (TAA) with a focus on Cirrus and Columbia. Here are some highlights from the right seat. Garmin vs. Avidyne: Cirrus airplanes are available with only the Avidyne Entegra while Columbias can be ordered with either the keyboard-equipped Garmin G1000 or the Entegra. By far, more owners are specifying the G1000 for the Columbia, but there are still more Avidyne Columbias flying. Which is better is a matter of personal taste. The Avidyne is simpler and easier to use, but the G1000 has more advanced capability, including interface with its own dedicated autopilot, the GFC700. Further, the Garmin has full screen reversion in the event of failures, the Avidyne doesnt.

With reference to your article on thicker windshields being quieter in the August 2007 Aviation Consumer, there is a very good reason you could not perceive a reduction in sound after installing a thicker windshield in your Mooney. The human ear cannot perceive a sound level change of less than about 3 dB and [IMGCAP(1)]you were only getting that much reduction in one location. The inability to remember the previous sound level accurately is also a reason, so your measurements are the only way to really tell. By the way, the cockpit noise in a 747 at the ear next to the side window is about 85 dB at cruise.

For those of us to whom a half-million bucks for a new airplane is a non-starter, older airframes-maybe 40-year-old airframes-are the only option. And even those can cost the better part of $100,000. For that kind of money, a would-be buyer assumes these expensive purchases will be supportable with parts, accessories and upgrades for the foreseeable future. And for the most part, a telephone call and a credit card payment are all thats needed to get a specific part to your mechanic in a matter of days, if not hours. But that isn’t always true and it may become less true as our airplanes get older. And even when a part is available, in some cases you may find that the hit to the credit card is breathtaking, if not prohibitive.

Normally, about three days into non-stop AirVenture coverage at Oshkosh, I have a world-class case of the thousand-yard stare. If Im lucky, the vague rivulets of spittle in the corners of my mouth don’t run onto my shirt. This year, there was more new stuff, more airplanes, more vendors and more self-important media pukes running around with notebooks, cameras and recorders than I can ever remember. As Martha Stewart used to say before she taught the girls in C-block to make festive place settings out of prison shivs, its a good thing.

What exactly is the difference between a factory rebuilt, a factory overhaul and a field overhauled engine? And is opting for the factory version worth the extra money? As the engine overhaul business has become ever more competitive, there’s even more confusion about the difference between categories and sources. Hardly a month goes by when someone doesnt phone to ask: “here are the numbers the shops are giving me. What should I do?”

If Oshkosh is to airplane companies what Wall Street is to investors, the mood in the world of general aviation is upbeat bordering on ebullient. At EAA AirVenture 2007 we saw a bumper crop of new product introductions-major and minor-at a well-attended show that may signal a turning point of sorts. Thats especially true for the emerging Light Sport Aircraft category, thanks to both Cessna and Cirrus announcing full-blown LSA programs which send the unmistakable message that they finally take this idea seriously. There were lots of hey-did-ya-see-that moments at AirVenture, but the biggest came from Eclipse, which flew in an intriguing single-engine “concept” personal jet that it claimed to have built in about 200 days in an off-site skunk works in Virginia. We werent entirely surprised by this, given persistent rumors of Eclipses plans before the show. But the fact that Eclipse CEO Vern Raburn actually taxied the thing up to the Eclipse exhibition was a stunner that were sure got the attention of Diamond, Cirrus and Piper, all of whom are toiling away on single-engine jets of their own.

I read with interest your report in Junes issue comparing various ANR headsets. Your conclusions about the new David Clark ANR X11 were spot on. I have been a supporter of David Clark and their products, having been the owner of a pair of H10-13.4s for a number of years. Recently, a buddy and I bought a Nanchang CJ-6A-not the quietest of warbirds to say the least. After a few hours of flying, we found that a passive headset wasnt going to work. Hearing one another over the push-to-talk intercom and calls from the tower were difficult and potentially dangerous due to missed communication. In order to wring out the maximum enjoyment from our ride while staying safe, we knew we had to invest in a good pair of ANR headsets.

I will freely admit that I have taken cynical delight in shamelessly abusing lunchtime conversation with the tired old joke about knowing there’s money in aviation because I put it there. Its mercifully fresher than the old large-to-small fortune groaner and is thus funnier because it resonates so we’ll with anyone who owns an airplane or who has been remotely associated with anyone who has. And now comes the latest chapter in the dumping-money-into-aviation story, the Light Sport Aircraft phenomenon.