FlyGirl Pajamas

This pajama set from flyGIRL is a great go-to for lounging around after a long day of flying. Made of a cotton/ polyester blend, the set features a royal blue V-neck
shirt with the flyGirl logo and a pair of drawstring shorts covered with swirling airplanes. The set, priced at $39.95, is available in sizes XS-XL.

On top of providing great flying attire, flyGirl strives to help more women realize their aviation goals. A portion of every flyGirl purchase goes to the organization’s scholarship fund, which awards several thousand dollars each year to help a woman pursue pilot training.

Learn more at sportys.com.

Fisher Space Pen

If you’re trying to jot down frequencies or other important info while in the cockpit, you need a writing tool you can rely on. That’s where the Fisher Space Pen comes in. This pen will write from any angle, in any condition. Made out of steel and brass, the pen utilizes a sealed, pressurized ink cartridge, which enables the ink to keep flowing even in zero gravity. The pen was used during the Apollo 7 mission in 1968 and has continued to be a mainstay for astronauts ever since.

The pen is priced at $62 and can be engraved if desired.

Learn more at spacepen.com.

Superstrata 3D-Printed E-Bike

Silicon-based Superstrata is offering a 3D-printed, all-carbon-fiber e-bike that is custom-made to each individual’s dimensions. The first-of-its-kind product forgoes glue and bolts that connect the various components of other bikes and instead provides users with a single continuous carbon fiber body that is both super strong and ultra-light.

Each bike is custom-built to fit a rider’s height, weight, and arm and leg length. Buyers have a number of different variants to choose from, including a gravel variant, a touring bike, a street bike and one made for racing. The bike features a number of electronic upgrade options as well, thanks to the power wiring throughout the frame. In terms of range, the e-bike can travel over 50 miles on a single charge, and it takes two hours to recharge fully. The bike’s power-assist modes allow for speeds of up to 20 miles per hour.

The e-bike comes with a price tag of $3,999. The company is also offering a conventional bike for more than $1,000 less. Both versions are available in black or white.

Learn more at superstrata.bike.

Flight Outfitters Bush Pilot Flashlight

Every pilot should have a flashlight in their gear bag, and this flashlight from Flight Outfitters makes a compelling argument among a crowded field of competitors. Recharged through a USB port, the Bush Pilot Flashlight eliminates the hassle of AA batteries. The USB port on the flashlight can also be used to recharge your phone if you find yourself in a pickle and low on power.

The flashlight has five light modes, including high, medium, low, strobe and stealth light, making it just as capable in an emergency as it is during moments when you need a little light but don’t want to blind your passengers. On its highest settings, it emits 1,000 lumens and will operate for 2.5 hours. At its lowest, it will keep on keeping on for 120 hours. The settings are selected using a smart dial, so you don’t have to cycle through other settings to get to the one you want.

The product is waterproof and contains a magnetic base that makes it easy to mount for quick transport. The flashlight is priced at $89.95.

Learn more at flightoutfitters.com. 

Motion Sickness Bags

Anyone who’s suffered from motion sickness,
or traveled with someone who has, knows how unpleasant getting sick mid-flight can be. These motion sickness bags, dubbed the Better Barf Bags, aim to reduce the discomfort by replacing paper or garbage bags with something custom-made for the occasion. These dark-colored bags help mask the contents, while a secure opening that closes with a zipper makes sure nothing leaks out. The bag also features a gusseted bottom, so that it will stand upright when placed out of sight on the floor.

Each package, priced at $6.50, comes with eight bags.

Learn more at sportys.com.

The post Gear: FlyGirl Pajamas, Fisher Space Pen, Superstrata 3D-Printed E-Bike And More appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

The round-up in our April 2021 issue includes sneakers designed for pilots, Flight Gear 3 Port Charger and more! Click through the gallery below to view all of the items.

The post Pilot Gear: Air Boss Ultraknit Shoes, Flight Gear 3 Port Charger, And More appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

Icom A16/A16C — Around $260-$300

A basic comm unit, the A16 is compact, simple, weather-resistant, and durable. Its lithium-ion battery is rated at 17 hours use between charges and has a cradle rapid charger. With six watts’ transmitting power, it also has what Icom describes as “loud audio” specifically designed for aircraft cabins (though a headset would be advisable) and airport ramps where line personnel find the A16 a rugged, reliable communications tool. Other features include a choice of a knob or full keypad for entering frequencies, a dedicated button for 121.5 emergency frequency, automatic noise limiter, LCD backlit display, low-battery indicator, weather alert and more. The A16B—around $300—has all the features of the A16 plus Bluetooth connectivity for hands-free operation.

Icom A25C/N — Around $300-$500

The A25C comm-only version of Icom’s A25 series features a large, 2.3-inch backlit LCD display with day and night modes, six watts of transmitting power, “flip-flop” channel selection, “smart” battery with status display, weather channel presets, 121.5 mHz emergency key, Bluetooth connectivity and more. For a few dollars extra, the A25N adds navigation capability, including GPS. It can store up to 300 user waypoints and 10 flight plans, loadable from a computer, tablet or phone via Bluetooth. The navigation display features a facsimile of a CDI and an omni bearing selector (OBS), a to-from indicator and an automatic bearing set system (ABSS) for setting the current course as a new course. The A25N does not include localizer or ILS frequencies. Like all Icom handhelds, it comes with a three-year warranty.

Yaesu FTA-250L — Around $210

Yaesu’s basic comm-only model offers five watts’ transmitting power, a .5- x 1.4-inch LCD display and IXP5-rated waterproofing. The FTA-250L weighs in at 10.1 ounces and uses a lithium-ion battery with a cradle charger. It has preset NOAA weather channels, automatic NOAA weather alerts and 250 memory channels. Users can choose between using the knob or the backlit keypad for entering frequencies. It comes with a belt clip, battery charger, AC adapter, cigarette lighter DC cable and headset adapter cable.

Yaesu FTA-450L — Around $250

The step-up FTA-450L comm-only model from Yaesu has a larger 1.7-inch-square dot matrix display with Yaesu’s “advanced user interface” icon symbology. The display is backlit and includes a low-battery indicator. The FTA-450L also offers the option of using the included six-AA alkaline battery tray instead of the lithium-ion battery.

Yaesu FTA-550L ProX — Around $290

Yaesu’s 550 series adds VOR/LOC navigation capability (but not glideslope). Buyers can choose the version that includes a six-AA battery tray in addition to the rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack. When tuned to a VOR or localizer frequency, the 1.7-inch-square dot matrix dis- play shows a course deviation indicator, to-from arrow and an omni bearing selector.

Yaesu FTA-750L — Around $380

For around $90 more than the FTA-550L ProX, Yaesu’s top-of-the-line FTA-750L adds GPS and full ILS (glideslope) capability.

Sporty’s PJ2 comm — $199

With its two in-house models, Sporty’s embraces “simpler is better.” The comm-only “dead simple to operate” PJ2 is designed for one-handed operation. It also has PJ jacks for standard headset transmit-receive plugs, so no adapter is needed (unless your headset has the six-pin “LEMO” plug). The PJ2 has separate volume and squelch knobs and a choice of knob or keypad for entering frequencies. In the bad news-good news department, the PJ2 does not come with a lithium-ion battery. It uses AA alkalines since Sporty’s believes the batteries’ longer shelf life gives you a better chance of having a full charge when you need it most. But it does have a USB-C plug-in, so you can use an external portable phone charger.

Learn more about Sporty’s PJ2 here.

SP-400 — $299

The SP-400 has been around for decades and set the precedent for Sporty’s in-house “simpler is better” philosophy. Like the PJ2, it is designed to be capable but easy to operate with one hand. Unlike the PJ2, you will need a headset adapter, but the SP-400 does offer an optional lithium-ion rechargeable battery pack. Its eight-AA alkaline battery pack (two more than most) provides up to 40 hours of operation. But the big difference for the extra $100 is navigation capability, including full-ILS with glideslope. Sporty’s catalog listing for the SP-400 includes a testimonial from a buyer who describes how the SP-400 “saved my life” after an electrical failure on a dark and stormy night flight. 

The post Handheld Radios For Pilots appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

 Mekoryuk, Alaska/Injuries: 1

The pilot reported that, during takeoff from a beach, the airplane lifted off and reached about 10 ft above ground level, but he then “felt something holding [the airplane] down.” He lowered the nose to build up airspeed and attempted to climb again, but the airplane was unable to climb due to a downdraft. The pilot was unable to abort the takeoff due to increased airspeed and reduced landing area. The airplane was heading toward a 50 to 60-ft-tall bank, so he decided to “pull up” and attempt to fly over it. The airplane continued for about 3/4 mile, aerodynamically stalled, and then the empennage impacted terrain. The airplane continued about 30 ft, struck a big clump of dirt, and nosed over.  The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing.  The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.  The pilot reported that the wind was variable at 27 knots, gusting to 36 knots.

PROBABLE CAUSE(S): The pilot’s exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack during takeoff in gusting wind conditions.

Note: The report republished here is from the NTSB and is printed verbatim and in its complete form. 

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When it happened in June of 2019, TV news aired sensational claims about a fatal accident of a skydiving plane in Hawaii that killed 11 people. Based on the NTSB report, with its roughly 500-page docket, I learned that the news reports had more than a little basis in fact.

June 21, 2019, on the North Shore of Oahu, was beautiful—about 74° Fahrenheit, VFR, light winds. Dillingham Airfield sits right on the Pacific Ocean, well known for amazing glider flying conditions and less-well-known as a filming location for the TV show “Lost.”

The sun was getting ready to set. A Beechcraft King Air twin-turboprop took off with one pilot and 10 passengers on a Part 105 commercial parachute jump flight. Almost immediately, it banked to the left and rolled fast, crashing into the ground less than 700 feet from the departure end of the runway. Barely made it to the airport fence. Inverted. Forty-two degrees nose-down. There was a post-impact fire, and all 11 occupants died.

Some accidents are so sudden, so violent, that wearing a parachute while sitting next to a big opening won’t help you. It was the deadliest civil aircraft accident in the United States since 2011.

The NTSB hasn’t yet issued a probable cause. We won’t speculate on that here. It recovered no cockpit voice recorder or flight data recorder but conducted many careful analyses and interviews. Parachute jumpers take a lot of photos and videos, and it just so happened that some of their images came in handy in the NTSB’s quest to better understand previous incidents to inform their investigation into this accident.

Pilot

The pilot information section starts off well. A roommate reported he, “did not drink, smoke or do drugs, and led a very clean lifestyle!She stated that he was always in bed by 2100-2130.” On the day of the accident, witnesses said he appeared happy. The 42-year-old had been flying for two years, with about 1,100 total hours, around 200 of those as PIC in King Airs.

There are some oddities in his logbook, like PIC time in a King Air while still a student pilot. We don’t know many details here, as the NTSB couldn’t get that information from sources close to the pilot. Eventually, subpoenas were issued, but an experienced NTSB investigator once told me that by the time a sheriff has to go get a witness, interview answers are often variations of, “I don’t remember.”

FAA databases reveal that the pilot failed his initial private pilot practical test, which, on its own, is no big deal. We all have bad days or bad instructors. But our pilot also failed his first instrument airplane practical test and his commercial multi-engine practical test. Not a good history, but we can all move on.

While some jumpers interviewed said the pilot flew consistently and predictably, others said the opposite—that he hadn’t seemed to internalize all the conventions required of a working commercial pilot. One skydiver wrote that the pilot would, “sometimes take off at an extremely steep angle and aggressive climb right after leaving the runway. This was presumably done for fun to create a high-gravity environment momentary intentionally. I talked to the pilot and asked he consider not flying the aircraft in that manner while I am onboard as it could cause a high AoA stall, which would be unrecoverable that close to the ground.”

The witness wasn’t alone. According to the preliminary report, “One former Oahu Parachute Center pilot stated that the accident pilot would bank hard and pitch up aggressively on departures, and he had seen him do that as a ’thrill ride’ for the passengers. He said the pilot would also do negative-G dives for the ’weightless’ effect for fun, but he heard some jumpers would complain. He said the accident pilot told him he had done barrel rolls in the accident airplane but not with passengers. When asked if the accident pilot had ever received acrobatic training, he said no. When he talked to the accident pilot about doing these maneuvers and putting excessive stress on the airplane, the pilot’s response was always that the passengers seemed to like it and did not complain to him.”

Another concerning detail from the preliminary report is a witness’ claim that when confronted about his unorthodox flying, the “pilot’s response was always that the passengers seemed to like it.” Which misses the point. Passengers don’t get to weigh in on safety procedures. They don’t like being told they can’t carry home the gifts they bought or the fish they caught (due to weight and balance) or that they’re not landing where they paid to go (due to weather minimums). Balancing safety needs against passenger wants is fundamental to the real job we do as professional pilots, and safety wins that one every time, or at least it should.

Some passengers do get it. One rode on the jump flight before the crash. This skydiver was working at Dillingham Airfield and wrote to the NTSB, “I have witnessed this pilot taking off aggressively banking low to the ground many times. I feared the worst, and it happened. I hope you find out why.”

Training

There were also serious concerns about the pilot’s training. The NTSB report states, “According to former Oahu Parachute Center pilots, there was no training curriculum for Oahu Parachute Center King Air pilots and no company training or procedures manuals.” It continues that, “Training consisted of doing a couple of jump runs, hand them the keys and that was it. There was no formalized training since there was no money to take the airplane out of service for training flights, and they primarily trained by viewing the King Air Academy videos on YouTube and not hands-on training.”

Another former Oahu Parachute Center King Air pilot stated that, “the training at Oahu Parachute Center ’was a joke.'” He said his training was minimal, and, when completed, his instructor hopped out of the airplane and told him “not to get uncoordinated.” There were no procedures given to him to follow, and there was no training on how to fly the airplane.

Unaddressed Structural Damage To The Airplane?

There were serious concerns about the health of the accident airplane, a 1967 Beech Model 65-A90 King Air powered by two Pratt & Whitney PT6A engines. The King Air is a safe, popular workhorse of a plane. But this one was old, and some recent history is incomplete. Work over the previous few months hadn’t been recorded in the aircraft logbooks. No logbook entries were found documenting engine compressor washes required due to flying in a salty atmosphere. The mechanic had both his Airframe and Powerplant and his Inspection Authorization FAA certificates revoked in 2005 due to falsification of records on two aircraft. He was later allowed to be reexamined, and new certificates were issued in 2015 and 2017.

According to one pilot who trained multiple other pilots in the accident airplane, “the accident airplane would not fly true straight and level, and always wanted to bank to the left. It required full maximum aileron trim to keep it straight and level.” The pilot said the aircraft owner was aware of the issue and told him, “it had something to do with the left wing being bent.”

Sound like hyperbole? Actually, this wasn’t the first time the board had seen N256TA; the plane had been involved in a dramatic incident in 2016, again flying skydivers. In this case, a pilot poorly recovered from an inadvertent spin, allowing excess airspeed and G-loads that caused the overstress separation of the right horizontal stabilizer. There’s an amazing air-to-air photographic record by a skydiver who exited the damaged aircraft. [Below] are NTSB graphics from the video that’s on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi83pFqAxOc. Somehow the pilot brought the plane in for a safe landing. No one was injured.

The post The Alarming Backstory Of A Fatal Hawaii King Air Crash appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

With the announcement last week by Boeing that it had delivered its last 747, it’s hard for those of us who love the plane to look back nostalgically at one of the most remarkable aircraft in aviation history. Not that the vaunted Seven-Four is gone, far from it. with hundreds of the jumbo jets still flying, the distinctive hump backed giant from Washington State will be flying for decades to come. 

The Boeing 747, which is featured on our Top 25 Planes of All Time list, made its first flight on February 9, 1969. The sortie lasted about 75 minutes. The four-engine, wide-bodied “jumbo” was the first among passenger jets to feature an upper deck, initially used as a lounge for first-class passengers.

Work that eventually led to the design for the 747 began in response to a March 1964 USAF request called the CX-Heavy Logistics System (CX-HLS), which specified nose-loading of large cargo. It was in this project that Boeing developed its four-engine design with the cockpit raised above the main deck to allow the nose to open for large cargo loads. Responses to the Air Force also arrived from Douglas, General Dynamics, Lockheed and Martin Marietta, and the high-wing Lockheed C-5 Galaxy was chosen in the end.

On the commercial side, Boeing developed a keen sense for opportunity, and competition with Douglas, in the wake of the 707’s success. Juan Trippe of Pan Am had already requested an airliner twice that size in hopes of reducing airport congestion, an interesting theory as we look back through hindsight today. Nevertheless, Trippe signed the contract for the first 25 747 aircraft on Boeing’s 50^th anniversary at a ceremony in Seattle.

Following development talks with Trippe and others, Boeing decided freight-dog duty could be the 747’s business fallback plan, thanks largely to its CX-HLS project DNA. Back then, a popular assumption at the airlines was that supersonic airliners would eat up the best part of the passenger-hauling business, but freight rarely needed to be anywhere quite as quickly.

While (comparatively) ultra-efficient twin-engine and twin-aisle “widebodies” have finally eclipsed the 747’s reign as Queen of the Skies, that has taken more than half a century, and the 747-8F,still in production, remains a star in the freight-hauling business. So, the fat lady hasn’t quite begun to sing for the Queen just yet.

—

Learn more about the amazing passenger jet here: Boeing 747: 50 Years, 50 Amazing Facts

The post Last 747 Delivery. We Look Back at the Big Boeing’s First Flight and the Model’s Brush with Failure appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

In late December 2021, when YouTube creator and former Olympic snowboarder Trevor Jacob posted a video of himself bailing out of his recently purchased Taylorcraft light plane over mountainous terrain, pilots immediately smelled something fishy. And they weren’t impressed. In fact, the incident, which is now being investigated by the FAA, according to AVweb (good scoop, y’all), was everything that pilots hate about the kind of flashy self-promotion that has been spawned and inspired by sites like YouTube and TikTok, which reward creators, like cash money rewards, for their viral videos. Jacob’s video currently has around 1.5 million page views.

I won’t belabor why people suspect that Jacob’s bailing out of the light plane was a hoax. In short, it was too perfectly choreographed. Jacob was wearing a skydiving parachute, the T’Craft’s door appears to be unlatched before the engine quits, the fuel selector looks to be shut off, according to one T-Craft owner, and the pilot’s reactions seem less than spontaneous in response to what many suspect was a faux emergency. The entire thing seemed perfectly set up to make a video. Even the title: I Crashed My Plane, seems to imply more than Jacob intended.

True believers would counter with the claim that Jacob wouldn’t have chosen such a remote place to exit his plane had it been planned. Skeptics would respond that such a location was actually ideal, and that Jacob, an experienced skydiver and backcountry athlete, would have been able to save himself from such an emergency.

But I’m not really concerned with making a case against Jacob—there are plenty of others who have done just that and done it well. I was a skeptic before I saw 10 seconds of the video, and the footage did nothing but cement that non-belief. Most pilots feel exactly the same way.

My point is that such stunts, as the FAA suspects it was, do not impress pilots. Quite the opposite. While we all embrace the videos of joyful selfies or wild crosswind landings, such self-made moments are capturing real flying. It is authentic, the joy, the challenges, even the risks. Wing suit flyers—Jacob was said to be carrying the ashes of a friend who died in a wingsuit accident—often take crazy risks, but they are doing so not to manufacture a crisis moment but to experience it and share that experience. And I vigorously support their freedom to do so while even more vigorously advising would-be flyers to find less risky aviation pursuits.

On the other hand, pilots find stunts wildly tone deaf to the nature of aviation. Manufacturing an emergency invites real harm, which real pilots would never do. Sure, many pilots embrace increased levels of risk in order to get an extra jolt out of their flying, but the idea is to not crash. And even more, such stunts are disrespectful of the losses that so many pilot have suffered, when people they care about are lost in an actual crash. There’s nothing clever or funny about them. They are little more than a demonstration of the creator’s ignorance of the culture of safety that real pilots live out loud on every flight.

Did Jacob create this emergency for YouTube bucks? I’ll let the FAA decide that. Whether it was a stunt or just a suspiciously opportune video moment, I wouldn’t want to be in Jacob’s shoes right now.

FAA Revokes YouTuber’s Pilot Certificate Over “Egregious and Intentional” Crash

The post Everything That‘s Wrong With The Infamous Parachute Video appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

The negative impacts to aviation of the implementation of 5G cellular towers starting late last year and in earnest early this year is news to no one. Chief though not unique on that list of affected aircraft electronics is the radar altimeter, which (mostly) larger planes, including just about all commercial and large business jets, use for precision approach and terrain warning purposes.

Before 5G cellular service was formally launched back in January, the FAA took measures to protect “big birds” using radar altimeters near large airports from potential 5G interference. The agency negotiated with the Federal Communications Commission for reduced power output of 5G antennas and created protected zones around major airports where mostly commercial aircraft will be making low visibility landing attempts in poor weather. Such operations, obviously, depend on the performance of the radar altimeter for precise and reliable awareness of altitude down to minimums. Notably, the FAA issued an AD in December 2021 specifying that NOTAMs will be issued at certain airports where radar altimeter performance has been verified as “unreliable,” thus prohibiting procedures that rely on it.

What about GA? Many of us operate fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft at small and mid-sized US airports probably never considered for a 5G protected zone during negotiations at the federal level. Our radar altimeters back up the glideslope on a precision approach and can feed an on-board terrain awareness and warning system (TAWS) with its all-important data feed.

Enter the market for 5G-friendly radar altimeters, such as units rolled out recently by FreeFlight Systems. These altimeters are like ancestor units except for the addition of a “unique combination of internal filtering and Digital Signal Processing technology that can tolerate out-of-band 5G interference as well as other RF interferences,” according to the company. That “out-of-band 5G” reference is a hat-tip to the fact that 5G cellular frequencies and radar altimeter frequencies are adjacent on the spectrum, not identical. This closeness is part of the reason such a debate has raged over the technology; interference has always been a risk, but not a certainty.

The FreeFlight RA-5500 is a new dual-antenna unit specifically developed for GA applications — including the emerging eVTOL market — and specifies “5G robustness” to up to 0.2 nautical miles. There is also a “Mk II” upgrade version of legacy Model 4000 and 4500 units available, with specific addition of the 5G hardening features.

This development doesn’t address the question of why owners and operators of radar altimeter-equipped aircraft should have to buy expensive new equipment to replace previously perfectly functional existing gear with no contribution from the companies that implemented 5G.

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The beloved Beech Bonanza is officially turning 75 this year. Even though it first flew at the end of 1945, the Ralph Harmon-designed single received its type certificate on March 25, 1947, with production beginning the same year. Fun fact: Did you know the first few Bonanzas had fabric-covered ailerons and flaps?

To celebrate the anniversary, the EAA’s Vintage Aircraft Association and the American Bonanza Society are teaming up to feature pre-1970 Bonanzas at this year’s EAA AirVenture fly-in. Nearly 100 early Bonanzas were pre-registered for the event by March 31 and are considered by organizers to be in “addition to” the already-sizeable Bonanzas to Oshkosh annual mass arrival to AirVenture.

In January 1949, wartime ferry pilot turned chronic record-setter (and ill-fated racer) William P. Odom flew the fourth Model 35 built, N80040, from Honolulu’s Hickam Field to Oakland, California by way of Reno, Nevada, in an attempt to reach!wait for it!New Jersey. As for that penultimate waypoint over Reno and reversal to California, well, it was a weather diversion. Odom’s quote after that 22-hour flight: “Boy, am I tired.” Despite breaking the straight-line FAI distance record for his weight class, Odom had the Bonanza disassembled once more, loaded back onto a DC-4 and flown back to Hawaii for another effort, which was even more successful. On March 7, he landed at Teterboro after 36 hours and two minutes. N80040 and its giant tip tanks now rest in the Smithsonian.

More than 17,000 Bonanzas of all variants have been produced, and the American Bonanza Society will be hosting a raft of forums, lectures, and other events at its tent near the Theater in the Woods at AirVenture. The EAA’s Vintage Aircraft Association, founded in 1971, endeavors to preserve the history of vintage aircraft and to “keep aviation history alive.”

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After the 1997 merger of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas, the joke in Seattle was, “McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing with Boeing’s money.” Twenty-five years down the road, we’ve realized it wasn’t much of a joke. What you may not know is how post-merger Boeing handled the remains of Hughes Helicopters, a prized subsidiary of legendary Hughes Aircraft until a Hughes’ Summa Corporation sold it to McDonnell Douglas in 1984.

The short version is that Boeing kept the military side of McDonnell Douglas Helicopter Systems, which held the lucrative AH-64 Apache military business and attempted to sell the civilian side to Bell Helicopter. The latter move was blocked by the Feds, so Boeing sold MD Helicopters to a group of Dutch investors, who sold it to investment fund Patriarch Partners in 2005, which then seems to have gone bust sometime in 2020. The aircraft business, as they say, ain’t easy, despite the brand’s reputation for pilot-pleasing products like the MD 500, a 1963 design with impeccable handling that still sees duty in private hands and commercial service, often supporting high-risk jobs like those of the aerial powerline workers.

This week, Arizona-based MD Helicopters filed for bankruptcy protection while simultaneously announcing its restructuring, and a buyer has emerged in the form of a consortium of creditors led by Barden Hill Investment Partners and MBIA Insurance. Access to financing for the restructuring of MD Helicopters is said to be about $60 million, which should buy the brand some time if nothing else. The purchase and restructuring remain subject to court approvals, naturally.

It will be interesting to see if the new stewards of MD Helicopters plot a path like that outlined for struggling Enstrom: to rebuild as a technical supplier to emerging VTOL and eVTOL makers while supporting the fleet of more than 2,500 MD Helicopters in operation around the world.

The post MD Helicopters Enters Chapter 11, Buyer Emerges appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.