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BUSINESS AVIATION

24 | Flight International | 8-14 March 2016 flightglobal.com

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E

mbraer Executive Jets has cho-

sen Mexican business aviation

services provider Across as its first

sales agent in Latin America.

The move is designed to exploit

the anticipated demand for busi-

ness aircraft in the fertile Mexican

market. Flightglobal’s Fleets Ana-

lyzer database records an installed

base of around 800 business jets in

Mexico – including 15 Embraers

• with an average age of 23 years.
  The key market of Latin Ameri-
  ca is home to 240, or nearly 25%,
  of Embraer’s global fleet of almost
  1,000 Lineage, Legacy and Phe-
  nom business jets. Embraer pre-
  dicts the region will account for
  650 new jet deliveries in 2015-
  2024, with a value of $11 billion. ■

U

S aircraft developer Spectrum

Aeronautical is hoping to se-

cure funding by the end of June to

launch production of its Freedom

S-40 business jet, and has selected

Mexicali in Baja, California – 2km

south of the US/Mexican border –

as the manufacturing and flight

test centre for the midsize type.

San Diego-based Spectrum says

Mexicali was chosen for its popu-

lation of highly skilled workers

and proximity to the “huge aero-

space industrial infrastructure of

southern California”. The Mexi-

can government is also offering

incentives to encourage aerospace

investment in the area.

INVESTORS SOUGHT

“Mexico is really keen to develop

its aerospace industry and the

S-40 will be the first aircraft to be

completely manufactured in the

country,” says Spectrum chief fi-

nance officer David Tenney.

Investment of around $300 mil-

lion is being sought to bring the air-

craft “through development, certi-

fication and into service”. Mexican

bank Bancomext is providing the

“debt portion” of the project, he

says, with the rest funded through

US and Mexican equity investors.

The S-40 design is frozen and

INVESTMENTS KATE SARSFIELD LONDON

Spectrum seeks

Freedom funding

S-40 requires $300m for development and certification, as

airframer chooses Mexicali for manufacturing and test site

building of the aircraft’s tooling

will begin in the coming months.

“We plan to break ground on the

manufacturing facility by the end

of the year, so any tooling we have

built up to that point will be trans-

ferred to Mexicali,” says Tenney.

The aircraft is designed to seat

up to nine passengers in a 1.8m

(5.9ft)-high cabin. Powered by GE

Honda HF120 turbofan engines,

the S-40 is projected to have a max-

imum cruise speed of 440kt

(814km/h), a range of 2,250nm

(4,170km) and maximum cruising

altitude of 45,000ft. It will be certif-

icated under US and European

regulations, says Tenney.

The S-40 is the first of three car-

bonfibre business jets privately-

owned Spectrum plans to bring to

market over the next few years.

These include an as-yet unnamed

larger cabin design and the com-

pany’s Independence S-33 very-

light jet. The latter programme

was halted in 2006, after the fatal

crash of the only flying prototype.

“We have never given up on

the [S-40],” Tenney says. “It has

always been Spectrum’s inten-

tion to bring a new generation of

low-cost business jets to market,

but we have been unable to find

the right partner until now.” ■

Spectrum Aeronautical

Design work on the HF120-engined business jet has been frozen

O

pposition to pan-European

commercial single-engined

turbine operations under instru-

ment meteorological conditions

(SET-IMC) seems to be abating, as

proposals increasingly satisfy

states that have previously resist-

ed it. Only Italy now appears to

still have reservations, while pre-

vious sceptics France, Germany

and the UK now seem happy with

the draft European Aviation Safety

Agency regulation.

The draft rule is being prepared

for an EASA committee vote. The

earliest that could take place

would be in June, but October is

more likely, suggesting the rule is

unlikely to be ready for imple-

mentation until early 2017.

EASA accepts the motivation to

agree a sound rule has always

been that small, isolated commu-

nities cannot viably be served by

multi-engined aircraft, and that it

is wrong to deny a single-engined

service if it can be provided safely.

Meanwhile, over 20 years of vig-

orous debate about the safety of

commercial air transport SET-IMC

operations in Europe, the reliabili-

ty and capability of turbine en-

gines, engine health monitoring

systems and satellite navigation

systems have improved.

These technical advances have

been taken into account in the

proposed rule, and strengthened

by the introduction of comprehen-

sive operational requirements for

crew training, capability and ex-

perience; flight planning consid-

erations; enhanced maintenance

programmes with tighter mini-

mum equipment list specifica-

tions; and aircraft type suitability.

Obvious aircraft candidates in-

clude Cessna’s Caravan family,

Daher’s TBM 900, the Pilatus

PC-12 and the Quest Kodiak.

However, additional technical re-

quirements for SET-IMC-cleared

airframes include twin independ-

ent electrical generation systems,

weather radar, radio altimeter, two

independently powered attitude

indicators, and smart ice-detec-

tion systems, among others. ■

Embraer gets Across to Mexico

SALES KATE SARSFIELD LONDON

TURBOPROPS DAVID LEARMOUNT LONDON

More countries warm to

EASA rules on SET-IMC

Daher

Operators of Daher’s TBM

850 could gain from the

new regulations

FIN_080316_024.indd 24 02/03/2016 15:44